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TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 ALSO 
 
 A CONTRADICTION OF THE WORK BY JOHN B< ROB- 
 ERTS, ENTITLED " SPIRITUALISM : Or, BIBLE SAL- 
 VATION VS. MODERN SPIRITUALISM." 
 
 True Spiritualism and true Christianity are One in 
 Foundation and Doctrine. 1 * 
 
 ''Man''* inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn.'" 
 
 COPYRIGHTED 
 
 Bj REV. R. SWINBURNE CLYMER 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 
 ;IANS, PHILOSOPHY OP FIRE, 
 7INE ALCHEMY, etc. 
 
 PRICE $2.00 
 
 HICAL PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 ALLENTOW2C, FA. 
 
■•"■ <^ x 
 
 LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
 Two Copies Received 
 JAN 7 1907 
 
 /k Copyright Entry 
 
 CUSS A xXc, No. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 In placing the following work before the 
 public I have no excuse whatever to offer but it 
 is important that I should make some explana- 
 tions regarding certain portions thereof. 
 
 The greater part of the work appeared as a 
 serial in "Modern Miracle' ' published in New 
 York City and was well received by a critical 
 public. This being the case, I think that it will 
 be fairly well received in its present form ex- 
 cept by a certain class which class condemns lit- 
 erature of this nature. 
 
 The book is an answer or contradiction of 
 the work by John E. Eoberts, a religious fanatie 
 of the present century. A man who quotes oth- 
 ers in part but does not give credit to such 
 authors for fear that they, the readers, might 
 read the books quoted from and thus learn for 
 themselves. I am radical in this perhaps but it 
 is a fact nevertheless. 
 
 What is said concernng Marriage is very 
 radical but it must be remembered that in order 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 to set any reform in motion it is necessary to 
 draw distinctive lines so that he who reads 
 may understand. I do not think it would be 
 wise to overthrow the marriage institution. In 
 fact, anarchy would set in but there is certainly 
 a vast field here for reform. I do believe that 
 the child, no matter under what conditions born, 
 should be recognized as legal by the state and 
 crimes of such nature will never stop until the 
 state does recognize such children. God does 
 not care how a child is born so long as it is 
 brought up right and that class of children 
 known as bastards will never be brought up 
 right unless they are recognized as legal chil- 
 dren and given the name of the right father, 
 no matter what the condition under which he 
 or she was conceived. Can the unborn child help 
 it if the conditions under which it was created 
 were not such as are sanctioned by Church or 
 Society? Never. Then why should it be con- 
 demned? God does not and while man tries to 
 condemn he should himself be condemned for so 
 doing. I boldly claim that the child is legal and 
 legitimate no matter under what circumstances 
 born. 
 
 The marriage ceremony as at the present 
 day performed has no foundation in the Bible 
 
PREFACE 5 
 
 or Holy Scripture. It was never instituted by 
 God but by man as are all other man-made insti- 
 tutions. That it serves a purpose I do not deny. 
 In fact, I know that it does but there are other 
 legal marriages besides those performed by 
 priests. As before stated, it would be a very 
 bad thing to sweep all marriage laws aside but 
 the law should be such as to recognize the true 
 marriage which takes place when the man mis- 
 leads the woman. If the state and Church would 
 recognize the true marriage, thousands of pres- 
 ent-day crimes would cease. I do not think that 
 the reader can misunderstand me in the present 
 work after this explanation. 
 
 Now a word concerning the phrase "Priest- 
 craft." By this word I do not mean only the 
 priests of the Catholic Church but I use the 
 word to cover all men at the head of churches, 
 no matter what denomination it may be. I do 
 not want the reader to understand that I con- 
 demn all priests, all ministers. I do not for 
 many of my best friends are Ministers of the 
 Gospel, priests of the Catholic Church. I want 
 it understood that I mean only such as think 
 they know it all and will not study, nor investi- 
 gate anything outside of their particular creed. 
 In fact, I refer to the bigot, no matter what the 
 
6 PREFACE 
 
 name of the denomination to which he belongs. 
 This is the sense in which I use the word 
 "priests" or " priestcraft. ' ' 
 
 Concerning the condemnation of Churchan- 
 ity and the Church, I want my readers to under- 
 stand that / do not condemn Christianity. I 
 believe that religion taught by the Christ to 
 be the purest and most sublime religion ever 
 given to man, but at the same time, I positively 
 want my readers to understand that these teach- 
 ings of the Christ are exactly the same as those 
 taught by Esoteric Spiritualism, Occultism and 
 Mysticism. There is absolutely no difference. 
 The Church as a whole has lost the inner or 
 esoteric meaning of the religion they try to 
 teach. In fact, the husk only remains. When 
 I say "Churchanity" or condemn modern 
 Christianity I do not mean the true Chris- 
 tianity but only that which passes for the trite 
 Christianity. Thousands upon thousands of 
 ministers and priests are trying to teach the 
 Truth as they see it and such men are doing 
 good. They are trying to teach a more beau- 
 tiful doctrine. In many cases, their members 
 are not ready for a beautiful religion, one of 
 Love and good will to all men. 
 
 Occultism, Mysticism and Spiritualism are 
 
PREFACE 7 
 
 judged by the masses according to the advertise- 
 ments appearing in magazines, journals and 
 newspapers. No wonder that the people con- 
 demn these noble sciences. I think that I should 
 do the same if I did not have any further knowl- 
 edge of the subject. There is no doubt but that 
 more fraud takes place under the name of these 
 sciences than under all else. However, this does 
 not prove that these Sciences in themselves are 
 a fraud, but it does prove that they are mighty 
 sciences or else they would not he counterfeited 
 as they are. There is no condemnation too 
 severe for those who use these things to defraud 
 a people who are truly seeking the Light as 
 many thousands are at this present day. Fraud 
 of this nature should be condemned as severely 
 as is abortion. Newspapers throughout the 
 country condemn Occultism and other sciences 
 of this nature and— accept all advertisements, 
 no matter how condemnable on the face of 
 them, concerning these things. Who then is the 
 one to be condemned! 
 
 Throughout the work mention is made that 
 the Church upholds the infernal crime of Vac- 
 cination. This hardly holds good at the present 
 time for in a canvas made through the state of 
 Pennsylvania by the Reformer— Mrs. Lola Lit- 
 
8 PKEPACE 
 
 tie, of Minneapolis, it was found that the min- 
 isters of the Methodist Church as a whole con- 
 demned this foul practice of child poisoning. It 
 will thus be seen that the Church is awakening 
 to facts which no longer will be denied. 
 
 There is another point that I wish my read- 
 ers to bear in mind and one which they possibly 
 do not accept as a truth. I am not a Spiritual- 
 ist in the accepted term. I belong to that Secret 
 School which contains all these sciences within 
 its catalog. My only reason for the present 
 work is my desire for fair-play for all things, 
 Spiritualism, as understood by the majority of 
 Spiritualists .even, is but a branch of the great 
 tree, of that great school to which I make claim 
 of belonging. When I use the word ' ' Spiritual- 
 ism' ' I mean what might be termed Spirituality 
 and no matter whether you are a Methodist or 
 a Catholic, you can still be a true Spiritual- 
 ist. It is not even necessary to believe in me- 
 diumship as generally understood in order to 
 be a Spiritualist. "Christianity and Spiritual- 
 ism are one, for Spirtualism is the foundation 
 of Christianity and is the foundation of the 
 coming Universal Brotherhood of Man." I 
 hope that I may no longer be misunderstood and 
 that all will read the book and understand it as 
 I wish them to understand it. 
 
PREFACE 9 
 
 Quotations throughout the work are from 
 such well-known writers as: Peebles, Foster, 
 Randolph, Hull, Dowd and Beard. I have tried 
 to be absolutely fair in all things and if I have 
 not been, then I pray you forgive me, for the 
 desire was to be fair and honest. 
 
 The Author* 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 Mr. Roberts starts by telling us that : i ' Spir- 
 itualists say that 'the Spiritualism of the pres* 
 ent day is that which Jesus preached nineteen 
 centuries ago.' But we can prove by the very 
 teachings and utterances of Spiritualists, that 
 the difference between Christianity, as taught 
 in God's word, and modern Spiritualism, is as 
 wide as the gulf separating Lazarus from the 
 rich man. ' ' 
 
 This statement, so far as I have investigated 
 the subject, is utterly untrue. It is a fact, on& 
 that cannot be denied, that the way some au- 
 thors treat Spiritualism in their writings, this 
 would seem to be correct, as there is a work 
 now before me, written by one who claims not 
 only to be a Spiritualist, but an authority, which 
 is as utterly false to the true teachngs of both 
 Spiritualism and esoteric Christianity, as that 
 modern Churchism is Christianity. Modem 
 Christianity, which is in reality nothing but 
 Creed and Churchism, must not be taken as the 
 
12 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 esoteric Christianity. To do so is unfair and 
 without reason or common sense. Nor yet must, 
 the Bible be taken in its literal sense, as it was 
 so distorted at the time of Constantine that it. is 
 almost mpossible to find the wheat among the 
 chaff. 
 
 Dr. J. M. Peebles, is possibly one of the 
 greatest authorities on the subject, as he is fair 
 to both Spiritualism and esoteric Christianity 
 and I shall quote him as to what Spiritualism is. 
 "Spiritualism is the philosophy of life— and 
 the direct antithesis of materialism. If the illua- 
 irious Tyndall saw the "potency and prom- 
 ise' J of all life in matter, Spiritualists, with 
 all rationalistic idealists, see the potency and 
 promise of all life and evolutionary unf oldment 
 in Spirit, which Spirit permeates and energizes 
 the matter of all the subordinate kingdoms, 
 mineral, vegetable, and animal 
 
 Thinking— meditating, Columbus concluded 
 that if there was a * ' this-side, ' ' there must nec- 
 essarily be a "that side" to the world. And so 
 'sailing on and still onward toward the western 
 sunset under the inspiration of a lofty faith, he 
 •discovered the new world, and, like a flash, faith 
 'became fruition. 
 * ' And so students of the occult; Spiritualists 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 13 
 
 of the last century, meditating— investigating, 
 discovered, or rather, rediscovered the spirit 
 world— the Spiritualism of the elder ages. In- 
 tuition and the Soul's higher senses, with the 
 out-reaching ideal, are ever prophesying of the 
 incoming ideal. The to-day's, afire with life 
 and love, assures us of a coming to-morrow. 
 This world indicates another— a future world, 
 which Spiritualists have not only rediscovered, 
 but have quite fully described. 
 
 Spiritualism does not create truth, but is a 
 living witness to the truth of a future existence. 
 It reveals it — demonstrates it, describing its in- 
 habitants—their occupations and characteristics. 
 
 Hannibal crossed the Alps twenty centuries 
 before Napoleon did. Napoleon reasoned that 
 what man had done, man could do, and so with 
 flags and banners unfurled he led the conquer- 
 ing French over the snow-capped Alps. And 
 through all the centuries before and since Han- 
 nibal's time, through all the historic ages there 
 were rifts in the clouds— there were visions and 
 voices from the better land of immortality. In- 
 spired mystics and philosophers testified alike 
 to the Reality of apparitions, the appearance of 
 good angels and the fulfilment of dreams. An 
 Angel— a spiritual being— appeared to Joseph 
 
14 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 in a dream announcing the coming of Jesus. 
 
 Patriarchs, prophets, and seers in Abra- 
 ham's and Isaiah's time conversed with spirits 
 and angels according to the Scriptures. Apos- 
 tles, disciples, and the early Christians before 
 and after John and Paul's time, consciously 
 communed with the spirits of those they had 
 known on earth— and why should not we? 
 Neither God nor His laws have changed. The 
 reputed wise man Solomon, said: "The thing 
 that had been, is that which shall be, and that 
 which is done is that which shall be done,— and 
 whatsoever God doeth it shall be forever." 
 (Eccl. 3:14.) 
 
 If there were visions, trances, apparitions, 
 Spiritual gifts, and conscious spirt communica- 
 tions all through the past ages— why not now? 
 Have the heavens over us become brass? and 
 have angel iongues become palsied! These 
 things did happen in the past— and they occur 
 to-day. And few, if any, except the most illit- 
 erate—except the atheist, the imprudent bigot 
 and the ironclad, creed-bound sectarists deny it. 
 Spiritualism is the most unpopular among the / 
 ignorant. It is also very unpopular in sectarian 
 club rooms, idiotic infirmaries, and state pen- 
 itentiaries. — — 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 15 
 
 When that highly inspired man of Nazareth 
 preached fyis radical doctrines in Palestine, and 
 performed his astonishing mediumistic works, 
 crowds following him, some of the doubting cau- 
 tions conservatives of those times asked the 
 question: "Have any of the Rulers of the Phari- 
 sees believed on him?" That is to say, have 
 any of the reputed great and wise, believed on 
 him? If so, we, the driftwood—we the putty- 
 headed policy men— will fall in line. Human 
 nature is the same in all ages, and cowards are 
 ever the same shrinking, apologizing, oily ton- 
 gued moral cowards. 
 
 SPIRITUALISM IS NOT SPIRITISM 
 
 Spiritualism must be differentiated from 
 Spiritism. The terminology of the two words 
 absolutely necessitate, as every scholar knows, 
 entirely different meanings. Chinese, Indians, 
 and Utah Mormons are Spiritists, believing in 
 present spirit communications. Most of the Af- 
 rican tribes of the Dark Continent worship 
 demons and believe in spirit converse, but cer- 
 tainly they are not intelligent, religious Spirit- 
 ualists. 
 
 Spiritism is a science— a fact— a sort of 
 Modernized Babylonian necromancy. The baser 
 portion of its devotees, hypnotized by the unem- 
 
16 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 bodied denizens of hades, divine for dollars. It 
 is promiscuous spirit commerce with a high 
 tariff. It is from the lower spheres, and mor- 
 ally gravitates toward the dark. It has its leg- 
 erdemain, its tricksters, frauds, and traveling 
 tramps. They should be exposed and shunned 
 as you would shun dens of adders. Spiritism, 
 I repeat, is a fact; so is geology, so is mesmer- 
 ism, so is telepathy, and so, also, is a rattle- 
 snake's bite. Facts may be morally true or 
 false. They may serve for purposes of good or 
 direst ill. As an exhibition of wonders— as pabu- 
 lum for sceptical atheists, who demand visible 
 sight of the invisible infinite One, and in^ 
 sist upon a terrific clap of thunder to convince 
 them of the existence of electricity, commercial 
 spiritism with its seeking for gold-fields, and 
 hunting for "social affinities,' ' with its attend- 
 ing, shadowy hosts, manifesting in ill-ventilated 
 seance rooms, may be a temporary necessity to 
 a degree useful, but it legitimately belongs, 
 with such kindred subjects as mesmerism, to 
 the category of the sciences." 
 
 We need not go to Africa or the Dark Con- 
 tinents, to find these Spiritists, as we can find 
 them right here in America, and possibly more 
 of this class can be found than of those that 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 17 
 
 follow genuine Spiritualism as an Esoteric 
 religion. It is this class of Pseudo-spiritualists 
 that bring the deadly and foul odium upon that 
 whch is the true Spiritualism, and it is this 
 class of frauds, that Churchism and Priestcraft 
 take as their authority when speaking of Spirit- 
 ualism. It is a fact, beyond dispute, that ninety- 
 nine out of every hundred of those who write 
 against Spiritualism, do not know the differ- 
 ence between Spiritualism and Spiritism. They 
 do not want to know. They do know that 
 there is no Christ Principle' in Churchism, no 
 life, no salvaton, no regeneration, nor anything 
 else that will appeal to any one who desires food 
 for the Soul. Knowing this, they know that 
 they can hold no one to them except those en- 
 tirely ignorant of anything pertaining to the 
 Soul or the Higher life, and such as do not have 
 brains enough to think for themselves. This 
 being a fact, they can plainly see that those who 
 study the subject, will leave Churchism and join 
 Spiritualism. Were they to take a few authori- 
 ties such as Peebles on Spiritualism, Dowd on 
 Regeneration and Immortality, and others on 
 kindred subjects, they might find the truth, and 
 know what belonged to Spiritualism, and the 
 Higher Sciences, Mysticism, Occultism, etc., but 
 
18 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 they will not do it, as they would be unable to 
 base an argument on and against these things 
 if they knew the truth. If they read the works 
 of Spiritists, they can find all the dark and 
 devilish isms that they want and it is then that 
 they hold forth against the true religions, while 
 only understanding that which may possibly 
 bear the same, or nearly the same name, but 
 which is as far from being true Spiritualism or 
 Mysticism as is Black Magic from White Magic. 
 
 Dr. Peebles further says : * * But Spiritualism, 
 originating in God who is Spirit, and grounded 
 in Man's moral nature, is a substantial fact, and 
 infinitely more— a fact plus, reason and con- 
 science—a fact relating to moral and religious 
 culture— a sublime spiritual truth ultimating in 
 consecration to the good, the beautiful and the 
 heavenly. 
 
 Spiritualism— a grand, moral science, and 
 a wisdom religion— proffers ,the key that un- 
 locks the mysteries of the ages. It constituted 
 the foundation stones of all the ancient faiths. 
 It was the vitalizing soul of all past religions. 
 It was the mighty uplifting force that gave to 
 the world in all ages its inspired teachers and 
 immortal leaders. 
 
 Rightly translated, the direct words of Jesus 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 19 
 
 are (John 4:24) "Spirit is God." The spirit- 
 ual is the real and the substantial. The spirit- 
 ually minded are reverential. They are religi- 
 ous. Their life is a prayer. "The fruit of 
 the Spirit," said the apostle to the Gentiles, "is 
 love, joy, peace, long-surf ering, gentleness, 
 goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." Spir- 
 itualism, by ivhatever name knoivn, without the 
 fruit of the Spirit, without religion and moral 
 growth, is but the veriest rust and rubbish; and 
 religion, by ivhatever name known, in any age, 
 without Spiritualism and its accompanying 
 Spiritual gifts, is only an empty shell — an 
 offensive creedal cadaver, that should be buried 
 without ecclesiastical formalities. 
 
 Spirit is God. And, Spiritualism while in- 
 hering in and originating from God, does not 
 center alone therein, nor rest entirely upon phe- 
 nomena, but upon spirit— upon the spiritual 
 and moral constitution of man, which constitu- 
 tion requires such spiritual sustenance as in- 
 spiration, prayer, vision, trance, clairvoyance, 
 and heavenly impressions from the divine 
 sphere of love and wisdom. Spiritualists, like 
 the primitive Christians, believe in God the 
 Father and in the Brotherhood of the races: 
 They acknowledge the living Christ; they feel 
 
20 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 the influx of the Holy Spirit ; they converse with 
 angels; they cultivate the religious emotions; 
 they open, their seances, many of them, with 
 prayer. They are "richly blessed with visions 
 and calm, uplifting ministrations from angelic 
 homes. They see in every pure crystal stream 
 a Jordan, in every verdure-clad mountain a 
 present Olivet, and in every well-cultivated 
 prairie a Canaan flowing with the milk and 
 honey of spiritual truth— love to God and love 
 to man. 
 
 Spiritualism teaches salvation by character ; 
 or by the life, as did Paul in his higher inspired 
 moments, who said— " Being reconciled, we 
 shall be saved by life. ' ' (Romans 5:10.) 
 
 Spirit is God. And neither matter nor sea- 
 slime nor protoplasm constitutes the basis of 
 conscious life, but spirit— that is to say, spirit- 
 ual or divine substance. Spirituality is the sub- 
 stantial reality. And man is a spirit now— a 
 spirit living in a material body, which body 
 bears something of the same relation to the real, 
 conscious, invisible man, that the husk bears to 
 the corn,— chaff to the wheat.' ' 
 
 Do Spiritualists believe in the Bible? Yes, 
 and No. All men who have studied the Bible, 
 and have developed the " Inner" being, know 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 21 
 
 that the teachings of the Bible cannot, as a rule, 
 be believed in their literal sense. The spirit of 
 these teachings is grand and snblime and is 
 identical with that of the teachings of the true 
 Spiritualism. But these teachings must be read 
 i ' between the lines " as it were, and the esoteric 
 meaning understood. That there was a general 
 belief in Spirits at the time when the Bible was 
 written is a fact beyond dispute, and we turn 
 to the speech made by Thomas Gales Foster, in 
 Boston, in 1867, in which he said: "Now, let us 
 begin, my friends, with the first book, the very 
 first book of the Bible. And here, perhaps, 
 men, just as is claimed they have appeared to 
 the mediums of Boston and other places, in the 
 present day. And the objector upon Biblical 
 grounds will have to settle the difficulty with 
 himself as to whether or not there is any reli- 
 ance to be had in such manifestations. 
 
 In the nineteenth chapter of Genesis, two 
 angels in the form of men appeared to Lot in 
 the gate of Sodom, and through the warning 
 which these angels give him, his family and 
 himself are enabled to escape from impending 
 evil. Now, my friends, it would be well if the 
 warnings that are given through modern 
 media— if the warnings that are given by the 
 
 2 I 
 
22 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 spirits in modern times— were always attended 
 to. Perhaps it would have been well for our 
 nation (time alone must determine) if the true 
 and pure-hearted Lincoln had listened to the 
 manifestations and the warnings that were 
 given him through a medium in our National 
 Capitol; he would not so soon have stepped 
 from the topmost round of the ladder of fame 
 into the sky, but would have remained to carry 
 out his own ideas in regard to the perpetuity of 
 American Institutions. 
 
 In the twenty-first chapter of Genesis, an 
 angel again appears to Hagar, and prophesies 
 in behalf of the boy Ishmael, and comf orteth the 
 mother. In the twenty-second chapter of Gene- 
 sis, the arm of Abraham is arrested when he is 
 about to commit murder upon the body of his 
 son Isaac, having been tempted to do so by 
 what, to-day, would be called an undeveloped 
 spirit, under the supposition that God had so or- 
 dered him, by way of a temptation. 
 
 In the twenty-eighth chapter of Genesis, 
 Jacob is represented as having had a dream, 
 wherein he saw a ladder extending from earth 
 to heaven, up and down which angels of God 
 were ascending and descending. Modern Spir- 
 itualism, by its various phenomena, is proving 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 23 
 
 that such a ladder exists— is proving that there 
 is an intellectual, spiritual ladder, reaching 
 from earth to heaven, "bright with beckoning 
 angels. " You believe in the dream of Jacobs 
 and scoff at the declarations of to-day. 
 
 In the thirtieth and thirty-first chapters of 
 Genesis, Jacob is represented as having had 
 another dream, in which he receives the advice, 
 which results in the curious proceedings, to say 
 the least, by means of which the property of his 
 uncle, Laban, is transferred to himself. Dur- 
 ing this interview with the angels in his dream, 
 he was also advised to leave his uncle Laban. 
 In the thirty-second chapter, after he had left 
 his uncle Laban, the angels of God met him, 
 and when Jacob saw them, he said, "This is 
 God's host." And when Jacob was left alone, 
 there wrestled a man with him until the break- 
 ing of day. Now, this all seemed extremely ab- 
 surd to the Spiritualist before the manifesta- 
 tions of modern Spiritualism; but correspond- 
 ing manifestations have occurred in different 
 parts of the country, where there has been act- 
 ual physical force manifested in contests with 
 media by an unseen power. Consequently, the 
 Spiritualists believe in this manifestation of 
 the past, far more than those do who deny the 
 
24 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 existence of conscious individuality beyond the 
 grave. 
 
 Again, one of the allegations brought against 
 modern Spiritualism, and heralded forth by 
 the many-mouthed press, and by the pulpit, is 
 this: that the tendency of modern Spiritualism 
 is evil; that the inculcations which come from 
 the spirit-world, through the modern media, are 
 calculated to demoralize societv. Now, mv 
 friends, without stopping to argue the question 
 whether in the past or in the present they were 
 or are immoral, let us see whether the analogy 
 does not hold good even in this respect. In 
 the third chapter of Exodus, whilst Moses was 
 watching the flocks of his father-in-law, Jethro, 
 an angel of God appeared to Moses, and ap- 
 pointed him to take the captaincy of the Israel- 
 itish host in their contemplated exodus from 
 Egypt. During the conversation held with 
 Moses, the angel gave Moses the advice that the 
 Israelite sh women should fradulently possess 
 themselves of the jewels and the raiment of the 
 Egyptian women— steal them. Did ever any 
 other spirits that are controlling the media in 
 different parts of the country, giving such ad- 
 vice? Yet the spirits controlling to-day are im- 
 moral ; and the spirits of former times should be 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 25 
 
 listened to— according to the Biblical objector. 
 In the fourteenth chapter of Exodus, an angel 
 preceded the host of Israel in the final exodus. 
 In the twenty-second chapter of Numbers, an 
 angel met Balaam by the way, as he was pro- 
 ceeding to the camp of the Moabites, whose 
 ruler invited him to come in order that he might 
 curse the Israelites, whose encroachments he 
 had begun to fear. In the second chapter of 
 Judges, it is stated that an angel spoke to aJl 
 the people at Bochim. 
 
 In the sixth chapter of Judges, a manifesta- 
 tion occurs, wherein the party concerned gave 
 indications of precisely just such conditions as 
 too often prevail to-day among some Spiritual- 
 ists, and among many investigators— that is— 
 a disposition to doubt perpetually, and to re- 
 quire conviction every morning; forgetting the 
 test that has but recently been given, and mani- 
 festing an earnest desire for a continual repe- 
 tition, for the production of a similar one." 
 
 In the sixth chapter of Judges, at the time 
 that Israel was oppressed by Midi an, an angel 
 of the Lord, it is stated, appeared to Gideon, 
 and appointed him to take command of the Is- 
 raelitish host against the Midianites. Gideon 
 was one of the doubting Spiritualists. He 
 
28 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 doubted whether it was an angel who appeared 
 to him in the form of a man, and he asked him 
 for a test. The test was this : that he might be 
 allowed to place a fleece of wool on the ground, 
 and that the angel should so manifest that the 
 fleece of wool during the night should become 
 wet whilst the ground remained dry. The angel 
 did this, and so effectually, that a bowl of water 
 was wrung from the fleece of wool. Now Gid- 
 eon was not satisfied with this, but he said, 
 "Will the Lord permit me, that I again place 
 the fleece of wool, and let the fleece of wool 
 remain dry and the ground become wet! " and 
 the angel did that also. Still Gideon was not 
 satisfied, nor was he convinced, until, in the 
 seventh chapter, he received another manifesta- 
 tion—that of the tumbling of a cake of barley 
 bread into the Midianitish camp. All I can say 
 in regard to this is, that when you next visit 
 -a medium, I trust you may meet with a spirit 
 as complaisant as the one who met Gideon. 
 In the thirteenth chapter of Judges, an angel 
 appeared to the wife of Manoah. Now the wife 
 of Manoah was barren, and the angel promised 
 her the birth of a child. He afterwards ap- 
 peared to Manoah and his wife together in the 
 form of a man, and they both conversed with 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 27 
 
 this man, nor did they know he was an angel or 
 a spirit until he disappeared in the flame of 
 their own burnt-offering. In the fifth chapter 
 of Joshua, it is stated, that as Joshna ap- 
 proached the walls of Jericho, he saw a man 
 standing by the wall with a drawn sword. He 
 advanced to him, and demanded of him on 
 which side he fought. The Book, which you call 
 infallible, says that the angel replied that he ap- 
 peared there as the captain of the Lord's hosts, 
 and that he fought upon the side of Joshua. In 
 the nineteenth chapter of first Kings, it is re- 
 corded that an angel appeared to Elijah more 
 than once while he was fleeing from the anger 
 of Jezebel to Mount Horeb, and that Elijah was 
 fed by the angel with material food. 
 
