Chapter X (2)

"Now we have informed you of the progress the water of Mars has made in being dispossessed of its gross and weighty elements; hence there are none of these to ascend and to commingle in the formation of rain drops; hence none but the purer and refined elements of the water are exhaled and drawn upward, and consequently none but the pure and refined descend. These are in themselves comparatively light and of greatly diminished gravity, and therefore mild and pleasant in their effect. Especially does this become true as a resulting necessity, from the fact that there are no fierce winds or storms or cold temperature in the surrounding atmospheric belts or zones. The rains on Mars are more like your gentle dews of early autumn than your rains and showers. You at once take in the situation from this and preceding statements of facts that crude material structures are not necessary, even if the material for their construction could be found, and we have seen that such is not the case, for all things, including the material in detail out of which edifices are constructed, have progressed beyond and above their crude grossness.

"In some portions of Mars no structures are used at all, owing to the mildness of the climate and the total absence of inclemency in the slightest degree. In other portions the beautifully developed trees, and especially those that spread out their branches near the surface of the soil, are ample for the purposes of shelter. Still in others they have a sort of building which is a grand pavilion, embracing a vast area of territory, thousands of miles in extent, under the same roof or cover, which during certain periods of the year and day become luminous and transparent. The temples and gorgeous structures, cities, and magnificent edifices have been transferred in spiritual essence to the spiritual spheres, and have ceased to be as material entities, so when the planet passes into the spiritual condition outright and in toto, all that Mars could ever boast of in architectural grandeur and excellence is preserved and perpetuated with additional luster and beauty from the finishing spiritual touches by the Infinite Master Builder. And now you perceive that other questions come up right here and require recognition and treatment. Among them these: Do the people on Mars sleep? If so, how often and how much?

"May 11. Why is it that you require repose in sleep? In the infinitely wise arrangement of all things there are amply satisfactory reasons for every demand, every requirement, every manifestation, and therefore there are reasons why sleep is induced and is an imperative necessity in your present and past states of existence.

"When rest in sleep is long deferred from nervous derangements or other causes, your physicians administer narcotics to induce it, for they well know, as you all do, that sleep is necessary after intervals of wakefulness in order to protract your being in the form, and why?

"You have voluntary and involuntary functions or organs; the voluntary only, the involuntary never, can be suspended for certain periods of time. Your respiration and blood circulation are involuntary, and as long as you remain embodied in flesh will continue to perform their appropriate functions, whether you wake or sleep, for they are not subject to or influenced by the will. And it is by the unconscious operation of these that your voluntary functions when suspended in sleep are replenished and reinvigorated. You are, as at present constituted, made up corporally of gross material, which becomes wearied and exhausted by the active exercise or operation of the voluntary functions, and the nerve force will expend itself unless periodically reimbursed and replenished, and restored to its normal condition by the intervention and recuperative power of sleep. When in the ages to come your people lose this grossness in their material composition, your inclination to sleep and the necessity for it will abate and become lessened correspondingly to your successive stages of advancement in progressive development.

"Thus is revealed to you the fact that on Mars, at this time, the inhabitants have but very little need of sleep. They sleep, but in a modified sense as to periods, duration and manner. They rest when fatigued, and for brief periods pass into a state of languor or stupidity, to some extent analogous to your sleeping state, which is never required oftener than once a week, and then only for a few hours.

"Your spirit friends will tell you that they never sleep, but rest, and ever keep in mind that the people of Mars are closely approximating the spiritual. Then, again, on Mars they do not have night as you do, and consequently not the same nocturnal influences to suggest and invite sleep. This suggests another subject germane to our line of thought. In nature you find always two extremes, that seem to stand in antipodal relations to each other. Let us give a few instances in illustration: You have day and night, cold and heat, male and female, fire and water, good and evil, etc. Some of these seem to be at fierce war with each other, and yet what a delusion! This seeming antagonism is but the working of a law that shall eventuate in the production of the completest harmony. Undeveloped people, ignorant of the jewel-crowned truths, as yet concealed from them in the grand arcana of nature and the progressive sciences, laugh and sneer at the idea of marriages in spirit life, when the unvarnished truth is that man, considered in his independent and separate sexual relation, is but a half man, and can not become rounded out into fully developed manhood until consociated in conjunctive union with the opposite sex--not indeed and truly until the man and woman become twain, one flesh, or, in better phraseology, spiritually unitized.