 Again, it is said that spirits, through mod- 
 ern media, are disposed to falsify ; that they tell 
 falsehoods; in other words, that they tell lies. 
 Even admitting for a moment that this is true, 
 let us see if the analogy will not hold good still. 
 Jn the twenty-second chapter of I Kings, it 
 is stated that God himself put a lying spirit into 
 the mouths of the prophets of Ahab, in order 
 that he might be deceived. With what bad 
 grace, therefore, comes the charge in the pres- 
 ent day, by Biblical objectors, against modern 
 
28 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 media, and the spirits controlling them, with 
 respect to falsehood. 
 
 In the sixth chapter of II Kings occurs this 
 manifestation: Elisha, by the power that was 
 manifesting itself through him, caused a solid 
 iron axe to swim upon the surface of the River 
 Jordan. Again, in the twenty-first chapter of I 
 Chronicles you will recollect it is stated that 
 David had angered God by numbering the peo- 
 ple, and that God gave David the choice of three 
 modes of punishment. Now, mark you, David 
 was a man after God's own heart, and his means 
 of communication with God were through the 
 agency of Gad, the seer. Compare the mani- 
 festations of Gad, the seer, with the manifesta- 
 tions of Andrew Jackson Davis, the seer, Pas- 
 chal Beverly Randolph, and others, and answer 
 to yourself, and to the spirit of the age, whether 
 or not there is not as much rationality and 
 beauty in the manifestations of seers of modern 
 times as in any of those presented in the past. 
 
 In the twenty-first chapter of II Chronicles 
 is a remarkable verse. It is there stated that a 
 handwriting came from Elijah, the prophet, to 
 Jehoram, King of Judah; whilst the Biblical 
 chronology shows that Elijah had gone to 
 heaven, in a chariot of fire, thirteen years prior 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 29 
 
 to the date of the writing. What reference can 
 this verse possibly have, if not corresponding 
 with conditions in the present day. 
 
 In the sixty-ninth Psalm there is another re- 
 markable verse. It is the twenty-second verse. 
 Read it, and remember it. David is represented 
 as uttering a prayer, in which he makes use of 
 this exclamation: "Let their tables become a 
 snare before them ; and that which should have 
 been for their welfare, let it become a trap." 
 It is difficult to tell what allusion this has, but if 
 it does have an allusion to the corresponding 
 conditions of modern manifestations, then only 
 the experienced investigator in modern Spirit- 
 ualism can appreciate the deep malignity of any 
 man's heart who could utter such a prayer. 
 
 In the first, second and third chapter of 
 Ezekiel you have an account of a vision pre- 
 sented to Ezekiel, and of his interview with the 
 spirits; and in the course of these interviews 
 Ezekiel says, distinctly, "A spirit entered into 
 me, and enabled me to hear the voices from the 
 sky,"— precisely what is claimed by the major- 
 ity of the trance mediums of modern times. And 
 I ask you to compare the manifestations of the 
 book of Ezekiel with the manifestations of mod- 
 ern times through different media, and see 
 
80 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 'which has the advantage in morality and de- 
 cency. In the third chapter of Daniel yon will 
 remember that three men, Shadrach, Meshach 
 and Abednego, by the presence of the angel and 
 by the influence of that presence, were saved 
 from injury by the devouring elements. 
 
 In the sixth chapter of Daniel a manifesta- 
 tion occurs illustrative of that wonderful mag- 
 netic power that can be brought to bear through 
 the human organism; indicative of that fact, 
 that when you shall have properly understood 
 the laws of your being, and more fully compre- 
 hend the occult forces of Nature, you will find 
 that men and women, the entire human family, 
 stands upon the apex of creation, and must, of 
 necessity, control all things below. In the tenth 
 chapter of Daniel, after Daniel had fasted, as 
 is the custom with modern mediums on all 
 proper occasions, he was entranced, and a 
 vision was presented to him; and, during the 
 vision, the spirit approached him in the form of 
 a man, and spoke to him, and touched him— 
 precisely what, is occurring daily throughout the 
 country. People believe in the former; and 
 condemn the latter. In the ninth chapter of 
 Nehemiah it is said, all the people praised God. 
 Because of what? He had sent them a good 
 spirit to speak to them. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 31 
 
 Read the twenty-eighth chapter of I Samuel, 
 from the first to nineteenth verse, inclusive. 
 You have all heard of the witch of Endor. The 
 Bible does not call her a witch; it is only the 
 clergy who denominate her thus. She is not 
 called a witch except in the headings of the 
 chapter and page, which have been furnished 
 by the translators. The chapter itself, from 
 the beginning to the end, does not contain the 
 word ivitch. She is called the woman of 
 Endor. She was a very good, hospitable woman 
 likewise. When Saul went there, she set before 
 him the best she had, although quite poor in 
 this world's goods. She gave them a sitting, 
 as it is called in modern times, with a striking 
 manifestation. She proved herself a good 
 woman, and a noble, true-hearted, God-gifted 
 medium. They are called witches by some, 
 and a hundred or so years ago they were called 
 Witches and some were burned, or lynched, or 
 suffered other physical punishment or death at 
 the hands of the ignorant and narrow-brained 
 masses. 
 
 In the thirty-second chapter of Job, eighth 
 verse, one of the advisers of Job utters a decla- 
 ration, which we commend to those of the read- 
 ers who believe in the infallibility of the Bible. 
 
32 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 Elihu, the youngest adviser of Job, proposes to 
 speak before two elder advisers, and he offers 
 an apology to Job. if we may so term it, in this 
 language: "But there is a spirit in man: and 
 the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them un- 
 derstanding. ' ' Just the apology, if it be one, 
 that all the media of the land would offer to the 
 learned wisdom of the age. We would not as 
 sume to arrogate to ourselves a superabund- 
 ance of wisdom; but whilst we are aiming to 
 teach, we beg to remember "there is a spirit 
 in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty 
 giveth him understanding. ' ' In the thirty- third 
 chapter of the same book, "God speaketh once, 
 yea, twice, yet man perceiveth it not. In a 
 dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep 
 falleth upon men, in slumbering upon the bed; 
 then he openeth the ears of men, and sealeth 
 their instruction. ' ' Every word of which the 
 Mystics, Occultists and Spiritualists of this, and 
 past ages, believed. 
 
 We turn over a number of leaves, and come 
 to the first chapter of the book of Matthew. 
 There we find that an angel appeared to Joseph 
 in a dream, and explained to him the condition 
 of Mary. You believe that. Suppose an angel 
 was to appear to-day and attempt to explain 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 33 
 
 away such a condition in some of the mediums 
 or Mystics of modern times. The world and 
 church would reject such a declaration as 
 wholly absurd, but they accept the manifesta- 
 tion of two thousand years ago. 
 
 In the first chapter and first verse of that 
 wonderful book, the Apocalypse, it is stated that 
 information is about to be given by an angel. 
 And in the last chapter, after John, in the isle 
 of Patmos, had received the mysteries of the 
 book of Revelation, the angel, through whom 
 they had been received, approached him. John, 
 psychologized by the idea of the age, when he 
 perceived the brilliant beauty of the angel, sup- 
 posed God himself was before him, and "fell 
 down to worship before the feet of the angel 
 which showed him these things. f ' But the angel 
 said, "See thou do it not; for I am thy fellow- 
 servant, and of thy brethren the prophets. 
 Worship God." Precisely what the spirits, 
 through the various phenomena of modern 
 Spiritualism, are saying to-day. The spirits 
 who communicate to-day, as in the past, are but 
 your brethren, members of the same great hu- 
 man family. Our injunction likewise is, Wor- 
 ship God. But our desire is, also, that you will 
 listen to the advice of those who have journeyed 
 
34 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 across the silent river before you, whose affec- 
 tions are still warm toward yon, and who seek 
 to pilot yon securely to the bright and beauti- 
 ful shores of another and a better land. 
 
 I have given but a few of these manifesta- 
 tions, in order to show the analogy existing be- 
 tween those of ancient days and those of mod- 
 ern times, and also to represent how utterly 
 absurd it is, upon Biblical grounds, to object 
 to the phenomenal phases of modern Spiritual- 
 ism. The hypothesis assumed is this,— and I 
 beg of those of you who object, upon Biblical 
 grounds, to the phenomena, to take home the 
 declaration,— the hypothesis of the spiritual 
 school, summed up, is this : If in the past there 
 was a laiv existing in the divine economy by 
 means of which Moses and Elias could have con- 
 versed with Jesus, by means of which angels in 
 the form of men could converse with Abraham, 
 or appear amid any of the conditions to which I 
 have adverted— if there was a law by which one 
 of his fellow -servants could appear to John on 
 the isle of Patmos—then, if God be eternal and 
 his laivs unalterable, that laic must still be in 
 existence; and you and, I can commune with our 
 fellow -servants who have gone before us; we, 
 too, can commune with angels proportionately 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 35 
 
 to the conditions and circumstances by which we 
 may be surrounded. And I aver that this is a 
 logical conclusion, a legitimate deduction, from 
 whence there is no escape. 
 
 Victorien Sardou, the great dramatist, par 
 excellence, of France, when questioned as to 
 the source of his extraordinarily proline 
 graphic power, invariably referred it to the in- 
 visible and spiritual world, and boldly claimed 
 to receive matter and suggestions for literary 
 labor direct from that sublime and elevated 
 source; nor can there be a rational doubt but 
 that in these days, when men, women and chil- 
 dren, the wide world over, are being bathed, as 
 it were, in the effluent tides of spirit from the 
 worlds above us; and in which magnetic sus- 
 ceptibility is as common as the tendency toward 
 music. It is fast being granted, on all sides, 
 that even clairvoyance, which a few brief years 
 ago, within the recollection of the most of us 
 now living, was laughed and sneered at by five- 
 sixths of the world, is, after all, not merely a 
 solid human fact, more valuable, perhaps, to 
 the human race, than any other single one in its 
 history of possessions, is now conceded not to 
 be a special gift to a few favored individuals 
 but to be the property and heritage of the entire 
 
36 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 human family, latent in all, developed in a few, 
 but, by judicious effort, attainable by nearly all : 
 Clairvoyance is a royal road to knowledge; by 
 it tens of thousands have been instructed, and 
 by it alone Dr. P. B. Randolph received the 
 education that enabled him to give to the world 
 the literary gems that he put forth. 
 
 What is Spiritualism? To show what Spir- 
 itualism is, Mr. Roberts quotes the following 
 from a speech made by Dr. P. B. Randolph, in 
 1858: "Spiritualism is all eye and head, no soul 
 and heart; all intellect, no emotion; all philos- 
 ophy, no religion; all spirit, no God. The anti- 
 Bible, anti-God, anti-Christian Spiritualism, I. 
 have perfectly demonstrated to be subversive, 
 unrighteous, destructive, disorderly, and irre- 
 ligious: consequently to be shunned by every 
 true follower of God and holiness, etc." 
 
 Dr. Randolph does not say that the true 
 Spiritualism is this, but he does say, that the 
 anti-Bible, anti-God and anti-Christian Spirit- 
 ualism is this. Every true Spiritualist will ad- 
 mit this to be true, as we all know that the 
 counterfeit of Spiritualism is as bad as the true 
 Spiritualism is good. But this is not Spiritual- 
 ism, it is Spiritism. This is a word that was 
 unknown at the time that Dr. Randolph made 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 37 
 
 tliis speech, and lie had to draw a distinction 
 between the good and the bad. Spiritism bears 
 the identical relation to Spiritualism, as modern 
 Christianity, or Churehanity, bears to the true 
 Christianity. The one is scientific and hard- 
 hearted, foul, lustly, abortive, and all that is bad, 
 while the other is pure, lofty, uplifting, and all 
 that is good. 
 
 "Whoever has read the speech, knows that 
 Dr. Randolph does not refer to the true Spirit- 
 ualism when he denounces scientific Spiritual- 
 ism, and I will prove that this is true, ere my 
 task is finished. This speech was used in his 
 work, "Soul, the Soul World," which was is- 
 sued in 1872, and following the speech, he say3 : 
 "I have nothing to change or modify in the 
 above sermon except that my experience since 
 1858 has satisfied me that most of what I then 
 called Demonism, meaning devils working on 
 a person from the outside, was, and is, nothing 
 more nor less than the devil from within— in 
 other words, unmitigated devilishness, wherein 
 disembodied people, good, bad, or indifferent, 
 had, and have, very little to do; in a word, I 
 believe that to corrupt morals and very bad 
 taste, was and is to be attributed most of what 
 I then charged upon bad disembodied people. 
 
 3 I 
 
38 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 My belief in Immortality is stronger than 
 ever; my belief in Clairvoyance and Seer- 
 ship, and in Divine inspiration is now a moun- 
 tain, where then but a handful of soil. ,, 
 
 Spiritualism is not Spiritism, that is, talk- 
 ing with the dead for curiosity, for fleshly grati- 
 fication, for selfish gain, for ambitious ends, or 
 for unworthy, amusing, and irreligious pur- 
 poses. If this was the witch-spiritism that 
 Moses condemned, or disapproved of, he did 
 well. It should be discouraged, condemned to- 
 day as unworthy of rational, royal-souled men 
 and women. 
 
 Intelligent, cultured Spiritualists do not 
 deny the existence of God— do not deny the ex- 
 istence of Jesus of NazareCh, the mediumistic 
 man and martyr, overshadowed and infilled 
 with the Christ-spirit— do not deny the Holy 
 Spirit of truth— do not deny the necessity of 
 repentance, of prayer, of faith, of religion, of 
 abiding trust, and the importance of living a 
 conscientious, spiritual, and holy life. 
 
 Spiritualism, in its broadest sense, is a 
 knowledge of everything pertaining to the spir- 
 itual nature of human beings. It is cosmopoli- 
 tan, eclectic, uplifting, and heaven-inspiring. 
 Spiritualists, being believers in the Christ 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 39 
 
 (Christo), have the New Testament promised 
 spiritual gifts. Spiritualists believe in the 
 great law of evolution. They teach that there 
 is a sweet reward for well-doing and certain 
 punishment for every wrong action; and that 
 all the good and divine that is attained here, 
 will be retained when entering the spiritual 
 world; that we are building now, by our con- 
 duct and characters, our homes in the future 
 state of immortality. 
 
 When the genuine Spiritualism is generally 
 recognized, and becomes, as it will, the universal 
 religion,— when it becomes actualized and out- 
 wrought through the personal lives of earth's 
 surging millions, it will no longer be selfishly 
 said, " mine— mine," but ours, yours, all who 
 appropriate it for holy uses. This is the resur- 
 rection — a spiritually exalted resurrection 
 state in this present life. It is Christ within. 
 It is divine altruism. 
 
 I repeat, when Spiritualism in its divinest 
 aspects is literally practiced, our country will 
 be the universe, our home the world, our rest 
 wherever a human heart beats in sympathy with 
 our own, and the highest happiness of each will 
 be altruism. Then, when this Christly Spirit- 
 ualism abounds, will the soil be as free for all 
 
40 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 to cultivate as the air to breathe ; gardens will 
 blossom and bear fruit for the most hnmble; 
 and orphans will find homes of tenderness and 
 sympathy in all houses. This is Spiritualism, 
 pure, simple, and practical. „ 
 
 Dr. Randolph believed in trnie Spiritual- 
 ism, he also knew that there was something that 
 went by the name of Spiritualism which was 
 no nearer true Spiritualism, than modern 
 Churchism is Christianity. This kind he gave 
 the name of Scientific Spiritualism, and which 
 we to-day, call Spiritism. To prove this, I will 
 quote fro mhis work, "Soul, the Soul- World, ' ' 
 the same volume in which his speech appeared, 
 and from which John E. Roberts quotes when 
 he desires to tell us what Spiritualism is, but 
 he does not give credit to the work, for the 
 simple reason, that should he do so, and should 
 any of the readers of his pamphlet read the 
 work, they would at once become convinced of 
 the reality of true Spiritualism, and utter 
 uselessness of modern so-called Christianity. 
 
 Dr. Randolph says: '"True Spiritualism is 
 the hope of the world, because it is a great hu- 
 man necessity, and out of such alone comes all 
 that makes sublunary life desirable for civiliza- 
 tion and progress; does not spring from any 
 religious faith, but from human needs. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 41 
 
 "The political, civil, social, and religious dis- 
 similarities among mankind, the wide world 
 over, grow out of the law of differentiation of 
 organic structure ; for truth itself is unitary, 
 and inherent in soul ; and is universal in its ap- 
 plication: hence, mankind merely misunder- 
 stands each other; their differences are more 
 apparent than real. They have been either in- 
 ductive or deductive, whereas they should have 
 been both. 
 
 "Should the writer be asked whereof what 
 is the use of all this varied irruption of spirit- 
 ual forces to the earth just now, he would an- 
 swer : Not to break down anything truly human, 
 or truly good, but to uproot and destroy that 
 parasitical social fungus, which now over- 
 whelms science, art and true liberty in these 
 dismal ages, and which usurps the name of 
 Civilization. The initiatory steps to this great 
 consummation consists, first, in removing Fear 
 as an element of religion; disabusing the hu- 
 man mind of its death, hell, and terror errors ; 
 establishing the religion of Science and Reason 
 on the ruins of mytho-theology, and inaugurat- 
 ing the good time coming in every individual's 
 heart y — thence working out in the conduct. This 
 can only be done upon the assured basis of a 
 
42 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 demonstrated immortality. The next step is to 
 Bring man to a comprehension of what individ- 
 uality means. 
 
 "Individuality: that is my gospel and the 
 fitting substitute for a dying or dead Christian- 
 ism,— having naught of Christ in it,— whose 
 gaunt form lies prostrate on the earth, felled 
 by the sturdy strokes of a better faith, the true 
 Christ-faith, and from whence issue dark, dense 
 clouds of vapor, redolent of fire and brimstone, 
 and from whose eyes, blood-shot and glaring, 
 there dart forth gleams of hatred and revenge, 
 instead of love divine; and from whose lips ter- 
 rible cries come out, indicative alike of its own 
 expiring agonies, and commemorative of the 
 tortured millions who have yielded life at the 
 rack, the stake, and inquisition. The Christian 
 (Churchism) religion is going out; the religion 
 of Jesus Christ is coming in: 
 
 ' "I start, then, from the principle that, 
 placed in the midst of Nature, we can have only 
 positive knowledge of Nature, and that all else 
 can be but conjectural, speculative, transient, 
 ephemeral, and of no utility whatever. In a 
 word, I have faith in Common Sense. 
 
 Now the genius of common sense is the soul 
 ? of human life, and its composition is Experience, 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM m 
 
 Pain, Pleasure, Hope, and Fear : Consequent- 
 ly, people blessed with it, reject as absurd alll 
 supernaturalism, in whatever shape it presents 
 itself. Miracle, as physical impossibilities, next 
 follow in the category of rejected crudities, arid 
 the sacred past, whenever it assumes the gar- 
 ment of infallible authority, follows in their 
 wake. ' ' 
 
 Is there such a thing as a miracle 1 We turn 
 to Eliphas Levi for a clear explanation of mir- 
 acles, and he tells us that : ' ' We define miracles 
 as the natural effects of exceptional causes. 
 The immediate action of the human will upon 
 the body, or at least that action exercised with- 
 out visible means, constitute a miracle in the 
 physical order. The influence exercised upon 
 wills or intelligencies, either suddenly or within 
 a given time, and capable of subjugating 
 thoughts, changing the most determined deso- 
 lutions, paralysing the most violent passions— 
 this influence constitutes a miracle in the moral 
 order. The common error concerning miracles 
 is to regard them as effects without causes, con- 
 tradictions of nature, sudden vagaries of the 
 divine mind, not seeing that a single miracle ;of 
 this class would destroy the universal harmony, 
 and reduce the universe to chaos. There ar© 
 
44 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 miracles which are impossible, even for God, 
 namely, those which involve absurdity. Could 
 God be absurd for one instant, neither Himself 
 nor the world wonld be in existence the moment 
 following. To expect from the Divine Arbiter 
 an effect having a disproportionate cause, or 
 even no cause at all, is what is called tempting 
 God; it is casting one's self into the void. God 
 operates by His ivorks—in heaven by angels, 
 and on earth by men. Hence, in the circle of 
 angelic action, the angels can perform all that 
 is possible for God, and in the human circle of 
 action men can dispose equally of divine om- 
 nipotence. In the heaven of human conceptions, 
 it is humanity which creates God, and men think 
 that God has made them in His image because 
 they have made Him in theirs. The domain of 
 man is all corporeal and visible on earth, and 
 if he cannot rule suns and stars, he can at least 
 calculate their motion, compute their distances, 
 and identify his will with their influence ; he can 
 modify the atmosphere, up to a certain point, 
 upon the seasons, heal or harm his neighbors, 
 preserve life and inflict death, the conservation 
 of life, including resurrection in certain cases, 
 as already established. The absolute in reason 
 and volition is the greatest power which can be 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 45 
 
 given any man to attain, and it is by means of 
 this power that he performs what astonishes the 
 multitudes nnder the name of miracle." So 
 much for Levi's definition, and I doubt whether 
 a better one could be given by any other Mystic 
 or Scientist. 
 
 A miracle, according to the orthodox inter- 
 pretation, is said to be constituted through a 
 deviation from the course of Nature. But the 
 intelligent inquirer at once suggests the inquiry, 
 How shall man be enabled by this rule to deter- 
 mine when a miracle is performed? For, even 
 in the present age of earnest inquiry, who shall 
 decide as to the legitimate course of Nature ? In 
 the days of Moses and of Jesus, men were not 
 so well informed as they are in the present day 
 with regard to such matters, and consequently 
 were more liable to run into error in drawing 
 their deductions from the phenomena by which 
 they were surrounded. Upon this point, Spirit- 
 ualism declares that a miracle, in the theological 
 sense, is scientifically, philosophically, and mor- 
 ally impossible ; and that if it were possible that 
 a miracle could take place in that sense, it would 
 not only destroy the divinity of the Bible, but 
 it would destroy divinity itself— and why? 
 Thus : no one will deny that God is infinite in his 
 
46 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 attributes, and that natural law is the effect of 
 the perfection and divinity of those attributes, 
 and that consequently, all things have been ar- 
 ranged upon the wisest and best purpose. Any 
 deviation, therefore, from this plan, must be a 
 detraction, because there can be no change in 
 what is perfect, except for the worse. To base a 
 system of religion, as is done in the orthodox 
 world, upon the performance of miracle, with 
 the theological interpretation of the word, is to 
 base that system upon the in-harmony of the 
 divine attributes; and in doing so, you neces- 
 sarily deprive Diety of that which alone makes 
 Him infinite. 
 
 We have seen what true Spiritualism is, 
 not only what one man says that it is, but what 
 the greatest thinkers of our times and of the 
 past say it is. Let us see what Churchism, or 
 Churchanity of to-day is. I do not speak of 
 Christianity, the esoteric teachings of the Christ, 
 but of that which to-day passes as Christianity, 
 and has as leaders such men as claim Spiritual- 
 ism, Mysticism, Occultism, and other great sys- 
 tems to be of the devil. 
 
 It was Dr. Randolph who said that "Christ- 
 ianity (modern Churchism), in its dainty care 
 of the senses, thought that it could not go too 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 47 
 
 far in the other extreme, and a man was canon- 
 ized and calle.d a saint, who made himself per- 
 fectly nseless, severed as far as he could, from 
 human intercourse, who never washed himself 
 or got a new coat till the old one fell in tattered 
 rags around him, and who was so much of a 
 teetotaler as to have a whole fountain to him- 
 self. Christianity put the spirit in contrast with 
 the senses. But when you carry that contrast 
 to the utmost, what do you behold ! what do you 
 accomplish? The answer rolls up in thunder 
 tones, 'You destroy the balance of the human 
 faculties, and provoke the most fatal and ter- 
 rible reactions.' No sensualities among the 
 ancients were ever so disgustingly incurable, 
 as those which prevailed in Christian lands, 
 and which are the direct and natural conse- 
 quences of Christian teachings." 
 
 This should not be understood as meaning 
 the esoteric teachings of the Christ, but the 
 teachings and actions of those who had lost the 
 esoteric meaning of His teachings, and there- 
 fore interpreted his teachings in the exoteric 
 sense, and became fanatics in the true sense 
 of the word. It was then, as it is at the present 
 time among Churchanity. I believe that the 
 doctrine of i ' Justification by Faith, ' ' or the for- 
 
48 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 giveness of sin through prayer, has more to do 
 with the crimes of to-day, than all other causes 
 combined. 
 
 ' ' In truth, the excitement of Christian fanat- 
 icism is kindred even to the most furious and 
 uncontrollable animality. Look at the majority 
 of preacher's sons— like father, like son— and 
 then study the natural history, origin and re- 
 sults, of the methodistic love-feasts, the pro- 
 fessed object of which is to promote spiritual 
 chastity. Henry VIII could zealously defend 
 the faith, and yet be a brute all the while ; for 
 in one short life-time, he, for the good of the 
 Church, and the promotion of morals, divorced 
 Catharine or Arragon, married and murdered 
 Anne Boleyn, and Jane Seymour; broke the 
 hearts of five others, and stigmatized Anne of 
 Cleves as a "Flanders Mare." Eight wives 
 had this holy defender of the faith. Remem- 
 ber the relation of cause and effect. ' ' 
 
 Let the church of to-day, or any other time, 
 bring us one example of such hellish work, that 
 was done by any single Occultist, Mystic or 
 Spiritualist, except such as disbelieved in the 
 esoteric part of these systems, not believing that 
 there was a God, a Christ, or that man was im- 
 mortal. Such do not confess to be followers of 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 49 
 
 the esoteric part of these doctrines, but believe 
 in the cold, scientific side of the doctrine. These 
 men, are usually, if not always, the children of 
 Abortionists, and are themselves but the effect 
 of a cause over which they had, and have, not 
 the slightest control. These men should not b^ 
 judged by their actions or doings, as they are 
 not responsible for them. The crime, or seeds 
 of the crime, were implanted into their very 
 soul, by the unnatural mother that brought them 
 forth. Of course, I do not claim that this is not 
 also the cause of modern Churchism, but fully 
 believe that it is, but then, "Justification by 
 Faith, ' ' is in itself a doctrine of degeneration. 
 
 "The spiritual fever of the multitude ren- 
 ders them easy dupes to the intellect of the 
 few, simply because the multitudes are not in- 
 dividuals. It is said that Christianity— the or- 
 dinary, common sort— abolishes slavery, which 
 is not true; but if it were, the gospel only de- 
 stroys the bondage of the body, while it brings 
 a more terrible set of shackles for the soul : 
 
 Christianity is not the religion of Jesus 
 the Christ, and never was or can be : Glance at, 
 tthe Crusades ; forget their poetical aspects, and 
 the benefits they conferred, but never contem- 
 plated ; and were they not the poorest insanities 
 
50 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 into which nations ever rushed? not even ex- 
 cepting the American rebellion: Therefore, it is 
 self-apparent that the only defense man has 
 against the wiles of priestcraft, and the whims 
 of despots, are in these very despised senses; 
 because they give him a consciousness of 
 strength with which despots dare not trifle. 
 Mankind has, as the fruit of the past miscalled 
 Spiritualism, a self-denial, an asceticism most 
 unnatural, with the morbid mockery of pseudo- 
 pious old maids, to make it ridiculous, a gross 
 and abominable sensuality as unnatural; but 
 the reaction against that asceticism, the attempt 
 of suppressed forces to assert and regain their 
 rights; and under the pretense of rendering 
 every individual the freedom of Christ, and 
 clothing him with a spiritual dignity, and an in- 
 tellectual eminence, which teaches him to des- 
 pise the poor Greek and Roman, you simply 
 enthrone Jesuitism as the queen of the world. 
 This, then, is my verdict on common, popular 
 Christianity,— that it flatters its adherents with 
 receiving a spiritual elevation and disenthral- 
 ment, but that it changes society into an arid 
 and joyless thing, to be tossed, and twisted, and 
 trampled, as it may suit the pleasure of diplo- 
 mats and ecclesiastics. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 51 
 
 Greatly, therefore, are they deceived, or 
 greatly do they deceive others, who aver that 
 such a Christianity, or Churchanity is the re- 
 ligion of the people. 
 
 Bnt at last, this intellectual phase of human 
 development, and with it that sort of Christ- 
 ianity, is drawing to a close. We are entering 
 on the moral phase of humanity's growth, the 
 long struggle of the human will against the in- 
 tellectual weapons and potent machinery of des- 
 pots, priests, and politicians, the accursed trin- 
 ity which has ever hindered our normal growth, 
 and repressed the aspirations of man. This 
 struggle will inevitably last long. The people 
 must drive these tyrants into insignificance and 
 efface them from the earth by the grandeur of 
 their own superiority : The time has come when 
 the people can bear the truth told them, and 
 when that time is fully ripe, deeds worthy of 
 America's most valiant battles in the past and 
 present will flash and fulminate in a new sense 
 from her shores; deeds worthy of her noblest 
 aspirations; for the future will utter to earth 
 and heaven, in thunder tones, what I am here 
 stating, that the moral phase of humanity has 
 begun. ' ' 
 
 The reader may say; it is all well enough 
 
52 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 to tell ns what modern Christianity or Church - 
 ism is, but how are we to help it? how make 
 things different? The answer is very simple, 
 and the only way is, to have a universal reli- 
 gion, without sect or ism, one that the rich and 
 poor alike can accept. We are all the children 
 of the Great All; and it is our actual relation 
 to the Great All that we are to determine. The 
 Past to us is a nonentity. Historical facts con- 
 cern us not at all. Of the Future we speculate 
 most, but can know absolutely nothing,— save 
 by direct inspiration and intromission, — except 
 that the universe is a great fact, and will ever 
 be such. Humanity's eternal religion, we de- 
 voutly believe in,— we individualists,— the be- 
 lief in God and immortality; but our God is the 
 everlasting Life that flows around us, and of 
 which we are a part, this part is the soul. Im- 
 mortality to us is a living fact, and a beautiful 
 ideal, that ever floats before us, as a gossamer 
 cloud floats on the bright, gleaming wings of 
 the morning zephyr, all bespangled with the 
 diamond eyes of pearly dew; nor can we speak 
 of it with the disgusting familiarity of modern 
 churchmen, or some of the modern Spiritists, 
 who seem to know the very will and desire of 
 God. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 53 
 
 Now, in nature, if we look with our natural 
 eyes, and do not permit ourselves to be crazed 
 by creeds, theologies, and dull metaphysics, of 
 the wild vagaries and speculations of mere dab- 
 step in the art of thinking, who, ever and anon, 
 set up for Sir Oracles, and modern Pythons, 
 what are the two things in chief we observe? 
 The reply is, an intense unity, and a boundless 
 multiformity, which are at once the results and 
 the conditions of each other. The essence is 
 one, and the aspects are manifold, because 
 the essence is one; and the contrary: This 
 might seem simple, and altogether indubitable; 
 but, look how it is denied by so-called Christians 
 and philosophical deists, who make no great 
 pretensions to Christianity at all. For the 
 Christian or Churchman, there are three om- 
 nipotent essences,— a spirit of omnipotent good, 
 called Jehovah; an omnipotent antagonist, 
 called Satan; and a limitless lump of earth 
 called matter. Now these three essences are 
 exactly equivalent to no essence at all: There 
 is a total destruction of all unity, and it is not 
 diversity which we behold, branching, from a 
 central source of unity, but the fragments of 
 the chaos matter, which Jehovah and Devil, in 
 their ferocious hate, hurl at each other's head. 
 
 4 I 
 
V 
 
 54 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 We are not much better off if we adopt the dual- 
 ity of the philosophic theists, because two es- 
 sences are as fatal to cosmic unity as three ;-- 
 we merely miss the liveliness which the Devil 
 gave to the concern;— and if we are to have 
 chaos, let us by all means have a devil to make 
 the thing interesting. 
 
 Hireling priests offer us a God far beyond 
 the moon, somewhere on the confines of outer- 
 most space; by doing which, they declare the 
 principle of individuality, or the right of self- 
 judgment paramount to all others,— so far as 
 they are concerned, and in the same breath ig- 
 nore, and utterly deny it in all the rest of man- 
 kind. 
 
 "As like as two P's" are priests and poli- 
 ticians; for these Jast seldom have the genius 
 or generosity to govern for man's highest good, 
 but they are glad when the people are terrified 
 by the priestly phantoms of revengeful Gods: 
 
 because they too recognize individualism as a 
 great and good, because true principle; and 
 feeling that "knowledge is power," they 
 tremble lest the people, breaking their priestly 
 ligaments, < will become full and rounded char- 
 acters, real genuine individuals, and then, adi^u 
 to the sinecures; farewell, loaves and fiishes, for 
 lo: "Othello's occupation's gone." 
 
 \ 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 55 
 
 The first step toward the overthrow of our 
 social, and all other evils, and the woes of every 
 kind— according to common sense— must be the 
 destruction of a one-sided Spiritualism, or phil- 
 osophy, which models, or attempts to model, 
 the community according to its insane caprice, 
 and to drag it away as far as possible from 
 Nature. But how is this done? You preach to 
 priests and government in vain. They are the 
 advocates of a miserable conservatism, and even 
 when they are not, they are stupid, as they al- 
 ways are indifferent; at all events, the godlike 
 growth of the community they sneer at as the 
 dreams of fools, or the delusion of men too hon- 
 est for this world. When you talk to them of 
 Nature, they think you are quoting D'Rolbach, 
 Grieves, Rosseau, or the dreams of some moon- 
 struck poet, and it is the chief article of their 
 creed, that Rosseau was a madman, Montaigne 
 a fool, Holbach a knave, Grieves a dreamer. 
 Swedenborg a fanatic, and your modern seer 
 or poet a lunatic on stilts. To whom then, must 
 you appeal? To the man— the individual: Dis- 
 enthral him from sectisms, and creed, and 
 party; isolate him from his old associations; 
 paralyze the grasp that custom has upon his 
 thoughts, and actions, make him a free and 
 
56 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 strong man, eager to be a hero, whenever so- 
 ciety demands heroic actions, and heroic sacri- 
 fices, and lead him to the feet of the Christ. 
 Now there are fonr ways in which this must be 
 accomplished: first, by invigorating the will; 
 second, by disabusing his mind of the old, silly, 
 pedantic notion, that he consists of a body and 
 soul, eternally at war with each other, and en- 
 abling him to feel that he is a vital unity, mani- 
 festing itself by multiformity; third, by mak- 
 ing him regard Nature as the Unity of unities ; 
 and the Multiformity of multiformities ; fourth, 
 by arranging before him each object in Na- 
 ture—tree, bud, flower, insect, bird,— as a mul- 
 tiform unity. 
 
 "By invigorating his will, you not merely 
 give him positive force for all his future march ; 
 you not only arm him with mighty resolves, for 
 mighty achievements; but you give him a 
 weapon with which to break that which is his 
 most unconquerable hindrance, most formidable 
 foe— the bondage of Conventionalism. By 
 stamping deep in his breast, also, the image of 
 himself, as a multiform unity; and not a com- 
 pound of soul and body, not a mere mixture of 
 spirit and matter, nor a bundle of parts, each 
 independent of the other in itself, and ham- 
 
 v 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 5? 
 
 mered into temporary relationship with it^ 
 neighbor;— but as a multiform unit of the great 
 eternal oneness— the TJni Omni Oversold: By 
 so doing, you not simply give him the boon of 
 health, but also the sense of affinity for the true, 
 the Beautiful, and the Good (God); and that 
 new sense will prodigiously elevate him, and 
 the knowledge of brotherhood will fill his very 
 soul with jovj and make his wearied spirit sing 
 for very gladness. A universal religion will 
 bring in a Universal Brotherhood, the dream 
 of the ages. 
 
 "The univercoelum will be none the less one 
 and many-fold if we regard it as mysterious. 
 It will be none the less beautiful, vast, and sub- 
 lime; nor will it lose aught of its joys, but it 
 will still shine with a sacred glory,— still be * 
 palace where the banquet of life is spread, and 
 a temple, inspiring the divinest visions, and di- 
 vinest valor — a temple wherein we may offer 
 the worship of holiest emotion— of Titanic la- 
 bors, of Martyrdoms for Humanity, and which 
 all true men shudder to desecrate by a base de= 
 sire, or dishonorable action. When, therefore^ 
 his will is invigorated, after these full, intelli- 
 gible and varied lessons, and "his moral trans- 
 formation is effected, man must be taken into 
 
58 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 the region of the unknown— into that wild, 
 weird clime, that lieth sublime, out of space, 
 out of time, and, first of all into the mysterious 
 depths of his own wonderful nature. 
 
 "This descent into the abysses of his own 
 mystery is intuitionalism. Not for the sake of 
 abstraction, self-analysis, or speculation, do I 
 recommend this course, — for there can be no 
 more unwholesome occupation than a man's al- 
 ways looking into his intellectual stomach,— but 
 because the religious transformation of the in- 
 dividual cannot be begun, or finished, without 
 intuitionalism. ' ' 
 
 It is from the prof oundest sense of mystery 
 in himself that he rises in the universal scale. 
 Individual men, aggregated after such moral 
 and religious transformation, form the mater- 
 ials for the future social state of integral har- 
 mony, beautiful as a sunbeam just bursting on 
 the world. "Man know thyself," has been the 
 command of the ages, and will be as long as 
 life lasts on this or any other planet. ' ' Master 
 thyself, and thou mayst be master over all 
 things," is not an idle saying, but is an awful 
 fact. 
 
 The chief obstacles to the progress of indi- 
 vidualism, are the two leading doctrines of mod- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 59 
 
 era Christianity, or Churchism, and which are 
 as distinct from the Heart-Religion of the 
 Martyr of Calvary, namely, the doctrine of 
 Justification by Faith, and that of Resignation ; 
 because utter resignation is utter folly, and 
 sheer nonsense. "Work out your own salva- 
 tion" is the word and the motto of a true and 
 genuine manhood,— which is also God-hood: 
 The atrocious absurdity of the doctrine of 
 resignation is most graphically and truly shown 
 in the character of "Uncle Tom,"— that "Jesus 
 Christ, in ebony," as Carlyle called him. Self- 
 defense, self-preservation, and personal, and 
 hence, national conservation, is the primal law 
 of human existence, written by the finger of 
 the eternal God in every human heart, and en- 
 graved in the star-gems on the everlasting 
 scroll of the arching sky. Nor is it necessary to 
 say, that not a single one of the followers of 
 the modern church carry out this doctrine of 
 "resignation," it is a farce, pure and simple. 
 Just try to force anything on one of these that 
 claim to believe in this doctrine and see what 
 will happen. 
 
 As to justification by faith, just think of 
 all your friends who are Methodists or Evan- 
 gelicals : It makes men vegetables or machines, 
 
60 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 while its twin dogma makes devils under the 
 garb of saints. I boldly make the claim that 
 nearly all the crimes known to mankind, are 
 really caused by this foul and unjust doctrine, 
 it gives a man the opportunity to commit any 
 crime, no matter how terrible, with the privi- 
 lege that he recant, as it were, and simply pray 
 for forgiveness. His victim may have suffered 
 all the pangs of hell and continue to suffer, but 
 he, by simply saying a few prayers, will be for- 
 given and need not suffer for his crime. .This— 
 doctrine is so utterly unjust, that it seems im- 
 possible~lT^liould J)e believed by any rational 
 mind, and yet, through superstition, there are 
 thousands that believe this to be a true faith, 
 not knowing that the Christ, whom they believe 
 they are following, never taught such a doc- 
 trine, but that He did teach the law of Karma, 
 as taught by all true Mystics and Occultists, 
 namely, "As thou soweth, so shalt thou reap." 
 If a man commits a wrong he must suffer for it, 
 and there is no law in heaven or earth, through 
 which he can escape his just punishment. I do 
 not doubt but that a sin committed by one which 
 does not hurt any one else but himself, may be 
 forgiven, as it has caused no other person to 
 suffer, but still, the sin that we commit against 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 61 
 
 ourself, is committed against the nation, or the 
 whole, as we are but a part of the one great 
 Whole. 
 
 " l Justification by faith, 7 is a sun-greened 
 carcass, a bog, and its loathsomeness offends 
 the sense of all honest men: In saying this, I 
 agree with Lessing, who wrote long since these 
 memorable words: 'The religion of Jesus 
 Christ and the Christian religion are not at all 
 the same thing.' In fact, they are about as like 
 as a horse-chestnut and a chestnut hor&e. The 
 Emanuel, Jesus Christ, I believe to have been 
 a divine soul, and a great reformer. If he were 
 on earth to-day, is there a single follower of 
 his that he would not be ashamed off or that 
 would own him if not dressed in the tip of the 
 fashion? " (Dr. Randolph.) 
 
 Mr. Roberts further says: "Dr. Randolph 
 renounced Soiritualism at one time, but was 
 
 A. 7 
 
 again ensnared. Dear reader, take warning: 
 Few, if any, of those who are caught in the 
 awful drag-net of Spiritualism e~er escape, 
 but are forever held in its deadly embrace, 
 and go down. to hell, there to spend endless ages 
 of eternal night among the demons (devils) 
 that seduced them. ' ' 
 
 In the first place, it is utterly and absolutely 
 
62 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 false that Dr. Randolph ever renounced or de- 
 nounced, true Spiritualism, and I defy any one 
 person, or any persons to prove that he did. It 
 is a fact that he denounced Spiritualism in 
 words that cannot be mistaken, as is proven in 
 the speech made by him in the city of New 
 York, in 1858, and which appeared in his work, 
 'Soul, the Soul World," but in that same work, 
 he defends true Spiritualism, and tells us that 
 it will be the hope of the world. I have no doubt 
 but that Mr. Roberts read this work, but he did 
 not dare to give the whole truth, nor explain 
 what Dr. Randolph meant in his speech, his 
 quotation, therefore, in the light the readers of 
 the booklet take it, is worse than a falsehood, it 
 is a down-right lie, given purposely to deceive 
 the readers and make Spiritualism appear in a 
 false light. 
 
 I believe we are willing to admit the fact, 
 that the person once accepting true Spiritualism 
 iiever returns to the Orthodox church, or mod- 
 ern Churchanity, and he certainly has very good 
 reason for not going back. A man that comes 
 out of darkness into light would be very foolish, 
 indeed, to return to the darkness from whence he 
 came. There are but few that ever denounce 
 true Spiritualism after they once accept it and 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 63 
 
 learn of the things that it can give unto them, 
 and as far as I myself am concerned I know 
 of none that ever gave np the true Mysticism', 
 Occult, or Spiritualism, for the church. 
 
 There is not a single pamphlet, or tract that 
 ever was issued by a Churchman, that did noi 
 lay especial stress on the devil and hell, it is the 
 very foundation on which Churchanity rests. 
 Take away their devil and their hell, and there 
 will be no church. The followers of Churchan- 
 ity are held in the bonds of fear, a fear of a 
 devil and an eternal hell, both of which have 
 no real existence. We find in the Bible that 
 God created Heaven and earth, but in no place 
 of that book are we able to find that He created 
 a Hell and a devil to attend the gates thereof; 
 It is also a fact, that true Spiritualism, Occult- 
 ism and Mysticism has thousands of followers, 
 but neither rests on a foundation of a hell or a 
 devil, but on the true foundation of Love and an 
 eternal Loving God. It is for this reason that 
 these grand systems hold their followers. "Love 
 is God," for St. John tells us that "God is 
 Love." We need no devil, nor do we need a 
 literal hell, for we know full well that our con^ 
 science is either our heaven or our hell, and that 
 the Astral is the great book that is opened be. 
 
64 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 fore us at death, in which we may, and must 
 read and see the wrongs that we have committed 
 while in the earth life, and reap our just pun- 
 ishment for the wrongs thus committed. We 
 need no God to punish us, our guilty conscience 
 will do that. It is not a revengeful God that 
 punishes mankind, but the soul of man does that 
 itself. The Master said: "The hand that smites 
 thee is thine own," we need be told no more, for 
 we understand. 
 
 Is there a devil? This is the question that 
 has been asked for ages by men in all walks of 
 life. There is no proof that there has ever 
 been such a being. That there is a principle 
 which may be called evil, cannot be doubted, but 
 this is not a being, and has no other existence 
 except in man, and is the negative of good. 
 To find out from whence the devil came, we 
 must go back to Mythology, and I can do noth- 
 ing better than to quote the Rev. Moses Hull, 
 in his book, "All About Devils," he says: "To 
 comprehend the whole in one short story, all, 
 01 about all, who believe in a devil believe that 
 he was made the grandest and 'most noble Ro- 
 man of them all.' He was the finest specimen 
 of what shall I say— humanity or Divinity? 
 among all of God's offspring. God thought so 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 65 
 
 much of him that he took him into his particular 
 confidence— made him his secretary, as it were. 
 In this God made no mistake, for everything 
 went of! well under Lucifer's administration. 
 When the books were wanted for examination 
 they were always on hand, ready for examina- 
 tion; and they were always posted and correct. 
 There were then no defalcations in heaven— no 
 flights to Canada— there was no boodle— there 
 were no heavenly boodlers— no Cronin murder 
 cases— no jury bribing. In fact, there was noth- 
 ing to mar, nothing to make afraid : 
 
 "But for some reason a meeting was called 
 of the heavenly cabinet and very important bus- 
 iness transacted, probably nothing less than the 
 creation of the planet on which we live, which, 
 it must be conceded, was important to us, and 
 Satan, by some oversight, was not called to that 
 meeting. "Whether he was slighted on purpose 
 or whether it was an accident, is not quite clear. 
 But, be that as it may, Satan took umbrage ; he 
 felt that it was hardly a fair deal to make him 
 responsible for all the business transacted in 
 heaven and then to go on and transact the most 
 important business without consulting him. He 
 probably hinted his disaffection to a few of his 
 most intimate friends, some of whom were not 
 very good at keeping a secret. 
 
66 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 * ' The result was, the news of a misunderstand- 
 ing between Satan and God, got into the hands 
 of the reporters and became public that God 
 sent to the devil, and told him that if he chose 
 to tender his portfolio, his resignation would 
 be accepted. But the devil determined not to 
 resign under a cloud; he would wait until mat- 
 ters settled somewhat. God then pre-emptorily 
 demanded his resignation, but Satan, feeling 
 that "Possession was nine points of the law," 
 obstinately refused; whereupon God commis- 
 sioned Michael to go and take possession of the 
 devil's books and office, at no matter what cost 
 But the devil had one-third of heaven armed 
 and equipped for battle. John, in the Apocal- 
 ypse, parodied heathen mythology as follows : 
 
 11 'And there was war in heaven; Michael and 
 his angels fought against the dragon; and the 
 dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed 
 not; neither was their place found any more in 
 ^leaven. And the great dragon was cast out, 
 and that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, 
 which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast 
 out into the earth, and his angels were cast out 
 with him. Therefore rejoice ye heavens, and 
 ye that dwell in them. Woe to the inhabiters 
 of the earth and of the sea ; for the devil is come 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 67 
 
 down unto you having great wrath because he 
 knoweth that he hath but a short time.'— Rev. 
 xii:7-12. 
 
 " Happy had it been for the inhabitants of 
 earth if the Gods and devils had either settled 
 their quarrel or continued their 'wart in 
 heaven,' but it seems that when the devils were 
 cast out they were not conquered— the battle 
 did not end. The only change was the removal 
 of the arena from heaven to earth. Here the 
 battle ^ias been going on ever since.' ' 
 
 That this is all symbolic and has a deep and 
 inner meaning, need not be said here. The 
 devil is not a being, nor an individual, but is a 
 principle in man. We take the child before it 
 reaches the age of understanding, and it is neu- 
 tral, but after it gets to a certain age, there are 
 two forces working in its " inner' ' being, one of 
 these will be the winner, it will either be the 
 g^od, or the bad. I believe that if mankind 
 would be born right, and not be taught any re- 
 vengeful God, nor yet be taught fear, after be- 
 Hg born, the good would always predominate. 
 As said before, God only created heaven and 
 earth. Holy Scripture does not say that He cre- 
 ated either devil or hell, and therefore both are 
 not created things, but principles. When God 
 
68 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 asked Satan from whence he came, he said: 
 i ' From going to and fro in the earth, and from 
 waiting up and down in it." Showing that^it 
 is a principle, not a person or individual, that it 
 is not a hell as taught, by orthodoxism, but that 
 it is something which can be found throughout 
 the entire world, and, a part of every individual, 
 until man becomes Master over himself. 
 
 "What is hell? There are three words in 
 the Greek Testament rendered hell; but in no 
 case does it say that God created a hell. One 
 is Hades, which signifies the place or the state 
 of death, this might be as much as to say that 
 heaven and hell are identical. However, I be- 
 lieve this word to mean the state through which 
 the so-called dead pass immediately after the 
 change. Another is Gehenna, which was a val- 
 ley just south of Jerusalem, where a fire was 
 kept continually burning to cremate the filth 
 of the city, this might well be called a hell on 
 account of the continual consuming of material 
 and the odor that necessarily came from the 
 burning of filth, 
 
 "The third was a Tartarus of Tartarosus, a 
 place located in Lake Avernus. The exact lo- 
 cation of Lake Avernus, and Surbonus and other 
 mythological places, are like Sodom and Gomor- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 69 
 
 rah, hard to determine. But they were some- 
 where in what was once the valley of the Nile. 
 These lakes had neither outlet nor inlet, the 
 water came in by the overflow of the Nile and 
 passed out by evaporation. 
 
 i 'Decaying vegetation in the region of these 
 lakes gave the smell of brimstone, and the roll- 
 ing of the waves in the light of the moon caused 
 the lake to look like a high lake of fire. Hug*, 
 phosphoric insects flying over the lakes looked 
 like balls of fire, or sparks from the lake. Thus 
 from a place that had an existence in Nature, 
 mythology has woven a cloth out of imagina- 
 tion, and we have the hell of brimstone, as 
 preached by the orthodox church of the present 
 day. Taking then, the Bible for authority, we 
 find that there is no such place for mankind 
 after they have passed beyond the pale of this 
 world, and that hell, in every case, meant a 
 place situated in this world. Hell is not a place, 
 but a condition. Inharmony is hell, so is an 
 uneasy conscience, and a man may be in hell 
 long before he is dead. The devil is not an in- 
 dividual or a being, but a principle in man. ' ' 
 
 Mr. Roberts further says: "Many wonder 
 why * physical manifestations ' are best ob- 
 tained in darkened rooms. Jesus says : ' Every 
 
 5 I 
 
70 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither 
 cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be re- 
 proved.' " 
 
 • It does not seem that those who do wrong 
 today, fear the light, especially when we take 
 notice of the rogues and villains that we can 
 meet every hour of the day, they do no more 
 fear light than darkness, but this had no more 
 to do with Spiritualism than has the part of 
 Scripture that Mr). Roberts quotes. In the 
 28th chapter of Matthew, an angel appeared to 
 the two Marys at the sepulchre; and what is 
 more, in the present age of scepticism, it ivas 
 aone in the dark, just before the dawn of day. 
 You believe that, but reject, ay, you denounce, 
 bitterly denounce the dark circles of modern 
 times, and utterly reject the manifestations oc- 
 curring in such circles. It is a pity that Mr. 
 Roberts did not live at that time, and we may 
 rest assured that he would have issued a booklet, 
 setting forth the fact that the devil had risen 
 instead of the Christ, for the reason that the 
 angel appeared in the dark. "There are none 
 so bli^d as those that will not see." 
 