"The day and night will continue until finally and by gradual processes the night is banished, and vanishes in the splendor of a continuously refulgent and sunlit atmosphere. On Mars this condition is almost reached, and the night there resembles the shadings thrown over the earth when a cloud passes over the face of your moon at hightide, and ultimately even this shall be no more, for in the spiritual spheres of Mars, as in your exalted ones, there are no shadows to obscure or mar the radiant light of the spiritual sun, and Mars itself is fast approaching this sublime condition. We must withhold what we have to say in regard to the seeming strife between good and evil for our next.

"May 12. The people of christendom have had it rung in their ears for nearly two thousand years that man is essentially bad, unutterably wicked, unspeakably depraved, and, worst of all, this horrid state comes to him, not of his own creating, but by inevitable and unavoidable inheritance. In our ignorance and credulity how we have wept over the weakness and folly of our first parents in yielding to the flattery and persuasive eloquence of the cruel serpent in the pure and primitive bowers of Eden. Our tears have flown and flown, with no gentle, soothing hand to touch our eyes and bid them cease; no voice panoplied with authority to speak to; no words of hope and cheer. We have been told in answer to our anxious entreaties for blissful hope and loving counsel that there is a superabundance of evil in us, and a trifling, insignificant quantity of good, and that nothing short of a miracle of regeneration can save us from unutterable and unending misery in the life to come; that without this miraculous interposition of divine grace, the little good that is in us will be swallowed up and devoured by the appalling evil of our sinfully inherited natures. Oh, man, how you degrade your true nobility, your godlike and divine nobility, by bowing the knee to this hideous monster of falsehood, and by kneeling at this unholy shrine. In direct opposition to this abominable and degrading doctrine stands the truth in its pristine and noble beauty.

"According to this Christian doctrine we behold in man a combination of good and evil, and in the struggle for the mastery the evil is to be mightier than the good. The good emanating from and partaking of the majestic excellence of the eternal, infinite God must, alas, succumb to and be overthrown by evil, its unholy rival. Can man conceive of a scheme more degrading and heartless, and more completely dishonoring to God and his infinite perfections of wisdom, goodness and power--a doctrine more utterly subversive of moral goodness, deific excellence, and that more completely wrecks the moral government of God and dumps into one common funeral heap the hopes and happiness of the human race. No, no, this is not true; it is false, false, basely false.

"What is the true theory of good and evil? Man, oh, man, hearken to the voice of truth, and be wooed and won by its gentle entreaties. Let the scales of ignorance and superstition fall from your eyes. Look upward for truth, and be baptized in its beauteous light, and cleansed in its pure and holy waters. Evil is the assemblage of elements in the concrete, if I may be permitted so to speak, and is simply undeveloped good, or good in a lesser degree. Evil is evanescent and transitory, good is permanent and eternally enduring. The fittest of all things in the grand scheme of progression only survive, while all else is doomed to perish. The good and the true are as enduring and everlasting as the eternal God himself, while the evil and the false are fleeting, unenduring, and carry within themselves the insatiate and unappeasable elements of ultimate annihilation. Be assured of this, for no truth in God's illimitable universe has been more firmly established on a more indestructible foundation. Good day.