 Mr. Roberts would have us believe that Spir- 
 itualists uphold promiscuous adultery, and says 
 this on the subject: "At a Spiritual conven- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 71 
 
 tion held in Rutland, Vt., the following resolu- 
 tion was presented: l Resolved, that the only 
 true and natural marriage is an exclusive con- 
 jugal love between one man and one woman; 
 and the only true home is the isolated home 
 based upon this exclusive love.' This seems 
 at first a very innocent resolution; but read it 
 again. To make it plain, I quote the language 
 of another Spiritualist, spoken 'in defense of 
 a medium known as the Rev. John Spear, who 
 became the father of an illegitimate child by the 
 direction of the spirit/ 'It is reserved for 
 this our day, under the inspiration of the spirit 
 world, for a quiet, equable, retiring woman to 
 rise up in the dignity of her womanhood, and 
 declare in the face of her oppressors and a 
 scowling world, 'I will be free, and no man, or 
 set of men, no church, no state, shall withhold 
 from me the realization of that purest of all 
 aspirations inherent in every true woman, the 
 right to rebeget myself when, and by whom, 
 and under such circumstances as to me seem 
 fit and best. ' Mrs. Lewis, in a speech delivered 
 at Ravenna, Ohio, said : To confine her to love 
 one man was an abridgement of her rights. Al- 
 though she had one husband in Cleveland, she 
 considered herself married to the whole human 
 
72 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 race. All men were her husbands, and she had 
 an undying love for them. ' What business is it 
 to the world, whether one man is the father of 
 my children, or ten men are? I have a right to 
 say who shall be the father of my offspring/ 
 Now we can better understand the Rutland, Vt., 
 resolution: one man or woman at a time, but 
 should he or she fail to love that one exclus- 
 ively, discard him or her, and find another 
 4 ' affinity. " Such is the "Divine Law of Mar- 
 riage' ' instituted by Spiritualists under the di- 
 rection of the seducing spirits; and of course, 
 this constitutes one of the many * doctrines of 
 devils.' " 
 
 So much for Mr. Roberts. The resolution 
 passed by the convention at Rutland, Vt, was 
 passed by a convention of Spiritualists, not 
 Spiritists, and it is not a resolution for any man 
 or set of men to be ashamed of, as it voiced the 
 true definition of marriage. These Spiritual- 
 its have done their duty, and they cannot be 
 held accountable what some one else may say 
 in Ohio. These were Spiritualists, while the 
 one who said the other, may have been a spirit- 
 ist, and there is very little relation between the 
 Two. In fact, there is no more relation between 
 Spiritualism and spiritism, than there is be- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 73 
 
 tween the esoteric Christ-teachings and modern 
 Churchanity, to which latter class Mr. Roberts 
 belongs. I would ask, does it take a spirit to 
 tell a man to seduce a girl? I doubt it very 
 much, if it does, then it accounts for the fact 
 that so many preachers of the gospel are annu- 
 ally arrested and imprisoned for this very 
 crime. Let Mr. Roberts mention one true 
 Spiritualist, that is today in prison for any of 
 these crimes, that he charges to Spiritualism, 
 he cannot do it ; but on the other hand, we could 
 mention many preachers who are today serving 
 sentences for assaulting or seducing girls and 
 women, but a few miles from where I now write 
 this lives a young woman who is the mother ox 
 several children, but who is unmarried. Not 
 far from where she lives there lives a minister 
 of the gospel who declares that they are children 
 of God. I have no doubt but that they are, 
 since they may really have been conceived in 
 Love, but I, and many others that know the 
 circumstances, have long ago come to the con- 
 clusion that he happens to be that identical god. 
 There are more so-called Christians in prison 
 today for crimes of this kind, than there are of 
 all other teachings combined. What Mrs. Lewis 
 says or has said, has no more to do with the 
 
74 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 resolutions passed at Rutland, than lias Mr. 
 Koberls. The convention can no more control 
 the speech of others than can any other man or 
 set of men. Each individual is a free moral 
 agent, and each one must be responsible for 
 what he or she does or says. 
 
 What is marriage! "That which God has 
 joined together let no man put asunder." This 
 has come down to us for ages past, but do we 
 recognize what the few words, "What God has 
 joined, " mean? The clergy of today, in their 
 .mad rush for money, have changed it so, that 
 ic seems to mean that what I, the priest or min- 
 ister have joined, let no man part., but— the di- 
 vorce court. Let us for but a minute examine the 
 question in a true light: St. John tells us: 
 "God is Love," and also "Love is God," if we 
 wish to believe in the Bible, we must believe 
 that Love is the grandest thing given to man, 
 aiat man should love, seems to be proven by 
 the fact that there are two of us, man and 
 woman, but be this as it may, we still find in 
 our marriage rites, that "what God has joined 
 together, let no man part," and if God is Love, 
 as St. John tells us that He is, then our mar- 
 riage ceremony should read: "What Love has 
 joined together, let no man say aught against 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 75 
 
 it." Then, and then only, will marriage be as 
 it should be. I go still further, and say, that 
 the marriage ceremony as it is today performed, 
 xs a man-made institution, and has naught of 
 God in it, it is made for greed and to enslave 
 men and women, gives license to lust, under the 
 cloak or marriage, and brings all the horrors 
 of this life, and throws a shadow on the life to 
 come; it is an unrighteous, ungodly institution, 
 and as long as it continues, we will have nothing 
 but what society presents everywhere, namely 
 —sexual and matrimonial perversions, misde- 
 meanors, and diabolism of every name and 
 grade, a growing and significant unwillingness 
 to assume the risks and burdens of leg&l mar- 
 riage, celibacy, intensified and morbid amative- 
 ness, sexual madness, masturbation, seductions, 
 rapes, and nameless extremes; prostitution, de- 
 bauchery and profligacy, connubial aversion 
 and disgust marital infidelity and intrigues, 
 jealousies, adulteries, hypocrisy, wedded misery, 
 abortions, insanity, murders, suicides, etc. [t 
 is a modern Christian institution, and the 
 fruits cannot be expected to be anything else 
 but what they are. True marriage cannot be 
 performed by a priest for so much a pair, and 
 1 fearlessly say that the marriage ceremony is 
 
76 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 a bad institution, because it binds two people to- 
 gether that in many cases were never intended 
 for each other, and unless they are parted, or 
 part themselves there is a pure hell in that 
 family for life, not only does it effect them, but 
 also their children, and all the crimes named 
 before, are bred in that family, and many more 
 not named. Is this marriage, or is it not? It 
 gives the man license to use the body of his 
 wife as he would use that of a houri, worse yet, 
 it breeds all the crime that man can suffer with, 
 it is but legal prostitution and debauchery, 
 made legal by a priest. 
 
 I claim that the marriage ceremony is abso- 
 lutely useless. What Love puts together, or 
 marries, let no man part, nor can any man or 
 set of men, or any law, or set of laws, part them, 
 they are one. Can a priest do anything more 
 than love has already done? Do his few words 
 help anything? Never, if two people love each 
 other, then they are married. Love (God) has 
 /married them and no man can part that which 
 God has joined, nor can any man bind them 
 closer than they are already bound. Why, then, 
 do we need the help of a priest to give the 
 license to commit crime, by giving humanity a 
 false idea of marriage, namely, the idea of pos- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 77 
 
 session? The church, so-called Christianity, 
 speaks so much about Divinity, conversion, etc., 
 and yet they hold on to everything that fosters 
 crime, as though it was their very life, and never 
 do they try to make life more endurable. , 
 
 When a man Loves a woman, and that 
 woman loves the man in return, that is the True, 
 Holy, and Sacred Marriage, the marriage insti- 
 tuted by God, and no man can interfere, nor 
 help anything or legalize it. If two people do 
 not love each other, but marry because of par- 
 ents, money, religion, etc., that is prostitution 
 and no amount of ceremonies can make it any- 
 thing else, no matter what a priest may say, it 
 is prostitution and debauchery still, and will 
 continue to be as long as they remain together. 
 Man has joined them, and God or Love had 
 nothing to do with it. If two people are bound 
 together that do not love each other, that is not 
 marriage, but a license or bond to prostitute, 
 and it needs no court to divorce or dis-marrv 
 them, for the reason that they are not married. 
 It may take a court to sever the bond, but not 
 the marriage, that was severed when love died. 
 Nature or God's law is, that when two people 
 Love, they are married, when that Love is dead, 
 they are free from each other, as Love or God 
 
78 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 no longer binds them and our courts should rec- 
 ognize it thus, and nine-tenths of the misery of 
 the world would be saved. I see the Chris- 
 tian (!) who reads this, hold up his hands in 
 horror, and exclaim: "Why, then, two people 
 could go together just for fun for awhile, and 
 when they get tired, just part" I ask, would 
 it be any worse than it is now! Do they not do 
 the same thing now ! All they do now, is to get 
 married, live a life of hell for awhile, beget 
 children, sow the seeds of crime in their little 
 brains, go to the brothel between time, and do 
 everything else, and at last, seek a divorce— get 
 it— and try again. The former would be much 
 better, for then they would part as soon as they 
 were tired of each other, they would not fight., 
 bear children, and commit all the other crimes 
 first, and then after all self-respect is gone, part 
 after all. Surely the first is the best, for when 
 they want to part, they will part anyhow 
 whether legally married or not. Of what use, 
 then, is the ceremony, except to give the priest 
 en easy living, and keep up a foul institution. 
 Marriage, as it is today, is a curse to humanity, 
 ho marriage can be recognized by God unless 
 it is bound with Love, and when it is thus bound, 
 no other ceremony is needed. Marriage today, 
 gives ownership, ownership is ruin to happiness. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 79 
 
 It was Dr. Randolph that said: "The teem- 
 ing millions need light in order to learn how and 
 whom to love, as love should really be; and the 
 only feasible plan to give that blessing to the 
 earth is to make the matter a common-school 
 affair all over ihe land, and let Anthropology, 
 in all its branches, become an ordinary and 
 every day study by every child, in every school 
 in the country. *Tis education forms the com- 
 mon mind; just as the twig is bent the tree's 
 inclined. ' Begin with the children, and you 
 will begin right; and in training them up as 
 they should be, in a knowledge proper to man- 
 kind in their childhood, when they grow up they 
 will not depart therefrom. Some such plan as 
 this, in my opinion, is the only true method, and 
 the only true and really effective antidote to the 
 marital chills and fevers of the age, a very 
 abnormal one in that respect 
 
 "I am in favor of monogamic marriage, royal 
 and legal; but I am also dead-set against the 
 false sort, even when law-and-ehurch-sane- 
 tioned; and yet it will not do to utterly break it 
 down, for there is as yet no substitute, no better 
 way known. Bitterly hostile to all forms of 
 libertinage and promiscuity, as I am to abor- 
 tion and abortion-brokers, still under no cir- 
 
80 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 oumstance would I compel a couple to live to- 
 gether as man and wife who bred nothing but 
 ill-will toward each other, moral consumption, 
 domestic misery, and badly organized children ; 
 for to do so were to commit a crime against 
 nature, therefore against God. ' ' 
 
 This is exactly what the marriage ceremony 
 ol today does, it binds those together that were 
 never intended to be put together, and on ac- 
 count of false ideas and the belief that owner- 
 ship is granted through marriage, these parties 
 are held together as by a bond of iron, and the 
 result is a hell, and badly organized children, 
 who have crime born into them, and are bound 
 to become criminals some time or other in their 
 life. 
 
 "Our wives are as free of obligation to us 
 as our mistresses. To bind them in the chains 
 of duty agreeable only to our feelings is a crime 
 and a profanation. To force or demand the 
 consolations of love from one who cannot read- 
 ily, freely, fully, and wholly yield them to us, 
 is sacrilege, and a crime against the divinity 
 and majesty of the human soul, both that of the 
 demander and the demandee. Yet, many, if not 
 almost all, children are born under just such 
 conditions, is it any wonder that the world is 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 81 
 
 lull of criminals? The answer comes in thun- 
 dering tones, No! no! no! 
 
 A child born under such conditions, must be 
 morbid, and morbidness is of necessity the 
 proper condition to produce crime. 
 
 "Passional license is not, and never will be, 
 marriage, any more than pork steak and chicken 
 iixins constitute the joys of the " world to come/' 
 
 "No man has a right to exact the fulfill- 
 ment, of a promise obtained from a woman un- 
 der the impression that she was beloved, or 
 wrested from her generous charity and com- 
 passion. To do so is to forfeit manhood-- nn 
 act no true male can be capable of doing. True, 
 it is done, but the doers are things, not men. 
 
 "New love requires danger and impediments 
 in its path, to round it out to fullness. Mature 
 love revives, when we can no longer kindle a 
 new flame in the souls of others. 
 
 "Love is a result of good and bad instincts, 
 placed in us by God himself for our punish- 
 ment or perfection. Bad human laws, which 
 always oppose, in all things, the will of nature 
 and the designs of Providence, often make an 
 inspiration of God a crime, and curse the senti- 
 ments he has blessed, while they sanction in- 
 famous unions (even legal ones), and do honor 
 
82 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 to those who live beneath the reign of their base 
 instincts— base as hades, false as untruth, al 
 though hedged about by law and panoplied in 
 custom and upheld by the church. 
 
 It remains for true statesman and legisla- 
 tors, to distinguish as much as possible, legiti- 
 mate, because natural and true, love from a 
 \ ain and guilty passion : For all true marriage 
 is loving consent, and so should be pronounced 
 in the name of a higher, purer, and more gen- 
 erous law than that which the civilized world 
 has upon its statute books today. 
 
 "The rights of a brother and lover are dif- 
 ferent. Those of a lover and husband are iden- 
 tical; unless the husband consents to become a 
 brother, in which case the law of marriage 
 would be violated in its most mysterious, inti- 
 mate, and sacred relation. The divorce would 
 be perfect; the woman be no longer bound, and 
 the rights of her lover and herself fall into their 
 proper places. Hence every man who fails to 
 husband his wife, but only brothers her, has no 
 claim whatever upon her wifehood or wifely 
 offices ; but from that moment her lover unques- 
 tionably has; for the brotherly relation is based 
 on brain and mind ; the other upon heart solely, 
 and heart, not mind, carries sex along with it. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 83 
 
 Nothing is more true than that when two souls 
 yield and become bound to each other, their 
 mutual possession becomes sacred, and as much 
 a divine right as individual liberty ; ior God 
 himself inspires them, by the miracle of love, 
 with all true human virtue, power and faith 
 in each other; which union no man, no human 
 law, can rend or dissever. Out, then, on mere 
 formalism, gross laws, and impious oaths. God 
 sanctifies the wedding, and will keep up the 
 miracle, and the twain will demonstrate the 
 glory of fidelity, and the sublime meaning of 
 the words, Honor, Love, and Marriage, without 
 ,a legal ring to bind them, or a social whip to 
 keep them in the traces : Ceremonial marriage 
 is a profanation to hearts that really love. An- 
 nounce such marriage publicly, but ask no leave 
 or license of priest or justice— ask it only of 
 your souls and God. Such a marriage will 
 develop its divinest joys. Its ideal realized is 
 triplicate— Love, Faith, Eternity, and no human 
 soul can scale the battlements of thought and 
 heaven, like one winged and plumed with such 
 a love— one in which physical passion is as a 
 cobble-stone to a frowning mountain— a side- 
 hill brooklet to the roaring sea ; nor can it ever 
 reach the crown of its lucidity and power so 
 
84 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 certainly as from the enthusiasm of a mighty 
 love like this; for it is an ever-present revela- 
 tion of the God, a manifestation of his divine 
 presence, in and near the soul, kindling up 
 flames too white and pure for wicked eyes ; joys 
 too vast for the sensualist's power of conceptive 
 thought: Why, as the subject unfolds before 
 the soul, it seems to me no man before has ever 
 written of it, and that the height, and depth, 
 and breadth thereof never hath been fathomed, 
 nor a tithe of the wonderful story ever yet been 
 told. God, how small the world looks ; how piti- 
 ful and mean the ologies and ologists in this 
 blessed light of love. 
 
 i 'And I say these things from my soul, be- 
 cause they are true. They may not be popular, 
 yet are immortal; uttered in spite of the " pub- 
 lic,' ' which is ever fickle, forgetful, cruel, and 
 unjust— I know it well, and yet say these things. 
 What are parties but plunder, and what are 
 creeds but solemn amusements. The strong sou] 
 stands unawed by threats, unbought by bribes 
 I think my soul is strong. In renouncing human 
 compassion and despising human glory, the 
 true soul feels the influx of celestial aid. I think 
 my soul is true. Death is bitter to the unjust. 
 I am not afraid to die, because the devil is a 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 85 
 
 chimera; hell a poetic fable: God, Love, and 
 Immortality alone are true; hence let us laugh 
 at Pagan errors, even though disguised in Chris- 
 tian garb." 
 
 Not so very long ago, one E. F. Boyd, hail- 
 ing from Minnesota, issued a circular concern- 
 ing true marriage. This was reprinted in the 
 book: "The Master Passion," by Dr. P. B. 
 Randolph. I believe that all, or nearly all true 
 Spiritualists will agree with what Mr. Boyd 
 says, and I would call the attention of the church 
 and churchmen to this part and what has been 
 .said before concerning true marriage and chal- 
 lenge them to show wherein we err, or wherein 
 we are at variance with the laws of God and 
 Nature. 
 
 "Proposition 1. A true social science cannot 
 be reared upon a material basis (namely ,upon 
 property, industry, capital). Mere material in- 
 terests, although primary when considered as 
 conditions of life, are but secondary when con- 
 sidered in relation to mora-1 principles. All 
 true sociology must be based upon a moral or 
 religious foundation. 
 
 "Ideals (moral or religious principles) 
 adopted as axioms must constitute the animus, 
 or directing power, of a true social order. 
 
86 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 "No. 2. The reconstruction of human na- 
 ture is an idle dream; a theological chimera; 
 a natural impossibility. Man, in the constitu- 
 ent elements of his being, is absolutely perfect. 
 "The image of God." 
 
 "The lowest principles in Man's nature are 
 as indispensable to his existence and happiness 
 as are the highest. The foundations cannot be 
 removed Without destruction to the whole 
 fabric. Self-love, sexual love, and parental 
 love, are each as necessary to complete and per- 
 fect the human soul, and are as divine as the 
 highest faculties of the mind or heart. To 
 meditate and deliberately plot the eradication 
 and extinguishment of these basic elements of 
 man 's being is not only self -destructive and sui- 
 cidal, but sacrilegious, sublimely pious, and 
 blasphemous. 
 
 " 'Call thou not unclean, untamable, or 
 wicked, anything which the Lord God hath 
 made/ " 
 
 Before going further with the subject in 
 hand, I think it well to add the following, as 
 the followers of churchanity are constantly de- 
 ciying the passions of man, not knowing what 
 they are really talking about, and still less know- 
 ing that the passions are so closely associated 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 87 
 
 with the soul of man, that they cannot be parted 
 from each other, without destroying both. "It 
 has become quite fashionable of late to hear 
 people loudly decrying the passions, especially 
 the sexual; but when I hear that sort of stuff 
 and twaddle, and hear man compared to the 
 fi animals," I set it down as morally certain 
 that there's a very dirty corner in the de- 
 nouncer's mind, and the chances are that such 
 a man is a debauchee every inch of him, and 
 such a female a harlot in grain, and uncoi- 
 scionable vampire in practice. The fault of to- 
 day is that 
 
 We give our appetites too loose a rein- — 
 Push every pleasure to the verge of pain, 
 
 "Common sense, backed by common hon- 
 esty (which is very uncommon at the present 
 time), will correct all this. Now, we are all 
 more or less diseased, physically, mentally, mor- 
 ally, passionally. Free love is a sort of ulcer 
 afflicting the body politic, brothels are the can- 
 cers, divorce courts the hospital, wherein the 
 remedy is often worse than the original disease. 
 It will not be so in the good time coming— and 
 very close at hand, let us hope. 
 
88 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 " Today there are many thousands who re- 
 ject the idea of hereditary depravity, because 
 it is a monstrous doctrine viewed in one light, 
 and had nothing to favor it but some old Jews ' 
 fables, and yet these same persons speak of pas . 
 sions as of some devouring pestilential leprosy 
 in the human heart. They are, at the same time, 
 both right and wrong, for so far as theology 
 is concerned, it is as false as falsehood, but 
 physiologically and psychologically, as true as 
 Truth herself. 
 
 "Political economists think we should have 
 the right kind of a world at last, if we cut all 
 the passions out of man. They would extinguish 
 every vestige of fire, even that which warms 
 and cheers us, and which cooks our food, simply, 
 forsooth, because village pumpkins make silly 
 bonfires in honor of some little lordling, whose 
 only praise is that he is a greater scoundrel 
 than the masses have among them; or because 
 silly boys on the Fourth of July burn their fin- 
 gers with gun-powder; or that cities are some- 
 times devastated with conflagrations. Fire is 
 to me sacred; I almost worship it, because it is 
 the type and essence of Purity herself. These 
 men would emasculate the race and make us 
 all eunuchs in theory and practice. Thank 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 89 
 
 Heaven we are not all content with tapioca, but 
 have now and then a relish for more solid food, J 
 and relish Common Sense. Uncommon sense ice- 
 should say. 
 
 "Nothing so alike as peas; nothing so nat- 
 ural as the family if love is there, and nations 
 are but the family developed. Consequently, 
 so long as one man loves one woman— and he 
 can fully love no more at the same time— there 
 will be the family. It will forever love its own 
 members better than its neighbor, and there 
 will be nations just as long; and patriotism 
 alone will be the tie which binds the mass to- 
 gether. 
 
 "This is simple common sense, and it follows 
 that the harum-scarum Utopian schemes of pas- 
 sion-fired "Foolosophers" and social communi- 
 ties—as isolated from the world as the angels 
 from the fabled burning pit— must ever and 
 necessarily fail on the basis of the love man 
 must bear to his wife, and she to their mutual- 
 ities. No isolated socialism can eventually suc- 
 ceed, because oranges won't grow on the polar 
 shores; and man must spontaneously coalesce 
 with man, else there can be no real unity. The 
 tendency of man is toward self-government, or 
 the essence of the self -hood. Every man wants 
 
90 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 to have his talk, his say, his finger in the pie; 
 ''too many cooks spoil the broth," and hence, 
 after a few brief years, these premature so- 
 cieties fail, and their forlorn leaders rub their 
 eyes, wonder how it came so, exclaim, "Who'd 
 'a thought it!" pass from the stage, and give 
 place to other visionaries. They failed to see 
 that which was right beneath their noses,namely, 
 the fact that as knowledge increased the senti- 
 ment of personalism gained strength, and with 
 it the desire of spontaneity and repugnance to 
 artificialism of whatever kind, under whatever 
 name; individual manhood and slavery to even 
 the most liberal doctrines are incompatible with 
 each other; and discordant notes must they be 
 that issue from such an instrument." 
 
 "Thus has it been in the past, thus is it in 
 the present, and ever will be, until men cease to 
 make laws for others, but learn to look at home, 
 and by assiduity learn to remedy the defects 
 there. The best piece of advice ever given was 
 that which says : First remove the beam from 
 thine own eye, and then pluck the mote from 
 out thy brother's." f 
 
 "No. 3. Sexology, a true philosophy thereof 
 is the natural and only true basis of social 
 ethics, and therefore of universal advancement 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 91 
 
 and reform. Abstract rights are inherent in 
 the soul or internal consciousness, and are inde- 
 pendent of sexism, excepting that it tones and 
 governs the individual in his or her recognition 
 or apprehension of these inherent rights, and 
 thus becomes the true basis of sociology, or 
 guiding law of our nature and actions, respect- 
 ing our appreciation and enjoyment of these 
 lights. Hence, the political rights of females 
 are just as real, as sacred, and as momentous 
 as the rights of males. So long as political 
 powers usurp private and domestic rights will 
 women need, and they should have, equal po- 
 litical rights with men. Men can never have 
 even their own individual rights fully and com- 
 pletely recognized and guaranteed by men alone. 
 Such can only be attained through the goodness, 
 and suffrage and help of woman. Besides, hu- 
 man happiness and peace are a "mere impos- 
 sibility" so long as one-half the race believes 
 themselves underrated, unappreciated, and un- 
 justly dealt with by the other. The equal poli- 
 tical rights of the sexes is the only road to uni- 
 versal peace. Apply the golden rule. Why 
 not, good Christians, practice what you preach? 
 Why not, ye Christian voters, show your faith 
 —in the golden rule— by your works? 
 
92 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 "No. 4. .Moral responsibility presupposes; 
 freedom of action. Coercion terminates moral 
 ^accountability. Therefore without individual 
 freedom there can be no individual moral re- 
 sponsibility in relation to practice. 
 
 "No. 5. Freedom being an inalienable right 
 of every accountable individual, it follows as a 
 logical consequence that all coercive systems, 
 theological and legal, not imperatively de- 
 manded by the known truths of science, are in 
 conflict with true social order and ethics, and 
 an unjust usurpation of individual rights, and 
 therefore not morally binding on those thereby 
 aggrieved. 
 
 "All matrimonial evils, violations, and 
 t rimes are, in a great degree, excusable on these 
 grounds, namely, the deprivation of natural 
 rights and personal prerogatives. 
 
 "No. 6. i There is one only and true mar- 
 riage, ' and that consists in the union of internal 
 and temperamental congenialities and counter- 
 parts. The true marriage, which is of the 
 spirit, and pure, is forever beyond the power 
 ol legislative action to create. True marriage 
 is dual, exclusive, and perpetual by the free 
 choice and mutual desire of the parties thereto. 
 Their mutual fidelity is instinctive. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 93 
 
 "No. 7. Every other marital relation than 
 the true marriage is provisional, temporal, ex- 
 perimental, imperfect, and transitory, but at the 
 same time necessary, when guided by wisdom 
 and justice, to the attainment of, or in the ab- 
 sence of the true marriage. 
 
 "Mankind being of an endless variety in their 
 physical and marital needs, temperamental re- 
 quirements and inward aspirations, no single 
 rule of rectitude and morality can be made the 
 ' law' for all, except in the usurpation by the 
 strong of the rights of the weak, or the practical 
 recognition of the dogma that ' might makes 
 right.' All statutory laws inhibiting or enjoin- 
 ing either celibacy, marriage, or divorce, mon- 
 ogamy, bigamy, or polygamy, are in defiance of 
 nature's laws of amative and marital manifes- 
 tation, a perpetual curse to the commonwealths 
 usurping such control, and must work their ulti- 
 mate dissolution and overthrow. 
 
 "No. 8. Every man and woman has an inal- 
 ienable right to seek and attain, if possible, the 
 true conjugal union of soul with soul. Legisla- 
 tion should rather aid, than seek to frustrate, 
 such a social consummation. Bigamies are only 
 a proof of false prior unions. Legislative laws 
 do not punish the false unions, but do punish, 
 
94 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 with savage malignity and injustice, him 
 ( though not her) who, abandoning the false, at- 
 tempts to form a truer union. Conventional 
 society, through the operation of its legislative 
 enactmentments, arbitrarily and despotically 
 governs all persons in their marital affairs, ut- 
 terly regardless of their individual consent, and 
 of their most sacred and private rights. Al- 
 though usurping the rights of individuals, and 
 ruthlessly coercing an abject obedience to its 
 arrogated authority, it nevertheless invariably 
 shirks the responsibility of the acts of those 
 whom it thus robs of their private rights, and 
 unjustly holds each individual to be morally, 
 socially, and legally responsible for whatsoever 
 sexual misfortunes, frailties, temptations, tres- 
 passes, mistakes, violations, woes, wars, and 
 crimes await them, which, under such a barbar- 
 ous system of laws, it is impossible for human 
 wisdom and foresight to anticipate or avert. 
 What can be expected from such unnatural un- 
 righteous, ungodly, institutions, but just that 
 which society everywhere presents, namely, 
 sexual and matrimonial perversions, misde- 
 meanors and diabolism of every name and 
 grade. Besides the propagation of natural- 
 born criminals, foes to human good, and all, too, 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 95 
 
 in the name, and under pretense of i religion 
 and justice.' 
 
 " ' Whatsoever ye sow that shall ye also 
 reap. ' 
 
 "No. 9, No possible relation can invest in 
 cue person the absolute ownership of another. 
 
 "No. 10. Nature comprehends all science, 
 and is the only Mailable word of God. Reason 
 embraces all ideas, and is man's only trust- 
 worthy guide. Hence nature and reason con- 
 stitute the tribune before which all questions 
 must be brought for solution. 
 
 "The above ideas admit of the widest appli- 
 cation, and the most varied relations. They do 
 not enjoin, nor prohibit either marriage or celi- 
 bacy, monogamy nor polygamy, divorcement 
 nor marital perpetuity, neither ' exelusiveness ? 
 nor i variety' as sexual 'laws,' but ever recogniz- 
 ing the central idea of the true marriage to be 
 the guiding star of conjugal love, regard each 
 and every phase of sexualism to be subordinate 
 to that idea as a governing law. True marriasre 
 simply means the strongest, most inseparable 
 and irresistible of any human attraction. The 
 science of chemistry furnishes a philosophical 
 sexology, namely, the law of indwelling simili- 
 tudes. 
 
96 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 "To the question, 'Do you blieve in, or ad- 
 vocate free love?' no reply can me made unless 
 the inquiries define what they mean by that 
 term. It seems to be vulgarly used as synony- 
 mous with prostitution. It is hardly necessary 
 to say, ^ that the leading doctrine in the above 
 platform being that of true marriage, nothing 
 can be farther removed from its aim and de- 
 sign, than that ' social evil, ' or anything tending 
 to increase or encourage it. I would proclaim 
 the gospel of true marriage, and advocate its 
 attainment. 
 
 "The philosophical philanthropist sees no 
 hope for the social and moral elevation of the 
 masses, under the false institutions that now 
 deform society. To educate the race up to moral 
 purity is an impossibility. Besides, education 
 is not morality. ' Knowledge does not save the 
 soul; but obedience to Nature's laws alone will 
 save. Sexual laws form no exception. Of nat- 
 ural laws God and nature teach this everlasting 
 gospel: 'Believe (or obey) and ye shall be 
 saved, believe (or obey) not, and ye shall be 
 damned. ' " 
 
 There is but one way to correct these evils, 
 and that is : 
 
 1st. That when a man and a woman truly 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 97 
 
 love each other, the laws shall recognize it as a 
 legal marriage, and deal with it as such. 
 
 2d. That when two people who are thus, or 
 any other way married and cannot agree, and 
 live a reasonable and happy life, and bring up 
 children as they should, the courts shall grant 
 them each their freedom without a trial and red- 
 tape, and let them part in peace. 
 
 3d. That if a man associated with any 
 woman, and betray her in any way, or on any 
 promise, that the court will recognize it as a 
 legal marriage, and if a child be the result of 
 such intercourse, that the law recognize it as a 
 legal child, and him as the legal and legitimate 
 father, and if he will not live with the woman, 
 force him to provide for the woman and the 
 child, and allow the name of the father to the 
 child. 
 
 In this way, and in this way only, can the 
 crimes that are now committed, be prevented, 
 and no more so-called, by the church, illegiti- 
 mate children be born. For in fact, there are no 
 such things as illegitimate children, for all chil- 
 dren are of father and mother, why defame 
 them for that which they could not help f Priest- 
 hood and the institution of marriage as it is to- 
 day, is the cause of abortion and discontent; 
 
98 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 abortion and discontent are the mother and 
 iather of all crime. Let us abolish them. 
 
 ' ' G od does not trouble himself about whether 
 Molly's child was born before being commis- 
 sioned properly by the Rev. Dr. So and So in 
 a surplice or after; but whether the child can 
 eat his allowance and turn it into good quantity 
 and quality of clear brain. He does not care 
 whether John marries Sally, but that each shall 
 marry some body and soul; for tfre earth, and 
 air, and sunshine, and matter were all specially 
 destined as nurseries of the incarnate God, by 
 the viewless chief of all existence, and as it 
 happens that every particle and atom has life, 
 and force, and power, and destiny, in exact 
 ratio with the subtlety and fineness of itself, it 
 follows that any aggregation thereof must also 
 have a determinate destiny by reason of size, 
 shape, fineness, etc., of the constituent atoms, 
 and one and all, as chemical existences, act just 
 as their organizations vote they shall, acting in 
 concert with the tremendous concourse of 
 eternal forces that forever play upon them in 
 myriad ways, alternately changing the vanish- 
 ing and accreting quantities and tendencies. 
 God today, devil yesterday, a mixture of both 
 tomorrow, resulting in crystallizing all that 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 99 
 
 is good and purging away the bad, whether 
 physical, mental, or moral, for as God is the 
 spirit of push, he pushes all to the better ends, 
 and as speedily as possible gets us out of the 
 cellars of life into its drawing-rooms and par- 
 lors. As all these things take place through 
 the law of evolution, no ceremonies of priests 
 are needed. God does all things well, and 
 Churchanity never yet did any good, nor will 
 it ever do any. 
 
 Mr. Roberts desires to tell us, and would 
 make us believe, that abortion was one of the 
 results of Spiritualism. This is possibly one 
 of the greatest falsehoods, and most untruthful 
 statements that he has ever made. Abortion 
 is the direct result of modern Churchanity and 
 its doctrine of "Justification by Faith." This 
 doctrine is, as Dr. Randolph said, "A sun- 
 greened carcass, a bog, and its loathsomeness 
 offends the sense of all honest men. ' ' In Orien- 
 tal countries, where modern Christianity, or 
 Churchanity, is as yet unknown, and where 
 people follow natural instincts and intuition, 
 where the modern faith or doctrine of "Justi- 
 fication by Faith," is as yet unknown, and men 
 believe in the "Law of Karma/ ' which was also 
 taught by Christ, when he said: "As thou 
 
 l ore. 
 
100 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 soweth, so shalt thou reap : ■ ' in these countries, 
 which we of civilization call heathen and unciv- 
 ilized, this foul crime known as abortion, or foet- 
 icide, is almost unknown, and there are but very 
 few other crimes committed there. The reason 
 for this is plain— the people of those so-called 
 heathen nations believe in a God; perhaps not 
 just as we do, but nevertheless they believe in 
 a God ; their God is a just God, and they believe 
 that if they commit a wrong that their God 
 will punish them for it; they do not believe as 
 modern priestcraft teaches, that a man can com- 
 mit as grievous deeds as he wishes, and then go 
 asid ask God for forgiveness and be forgiven 
 and not have to suffer for so doing, as we Chris- 
 tians, or Churchmen of America are taught by 
 the clergy, who care very little for our souls so 
 long as they get a good, easy living. But while 
 these people may worship an idol, as we call it, 
 yet they believe that the God that they worship 
 is a just God, and that if they do wrong that 
 iliey must suffer for it. Believing thus, they 
 are careful of what they do. Although they 
 have never seen our Bible, yet they believe the 
 words that the Christ said: "As thou soweth, 
 so shalt thou reap." They live not by educa- 
 tion, but by that grander faculty of the human 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 101 
 
 soul— intuition, that faculty, which we in Amer- 
 ica have lost through so-called civilization and 
 Christianity. The women do not care for 
 Church and society, therefore they are naturat, 
 and when they approach motherhood, they 
 thank their God, because they think it a blessing 
 to be fruitful; and instead of committing the 
 ioul crime, that is daily committed throughout 
 civilization, they let their children be born as 
 they should be, and the consequences are, that 
 the children are not born vuth the«r brains lilled 
 with the seeds of murder, and other crimes. 
 Here in America, where the Christian faith 
 abounds, where every family has the Bible 
 wherein it says: "Be thou fruitful and re- 
 plenish the earth:" where we go to church; 
 send out missionaries to convert these heath- 
 ens (!) ; here in civilized America, it is getting 
 to be a shame for a woman to have children, 
 and she is looked at by the noble followers of 
 Church and Society as being unnatural , and 
 while she may be a Christian, she dares not do 
 as the Christ whom they profess to so nobly fol- 
 low, taught; and if she wishes to associate with 
 these clean things, Society and Church, she 
 dares not be plagued with children. There is 
 then but one way open to her and that way 
 
 7 I 
 
102 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 is abortion, the crime of hell and the destroyer 
 of souls, and the breeder of all the crimes that 
 civilization is cursed with. 
 
 On a slip of paper that I recently picked up, 
 I find the following, which is very true as all 
 travelers testify to the truth of it. "Beginning 
 with Venice and traveling westward on the 
 northern shores along the entire coast the morals 
 of the women and men are not surpassed by 
 those of any land on earth, excepting only the 
 Celtic portions of Ireland. The twin cancers 
 of the social structure elsewhere foeticide and 
 divorce are unknown on the northwestern 
 Mediterranean shores. And if you will follow 
 those people to this country where you will find 
 the same conditions present themselves, I will 
 venture to compare any given portion of the 
 population of Philadelphia's little Italy with 
 any equal number of the inhabitants of our 
 fashionable apartment houses and hotels from 
 a moral viewpoint to- the infinite disadvantage 
 of the latter. These facts are so glaring, so 
 ubiquitous they cry out with such trumpet- 
 throated voices as to arrest the attention of our 
 chief executive." 
 
 I do not know who the author is, and am 
 therefore unable to give him the credit that he 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 103 
 
 deserves, but nothing truer has ever been writ- 
 ten by any one. 
 
 Many who have heard me speak on the sub- 
 ject, or mayhaps have read the booklet, i ' Abor- 
 tion a Crime, and the Cause of Crime/ ' have 
 said to me : ' * I admit that this is a crime, but 
 how can it be the cause of crime V To which 
 I answer: " There is not a scientist in the 
 world, that does not acknowledge the powerful 
 influence of Maternal Impressions on the child, 
 if feticide is successful, of course, there can be 
 no criminal born then, but in about 60 per cent 
 of the cases where this is tried, it proves to be 
 unsuccessful. The mind of the mother is made 
 up to accomplish certain ends, she believes that 
 she will accomplish these results, and these 
 thoughts of red-handed murder are impressed 
 with a double force on the unborn child. Con- 
 trary to her expectations, she does not succeed 
 in her intentions, and the result is— a criminal 
 and no law under the sun can make anything 
 else of the child. Again, in other cases, the ob- 
 ject sought for is accomplished, but that woman 
 can never bring forth an honest child, the soul 
 of the woman is affected, and she can no more 
 have an honest child, than can a white woman 
 have a pure-white child after she has once had 
 
104 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 a child by a negro father. It is impossible, both 
 the soul and the blood is tainted, and will stay 
 tainted throughout eternity. This is the sin that 
 will kill the soul, there is but one other sin be- 
 sides this, that will do this, and that is Sodom- 
 ism. These are the only two sins whereby the 
 soul can be killed. "The soul that sinneth, it 
 shall die." These are not sins as we usually 
 understand sin, but they are sins of the soul. 
 
 This is the cause of nearly all, if not all, the 
 crimes of the civilized world. Before foeticide 
 was practiced, crime was almost unknown, but 
 as Churchi sm, with its doctrine of ' ' Justification 
 by Faith 1 ' advanced and the people became wise 
 in the sciences of not having any children, crime 
 advanced with the church. The laws of all civ- 
 ilized nations deal with the wrong criminal. The 
 real criminal is the one that implants the seeds 
 of crime in the mind and soul of the yet unborn 
 babe, and she and the physician (God save the 
 mark) are the ones to be punished. Foeticide 
 should be made a crime punishable by death, and 
 the ethics of medicine should be so changed that 
 it would be a crime. As it is at this time, a phy- 
 sician or patient can commit crime, and another 
 physician dares not inform against them. 
 
 Abortion is a crime any time between 24 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 105 
 
 hours after conception until the time the child 
 should be naturally born. Not only does it ruin* 
 the body and mind and implant the seeds of 
 crime in those who do it, but it destroys the soul 
 as well, and no amount of praying will save 
 that soul from total destruction, no matter what 
 Priestcraft may say; and I defy them to prove 
 to me that a person that kills his or her soul can 
 enter heaven, as the Bible teaches. 
 
 I say without fear, that the cause of this 
 and other crimes is the teachings of modern 
 Christianity or Churchism. If they, the clergy, 
 would teach as Christ taught, when he said: 
 " As thou soweth, so shalt thou reap," then there 
 would be far less of this soul killing crime and 
 therefore less of other crime; but with their 
 teachings of "Justification by Faith/ ' the world 
 must continue to go down; and why not? Why 
 should a man or woman care for anyone else? 
 Why should they not enjoy themselves, even if 
 a child must be killed, or the bread taken out 
 of another's mouth, knowing that all they need 
 to do, is to ask for forgiveness at the last moment 
 and all will be well, and they can live happy 
 ever after, in the Heaven of the blessed. 
 
 Why should I care for another and suffer 
 and go hungry, when I can kill another, ruin an 
 
106 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 innocent girl, steal another's hard earned 
 money, and enjoy myself, and go to Heaven, 
 anyhow? Surely there is no need of me doing 
 so. I say again, that it is the teachings of mod- 
 ern Churchism; which cares not for souls, but 
 for the money that is in it, that this crime can 
 exist, and in turn, it is the cause of many of the 
 other crimes. 
 
 Spiritualists do not, and cannot believe in the 
 Doctrine of "Justification by Faith," but they 
 do believe in the Law of Karma and in the teach- 
 ings of Christ, when He said : "As thou soweth, 
 so shalt thou reap. ' ' Believing thus, and know- 
 ing many of the secrets of the Spirit World, 
 they cannot be a party to this crime, and the 
 accusation is therefore absolutely false, and has 
 not a shred of truth in it. 
 
 Dr. Randolph saw the results of this crime, 
 and says: "In all our large cities there are a 
 score of shameless wretches, vile abortionists, 
 male and female, in my opinion fit candidates 
 for the gyves or gallows, who flaunt their 
 dreadful trade of child-destroying barefacedly 
 to the world; who advertise liberally in the 
 public journals, informing people where they can 
 get murder done at so much per head,— a ter- 
 rible state of things, but legitimately growing 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 107 
 
 out of popular demand, arising from popular 
 hypocrisy, which seems to hold that a bastard 
 is not fit to live, and therefore should be hurried 
 into, and out of, the world as soon as possible. 
 And yet, not one half the murdered innocents 
 are such; for if we can believe scores of family 
 physicians, ten married women resort to it, 
 where one poor deceived girl is forced to, wholly 
 unconscious of the dreadful enormity of her 
 offense. And yet even a bastard is the handi- 
 work of the Eternal God. Why not, then, permit 
 them to be born, even though the mothers pass 
 shamefacedly through the world. Legislators, 
 in God's name, I implore you to establish 
 Foundling Hospitals for these unfortunates. It 
 will not be putting premium on crime, but it will 
 prevent many a suicide, and save thousands of 
 human beings who are now being ruthlessly 
 butchered, that abortion-brokers may fatten in 
 the land. Murder, sirs, I tell you that red- 
 handed Murder is abroad in the land, and his 
 victims are the Innocents. It is the fashionable 
 crime, alike resorted to by women in and out of 
 wedlock,— of all classes, from the public layman 
 on the highway, to My Lady Gay, and the poor 
 girl who has loved, not wisely, but too well. Oh, 
 all good people, let us try to prevent this tide of 
 
108 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 crime from submerging our country,— you in 
 your way, I in mine. We are all journeying 
 to the Land beyond the Shadow. Let us do 
 something worthy ere we go." 
 
 Dr. Randolph was a Spiritualist, and made 
 this plea for a yet unborn humanity. Does it 
 look as though Spiritualists sanctioned this 
 crime? I thmk not I have the testimony from 
 a physician now practicing in Minneapolis, 
 Minn., that within one year, more than 200 
 women, married and single, have appealed to 
 him to commit this crime in order to save them 
 either dishonor in the case of single women, and 
 ''avoid having kids" in cases where they were 
 married. He tells me that all of these women 
 professed to be Christians, and in very many 
 cases, the plea was based on this fact, and they 
 did not want to be dishonored. Just think of it : 
 saving one's honor by committing a crime. Yet, 
 such is modern Churchanity, and then they try 
 to tell us that this crime is sanctioned by Spirit- 
 ualists. 
 
 Foundling Hospitals would do an immense 
 amount of good in cases where young girls are 
 betrayed, by things that call themselves men. 
 But as this crime is committed by married 
 women ten times oftener than by single ones, 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 109 
 
 nothing could be done for these. The trouble 
 today is, that women care a great deal more for 
 their little, loving ( !) pug dogs, than they care 
 for either babies or their husbands. But recently 
 a man in Chicago was granted a divorce because 
 his wife loved a bull-dog more than she did him, 
 and insisted on having the dog sleep in their bed, 
 When the husband protested, she spat in his 
 face, dared him to strike her, and declared she 
 would kiss the undertaker when he died— which 
 she prayed God would be soon. Judge Wate- 
 man granted the divorce after this little pre- 
 liminary : 
 
 "You say," said the Judge to the woman, 
 "you love the dog more than you do your hus- 
 band ?" "Yes, and this is because the dog is 
 much more lovable than the man," answered 
 the lady (?) in half -apology, pulling on her lace 
 handkerchief. "Then I'll not divorce you from 
 the dog. You may live with him forever, but 
 we will just enter a decree in favor of the man. 
 And I would like to here announce that any man 
 in Illinois who has a wife that loves a dog more 
 than she does him, can get quick relief in this 
 court. ' ' 
 
 This is the morality that the Church teaches 
 at this time. A woman can have, hug, and kiss 
 
110 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 as many dogs as she wishes, and it is all right, 
 it belongs to Society, but to have a baby is a dis- 
 grace, especially if she already is the mother 
 of one. I have nothing to say against dogs, I 
 like them, but they have their place, and that 
 place is not in the arms, or bed, of any woman 
 with a spark of womanhood within her soul. 
 
 Mr. Roberts then tells us, that: " Since 
 about 1830, when the devil sprung the soul-de- 
 stroying trap, called Spiritualism, into active 
 work through the Fox Sisters, its baleful in- 
 fluence has become world-wide. And today it 
 stands a rival to Roman Catholicism and Prot- 
 estantism as an infernal machine. Its victims 
 are numbered by the hundreds of thousands, 
 ves, bv the millions. ' ' 
 
 I can best answer this by quoting from the 
 work entitled: "All about the Devil/ ' by the 
 Rev. Moses Hull, in which he says: If the 
 Church has been a proper judge there has never 
 been a reformer in the world who has not in 
 some way been connected with the devil. The 
 Church has always claimed authority to judge 
 for the world it now claims ; it was, in past ages, 
 thought to be more nearly infallible than it is 
 today. Hell has been the grand store-house of 
 reforms and the rendezvous of reformers. Ref- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 111 
 
 erence to a few of the most common historical 
 facts will prove this. 
 
 "John the Baptist and Jesus were both ac- 
 cused of being in league with the devil. Of John 
 they said : ' ' Behold he hath a devil. ' ' 
 
 They said of Jesus : * i Thou art a Samaritan 
 and hast a devil. ' ' They said : "He casteth not 
 out devils but by Beelzebub, the prince of 
 devils." To those who were led away by his 
 doctrine, they said: "Why hear ye him, he 
 hath a devil?" 
 
 Thus, according to the consensus of the pop- 
 ular Church of their day John and Jesus each 
 had some mysterious connection with the deviL 
 But the Church today will acknowledge that, 
 devil or no devil, John and Jesus were in the 
 right and the Church in the wrong; and what- 
 ever their practice may be, they will profess 
 to be followers of those accused of being under 
 the influence of devils rather than to be the legi- 
 timate descendants of their accusers. Human 
 nature is strangely contradictory, no matter 
 where we find it, and when so-called Christians, 
 who are really fanatics, come to tell us what the 
 devil is, and what his works are, they usually 
 contradict themselves, and tell us that the devil 
 does God's work, while God must be doing the 
 
112 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 Devil's work. "Oh, consistency, thou art a 
 jewel. J \ 
 
 If the Church is infallible John and Jesus 
 did their work by the power of devils ; but if the 
 Church made a mistake then I will consider that 
 it is liable to err, and will look as often as twice 
 before I shall conclude that the devil is in Spirit- 
 ualism, on the mere ipse dixit of pulpit igno- 
 ramuses. 
 
 Edward C. Towne tells us in his "Exam- 
 iner," that: Five thousand children under the 
 age of five years, were put to death by the Cath- 
 olic Church for being emissaries of the devil. If 
 a child manifested any precocity in any peculiar 
 direction it was supposed the devil was operat- 
 ing through the child as he did through the 
 snake in the garden, and the child was put to 
 death. ' ' Isn 't this a nice record for the Church 
 to cherish, and hold dear to its heart, as a proof 
 of the glorious work done by it in the past? 
 Surely Spiritualism has as yet, not smeared its 
 hands by such devilish work and the blood of 
 the innocent- 
 Giles Corey, of Salem witchcraft fame, on 
 two occasions manifested wonderful feats of 
 physical strength; this was proof to Cotton 
 Mather, Sir Mathew Hale, and others that he 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 113 
 
 was a wizard, possessed of the devil, and the 
 was pressed to death. 
 
 Let the church look back to the hellish out- 
 rages committed in, or at Salem, and think what 
 unutterable and ghastly crimes were then com- 
 mitted by fanatics in the name of Christianity. 
 I have no doubt but that Mather, Hael, and oth 
 ers are now in Heaven enjoying themselves as a 
 reward for their faithful work for the Lord God, 
 while Corey and the hundreds of other innocent 
 victims are getting a taste of Churchanity *s hell- 
 fire. I think that Churchmen should take a warn- 
 ing from these things and not fall into the same 
 error, but they are doing the same thing today 
 against\Spiritualism, Mysticism, and Occultism^) 
 as the Satem murderers did against the so-called 
 witches at that time. The only difference is, that 
 they can only deal out mental suffering to the 
 Spiritualists and Mystics, while the Salem butch- 
 eries dealt out death and physical suffering. 
 And yet, I believe, that when the two are com- 
 pared, mental suffering is much more terrible 
 than any pain that can be inflicted upon the 
 body. 
 
 When the common flesh fork was invented it 
 was bitterly denounced by the clergy, so also was 
 the f anning-mill, which separates the chaff from 
 
114 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 the wheat, when invented by an old Scotchman. 
 
 When Fulton invented the steamboat, the 
 Church everywhere prophesied against it; it 
 would not work ; or, if it did, it was an insult to 
 Almighty God, and the work of the devil to run 
 a boat against God's wind and tide. The clergy 
 have about gotten over the idea of calling in- 
 ventions works of the devil, and as those things 
 cannot take their jobs, they do not care even if 
 they were the works of their Satanic Majesty. 
 When a system comes up that may rival Church- 
 ism, then it is, that their soft spot is touched, 
 and they are as bad as some so-called ' i regular ' ' 
 physicians, when a system of healing is started 
 up. There is sure to be * i something doing. ' ' 
 
 Andrew D. White tells us that : ' ' When Gal- 
 ileo had discovered the four satellites of Jupi- 
 ter, the whole thing was denounced as impossible 
 and impious. It was argued that the Bible 
 clearly showed, by all applicable types, that 
 there could be only seven planets; that this 
 was proved by the seven golden candlesticks of 
 the Apocalypse, and by the seven-branched 
 candlesticks of the tabernacle, and by the 
 seven churches of Asia. Mathematical and 
 other reasonings were met by the words of 
 Scripture. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 115 
 
 It was declared that Galileo 's doctrine was 
 proved false by the standing still of the sun for 
 Joshua ; by the declaration that the foundations 
 of the earth are fixed so firm that they cannot 
 be moved ; and that the sun runneth about from 
 one end of heaven to the other.' ' , 
 
 While Luther, in Protestant Wittenberg, was 
 preaching against Galileo, the Dominican Father 
 at Rome, Caccini, was issuing his invectives from 
 Rome. He preached on the text, "Why stand 
 ye gazing up into Heaven ? ' ' In this sermon, he 
 insisted that geometry is of the devil ; and that 
 mathematicians should be banished as the 
 authors of all heresies. " 
 
 "For the final assault, the park of heavy 
 artillery was at last wheeled into place. You 
 see it in all the scientific battlefields. It consists 
 of general denunciation. It was brought to bear 
 on Galileo with this declaration. 
 
 The opinion of the earth's motion, is, of all 
 heresies, the most abominable, the most per- 
 nicious, the most scandalous. The immobility, 
 of the earth is thrice sacred. The argument 
 against the immortality of the soul, the creator, 
 the incarnation, etc., should be tolerated sooner 
 than an argument to prove that the earth 
 moves. ' ' 
 
116 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 Galileo urged his accusers to look through his 
 telescope and be convinced, but they refused. 
 One Calvious declared that the devil had enabled 
 Galileo to invent an instrument to distort man 's 
 vision and make things appear as they were not. 
 This was on a par with some of the accusations 
 of some of the Salem witches, and also, with the 
 accusations made today, by the clergy, through- 
 out the world, against Spiritualism, Mysticism, 
 and Occultism. There is no difference in these 
 accusations, they all come from poor, deluded, 
 ignorant fools, who are really more to be pitied 
 for their ignorance, than to be condemned. 
 
 Poor Galileo was imprisoned and abused al- 
 most beyond description for his heresy, and 
 finally compelled to get down on his knees be- 
 fore church authority and say : 
 
 "I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, be- 
 ing a prisoner, and on my knees, and before 
 your eminences (?), having before my eyes the 
 holy gospel, which I touch with my hands, 
 adjure, curse and detest the heresy of the move- 
 ment of the earth.' * 
 
 The devil, Galileo and science were right. 
 God, the Bible and the Church were wrong, as 
 usual. But no, God ivas not wrong, it was these 
 poor deluded fools who thought that they knew 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 117 
 
 the very will and desire of God, who wrongly 
 interpreted His Word, through their ignorant 
 fanaticism, that were wrong. God is ever the 
 same, today, tomorrow, and throughout etern- 
 ity. Man misunderstands and blames God for 
 his ignorance, when an opportunity is held out 
 to him to get Wisdom, he refuses it, because he 
 desires to remain ignorant. 
 
 Was the Church ever right in giving the 
 devil credit for something that he really did do ? 
 Yes, yes, yes. I am willing to allow that for 
 once they were right. When Thomas Jenner 
 accidentally discovered that vaccination took the 
 deadly sting of small-pox ( ?), he was denounced 
 in long printed statements as having formed a 
 partnership with the devil to turn man back to 
 the genus quadrumane. In this the Church was 
 right, for never, in the history of man, has u 
 more foul and deadly system of child-murder 
 been instituted, and shame to the times, it is kept 
 up today as never before. Throughout the world, 
 the cries of murdered children raise to Heaven 
 in one wail of anguish, but there is no letting up 
 to it. Instead of getting more sense, the doctors 
 are now forcing it upon people by a damnable 
 law, and the Church, ever the champion of 
 wrong, stands by them, and helps them in mur- 
 
 8 I 
 
118 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 dering men, women, and children. For once the 
 Church was right, and now they stand by the 
 very works of the devil, although the greatest 
 scientists of this age and past centuries have 
 proved beyond a doubt, that Vaccination is a 
 curse to humanity, and the most effective system 
 of child-murder ever instituted. 
 