"May 15. Astronomers will tell you that in their observations through the telescope the planet Mars presents a red brilliancy not observably characteristic of the other planets in your solar system, which they are unable to account for. Considering the vastness of the subject, the immense distance in space where the scintillating orbs are chanting their silent songs of praise to God, the difficulties in the way of observation, etc., the discoveries in the domain of astronomy have been fully as remarkable, important, and satisfactory, as in any other field of scientific investigation. But still only a very little compared with the immensity of the subject has been disclosed and some of that mixed and interlarded with error. Astronomy will become the greatest of all sciences when by new apparatus and new appliances the spiritual spheres belonging to the various planets shall have been discovered. This success will be achieved in the coming time. On Mars the people have mastered this problem, and I was surprised to learn that they knew all about our spiritual spheres from their far distant standpoint of observation, and that they knew minutely all the characteristic and inherent qualities of your planetary atmosphere. They have long since invented instruments by which they are enabled to photograph in minute detail and perfect fidelity of representation every material object on the earth. And you will be surprised when I tell you that I inspected Stockholm, London, Paris, New York, your own queen city, Cincinnati, etc., in a more perfect form of presentation than your artists can reproduce on canvas with pencil and brush, and at the same time I was standing in spirit in the immeasurable immensity of space on the planet Mars. I can not give you even in outline, much less in detail, the modus operandi of this achievement, and will only say that the rays of light in reflective power will yet dawn upon your scientists and philosophers as the agent of discoveries and accomplishments not now even dreamed of by the people of earth. I want to add right here a prophetic statement, which you may carefully note, that the time is not so very far distant when your inspired inventors will devise and construct an instrument that will disclose to the human material eye, to the astonishment of the world, your own spirit land; for let it be well understood that your spirit world has a real, tangible, objective existence, that will yet yield its rich treasures in scientific revealments for the enlightenment and progress of your race. In very truth the spirit world is the only real and permanent one, constructed by the infinite master builder for all eternal time, while your physical and material, except their spiritual essences, are but the shadows and temporary projections from the spiritual. Logically and metaphysically speaking, the spirit world is the pre-eminent cause of your world, the mere transitory effect. This being true, your keen sense hastens you at once to the conclusion, founded in reason and truth, that an effect can not be greater or more enduring than the cause that produced it, but must of necessity and in the very nature of things be infinitely less.

"May 18. A people so pre-eminently advanced in all that appertains to the sublimation of their being, and all that surrounds them, and in which they come in contact, must necessarily be exceedingly refined and aesthetic in their mannerisms, habits of life, intercourse with each other, and in their vocations and employments. In the very nature of things it could not be otherwise. From what has been heretofore said relating to the highly favored and inestimably progressed denizens of Mars, it is not difficult to see that their pursuits must necessarily and almost entirely relate to the realm of the intellectual and spiritual, as they have passed beyond the requirements and demands of that which pertains to the material phase of existence. Physical wants require physical exertion to supply them. Material requirements necessitate attention to and labor in the domain of the material, and this, for obvious reasons, that need not be stated or discussed. It may be prudent, however, to premise that when the physical constitution requires substantially gross materials to keep up and maintain the corporealities of our nature, we must look to the productions of the farm and the fruitage of the forest, and also to animal food, which are always in quality and degree in exact correspondence to our status or state of progression. But when we lose the constituent elements of corporeal being that belong to the lower strata of the constitution of things, we require something more refined and sublimated, and lo, always it is at hand to meet the exigency, for let it ever be borne in mind that the law that is incessantly and without intermission working away in solving the great problem of life and being, moving upward from the lower to the higher, is not confined in its operations to only form or species of being, but applies to and operates upon all, whether rational or irrational, animate or inanimate, and pushes all forward and upward with perfect and precise equability and in exact and equally proportional degree, none advancing more rapidly than the rest and none lagging behind. Thus, you perceive the infinite order and the beautiful symmetry of the great law of evolution and progression. Herein is necessitated varied changes in the value and character of vocation and employments, suited to the continued mutations of things in the endless series of progressive changes.