 Jenner himself saw the inefficiency of vac- 
 cination, and freely admitted it, but his follow- 
 ers, or rather, the followers of his first mistake, 
 do not believe him when he spoke the truth, go 
 on killing the innocent as ever before. It is a 
 fact that the Rev. Moses Hull believed in vac- 
 cination and even upheld it at the time he wrote 
 the work, "All about the Devil,' ' but today he 
 is as firmly against it as other great men, among 
 them may be mentioned Alexander Wilder, M. 
 D., J. Peebles, M. D., and other scholars, Mys- 
 tics and Spiritualists. Vaccination is not upheld 
 by a single real Spiritualist, Mystic, Occultist, 
 Rosicrucian, or Hemetist in the world, but is 
 condemned to the place where it ought to be. 
 I admit that some of those who claim to be Oc- 
 cultists, uphold it, but these are no more true 
 Occultists, than that vaccination is a protection 
 against small-pox. 
 
 Next, the devil was in the anti-slavery move- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 119 
 
 ment. God and the Church were in favor of 
 slavery; the devil was trying to overthrow God's 
 precious law, by repealing the clause which 
 says, "Cursed be Canaan," etc. 
 
 "Every Church in Christendom denounced 
 the abolitionists, and said slavery was a divine 
 institution, until Infidels and heretics carried it 
 on to success. I have in my possession today, 
 books containing the resolutions passed by all 
 the leading churches in favor of the divinity of 
 slavery and against fire-eating Infidel abolition- 
 ists. The abolition ball had long been rolling 
 up hill ; the Church had either been fighting the 
 work or standing by and looking listlessly on 
 until the whole world saw it was bound to be a 
 success in spite of all opposition, when they 
 rushed to the work with a ' ' Come on, boys, give 
 it one more roll. Heave, oh, heave.' ' Then, 
 when they saw the thing descending the inclined 
 plane of public opinion propelled by its own 
 weight, they turn to the world and say, "See 
 what we've done." 
 
 "Now, if the devil has carried all the works 
 mentioned, on to success, he has in that given 
 us a sufficient guarantee of the success of Spirit- 
 ualism, Mysticism and other branches of the 
 Soul-sciences. If the devil is in Spiritualism, 
 
120 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 as he has been in every other reform, the min- 
 isters may as well learn from the past and sur- 
 render. They are ours. The only trouble with 
 them will be when they come over in a body, as 
 they will do, they will all claim that they always 
 were Spiritualists, and it will be about impos- 
 sible to find one who did not see from the start 
 that God was in Spiritualism ; and together they 
 will shout and chorus, "The Church did it." 
 
 Mr. Roberts then tries to tell us what some 
 of the accepted teachings of Spiritualism are, 
 and claims that they are " Doctrines of the 
 Devil.' ' 
 
 "1st. You are your own Saviours.'' 
 
 "2d. Christ's death has nothing to do with 
 the remissions of sins." 
 
 " 3d. Each and every one of you is a judge, 
 a God." 
 
 Does any one, who is not totally ignorant, 
 deny that man must work out his own salvation ! 
 I think not. The doctrine "Justification by 
 Faith," is becoming a dead letter with all intel- 
 lectual thinkers, and the doctrine of "The one 
 Saviour of the world is Love, ' ' is becoming the 
 grand doctrine that must save the individual 
 and the race. To answer these three articles, I 
 can do nothing better than to quote from "The 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 121 
 
 Secrets of the Universe and other Essays," by 
 S. Mayle, of Eng. He says : ' ' If we watch the 
 growth of love in man, especially when his indi- 
 vidual love has come into contact with that of 
 the great Universal Love, it seems certain that 
 some outside influence is at work on that man, 
 transforming him into a new creature. And 
 even as in wireless telegraphy, the receiver that 
 receives the message establishes conclusively the 
 existence of an agent from whence that message 
 emanated; may we not from man, when he be- 
 comes all-loving, demonstrate the reality and 
 existence of an Infinite Love? 
 
 And it was because in his life Jesus so man- 
 ifested that love, that he gave to men a revela- 
 tion of God unique in its beauty. It is because 
 of this that men assigned to him the pre-emi 
 nence of being the one and only son of God. 
 (Italics are mine throughout the whole quota- 
 tion). For we thus show unconsciously our 
 recognition of love as the supreme force of life. 
 
 It was this message of love that the common 
 people heard gladly, for they are more elemental 
 in their natures than the cultured classes (for, 
 love is always stifled by intellect). These cul- 
 tured classes felt this doctrine of love to be a 
 pernicious doctrine, and rested not until they 
 
^^— ^ 
 
 122 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 had brought about the death of Him who so 
 boldly and openly declared it to be the secret of 
 all true religions. 
 
 Thus hate (the people) met Love (Christ) 
 and seemed to put him to death, only Love never 
 dies; and this gospel lived on in the hearts of 
 a few fisher-folks, who were so possessed with its 
 truth that, like their Master, they gladly endured 
 all things rather than deny its omnipotence. 
 
 At first, however, even they failed to com- 
 prehend the universality of the law that they 
 gave their lives to manifest to the world ; but a 
 revelation came to one of them that love may 
 not be limited in its action, but must be univer- 
 sal, or it is not love at all. Then learned mea 
 realized the power of this teaching as a religion, 
 but seeing sin to be co-existent and failing to see 
 that, sin comes from want of love, evolved from 
 old Jewish rites the sacrificial idea of the atone- 
 ment. 
 
 Thus has the intellect always refused to rec- 
 ognize Love as the one great unifying power 
 in the world, and after the death of Jesus, error 
 ermeating his teaching more and more. And 
 men today still misread the gospels, our churches 
 still worship a dead Christ { if it were not so, the 
 world would have been regenerated long ago. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 123 
 
 Too long the churches have been content to 
 worship and mourn over a crucified Saviour. 
 The one Saviour of the world is love; Love who 
 lives today, who stands knocking outside the 
 door of each man's heart, though man still re- 
 fuses to listen to his pleading voice." 
 
 Nothing truer was ever written, and this is 
 proof positive that man is in reality his own 
 Saviour. He must allow Love to come into his 
 heart, his soul, and his very being. Love must 
 be the Master, and when it has once become 
 Master, all hate (the devil) will be rooted out. 
 It is then that universal Love will be able to 
 manifest itself, and man has found his God, 
 through the Christ ivithin himself. The germ 
 of Love is within every human being, because 
 the Christ said: "Ye are the Temple of the 
 Living God," but it needs the help of man to 
 awaken this spark within himself, man must seek 
 it; and bring it to life, and it is then, and then 
 only, that they may know God. , 
 
 The Christ was the Divine principle in the 
 man Jesus, and was the Love of God perfected, 
 as it possibly had never been in any being 
 before. Jesus was the Mortal man, but Christ 
 was the Divine Love within the Temple, or 
 Jesus. 
 
124 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 "What are our holy days, feast days and 
 lenten services, but a farce, while that voice 
 pleads in vain; while around us our sinful and, 
 suffering fellow-men groan under the burden 
 imposed upon them by their fellows! Our 
 churches are like a woman who tends the mem- 
 ory of her dead child, while all the time there 
 are suffering little ones craving her love and 
 care. 
 
 Let men leave their rituals, creeds, and dog- 
 mas, and keep the fast that God ordains ; to do 
 justice, love, mercy, and walk humbly with their 
 God. Let them try to breathe warmth and vi- 
 tality into Love's freezing limbs. " 'Tis life of 
 which our nerves are scant, ' ' and the only life is 
 Love. 
 
 Those who throng our churches and chapels 
 are those who too often fail to obey Love's di- 
 vine decrees. They do not know it, no, or they 
 would not do it; they do not see Love's vistage— ^ 
 marred more than that of any other man, with 
 the world's woes; woes that arise from its own 
 lovelessness. Could they but for one moment 
 see that form, hear that voice, surely they would 
 surrender themselves wholly unto Love ; and in 
 that surrender they would enter into what the 
 joy of Love means. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 125 
 
 But before man can know that joy he must 
 let Love master him, for Love allows no rivals ; 
 he will subdue all things to himself. This is why 
 men are so reluctant to yield themselves to Him. 
 
 The man who never sins against Love, is 
 without sin ; though in order to be true to Love 
 he mav have to break certain man-made laws. 
 But so long as he is true to Love in its highest, 
 purest, noblest sense he is free from all laws. So 
 far, however, man has as yet failed to grasp 
 what love means; he regards it only as a means 
 of enjoyment, whereas, it is as we have shown, 
 a very via dolorosa. Instead of possession, it 
 means renunciation ; instead of joy it means suf- 
 fering. But let him once acknowledge the supre- 
 macy of this law, let him yield himself to it con- 
 sciously, whole-heartedly, then, though the way 
 be steep and the path be stony and full of thorns, 
 it will bring him at last to a vision whose exceed- 
 ing glory will transcend a thousand-fold the 
 highest, deepest, purest joy that earthly love 
 can bestow. 
 
 "God is love, and he that dwelleth in love 
 dwelleth in God, and God in him. ' ■ Thus perfect 
 communion with God in love will make man like 
 unto him. "And hereby know we the spirit of 
 truth and the spirit of error ; for he that loveth 
 
126 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 not, knoweth not God, for God is love." Our 
 entrance into all the privileges of sonship is 
 dependent, then, upon love, and upon nothing 
 else. 
 
 We may give all our goods to feed the poor, 
 yet without love it profiteth us nothing. It is 
 only when we love with a love that suffereth 
 long and is kind, that envieth not, vaunteth not 
 itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself 
 unseemly, seeketh not its own; that bears, 
 endures, and hopes all things, that never fails ; 
 it is only then that we can enter into a realization 
 of what the love of God means. 
 
 Do we say that love is impossible between 
 men? Yet even this last century has witnessed 
 the growth of a great universal pity stirring the 
 hearts of men for their suffering fellow crea- 
 tures: (Witness the great work that has been, 
 and is being done, against the foul and hellish 
 crime of Vivisection, against the killing of ani- 
 mals for the food of man, and other humane 
 works), a pity that must soon burst the bonds 
 that bind it, when men will know it for what it is 
 —a great universal love of the human race. 
 
 The time is now come whe.n all creeds and 
 dogmas must pass away; for their work is 
 ended. They are now a hindrance rather than 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 127 
 
 a help; the one religion we all need is the 
 religion of love. The one lesson we have all to 
 learn, is to learn to love. 
 
 A study of the Gospels seems to show us 
 that Jesus himself only realized toward the end 
 of his teachings, that the whole of that teaching 
 was summed up in that new commandment of 
 love; that he did so believe is proved by his 
 words : 1 1 By 4his shall all men know that ye 
 are my disciples, by love ye have one to 
 another." And the disciple he loved best was 
 the one who was penetrated most deeply with 
 the spirit of love, his epistles being one long 
 exhortation to men to love. 
 
 "The union of God and man is essential 
 before a man can be born consciously into the 
 Kingdom of God. And before a man can enter 
 into this conscious union with God, he must be- 
 come loving. Then consciously united to God, 
 he begins to know something of what the joy 
 of love means, and to reflect that joy in himself. 
 And as death approaches, he realizes that he has 
 nothing to fear; for it is only the door through 
 which he passes into a more real and vital union 
 with the Supreme Love who is the 'One among 
 Ten Thousand and the Altogether Lovely. ' For 
 death removes the glass in which we saw Love 's 
 
128 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 face but darkly, and enables us at last to see Him 
 face to face." 
 
 "Each and every one of you is a judge, a 
 God." Can this be proved in the face of the 
 false teachings as taught by the Church! I 
 think it can; and very easily at that. In his 
 book "Evolution of Immortality," Freeman B. 
 Dowd, under the heading of "Christ, the Light 
 of Immortality, ' ' says : i i Light dawned in man 
 with disobedience. Our physical eyes are merely 
 images of the spiritual forms of perception, as 
 sunlight symbolizes the light of spirit. Imag- 
 ination is the spiritual eye, and by it are all 
 discoveries made. When man's eyes were 
 opened his horizon enlarged, and the area of 
 the exercise of his powers was limited only by 
 that horizon. He no longer could be limited by 
 "the garden," a child restrained by fear, a 
 slave to any power but that of his own choice. 
 He entered a new and wider life, and is hence- 
 forth become his own providence. God no longer 
 clothes him as He does the lilies of the field, nor 
 as he feeds the birds of the air. Unaided and 
 alone, he must produce for himself. This is the 
 price of knowledge and freedom. 
 
 "Physical slavery is grievous, but it is a 
 slight misfortune compared with mental and 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 129 
 
 spiritual bondage. The mind which gathers 
 truth by observation and investigation is free, 
 but the mind which reflects only the opinions of 
 others is in bondage to those opinions. He is a 
 creed-bound slave, confined in his little garden 
 by the command "thou shalt not" think, for 
 fear of the consequences, who wears his opinions 
 as he does his garments, things which are the 
 work of other hands and brains. Such souls shut 
 the illimitable universe out and bury themselves 
 in the tombs of their forefathers, breathing over 
 and again the mephitic vapors of decay and 
 death, through fear of Man's greatest boon, 
 freedom of thought. The pure breath of spirit 
 blows over the mountains of thought, the quick- 
 ening power of the Christ. It cleanses the blood 
 of its sluggish vapors, changes the red lust color, 
 and wafts the soul to the throne of the Great 
 God. 
 
 1 i Passion and love of self are fruitful sources 
 
 of disease but the serpent of sensuality, lifted 
 up, placed on a standard of high thought and 
 action, something to be looked up to for help, 
 a power having a divine use in the world of 
 humanity, is for the healing of the nations. It 
 is no longer the serpent of lust but the holy 
 spirit of love that "Casteth out fear," for 
 "Fear is torment," "Torment is hell." 
 
130 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 We only know that Christ is within us when 
 we have an experience which demonstrates His 
 presence in the sonl. We beget the Son of man 
 by an effort of will in Love. He is the light of 
 love and cannot be begotten of fear. That light 
 can never be confounded with the smoke and 
 vapor which is the issue of passional love. If 
 you would have that light lift up your love, set 
 it on a standard above even your power of at- 
 tainment, and never let it fall into the dust and 
 degradation of lust. Feed its fires with noble 
 thought and constant efforts to become more 
 and more worthy, merciful, charitable, gentle, 
 and lovely, for this is the Christ begotten in the 
 soul. The light of love illuminates even the phys- 
 ical blood, purifying and permeating it with 
 joy and peace. It is thus we grow wings to the 
 soul. There is neither doubt nor fear in the 
 soul filled with the light of love. It bears heal- 
 ing on its wings and makes man superior to the 
 evils of life and the circumstances of death. In 
 it is the germ of immortality, that instinct which 
 recoils from the presence of death and prophe- 
 sies of eternal being beyond the change of form. 
 
 ' * Will controls matter, love controls will, 
 and the true man controls his love. Immortality 
 is of the whole man; he cannot be saved in 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 131 
 
 pieces, neither can half of a man become immor- 
 tal. The way to immortality is in the body, but 
 no form remains fixed/ ' The immortal have 
 power to change forms at will. Form limits 
 freedom. Forms of thought imprison the mind 
 as the body holds the spirit. Those who are free 
 in thought little think of forms of thought that 
 are hoary with age. No man or woman bound 
 down with creeds, as the modern churchman is, 
 can be free in thought or action, they are bound 
 down to a certain circle, in which they are bound 
 to stay. They dare not think for themselves, 
 but must believe as the clergy of that particular 
 creed tells them. They do not think, but think 
 they do, and it is in this where they make their 
 great mistake. They may read the Bible, but 
 will take the interpretation of the Orthodox 
 Ministry as the truth. When man once starts to 
 think, then there is hope for that man, but so 
 long as he does not think, he is of necessity in 
 the dark. 
 
 " Life-giving, immortalizing, religious 
 thought when formulated soon becomes enwrap- 
 ped in ceremonies which become automatic, and 
 the ecstasy of individual experience of its exal- 
 tation turns to a cold and barren public duty. 
 So it is with the form which we call man. The 
 
132 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 free soul ignores form, or regards it as a hin- 
 drance ; and the cults which teach that its power 
 can be lessened by opposing and denying its 
 legitimate demands but seek a way from the 
 soul into freedom. The body is a sacred edifice, 
 the temple of the living God, and He only can 
 change and dissolve it. 'If man were to with- 
 draw himself wholly from the body at death, 
 it would vanish like a vapor. Death is only a 
 partial withdrawal, for as long as the thought of 
 the form remains, something of the body will 
 hold together. A partial withdrawal of the man 
 is demonstrated in sleep and in trance. 
 
 Jesus possessed the power wholly to with- 
 draw from the body, and it vanished into the 
 invisible world. He passed through the form 
 of death to show the world the domination of 
 man over the forces of form, both of organiza- 
 tion and disorganization. Christ did not pass 
 through the form of death so that all that be- 
 lieved in Him and believed that He did so, wo aid 
 be saved. But He passed through this form to 
 shoiv man how he might do the same thing by 
 awakening the Christ, or Love, within himself. 
 Man is his own saviour, in a sense, no matter 
 what the Church may teach. A man may believe 
 that there was a Christ, and that he died and 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 133 
 
 arose, all that he wishes, but unless he awakens 
 this same Christ tvithin himself, through Love 
 Universal, and Love of the One, he will never 
 be Immortal. 
 
 "The light of the Christ shone out pre-emin- 
 entlv in the man Jesus, who affirmed that of 
 Himself He could do nothing, that it was the 
 Father working in Him, and that those who 
 believed in the Father should do greater works. ' ' 
 
 The Christ said : * i Ye are the Temples of the 
 living God," and unless man first believes this, 
 it stands to reason, that he will be unable to find 
 the God and the Christo within himself. It is 
 necessary to believe this, that we are the 
 temples of the living God, before we can set to 
 work to awaken this Divine Spark within us, 
 and thus find the Christ. Even though a man 
 would find the Christ within, and would not 
 have the Faith to do these things, he would be 
 unable to do anything. It was for this very 
 reason that the Christ told His disciples to have 
 faith in the Father. 
 
 "The spirit within himself and without He 
 recognized as a creative, loving presence, the 
 Christ by whom and through whom He worked, 
 suffered and died. That 'He did not many 
 mighty works' in some localities shows the defi- 
 
 9 I 
 
134 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 ciency of the Christ spirit in the aura of those 
 places His prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, 
 the announcement, 'Thy faith hath made thee 
 whole,' his feeling that ' virtue had gone out of 
 him' at the touch of the diseased woman, and 
 especially his cry on the cross, 'My God! my 
 God! why hast thou forsaken me?' all go to 
 prove that He recognized a power within and 
 without greater than Himself, with which He 
 was intimately connected. 
 
 "Human nature is changeable and cannot 
 furnish a permanent abiding place for the 
 Christ spirit, and in the absence of it Jesus the 
 man 'cried out with a loud voice and gave up 
 the ghost. ' But the Holy One could not see cor- 
 ruption, and when its object was so far accom- 
 plished, the Christ spirit again took up the body 
 of the man Jesus, and after exhibiting it to the 
 disciples on several occasions, caused its per- 
 manent disappearance. 
 
 "We of the Rosy Cross hold that the Christ 
 is begotten in us by the union of the soul with 
 that all-embracing energy which ebbs and flows 
 throughout conscious being. We also hold that 
 it is no respecter of persons, but is born in every 
 soul that loves, believes, and wills its presence. 
 The Christ is called the Son of man because it is 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 135 
 
 begotten by the love of man for God and his 
 brethren. ' ' 
 
 I believe that all true Spiritualists believe 
 this with Dowd, as this is the only true Doctrine 
 of Salvation and the begetting of Christ within 
 the being— man. I find that Dr. Peebles believes 
 this also, for he says: "The primitive Chris- 
 tians were religious Spiritualists. They often 
 saw Jesus in visions, and in His name they 
 healed the sick. Spiritualism, the complement 
 of Christianity, sweetens the bitterest cup, helps 
 bear the heaviest burdens, lightens the darkest 
 day, comforts the saddest heart, and gathering 
 up the kindly efforts we make in behalf of our 
 fellow-men, transfigures them with its bright- 
 ness, ennobles them with its moral grandeur, and 
 throws around them the circling aureole of fade- 
 less splendors. And further, by and through its 
 holy ministries, we know that the grave is no 
 prison house for the soul, but that life pro- 
 gressive is ours, eternal in the heavens. The 
 higher Christianity and Spiritualism are com- 
 ing together. Their aspirations and aims are 
 one. Love is Christ's test of Christianity — that 
 Christ Jesus who was "the first born among 
 many brethren. " " We know, ' ' said the beloved 
 John, "That we have passed from death unto 
 
136 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 life, because we love the brethren." Pure love, 
 remember, is the divine seal of Christian dis- 
 cipleship. 
 
 Does this look as though the true Spiritual- 
 ists did not believe in the Christ! I do not think 
 so ; yet, the Church tells us that we are of the 
 devil, and deny the Christ. This is absolutely 
 false, and were there such an individual as the 
 devil, I would be inclined to believe that he was 
 helping the clergy to circulate falsehoods against 
 the Christ, Love, and true Religion. Here we 
 have three of the greatest authorities in the 
 world to agree on a single point. Each of these 
 belongs to a different Hierarchy, as it were, yet, 
 they all agree as to what Christ is, and how 
 the Christ principle works to bring about the 
 salvation of man. Neither denies the Christ, but 
 all uphold Him. 
 
 Again Dowd says: "When Jesus alluded 
 to death it was the physical death with which 
 we are acquainted. To the Jews he said, 'Your 
 fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and 
 they are dead. ' There is no spiritual death ; the 
 breath of God cannot die. The Salvation Jesus 
 taught was of this world, being free from pain, 
 disease, and death. He affirmed that He would 
 lay down His life, but none could take it without 
 His consent 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 137 
 
 "Christ speaking in Jesus says: 'He that 
 belie veth on Me shall not die ;and though he were 
 dead yet shall he live again/ To believe with 
 the heart is to do and to be. The fact that 
 Jesus spent thirty years of His life like an ordi- 
 nary man and then fasted forty days and nights 
 alone on the mountain proves that He was not 
 exempt from the struggle all must know who 
 would evolve within themselves the immortal 
 Christ, the Son of man." 
 
 Again Mr. Roberts tells us that the Spiritu- 
 alists believe in a doctrine, which is a doctrine of 
 the devil, which says: "There is no God any- 
 where to forgive sins. There is no such thing as 
 forgiveness of sins." To admit that man can 
 be forgiven for the sins he commits without suf- 
 fering for them would be to admit the truth of 
 the doctrine of "Justification by Faith," which 
 no true man can believe in. This is a doctrine 
 for cowards, but not for men. If the coward 
 and degenerate commits any crime, he desires 
 to get through one way or another, without the 
 legitimate punishment of such wrong doing. He 
 was degenerate enough to commit the deed, but 
 is not man enough to take the just dues for such 
 wrong doing. The true man, when he commits 
 a wrong, is willing to suffer the legitimate pun- 
 
138 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 ishment of his wrong-doing, and would not get 
 down low enough to ask for mercy instead of 
 justice. A wrong committed unknowingly, is 
 not a sin ; as man cannot be held responsible for 
 that which he does not know. The forgiveness 
 of sin is a huge farce and one of the foundations 
 of Churchism, but is not one of the doctrines 
 of the Christ. Freeman B. Dowd tells us that: 
 "The idea of a day of universal resurrection 
 and judgment is out of harmony with infinite 
 wisdom and justice. To the soul there are no 
 days or years, but one eternal now, and God is 
 all the time within us in judgment. 
 
 "When a man's sins overtake him is the day 
 of judgment for him; when his misdeeds come 
 thronging back into his consciousness, demand- 
 ing recognition and reward, the God within 
 judges, separates, and punishes, and the soul is 
 the great white throne of Deity. ' ' 
 
 One of the punishments after death consists 
 in atoning for one's bad and baneful influence 
 while on earth ; and the more extensive this has 
 been, the more fearful the penalty self-inflicted 
 therefor. The man who has taught millions that 
 God is a revengeful being; that He ever stands 
 ready to hurl ruin and destruction on the world 
 —to rain literal fire and brimstone on the earth, 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 139 
 
 and thus frighten people into woe and insanity, 
 —must abide the consequences, and in the world 
 beyond be compelled to face the dreadful music 
 himself may have evoked. And so with others, 
 let their influence be what it may. Eternal jus- 
 tice rules the destiny of mankind; and sooner 
 or later its behests must be and will be accom- 
 plished. 
 
 God does not punish any of his children, nor 
 does he forgive their wrong-doing. The wrong- 
 doer will receive his just reward, for the Christ 
 said : ' * The hand that smites thee is thine own, ' ' 
 thus proving that it is man himself that metes 
 out his own punishment. Since hell must have 
 a beginning, it must also have an end, and there 
 is no such thing as an Eternal hell. Man must 
 only suffer in the Spirit world until he can for- 
 get his wrong doing, when he will pass to 
 another state and advance as all beings do. 
 There is no standing still in this or any other 
 world, evolution is the law in every state. 
 
 The human soul is kaleidoscopic according 
 to Randolph. The scenes it forever conjures 
 up before it from out its mighty deeps, and by 
 which it is surrounded, are constantly and for- 
 ever changing ; no matter whether its locality be 
 on earth, in the mid-region of the great world's 
 
140 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 atmosphere, on the confines of the two great 
 states embodied or free, or whether it be a 
 dweller in the city of divine souls, the law is the 
 same and incessantly operative. Change is 
 written on all things; and although in essence 
 soul can never alter, yet its moods and phases 
 constantly do, else Hell would be a permanency, 
 Earth stand still, and Heaven grow monot- 
 onous. In accordance with this principle, there- 
 fore, no scene in the Soul-world is a perma- 
 nency, but as soon as one has produced all the 
 joy or pain it can to those from whom it is an 
 outgrowth or projection, it changes, but ever 
 toward the higher and more resplendent. 
 
 "When a man forsakes his evil ways and 
 turns his back on wrong-doing, his sins turn 
 back also and follow him. They are the angular- 
 ities of his nature, the atoms of which he is 
 made. Let him receive them as a father his 
 wayward children. 
 
 "Their home is the love of evil that gave 
 them being, and there they have a right to return 
 to die, to be indrawn and forgotten, or forgiven, 
 being received in love and recognized by wis- 
 dom, their work having been accomplished ac- 
 cording to the law of their existence. 
 
 "This is the at-one-ment, the indrawing of 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 141 
 
 evil to its source. Jesus said, * Resist not evil. ' 
 If the evil instinct be indrawn and transmuted 
 into good, no outward evil can harm us. Love 
 is the universal absorbent in whose infinite 
 bosom evil disappears. 
 
 "The consequences of our evil actions come 
 home to the source of the actions; their death 
 throes are painful, but all regrets cease and 
 tears are wiped away when we succeed in for- 
 giving ourselves. 
 
 "There can be no salvation of the race until 
 each individual of it is cemented to all by broth- 
 erly love. There can be no salvation of the indi- 
 vidual so long as the different faculties of the 
 mind are at war with each other. Salvation is 
 in harmonious union, or perfect moral and phy- 
 sical health. 
 
 "Salvation cannot be perfected in a diseased 
 bodyj and it is to teach this truth that Jesus 
 heaied the sick. His religion is physical and 
 spiritual, but the first work is with the body. 
 Disease and pain make the mind opaque; the 
 light cannot shine through it. Pain is only the 
 froth and foam of being, in too great agitation. 
 It is the result of the jar and friction of oppos- 
 ing elements of mind and body. If the atoms of 
 the body be true one to another, and the ele- 
 
142 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 ments of the mind are in harmony, all is peace 
 in the outer and inner man. Truth, peace, and 
 joy descend into the minutest atom of being, as 
 the body is built or rebuilt by the quality of our 
 thought. ' ' 
 
 " Jesus says, 'God is a spirit, and those who 
 worship him must worship him in spirit and 
 in truth.' The 'Spirit and the truth' you are 
 enjoined to worship in are your own love and 
 the reality of your soul. The spirit of God en- 
 tering in impregnates the soul, and this is wor- 
 ship in its fullest sense. To know truth one 
 must worship it, not with song or words or cere- 
 monies, however charming or esthetically sat- 
 isfying, but in the secret recesses of being, when 
 'thou hast entered into thy secret closet and 
 shut the door, that nothing may distract or dis- 
 turb the calm of spirits.' " 
 
 Did Jesus raise the dead? Whether this is 
 to be taken literally or not, is a question asked 
 by the greatest scholars. It is a fact that Christ 
 meant those that were "dead in Christ," the 
 peoples of the world, who had not yet awakened 
 the divine spark in their being ; who had not 
 yet learned that they were the temple of the 
 living God. I am not prepared to deny that 
 Christ did not even raise a few that were dead 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 143 
 
 in the literal sense, as this is neither impossible 
 in some cases, nor yet a miracle, but his teach- 
 ings did not refer to raising those that had died 
 a literal death, bnt to those that were dead in 
 sin as we understand it, and that his teachings 
 did this, cannot be denied by anyone, for who- 
 soever findeth the Christ is regenerated and 
 raised from the dead. 
 
 Was the natural body of Jesus Christ re- 
 animated after the crucifixion, and is a man to 
 be judged by himself as a spirit, or by a per- 
 sonal God! are questions that have been 
 answered already, and I need not deal with 
 them here. Is there a devil! has also been 
 answered in the foregoing, and proven that the 
 devil is not a being, but a principle in man, or 
 a universal principle in the world. 
 
 Spiritually and divinely speaking, is there 
 sin! Narrowly catalogued, like portions of all 
 church Discipline, and especially that of the 
 Methodist Episcopal, and the Evangelical, at the 
 instigation of which church I have been made 
 to suffer untold agonies in the past, are the 
 "Thou shalt," and "thou shalt not," which, 
 expressing a monopoly of virtue and truth, pre- 
 suppose an unqualified panancea for all wrongs, 
 termed by Priestcraft as "sin" and the exten- 
 
144 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 sion of all true worth, called " righteousness. ' ' 
 Moral wrongs cannot be made right by a priest's 
 indulgence or ablution, or by a ministered cere- 
 mony, neither can they be made right by an 
 agent of civil law, but only by teaching the law 
 of Karma to avoid the repetition of these wrongs 
 in the future, and by suffering for those com- 
 mitted in the past. 
 
 One W. Delos Smith, in an article that 
 appeared in "Mind," says: "The dogmatism 
 of theology is the assumption of theocratic 
 rights. In harmony with the expressed man- 
 dates of these so-called divine systems, the. 
 meaning of the term 'sin' has been taught. In 
 childhood, when the mind is most susceptible to 
 impressions, the idea is conveyed and empha- 
 sized that 'sin' is that which offends a sensitive 
 and all powerful Being who resides somewhere 
 in the skies— in a city called Heaven, the streets 
 of which are paved with gold. Continued offense 
 will result in non-forgiveness, and then there is 
 no alternative but Dante's 'Hell.' All this 
 appeals strongly to the imaginative fancy of 
 childhood. Intellectually impressed, conscience 
 will act as a support to such belief. The appeal 
 to fear aids to a coveted subjection of the mind 
 by which a cunning priesthood has reigned 
 supreme and unquestioned for centuries. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 145 
 
 This conception of sin is a delusion. It is 
 the bugbear with which weak-charactered moth- 
 ers frighten their children into obedience, and 
 effeminate leaders of men seek recognition and 
 support. Being a fallacy, its teaching is an 
 insult and injustice to childhood, and a startling 
 presumption on the intelligence of maturity. 
 
 Thoughts and acts may be unwise and in- 
 discreet because they are violations or trans- 
 gressions of law inherent in the nature of things. 
 If thoughts performed produce injustice and 
 therefore pain, such acts should be avoided. 
 The thought of inevitable compensation should 
 rule our course of conduct, not the belief in 
 offensiveness to a personal Deity. Minds that 
 think, and are unselfishly true to their convic- 
 tions, inevitably arrive at this conclusion. Minds 
 that think for others, having selfish objects in 
 view, and minds that permit such others to 
 think for them, rest satisfied with the delusions 
 of dogma. Such imposters, knowing that the 
 perpetutation of error is to their advantage, act 
 upon the principle— " Where ignorance is bliss, 
 'tis follv to be wise." 
 
 In the great conflict between Truth and 
 Error, the latter for years may reign supreme, 
 but " Truth crushed to earth will rise again." 
 
 10 
 
146 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 In the great reaction, when all elements shall be 
 harmoniously adjusted, Truth will have uni- 
 versal recognition and honor. 
 
 Where the harmony of Truth prevails, dog- 
 matic "sin" cannot enter. True right or wrong 
 is only a matter of attitude— of relation. Neither 
 civil law nor public opinion is the criterion by 
 which we may determine the status of an act. 
 Where there is obedience to natural law, the 
 question of right relation is settled; therefore, 
 the question of right and wrong is also settled. 
 To a soul in harmony with the Divine in Nature, 
 the unreality of "sin" is evident. That is 
 right which is in harmony with natural law. 
 Obedience to principles to which all life is sub- 
 ject must produce happiness ; therefore, pain is 
 evidence that some law is violated. 
 
 Injustice is usually a result of selfishness 
 somewhere. Wherever injustice is done, dis- 
 cordant relations have been sustained. Prompted 
 by selfish greed and utterly disregarding the 
 rights of others, real immorality and dishonor 
 are created. Love thinketh no evil (discord) ; 
 hence, love is the fulfilling of the law ^Har- 
 mony). Where real love exists* harmony 
 exists; and where harmony prevails so-called 
 sin cannot find a place. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 14T 
 
 The Man of Galilee uttered a profound truth 
 when, in that beatific statement, he said: 
 " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall 
 see God (good). ,, The world's greatest poet, 
 living this blessing, saw " Books in the running 
 brooks, sermons in stones, and good in every- 
 thing. 9 '* Our synoptic visions determine our 
 relations ; our relations determine our character 
 —and character is destiny. 
 
 Conventional orthodoxy for years has been 
 influencing and shaping public opinion on social, 
 moral, and religious lines of thought. Its policy 
 has ever been to see bad in everything except 
 what was purified (?) through irrational and 
 blind faith in a dogmatic theological theory. 
 By recognized psychological law we consciously 
 or unconsciously promote what we earnestly 
 believe. The doctrine of total depravity is quite 
 necessary in building the orthodox system of 
 theology, and in these systems the term "sin" 
 as usually interpreted is equally necessary. 
 But, judged from the rational point of view of 
 the operation of laws that this belief necessarily 
 utilizes, it is a pernicious doctrine. To believe 
 a character or an act to be bad (discordant) 
 helps to make it so. ' ' There is no such thing as 
 total depravity, no matter how bad a person may 
 
148 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 be, there is still, deep in the heart of such a per- 
 son a spot that is very tender, and would it be 
 known what this spot is, and the proper in- 
 fluence used, that person would become as good 
 as the best of us. The Christ principle is in 
 every one, no matter how bad, it is slumbering, 
 and only needs the torch of Love to be held to it, 
 and it will be awakened and blossom forth 
 grandly and sublime. 
 
 "The very current of our social, moral, and 
 religious life being poisoned with thoughts 
 adverse to harmony, it is no wonder that the 
 stench of impurity rises into the nostrils of the 
 members of such conventional society and that 
 sensuality and deception are perpetual. Dis- 
 cord is impurity, and the impure cannot see 
 Cod (good). 
 
 The same general idea is evidenced in trends 
 of current thought. Few, comparatively, 
 express admiration of the good features of ma- 
 terial benefits, institutions, or persons. In sec- 
 tions of the West where lack of rain somewhat 
 injured the corn crop, nine-tenths of the people 
 magnified this misfortune, which was the whole 
 burden of their conversation. In the same sec- 
 tion of the country a wheat crop far above the 
 average was harvested, and very few ever made 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 149 
 
 mention of this exceptional gain. From prena- 
 tal impressions to hoary-headed age, the current 
 of human thought is generally directed into,, 
 and educated through, pessimistic channels. 
 Under such conditions the attainment of har- 
 mony, purity, and love is greatly retarded. 
 
 The power of a word in its influence on 
 human life is measured by the effect its use 
 produces. The term "sin," as universally 
 accepted in Christendom, conveys the idea of 
 antagonism to the fiat of a supreme Personality. 
 This idea is mythical in origin, a will-o'-the- 
 wisp in realism, and a presumption on rational 
 intelligence in its use. If it ever performed a 
 function of any value whatever, that time was 
 in the period of civilization in which Christian- 
 ity had its origin— when in accordance with the 
 Jewish conception of Yahveh, a god of venge- 
 ance and wrath, the motive of fear was neces- 
 sary to be appealed to. The word, "sin" there- 
 fore, was coined as a convenient generality with 
 which to class anything opposed to what was 
 pleasing to Yahveh— a wrathful god. With the 
 term is most intimately related the idea of fear, 
 because, mythological-like, the caprice of this 
 god frequently dictated everlasting, excruciat- 
 ing torment. For centuries the doctrine of 
 
 10 I 
 
150 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 everlasting punishment in a lake of material 
 brimstone fire, said to be the sinner's inevitable 
 inheritance, was taught. Since he who entered 
 this place was past the limit where reformation 
 could or would be recognized, this punishment 
 was of course provided as a means of revenge, 
 and not for the good of the individual. 
 
 The effect of the idea (sin), therefore, has 
 been to create a fear prompted by degrading 
 motives. Humanity has been kept sick through 
 the influence of this imaginary miasma. It has 
 been kept in bondage through the forces of this 
 prejudicial and intolerant idea. It has sought 
 liberty from the dungeon of ignorance but found 
 only the phantom-light of this superstition to 
 overwhelm it with disappointment. It has 
 thirsted for the sweet waters of happiness, but 
 has been supplied with cups from this spring 
 of Marah. In every stage of its innate longing 
 for the pure delight of Truth's symphony, it has 
 heard only the discordant notes of this demon 
 of error. When looking for liberation from 
 the thraldom of unjust servitude, it has felt the 
 lash of the whip of this superstititious fancy. 
 
 Intellectual freedom, in which loyalty to the 
 great truth-principles of life predominates, will 
 relegate this imposter of "sin" to the oblivion 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 151 
 
 of pretenders, where its baneful influence shall 
 poison the stream of true human life no longer. 
 There may be martyrs to the faith of non-con- 
 formists, but if necessary these shall herald the 
 glad new era of Truth's Millennium. ' ' 
 
 Is there more than one kind of Spiritualism ! 
 f have already treated on two kinds of Spiritu- 
 alism. One, the true Spiritualism, which is of 
 the Soul, the other, which is not Spiritualism at 
 all, it is of the head, and is Spiritism, this is its 
 proper name, and it should not be associated 
 with true Spiritualism, no more than the Christ- 
 religion should be associated with the modern 
 so-called Christianity, or Churchism. 
 
 Dr. P. B. Randolph, in his book, ' ' The Soul- 
 world,'' tells us that there are four kinds of 
 Spiritualism; these are: First, a mere bodily 
 sensitiveness, nervous acuteness, and suscept- 
 ibility to magnetic emanations and impressions, 
 out of which arise a great deal of the stagnant 
 filth and social corruption so prevalent, to 
 debaucheries and license, and great evils which 
 pain so greatly the hearts of true men and 
 women. Second, a Spiritualism of the brain 
 alone, a cerebral quickening, a hot-house ripen- 
 ing of faculty, which gives rise to much talking, 
 and sometimes leads to the discovery of many 
 
152 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 of the elements of the great principia underlying 
 the Stmpathiad, and prophesies the good time 
 that is yet to be. Third, "compact" Spiritual- 
 ism, or that wherein and whereby a certain 
 class of sensitives, be they male or female, 
 become dupes of their own folly, and the vic- 
 tims of disembodied maniacs, lunatics, and self- 
 deluded denizens of the middle state; Spirits 
 who wander on the outskirts of three worlds, 
 without a permanent resting-place in either. 
 These have been useful, however, inasmuch as 
 they have called, and even compelled, attention 
 to phenomena which they produce, and which 
 cannot be explained away, nor accounted for, 
 save by admitting two things: First, that 
 immortality is a fixed fact ; and second, that it is 
 possible to bridge the hitherto impassable 
 chasm which divides earth from regions which 
 lie beyond. The fourth kind, and truest and 
 best, indeed that which only is truly spiritual, is 
 the growing up into a spiritualized, out of the 
 merely physical self -hood; and this growth of 
 soul necessarily admits the subject of it into the 
 mysteries of being, precisely in accordance with 
 the degree of the person's own unfolding. It is 
 the offspring of good resolutions, well and faith- 
 fully carried out; ignores pride, talk, lust, 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 153 
 
 hatred, envy, malice, slander, and all else which 
 characterizes the other three sorts. Immortality 
 is to such not an acquired, but an intuitive fact. 
 Such Spiritualists are good, moral, humane, 
 charitable, merciful, kind, and true; religious. 
 Christian in deed as well as name; and such as 
 these are never pulling down, but ever building 
 up the Good, the Beautiful, and the True; and, 
 when such an one dies, his or her stay in the 
 Middle state is very short, for they have paid 
 their ferriage, and are speedily introduced to 
 the mysteries and grandeurs of the world of 
 Soul. ' 
 
 "Such an one is unfolded; and by this term 
 is not meant that state to which a man arrives 
 after packing the contents of two or three librar- 
 ies on the shelves of his memory; by that term 
 is not meant the condition of one who has ar- 
 rived at honor and distinction by dint of mere 
 acquaintance with learned authorities and the 
 accumulation and piling up of knowledge of 
 various common and popular sorts; for it fre- 
 quently happens that men and women, who are 
 very ignorant of all these things— and who, so 
 far as they are concerned, are not ' progressed' 
 at all, prove on trial to be far more ' unfolded' 
 than thousands of those who have grown gray in 
 
154 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 the service of Letters, and who have, by per- 
 sistent assiduity, succeeded in transforming them 
 selves from human beings into locomotive ency- 
 clopedias, splendid to look at, interesting to dine 
 with and talk to, but cold, inheartful encyclope- 
 dias after all. Education is often a mere mechan- 
 ical mastery of useless abstrusities ; coins, which 
 on the social counters jingle well, but which are 
 not over and above current in the far-off worlds, 
 where a boor's earnest prayer weighs far more 
 than the ornate, rhapsodical orisons of scores 
 of learned pedanta, who, to judge them by their 
 language, take God to be a school committee 
 rather than a loving, tender parent. 
 
 ' ' Thus I find true, what had previously been 
 surmised, that a person may know but little, yet 
 approach much nearer the Divine than one who 
 has more brain furniture with a great deal less 
 heart. ' ' 
 
 Dr. Randolph wrote this many years ago, but 
 it is the same today as it was in his time. To 
 prove this, I will quote from an article by Dr. J. 
 M. Peebles that has just been published, and the 
 reader will readily see that the writings of these 
 great thinkers are identical. Dr. Peebles says: 
 ' ' The passion of religion is universal. As spirit- 
 uality is rooted in God, so the root-source of 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 155 
 
 religion is in spirituality. Human nature was 
 the same in the remotest antiquity that it is 
 today. Words are but symbols of ideas. Names 
 and forms change, but principles are immutable 
 fixtures. We know these only as they are, in some 
 degree, embodied in forms. It is the spirit that 
 moulds the form. 
 
 The history of the universe with its lower 
 kingdoms, with its multitudinous tribes, sub- 
 tribes and races, is as unitive as the links in the 
 chain of cause and effect. It is only when man 
 appears in the upward line of evolution that 
 religion becomes manifest. It is the blossom of 
 the spirit atom, the pearl that rises from the 
 great oceanic realm of life, the crowning ascent 
 from the nadir of the lower conditions to the 
 zenith of conscious reverence. 
 
 Religion should never be confounded with 
 theology. The words are in nowise synonyms. 
 Those who would use them interchangeably 
 would be quite apt to blunderingly confound 
 socialism and anarchy, hunger and appetite, the 
 one the natural, the other generally abnormal, 
 leading to gluttonous excesses and gormandiz- 
 ing. These careless thinkers and loosely inclined 
 writers would quite likely confound such words, 
 too, as idea and ideal, office and official, spirit 
 
156 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 and spiritual, and spiritism with Spiritualism. 
 The first is an old-time farce, while the latter, 
 wide as the universe, comprises sense-phenom- 
 ena, mental science, moral philosophy, and 
 religion. 
 
 Practical religion was beautifully expressed 
 by St. James, "Pure and undefiled before God, 
 the Father, is this, to visit the fatherless and the 
 widows in their afflictions, and to keep thyself 
 unspotted from the world. ' ' Jesus, the medium- 
 jstic Nazarene, Mved this religion daily, going 
 about, as the records say, "doing good." And 
 Spiritualists, blest with the knowledge of the 
 future existence, should do likewise, thus making 
 their divine gospel a practical power in human 
 redemption. ' ' 
 
 The religious Spiritualism of the past and 
 the present are one in essence— one in principle, 
 though expressed in different phraseology. Evo- 
 lution requires fresh statements of aim and doc- 
 trine as the years roll on and the race unfolds. 
 A truth uttered in the first Christian century 
 requires another dialect in this twentieth cen- 
 tury, and other analogies to round out the angles 
 of philological transmission. 
 
 Man is not "a religious animal," as is often 
 said, but a reasoning, rational, and morally re- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 157 
 
 sponsible being. Remember that Spiritualism is 
 not animalism— is not a helter-skelter series of 
 phenomena from the lower obsessing spheres to 
 gratify curiosity, to cater to individual selfish- 
 ness, or to personal aggrandisement; but it is a 
 spiritual force of the first magnitude, opening 
 the gates of knowledge— knowledge of a future 
 existence to Vedic adepts, to Hebrew seers, to 
 a Socrates, to a Victor Hugo, a Robert Owen, a 
 Judge Edmonds, a Sir William Crookes, and 
 to all honest seekers after truth today. It is a 
 priceless pearl, holding up a noble type of char- 
 acter, presenting a higher ideal of living, and 
 bearing aloft a new order of society, rightly 
 named religious socialism, based upon justice, 
 self-abnegation, and the fraternity of humanity. 
 Could there be a grander consummation than 
 this union of all mankind into one loving broth- 
 erhood? Inspiration leads up and on to this 
 mighty result, and energy, continuity in action, 
 and holy purposes are the evolutionary methods 
 to the attainment. 
 
 The plain truth is, intelligent Spiritualists, 
 and even thinking students of nature with no 
 fixed theological convictions, have had enough 
 of this Godless, Christless, prayerless, phenom- 
 ena-hunting spiritism— enough of this combat- 
 
158 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 ive, tear-down negationism. The late Espes Sar- 
 gent, one of the most brilliant of our American 
 Spiritualists, wrote these words to W. Stainton 
 Moses: "I am battling not only for Spiritual- 
 ism proper, but against the coarse atheism of 
 certain lecturers who call themselves Spiritual- 
 ists. There has been too much 'coquetting' with 
 a rank and brutal materialism under the guise 
 of Spiritualism. To deny God and publicly 
 sneer at prayer, is ruinous to the true interests 
 in Spiritualism. ' ' 
 
 Science and Spiritualism already stand side 
 by side, and are working to one glorious end. In 
 fact, the childhood of Spiritualism is steadily, 
 surely merging into a thoughtful, substantial 
 manhood. The excrescences are falling off, and 
 it is putting on a whole armor of a sterling, ra- 
 tional, religious maturity. From the truth mil- 
 itant, it is already a long ways forward to the 
 truth triumphant. No true Spiritualist ever re- 
 canted— no truth ever perished. 
 
 Standing now upon the mount of vision and 
 looking down the long vista of time, I see doubt 
 giving place to faith, and faith giving place to 
 knowledge. I see tyranny dying upon the grassy 
 plains of freedom. I see superstition receding 
 before a rational religion. I see error giving 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 159 
 
 place to the inviting brilliancy of truth, vice to 
 sturdy virtue, bigotry to toleration, sectarian- 
 hate to charity, policy to principle, monopoly 
 to co-operation, individualism to communism, 
 and grating discords to divinest harmonies. I 
 see before us a new heaven and a new earth. I 
 see in our midst the living Christ. I see the 
 burning of the tares, the gathering in of the 
 golden sheaves and a very Eden of peace, peace 
 and love and good will crowning our world and 
 baptizing the very heart with the pentecostal 
 fires of a purified life and a divine beneficence 
 as altruistic as universal. ' ' 
 
 The phenomena of Spiritualism have estab- 
 lished as a fact the continuous life of man. Death 
 changes him only from the visible material plane 
 to the invisible material plane. In himself there 
 is no change. 
 
 Some of the so-called dead have the power 
 to make themselves visible and tangible for a 
 brief space of time, showing that there are de- 
 grees of knowledge and power the other side 
 of death just as there are on this side. 
 
 Sidney H. Beard, one of the greatest reform- 
 ers in England, in an article which appeared in 
 the "Herald of the Golden Age, "-tells us that: 
 "For a long time I have believed that the 
 
160 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 human soul survives the death of the body, for 
 the evidence that such a belief demands for its 
 justification, seemed, to my mind, to be existent. 
 Although it did not amount to absolute demon- 
 stration, yet I felt that the accumulated testi- 
 mony of those who have declared that they have 
 had personal communications from the dead (so- 
 called), constituted, when combined with the 
 conclusions which can be logically deduced from 
 well attested psychic phenomena, and when sup- 
 ported by the inner voice of Intuition, a rational 
 basis for such a conviction. ' ' 
 
 But there have been moments in the past 
 when. I have been tempted to question whether, 
 after all, our common hope concerning human 
 immortality may not possibly be due to inherited 
 tendency and early education; and then I have 
 yearned for definite knowledge concerning the 
 life beyond the grave. 
 
 This state of mental uncertainty, of mere 
 belief, has now, however, finally passed away; 
 for I have recently been permitted to pass 
 through experiences which enable me to speak 
 from the standpoint of personal experience con- 
 cerning this matter. 
 
 Hitherto I have believed, now 7 know, that 
 when the physical body is laid aside, the soul 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 161 
 
 retains its individuality and its consciousness. 
 
 I have been permitted to hold prolonged con- 
 versation wifh human souls who are now dis-. 
 carnate, and to receive from them such com- 
 munications, such evidences of their personal 
 identity, such utterances concerning mundane 
 and spiritual facts, as prove conclusively to me 
 the reality of their post-mortem existence and 
 the retention of their individual mentality. 
 
 The quest after truth which culminated in 
 these occurrences was commenced on my part 
 with an open, though watchful and critical mind. 
 I was fully aware of the unreliability, the per- 
 sonating tendency, and the clairvoyant or mind- 
 reading faculties of some of the astral or spirit- 
 ual entities who seek to get into communion with 
 mortals through various media, and conse- 
 quently I carefully weighed and considered the 
 phenomena which took place. Twenty years 
 ago I was elected an Honorary Member of the 
 Psychical Research Society and took part in its 
 scientific experiments and investigations; con- 
 sequently, I had some knowledge concerning 
 psychical phenomena and test conditions. 
 
 But after calmly reviewing all the facts and 
 giving consideration to every possibility of illu- 
 sion, I find it impossible to escape the unalter- 
 
 11 
 
162 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 able conviction that I have indeed talked face- 
 to-face with a kindred soul who left the earth- 
 plane a few years ago, and whose voice, man- 
 ner, gestures^ clear and lucid diction, and almost 
 phenomenal knowledge concerning spiritual 
 truths, were, when combined altogether unmis- 
 takable. 
 
 During several long interviews (one of which 
 lasted for more than an hour, and took place in 
 the presence of a reliable eye-witness), I pre- 
 sented to this friend many searching questions. 
 They could only have been answered in the man- 
 ner in which he answered them, by one who not 
 only knew all about his earthly life, his work, and 
 his ideals, but who also possessed his own dis- 
 tinctly denned personality and manner of speech 
 and his unique comprehensive understanding of 
 spiritual law and the highest forms of esoteric 
 truth. Yet I did not fail to receive an immediate 
 and perfectly relevant, masterly and satisfac- 
 tory response to every one of them. 
 
 Many of these responses revealed the most 
 profound knowledge concerning transcendental 
 phenomena, and spiritual illumination of a high 
 degree. And I am convinced that it has indeed 
 been my privilege to hold communication with 
 one in the discarnate state, who, when on this 
 earth, was verily one of God's prophets. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 163 
 
 The medium through whom he spoke (a 
 woman aged 74), was altogether ignorant con- 
 cerning him ; she possessed no knowledge of the 
 subjects which we conversed about, or of my 
 own identity. 
 
 She is a sincere religious soul whose chief 
 wish is to be used by God in any way that He 
 may desire for the accomplishment of His pur- 
 pose. And she is neither clairvoyant nor psy- 
 chometric, nor does she possess the mentality 
 that would have enabled her to understand the 
 matters we discussed, or the phraseology that 
 we used. 
 
 But she is so constituted as to be able to sur- 
 render her physical organism and her conscious- 
 ness so completely, whilst in a state of trance, 
 that she can be used with great facility as a 
 medium for spiritual communication. 
 
 Her bodily form was so transfigured and con- 
 trolled by the spirit of my friend, that the sense 
 of her presence was almost lost^ and only that of 
 Him who used her physical organism was mani- 
 fest. 
 
 He said to me at the time: "I can control 
 
 the body of this medium with almost as much 
 
 ease as I could my own when I was in the flesh. ' ' 
 
 And his presence could be felt as well as 
 
164 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 seen ; his handclasp was unmistakable ; his pow- 
 erful personality beyond all counterfeit. 
 