"At one period in the history of Mars the art of photography was discovered. Of course it attracted great attention and challenged admiration. It was regarded not only as wonderful but marvelous. The discoverer was almost deified, for he was thought to be endowed with something of the divine nature not discoverable in others, until the art advanced step by step, improvement on improvement, when the divinity with which the discoverer had been invested by the admiring multitudes dwindled into insignificance, and the very sensible conclusion reached that he was merely highly gifted and spiritually inspired, but altogether human still. Compare the primitive system of photography, limited as it was, to objects of immediate presence to that now existing, whereby worlds and systems of worlds are made tributary to its discoveries and achievements. Now, instead of the wonders of the art inspiring hero worship of the men engaged in its studies and who produce the wondrous results, a feeling of awe and veneration for the continually increasing wonders of the creation is inspired. The admiration is justly transferred from man to the creator and the stupendous majesty of his laws and works. On Mars photography is now and has been for a long time a favorite and delightful employment pursued by the many, for all have the advantages of it. Therefore the study, not only of their own world, but numerous others, constitutes a pleasant, instructive, and intellectually remunerative employment. Nor is this confined and limited to material worlds, but reaches out and embraces the spiritual spheres of each.

"Again, take the science of chemistry. It once only dealt with material solids, but now on Mars it has reached a higher plane or sphere, and the sublimated substances, still possessed of modified degrees of matter, likewise atmospheric and spiritual substances, come within the purview and yield obedience to its powerful processes of analysis. This is still and ever will be an instructive and profitable field for those aspiring minds of the Marsians bent on the acquisition of knowledge and the understanding of the infinitely varied and universal laws by which all nature and the universe are governed and controlled.

"May 22. On Mars the people are divided up into a very great many societies. The membership of these societies is not a matter of choice and volition. Here you have degrees of social society, and you say there are three grades--the lower, middle and upper. This is so in the deceptive seeming, but in fact you have many more, but you do not understand the subtle laws governing in their formation and diversity. You also have secret societies, into which you require the consent of a certain number to gain admission, while at the same time a certain other number may object. Certain arbitrary votes in number control the question of application, and by them your admission or rejection is determined. In your social society quite a different rule or policy prevails. In a certain grade or stratum true merit and worth are not considered of any moment, but wealth and pecuniary par excellence constitute the law of attraction. In other words, and what ought to burn your cheeks with shame, it matters not how morally depraved or utterly abandoned to all real intrinsic worth of manhood or womanhood, a large supply of the world's fleeting possessions constitutes the real standard of respectability, and the sure passport into the higher walks of social life. On Mars they have long since passed beyond and above this purely human, unspiritual and unholy rule. There they are known and estimated as they really are, for they can not disguise their moral and spiritual status; it is read in the look, the walk, the thought-words, and most potently in the aura emitted, permeating and coloring the very garments worn, thereby disclosing by shades of color the moral, mental and spiritual degree of advancement. You have an old adage, which contains a very great truth, namely: 'Birds of a feather will flock together,' 'like draws like.' Under the operation of an immutable law of attraction and repulsion the societies of Mars are formed, and this law, so utterly disregarded by embodied man on the earth, applies to and is operative in the spiritual spheres of all the innumerable worlds of the vast, illimitable universe of God. And this law of attraction and repulsion is indiscriminate and recognizes no distinction on account of wealth, social standing or prominence among men. It deals with spiritual laws and spiritual truths and spiritual things. There being different societies on Mars, formed and governed by this great and inexorable law of selection or attraction and repulsion, you see readily that their employments must of necessity and in some regards be quite different.

"May 29. We have endeavored to keep before you, at the risk of being censured for occasional reiteration and repetition, the great primary and fundamental fact that all things under the divine arrangement advance in the ascending scale of infinite and unending progression by regular and gradual series, and in equal ratio; but you must note an important fact in this connection, namely, that all do not at the same time reach the same degree of unfoldment--some a little in advance of others, and so on. The question necessarily arises, why is this so? We only desire to say in answer at this time that all do not start out on their career of animate being at precisely the same time or under the same conditions, nor with the same or equal antenatal advantages. This carries us back behind our mere entrance into physical life, through and by the laws of human physical procreation, into a domain as yet unexplored, except feebly, by mortal man. It seems to me if men could only perceive and understand the grand sublimity and variety of their antecedent being, they would no longer be blinded to the future greatness and glory in store for them. This subject, if you ever enter upon it, you will find prolific of vast knowledge, immense and perfectly astounding revelations. But the time has not yet arrived for them. The people on Mars, like your own, not starting out on life's eventful and momentous journey with the same or equal advantages, have necessarily attained unto different degrees of progressive unfoldment, and by reason of this are their different and somewhat differing societies formed. In the same circle, order or stratum of society on earth, the good, the bad and the indifferent associate and seem to harmoniously blend and assimilate. But this is not true in fact. The degree of perfection attained in moral and spiritual excellence does not govern in their formation, and they are therefore incongruous, unsatisfactory and transitory. On Mars two unequals in progression can not harmonize, for the law rebels, interposes insurmountable barriers, and will not allow it. Those only are associated who harmonize and resemble each other, not in the accumulations of wealth, not in stature, not in facial expressions or outward physical conformation, but those who are drawn together by a sort of soul kinship, of absolute union of soul feeling, sympathetic inclinations and aspirations, having for their basis, as of prime and first importance, an equal degree of spiritual unfoldment. Thus divided and separated, there are very many different societies or orders, each differing in development, inclinations and aspirations, they inevitably have dissimilar pursuits and employments, suited to tastes, wants and abilities, but all conspiring for the general good of all.

"June 1. The people of Mars are not so large in stature as on your earth, nor are they as large as at former periods of their history. The process of progression in casting off the gross, and also by affecting the laws of propagation, has materially reduced the present inhabitants in their physical proportions. Their feet, except in the lower order, are either not shod at all, or are covered by a very light and refined material substance. The nearer the spiritual the people become the less they are affected by grosser atmospheric elements, and this is directly the opposite of your experience. Here the coarser the material make-up the better can the severer conditions of your temperature be borne, and the reason is plain.

"Here some are progressed, physically speaking, in advance of the progress of the elements, and therefore they are detrimentally affected and influenced by them, whereas on Mars a regular advance in development has been reached, and all things now smoothly and evenly pass under the operations of the law. After awhile the same law will commence to thus orderly and regularly operate with you when this difficulty will be happily overcome. The grandest achievement made by progression on Mars has produced the greatest result in the formation of the heads of the people. Phrenology here on earth is but feebly and imperfectly understood, although there is in it a grand and most salutary scientific truth. Here, however, as yet, you have the angular and uneven formation of the cranium, with its attendant angularity of temperament and disposition. On Mars the heads are so exquisitely formed and so harmonious in the external, and so perfectly symmetrical, that you observe and note it at first glance, and following this high and beautiful development is discovered a degree of wisdom and learning perfectly astonishing to a visitor from a foreign, though neighboring planet. The hair on these magnificent heads is of a fiber and texture resembling your finest silk, and from under a beautifully arched brow you behold a mild yet brilliant eye, beaming with intelligence and affection, and they can convey thoughts and ideas without the use of words or the intervention of audible sound.

"June 5. Hundreds, yea, thousands of years ago, the development of mind on the planet Mars was extraordinary, and you can conceive what it must be now. Many causes, of course, conspired and aided in bringing about this result. The natural process of development would have ultimately accomplished it unassisted by other agencies, but a wise and humane governmental system was adopted, originating in the spirit world, which constituted a complete innovation upon and revolution in previous systems, and which gave a marked impetus to the growth and advancement of mind, and which produced also a wonderful improvement in the physical constitutions of succeeding generations. That system consisted of a legislative policy of the controlling government, rigidly and unexceptionally enforced, which provided that all children born into physical life should be given up and relinquished to the control and direction of the government, and by the government reared, educated, and prepared for the duties and requirements of life. Elaborate buildings, elaborately and artistically embellished and beautified were constructed at proper and convenient locations, where at a certain period of gestation, very early indeed, the expectant mother was taken and kept until a certain and proper time after parturition, when the mother was discharged and restored to freedom, and the new-born babe was taken charge of, raised and maintained by the fostering care of the government. Between the period of conception and parturition, the mother was continually kept under the most elevating influences, both of body and mind. Her soul was kept enraptured by the ennobling influences of music, and such music, of which you as yet have no conception. This produced in the mother the desired condition of harmony, which had a corresponding effect upon the little one concealed from mortal view. Twice or thrice a week lecturers, under the pay and patronage of the government, visited these asylums and discoursed to the inmates on scientific, literary, and moral subjects.

"June 8. These discourses were not only designed but efficacious in directing the minds and hearts of the auditors into the most elevating and progressively intellectual channels, and left their inevitable and unfailing impress upon the forthcoming offspring. In addition works of art, rare paintings, and exhibitions of sculpture were at certain times presented for inspection, study, and reflection, inspiring noble thoughts of the sublime and beautiful. Artists of superior attainments and national renown occasionally visited these places and gave exhibitions of their skill in transferring to canvas, in an impromptu manner, their loftiest conceptions of the beautiful in landscapes, scenes, etc., which were of the rarest beauty of design. Books treating of the noblest subjects were placed within ready reach and convenient access, and the inmates read them with avidity and delight. They understood that they were thus preparing the new generations, as yet unushered into life, to take their places, and that their success largely depended on the assiduity with which they availed themselves of their opportunities. The government, as before stated, took charge of the young and trained and educated them in art, music, and the sciences, and the result was soon manifest in producing a race of intellectual giants, and distinguished for their ability in the arts and sciences, and the benevolence or their religious natures. And to-day you can not find a man or woman of adult age who is not perfectly versed in all the higher branches of learning, and eminently proficient in music. If a thousand of them could be bodily transferred to America, and with her exceptional advantages, and live, they would soon, by the sheer force of intellect, rule this world, and lift it morally and intellectually upon a plane that would dazzle you to behold. And yet, my dear friend, it is laid up in the womb of time that you of earth shall reach this sublime height.

"The denizens of earth may wonder at and disbelieve these relations, but nevertheless they are as true as that the eternal God is truth. They point to the destiny in store for the future inhabitants of earth, and intimate to poor disheartened mortals the certainty and greatness of the future, in which they are to figure in no mean way nor act no inconsequential part.

"July 10. On Mars the doctrine of discrimination on the score of sex was never taught, but the equality of the sexes has always been recognized. This indiscrimination has always been operative in employments and in the choosing of persons to fill official station at a period of their history when officers were paid out of the public exchequer for their services. Of course, at this time when office is administered without compensation the rule remains undisturbed. Your troubles, that is, many of them, in the present and past have arisen either from a misunderstanding of the truth or a misapplication of it and its requirements. Can it be rationally maintained that truth and justice require a discrimination to be made adverse to the female? If so, there must be ample reasons for it, and what are they? We are told that, comparatively speaking, woman is the weaker. Is this true? and if so, pray tell wherein? You answer physically, and thus you would establish her status in all other regards, by the rule of mere brute force, powers of endurance, and physical capabilities. Do you not know that the ox and the horse, for precisely the same reason, can largely discount you? Do you not realize that by this argument you are appealing to the lowest element of your nature, that which only distinguishes you as connected with matter, and which as we have already seen, is transitory and fleeting? Pray lift the subject upon a higher and nobler plane and then let us have your arguments and reasoning. Is man superior to woman morally? Now, if you are honest, you must blush. In morals, man superior to woman! We all know this is not true. And do morals count for naught in the scale of being? In what pertains to the finer sensibilities and spiritual pureties is woman inferior? If not, are these of no moment compared with mere physical brute force? Do women survive death as men do; if so, which will be of greatest value in the beautiful hereafter--brute force and physical prowess, which only have existence in the lower realms of the spiritual world, or those finer spiritual qualities possessed by woman in a much higher degree than by man as they manifest in embodied life, and which belong to the higher spiritual sphere of being in the other life?

"Beware, oh man, how you treat angelic woman, for the future will teach you many lessons, brought about by your arbitrary and utterly indefensible assumptions and arrogations, among which will be classed your illiberal and unjust treatment of woman. She is your equal, and your great weakness is in withholding it from her.

"July 13. In giving briefly and very imperfectly a sketch of what I saw and learned on the planet Mars I have been compelled necessarily to omit many things, among other reasons, because they would not only be not believed, but in many instances incite unfavorable comments, if not absolute ridicule. I am not unconscious of the fact that many things contained in the foregoing narrative, although literally true, will meet with unfavorable criticism, but I have not been writing to please or to avoid censure, but to deliver the truth, much of which I am aware is far in advance of the age in which you now live on the planet earth. But it has been thought that a little work of this kind would be kindly received and amiably treated by at least progressed minds--those who had inspirationally and intuitively drank at the fountain of spiritual wisdom and spiritual things; and, as to others, it was hoped it might cause them to think it possible, if not probable, that man is something more than a mere fleeting bauble, a mere creature of a moment.

"To awaken in man the consciousness of the augustness of his being, and the mighty destiny before and awaiting its development, can not fail in this transition period, when you are passing from old theological theories and religious systems into something better, higher, holier, to subserve great and lasting good. In this transition process the great effort is to be made to direct the great body of advancing minds into the right channels, for in many cases the tendency is found to be toward the cold barrenness of materialism.

"The question that is to confront you in the future is not in regard to creeds and dogmas, for they are passing away, but whether these few fleeting years of physically embodied life is the all of your being, whether death is the setting forever of the bright star of our being in the night and gloom of ended existence, or whether there is for man a glorious life of endless progress beyond the life and transitory scenes of physical embodiment.

"July 14. With this my labors for the present end. The effort has been more irksome than you may conceive. The difficulties attending the act of communicating are more numerous and troublesome than the world would allow if they were fully explained. But we have done the best we could.

"To you, Mr. Helleberg, I return my thanks and the thanks of those co-operating with me, for the patience, earnestness and honesty which have characterized your association with us in this work. Our blessings rest upon you, and be assured that your greatest reward will be in the happy land which your aged footsteps are nearing. We shall shield and bless you here, and crown you in the land of immortal beatitudes.

"We would be ungrateful beyond measure not to speak in acknowledgment of the virtues and noble qualities of the medium, through whose superbly developed medial powers we have been enabled to speak to the world. In consequence of our frequent contact with her noble and pure soul our first admiration for her has grown into the deepest, truest and holiest affection. Heaven bless her in all her ways and walks. Her noble band of spirits, tireless, indefatigable and upright, have rendered us vast assistance, without which we could not have succeeded in the slightest degree. They are capable, true and honest, and able to guard and protect their instrument, before whom is a great future career of usefulness, and she may confidently trust them in all things.

"To those who may read my feeble lines I bespeak that charity you would like extended to you. Judge not harshly, but with generous impulse. You are in the realm of crude materiality, in the tenement of flesh, influenced more or less by many disadvantageous surroundings, which are not spiritually inspiring or elevating, but by and by you will survive and pass beyond them. Let me entreat you to study and learn of the great law of PROGRESSION, which we have constantly endeavored to keep before you. In that law and its manifold manifestations reside all wisdom, love and truth. It is that law that assures your future greatness and happiness, and will work out for you a destiny, the grandeur and glory of which you can but faintly comprehend and know. You can not die. You must live forever. You can not retrace your steps, nor recede in the development of your being; neither can you stand still. Therefore you must move forward, onward and upward, forever and forever.

"FREDRIKA EHRENBORG."