 He spoke to me through another medium who 
 did not know my name or anything about him. 
 And yet his identity was just as clearly evi- 
 denced by his voice, diction, hand-clasp, manner, 
 and reference to his private affairs and ideals. 
 
 The identity of the other soul, with whom 
 I held repeated converse, was also established 
 by very strong evidence, and in every case was 
 confirmed and attested by him whose words I 
 would rather trust than that of almost any liv- 
 ing man I know— not only because of his integ- 
 rity, but on account of his wonderful spiritual 
 insight, his well-trained observant faculties, and 
 his reliable judgment. 
 
 Two of these Visitants were well known dur- 
 ing their earth-lives; they bore witness to the 
 Truth and suffered for its sake. One of them 
 was a Reformer who withstood the false theology 
 and ecclesiastical tyranny of his day and gener- 
 ation, and, by so doing, transformed the thought 
 of Christendom. The other was a heroic woman 
 who manifested the spiritual consciousness and 
 vision, and the transcendent life, in a manner 
 that is almost unparalleled in history, and she 
 was burned at the stake after winning immortal 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 165 
 
 renown and changing the fortunes and destiny of 
 her country. 
 
 They told me many things that I wanted to 
 know, and said much that was calculated to help 
 and encourage me in my life-work. They also 
 gave me certain valuable advice, which revealed 
 intimate knowledge concerning my personal 
 ideals and also concerning our doings at the 
 Headquarters of the Order. 
 
 And they promised me their aid in the 
 future, and assured me that I and my co-work- 
 ers were being used as instruments for the ac- 
 complishment of the Divine Purpose. 
 
 My own mother came to me and spoke in 
 such a way as to establish recognition on my 
 part, and also another lady who was known 
 throughout the world as a prominent religious 
 worker, and whose intimate friendship I was 
 once privileged to enjoy. 
 
 I am not constrained to make these affirm- 
 ations, merely to attract attention to my exper- 
 iences, but with the hope that my testimony may 
 possibly be helpful to some of our readers who 
 may be harrassed with doubts concerning the 
 reality of life beyond the grave. 
 
 The dark clouds of Materialism which hang 
 like a pall over the religious and scientific world 
 
 11 I 
 
166 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 in these Western lands, .can only be dispersed by 
 the revelation of spiritual facts. 
 
 Each additional witness, therefore, concern- 
 ing genuine psychic phenomena, whose word can 
 be trusted and whose soundness of judgment is 
 to any extent recognized by some of his con- 
 temporaries, helps to let in the light of Truth 
 which constitutes the only remedy for the mental 
 obscuration that is so prevalent. 
 
 Consequently, I feel that I am almost under 
 an obligation to bear witness concerning the 
 manifestations that have been given to me. 
 
 Having, for many years, asked for spiritual 
 light and knowledge, in order that I might be 
 enabled to help others, by passing on to them 
 what was given to me, I may not be silent con- 
 cerning this matter. I do not, however, expect 
 this brief narration to appeal to other minds 
 with the same force as these occurrences ap- 
 pealed to me." 
 
 If there is one man in all Europe that I would 
 believe, it is Mr. Beard, and I think it is not too 
 much to say, that this great Reformer has done 
 more for a non-flesh diet, and humaneness, than 
 any other man living. Not only has he tried to 
 teach humaneness in diet, but has been a strong 
 fighter against the hellish crime of Vivisection, 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 167 
 
 which is almost as prevalent in England as it is 
 in America. In fact, this crime is committed 
 in every civilized (!) country. 
 
 Most clearly and emphatically does the 
 teachings of Jesus to his more intimate disciples 
 imply, that, with the exercise of the right kind 
 of faith, we should become the media of Divine 
 communication to the world ; that we should see 
 and hear as those who were attuned to heavenly 
 conditions, ever having the open eye of the soul 
 to see heaven 's messengers when they come, and 
 the ear to hear the voices that speak to us from 
 the Beyond. 
 
 But the Christian Church repudiates such 
 things. She has no faith in the possibility of an 
 actual communion with ministering spirits such 
 as the first disciples enjoyed. And those who do 
 believe such things and seek to realize their 
 blessed influence, have too often to look for fel- 
 lowship outside her ecclesiastical borders. 
 
 When a few more man-made creeds wither, 
 die and rot into deserved non-entity, when 
 Christ's Christianity, which is pure Spiritual- 
 ism, prevails, when nominal Christians become 
 more Christ-like and nominal Spiritualists more 
 spiritual, the chasm of shibboleths and almost 
 brutal dogmatisms, will be bridged, souls will be 
 
168 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 baptized afresh, estranged hands will be clasped, 
 unsympathizing hearts will be warmed by the 
 pentecostal flames of love, angels will the more 
 readily daily walk and talk with mortals, and 
 all be recognized as constituting a vast fraternal 
 commonwealth of gods, angels, spirits, and men ; 
 and love, pure, unselfish love— Christ's universal 
 love— will then be the one acknowledged spirit- 
 ual religion of the world. 
 
 If you want to be true Spiritualists, then let 
 all your aims be high and holy. Lift your aspir- 
 ations towards loftier points, and struggle for 
 more elevated positions in the realm of thought. 
 As you thus aspire, there is not an angel bend- 
 ing from the snowy clouds that roll as an ocean 
 of drapery on the blue depths of the sky, but will 
 smile with exceeding beauty upon all such 
 efforts ; whilst images of unfading beauty shall 
 forever be thine, coming to thee in quick succes- 
 sion from the heaven of brighter minds above 
 you. Thus, you will become united and you will 
 be enabled to move forward as a glorious 
 Brotherhood along the pathway of progress that 
 lies before you. And in this way, through the 
 magnetism of unity, of sympathy, and of love, 
 love for all things, you shall preach louder in 
 behalf of truth than all the media you can place 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 169 
 
 upon your rostrum, however good they may be. 
 
 Learn to love one another, and aim to dis- 
 card whatever is calculated to retard your ad- 
 vance in this direction. Let your common faith 
 in the immortality of spiritual truth be written 
 as with ink of fire, and let your diversities of 
 opinion with regard to the various manifesta- 
 tions of this truth be inscribed on the shifting 
 sand, remember that the fundamental principles 
 are alike in everything, but the theories of no 
 two men are alike. Cast aside prejudice and 
 bigotry, which too often magnifies the points of 
 difference between you, and use charity and 
 reason, which will bring within the horizon of 
 your view the manifold and mingling beauties 
 of the glorious cause you all so much love. 
 
 "Pure Living and Spirituality. How is it 
 that the psychic vision of the church is lost? 
 Why has she no more gifts of tongues, and 
 prophecy, and esoteric interpretation. Because 
 a dark three-fold veil hangs across her Intuition, 
 shutting out the vision of the Holy Place. ' ' 
 
 The veil of blood is still before her. Though 
 she no longer offers animal sacrifices on her 
 altars to God, she offers them to the mammon 
 of taste and appetite. She lives in a realm of 
 blood. She takes a more active part in the 
 
170 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 slaughter of animals for food, and permits their 
 torture for scientific knowledge. (Vivisection). 
 She is the supposed purifier of the land, yet the 
 land is full of blood; and alas, she approves 
 of it. 
 
 She values her ceremonies and outward bul- 
 warks more than the gracious influences of the 
 Eternal Spirit. In short, to a large extent, she 
 is only the reflection of the world-spirit. She is 
 like the sky taking the earth's reflections of 
 colour rather than giving her Divine tone to the 
 earth. 
 
 This appalling blindness to spiritual real- 
 ities, this awful deafness to the Voice that 
 speaks out of the Silence, can never be removed 
 till her hands are washed white from the blood- 
 stains that she hath put there. 
 
 She must give up her love of fresh-meats, 
 ner cowardly attitude towards the oppressors of 
 the animal kingdom, her callousness concerning 
 the rites of the physiological laboratories, which 
 are no less than the Hells of so-called science of 
 the present day. 
 
 She must teach the royal road of love even 
 towards the lower races. She must learn that 
 God will have mercy and not sacrifice, that a 
 gentle spirit is more acceptable to Him than 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 171 
 
 feast-days, sacred hours, and mere rites or cere- 
 monies. Yea, she must learn the secret doctrines 
 of the universe, the unity of all Being, the uni- 
 versal Oneness of life. Unless she does, never 
 will the Divine Vision be hers, nor hers the priv- 
 ilege to hear the sublime messages from the 
 Beyond. 
 
 For these great and glorious privileges are 
 the fruits of personal dedication to the highest 
 ideals, and a genuine effort to realize spirit- 
 uality. 
 
 Only by earnest endeavor to overcome carnal 
 limitations can she be brought into such intimate 
 fellowship with Heaven as to learn the mind 
 of the Master through direct communion; and 
 so gain His secret. And, with that talisman, 
 open up the whole spiritual realm to the soul. 
 
 The great mystics who so intimately com- 
 muned with the highest spirits have always been 
 men and women who repudiated flesh food and 
 lived on the simplest fare, not only curbing the 
 appetites, but also refining the senses till these 
 were sensitive to the influence of heaven, and 
 could become the venues of heavenly messages. 
 
 And here I would remind all my fellow Chris- 
 tians who are known as Spiritualists, that the 
 purest and highest cannot be reached without the 
 
172 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 consecration of the heart, mind and body to pure 
 feeling, pnre thinking, and pure living. If the 
 Christian Church has long lost the Psychic gift, 
 and come to deny its realization (though she 
 holds it in her philosophy), and that through 
 the failure of her members to understand the 
 essentiality of simple, pure, natural diet in 
 order to fit the body to become the temple of the 
 Eternal Spirit ; so we may rest assured that the 
 highest psychic gifts and the purest, truest psy- 
 chic communications, can be ours only through 
 prayer and fasting— through that prayer which 
 is, a continual aspiration after the Divine; and 
 that fasting which is a purification of all the 
 senses, and the harmonizing of them with the 
 will of heaven. 
 
 If all who truly believe in spiritual science 
 and practice it would exalt and enlarge their 
 faith by the purification and consecration of 
 their bodies, so that henceforth they might be- 
 come fit channels of Divine communication to 
 the saints, what a power for righteousness might 
 they not become ! What an increase of spiritual 
 knowledge, fellowship, and aspiration might 
 they not bring down to the world ! They would 
 then come to be what the members of the Chris- 
 tian Church ought to have been— circles of men 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 173 
 
 and women whose souls are open to the light of 
 heaven, who give its influxes freedom of access 
 because they have rent the veil of materialism 
 which divides and cuts off God from the soul." 
 —Rev. J. Todd Ferrier, in the "Herald of the 
 Golden Age." 
 
 This is one of the altruistic works that the 
 Spiritualist must take a hand in, and he dare 
 not stop until the last anim#l has been killed for 
 food. Spiritual communication can never be 
 at its best as long as the body of man is loaded 
 down with the blood and decaying carcass of his 
 fellow being, a being that has just as much right 
 to live as man has. It is inhuman to kill, even 
 for food, man is not a flesh-eating animal, but 
 is a Divine being, whose natural food is such as 
 needs no shedding of blood. 
 
 While beef or mutton is bad enough, pork 
 is still worse, and there is absolutely nothing 
 that will fill up the whole system of man with 
 unnatural passion as soon as pork will. It 
 makes him a passionate brute, unfit for the asso- 
 ciation of any decent woman. Were this pas- 
 sion normal it would not be so bad, and might 
 be kept within bounds, but it is not, and being 
 abnormal and wholly animal, it cannot be kept 
 within bounds, and by looking around you you 
 
174 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 will be able to see the results. There are those, 
 some self-styled Dietary Food reformers, espe- 
 cially a woman in London, who tells us that to 
 keep in good health, use mutton in summer and 
 pork in winter. To this I would add : and take 
 a bundle with you to hell to keep up the abnor- 
 mal passion fire, for you will need it beyond the 
 grave. The hog is possibly the most loathsome 
 animal alive, and how anyone can claim such 
 food to be the natural diet for man, I fail to 
 understand. Just think; a clean spirit to hold 
 communications through the body of a medium 
 which is loaded down with the filthy carcass of 
 the hog! Such a thing is utterly impossible, 
 and the sooner people will learn better, the bet- 
 ter for them. It is to be hoped that no true 
 Spiritualist will follow the Church in this re- 
 spect, but will do all in his power to stop the 
 slaying of the innocent in order to satisfy the 
 abnormal appetite of man. 
 
 God, according to the Bible, did not intend 
 that man should eat meat, for in Gen. i, 29, we 
 find: "God said, Behold, I have given you 
 every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face 
 of all the earth, and every tree, in which is the 
 fruit of a tree yielding seed ; to you it shall be for 
 meat." Christians and other so-called and self- 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 175 
 
 styled food reformers have never read this, 
 doubtless it is not in their Bible, or if it is, it 
 does not mean them. Let us hope that all true 
 Spiritualists, Mystics and others of this class, 
 are able to find it in their Bible, and follow it. 
 
 The vegetarian diet is the most favorable 
 to purity, chastity, and to perfect control of the 
 appetites and passions, which are often a source 
 of great temptation, especially to the young of 
 all so-called civilized nations, in uncivilized, or 
 heathen nations, flesh is not used as food for 
 man. 
 
 Meat eating is the main cause of drunken- 
 ness, and you all know how dif gusting it is to see 
 a drunkard, not considering the awiul suffering 
 that drinking causes to millions of women and 
 children, bringing shame and disgrace on count- 
 less numbers of the innocent. 
 
 The enormous increase in cancer and con- 
 sumption during the last hundred years is due 
 to a great extent to the eating of meat. Vaccin- 
 ation is the main cause of these diseases, and 
 meat eating follows this awful crime of child- 
 hood. With vaccination and meat eating stop- 
 ped, cancer, consumption, scrofula, and other 
 diseases of this kind would soon be a thing of 
 the past. It is almost impossible to find a per 7 
 
176 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 son nowadays, that does not have his or her 
 blood filled with scrofula, You ask what is the 
 cause of this; the answer is— Pork. Pork as 
 a food, cannot be too strongly condemned, and 
 the Hebrew does well in letting it severely alone, 
 and it is very seldom that you find a Hebrew 
 who is suffering from scrofula, unless he is a 
 Reformed (?) Hebrew. 
 
 Another crime that all true Spiritualists and 
 Mystics should do all in their power to abolish, 
 is Vivisection. This is one of the greatest 
 crimes that afflicts modern civilization. It could 
 not exist, were it not for the fact that the Roman 
 Church upholds it openly, and all other so-called 
 Christian denominations give their silent, con- 
 sent, and are therefore accessories to the crime. 
 
 In a manifesto lately issued by Monsieur 
 Vaughan is this statement: "Cardinal New- 
 man expresses the teachings of the Church as 
 follows: 'We have no duties towards the brute 
 creation; there is no relation of justice between 
 them and us. Of course, we are bound not to 
 treat them ill, for cruelty is an offense against 
 that holy law which our Maker has written on 
 our hearts, and it is displeasing to Him. But 
 they can claim nothing at our hand; into our 
 hands they are absolutely delivered. We may 
 
TEinrSPIRITUALISM 177 
 
 me them, we may destroy them at our pleasure, 
 not our wanton pleasure, but still for our own 
 ends, for our own benefit and satisfaction, pro- 
 vided that we can give a rational account of what 
 we dp.' M 
 
 Sidney H. Beard, Esq., then says: "An 
 attempt is then made to justify this illogical and 
 inconsistent mixture of paganism and Christian 
 piety, which, alas, reveals only too clearly the 
 visual limitations of him who wrote it and of 
 those who can accept such as inspired teaching, 
 by a series of artful, plausible, and sophistical 
 statements which are calculated to so confuse 
 the real issue in the minds of untrained think- 
 ers, as to create the hallucination that the Rom- 
 ish Church is, notwithstanding her advocacy of 
 Vivisection, the only genuine exponent of benefi- 
 cence and compassion in this world/ ' 
 
 "This priestly defense of Vivisection is, 
 practically, but the presentation in another 
 form of the old dogma which has ever been the 
 distinguishing mark of all materialistic priest- 
 hoods — that deliverance from the penalty of 
 human transgression is to be obtained by the 
 vicarious suffering of some innocent victim!, 
 rather than by the amended life of the individual 
 
 sinner." 
 
 12 
 
178 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 "This Romish Manifesto may be summed 
 up by the affirmation that it presents an ethical 
 creed which is distinctly lower and more bar- 
 barious than that which justifies the burning of 
 martyrs by the Romish Inquisition. The human 
 victims of the 'Dark Ages,' were Ecclesiastic- 
 ism ' bossed \ mankind, were ostensibly— though 
 not really— burned for the good of their own 
 souls and in order to proniote their own salva- 
 tion ; but these poor animal victims are openly 
 and avowedly sacrificed in order that sinful man 
 may find some way to escape from the conse- 
 quences of his wrong-doing. 
 
 It is Moloch-worship, pure and simple, in an 
 up-to-date form. And the Church which openly 
 defends such systematic tormenting and mas- 
 saereing of harmless souls, and which denies 
 them all rigths— whether as sentient beings or 
 as God's creatures— does but pronounce its own 
 doom. 
 
 For the coming generations, who will be 
 characterized by more enlightenment than dis- 
 tinguishes this present one, will most certainly 
 repudiate ethical and religious teachings which 
 is manifestly characterized by materialistic 
 blindness, and an almost total eclipse of spir- 
 itual and intuitional perception. ' ' 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 1 79 
 
 While other denominations have not issued 
 any manifestoes upholding this hellish crime, 
 yet, by their silent consent, are they upholding 
 this foul practice. Like the Romans, they are 
 willing to sacrifice all lower life, if by so doing, 
 they will be able to save themselves from the 
 lawful penalty of wrong doing. The present 
 day churchism teaches the grossest immorality 
 that it is possible for any man or thing to teach. 
 Before gross materialism invaded Buddhistic 
 India, under the name of Christianity, meat was 
 not eaten as a food, and all animal life was 
 recognized as sacred, but all that is now changed 
 and there is but a slight difference between there 
 and here. Let all true Spiritualists and Mystics 
 do all in their power to bring about the abolition 
 of this horrible crime* 
 
 Following Vivisection, and still, more awful 
 in its ; effects on humanity, comes Vaccination. 
 As Vivisection is the Kell of Science, so is Vac- 
 cination the Hell of childhood. No language 
 is too harsh to be used in denouncing, this foul 
 and deadly crime, the crime that has killed 
 thousands of innocent children, maimed thour 
 sands more, and filled the blood of the people 
 with : filthy and loathsome diseases, so, that even 
 their children are filled with deadly, .poisons, 
 
180 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 that make their appearance sooner or later. 
 Vivisection is a crime on the lower beings, but 
 Vaccination is a crime whose effects are directly 
 on the human family. Were each one allowed 
 to have his free will in the matter, it would not 
 be so bad, but through villainous physicians and 
 demoralized law-makers, laws have been passed 
 in many of our states, forcing a man to have 
 his children poisoned by the foul and deadly 
 pus poison, which in itself is so loathsome and 
 disgusting, that it is almost impossible for us 
 to believe, that even demoralized human beings 
 can uphold it, much less force it on others. 
 
 These are two of the crimes that all true men 
 should fight against,, and seek their abolition, 
 even though they must give their life and liberty 
 in the cause. There is yet another crime of 
 civilization that is as bad, although its effects 
 are not always on conscious life, and that is 
 abortion. I have already treated this subject 
 fully, and it is not necessary for me to say more 
 about it at this time. 
 
 These three crimes— Vivisection, Vaccina- 
 tion, and Abortion, form the sacred Trinity of 
 Hell, and no demons could wish for a Trinity 
 that is more foul, and that can cause more 
 destruction and crime than these three. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 181 
 
 Any of these three might well be used as an 
 offering in the rite of the witches of the Black 
 Sabbath, which makes any one shudder, or it 
 might well be used as the rites of the Grand 
 Grimoire. Either of the three is foul and deadly 
 enough, and would surely satisfy these followers 
 of hell itself, as. an offering in performing their 
 rites. Nothing more loathing was ever practiced 
 by the followers 01 the Grand Grimoire, nor by 
 those that took part in the Black Sabbath, of 
 which every student of the Occult is familiar. 
 
 We must remember that it is not enough to 
 develop and become like the Christ, for there is 
 then a work for us to do. Even the Christ forgot 
 self in the work that He tried to do for a suffer- 
 ing humanity, so must we. Until all men and all 
 things are free, we cannot be free. Until these 
 crimes are abolished, we are not free men. Let 
 us do our part, let us help humanity to get on 
 its feet and throw off the shackles of the bigoted 
 and inhuman few, and establish a universal 
 religion, a religion of Spirituality and Individ- 
 uality. 
 
 i ' Spiritualism not only demonstrates a future 
 existence, not only teaches the certainty of suf- 
 fering in all worlds for wrong-doing , not only 
 encourages invention, art, science, exploration, 
 
 12 I 
 
182 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 and all sanitary enterprises, not only shows 
 memory to be the 'Recording angel/ and self- 
 denial, nobleness of purpose, purity of life and 
 sweet spirituality to be the ascending steps to 
 heaven, but it strikes the chains from millions of 
 slaves and builds unsectarian universities." 
 
 If you are a true Spiritualist, then follow 
 these teachings, and help to abolish these crimes 
 and strike the chains from your fellow beings 
 who are slaves, and in a night of utter darkness. 
 
 (THE END.) 
 
PROSPECTUS OF 
 
 Universal Brotherhood of Man 
 
 "One God, One Law, One Element: 
 
 And One far-off event 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 Tennyson, "In Memoriam." 
 
 'Let us build altars to the Blessed Unity 
 which holds Nature and Souls in perfect solu- 
 tion, and compels every atom to serve an uni- 
 versal end."— Emerson. 
 
 WHAT IS THIS BLESSED UNITY? 
 
 There is but One. We may call it what we 
 please, the Universe or God, or by any other 
 name. It is the same. The serpent has his 
 tail in his mouth; the chain of causation and 
 relation is nowhere broken, nor can it be. 
 
 ♦Circular prepared by F. Oscar Biberstein, from the teachings of 
 ''Dawn Thought" by J. Wm, Lloyd and "Brotherhood, Nature's Laws" 
 by Burcham Harding. 
 
184 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 If the One created the Universe, He must 
 have made it from Himself, for there was 
 
 nothing else to make it from, and this Universe 
 and all that it contains, must be still Himself, 
 just as the body is the man in his outward as- 
 pect. Is this theory true f If so, then everything 
 is convertible and in the last analysis all are 
 one and the same. 
 
 The One must be Life, and everything must 
 be alive. The One Life pervades all regions of 
 space and all forms. It is everywhere, bound- 
 less, infinite, eternal. It is the origin of every- 
 thing visible and invisible. Yes, of everything, 
 of all that has been, now is and ever shall be. 
 
 The One Life is divided into many " lives' ' 
 which lives are parts of itself. In other words, 
 the One Great Force or Energy of Nature is 
 subdivided into innumerable smaller forces, or 
 centers of force, each being separable from The 
 One Life and identical in Essence with it. 
 
 The whole — all nature — then is One, and 
 this grand Truth all things in nature repeat to 
 us in ever varying lessons. Everything in 
 nature seeks Unity, equilibrium, the center and 
 though continually thrown out, persistently 
 returns from whence it came, just as man goes 
 back to Nirvana. Let us consider the waters. 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 185 
 
 Though lifted up in mists and clouds, they drop 
 swiftly back through all their shining levels to 
 the sea. And, if more slowly, the uplifted 
 mountains are just as certainly and stubbornly 
 flowing down into the valleys. When we seek 
 for a clear partition and definition between 
 mineral and vegetable, vegetable and animal, 
 animal and man, man and God, we fail to find 
 it. Any of these viewed centrally is different 
 enough but when we seek for boundary lines 
 they forever elude, and that, because they do 
 not exist. They are but convenient fictions, 
 lines on our maps which the fields and forests 
 they cross know not of. Does not evolution 
 reveal a perpetual touch and blending all along 
 the lines of life! Do not the methods, the 
 "laws" of nature apply universally? Is not 
 each thing a type and figure of every other 
 thing? Is not man a microcosm of the macro- 
 cosm! Study comparative anatomy, and see 
 how every nerve and muscle and bone hints 
 of the human. Run sex down, if you can, and 
 find some element or aggregation which knows 
 nothing of the power of the dual principle. 
 
 Motion and rest are all of life, and all our 
 motions are in pursuit of rest. 
 
 We all stand on the earth, and are united 
 
186 TRUE SPlRtTtfALISM 
 
 by our touch of it, and by the air which ever 
 pursues, by the cheer which never leaves us, by 
 electric and magnetic currents, interpenetrat- 
 ing, by strange, invisible nervous sympathies 
 which clairvoyance, telepathy, and similar mar- 
 vels, occasionally reveals to us. We are united 
 by our common needs, weaknesses, passions, by 
 our common origin and destiny. 
 
 Look how reproduction unites us. The act- 
 ual substance and life of the parent goes into 
 the child, and there is no break in the life. The 
 life in the seed is the life, and the finest life, of 
 the parent, and develops without cut-off into the 
 off -spring, an extension of the parent. Human- 
 ity is like an undying tree, and dying individual 
 forms are like the dropping leaves. 
 
 And humanity is only a limb of a Great 
 Tree, or Body of Life equally inseparate. 
 
 Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fid fill 
 the Law of Christ.-ST. PAUL. 
 
 The study of the One Life and its constitu- 
 ent parts or lives, makes it clear that Universal 
 Brotherhood is both a law and a fact in nature ; 
 for everything in nature, in this physical world, 
 exists by reason of the mutual helpfulness that 
 all parts render to one another. 
 
 In the lower kingdoms, this is co-operation 
 
TTCtJE SPIRITUALISM 187 
 
 compulsory, for the moulding force from a 
 higher kingdom impels the "lives" to render 
 assistance.; Itjs this co-operation which holds 
 together the forms for a period, and then re- 
 laxes, allowing the "lives" to break-up their 
 prisons and seek progress in new directions 
 It governs also human beings, but with this 
 difference: that the individual is not compelled 
 but must voluntarily determine to work in ac- 
 cord with this natural law. 
 
 Brotherhood is both a law and a fact in 
 nature, taught by every object, and cannot be 
 ignored without dire consequences. All ' * Lives ' ' 
 belong to one great brotherhood, as sparks of 
 the One Life or as drops of the mighty ocean 
 of life. Their co-operation is exemplified 
 throughout nature's workshops, whether we ex- 
 amine a mineral, plant or animal. This spirit 
 of helpfulness has personified in the God who 
 is ever loving his children, the beneficent Prov- 
 idence assisting all things to reach a higher 
 state. 
 
 Instead of brotherhood, the practice of 
 selfishness mainly rules, and we need not won- 
 der therefore that the penalty and suffering is 
 so widely experienced in all quarters of the 
 globe. Famines, earthquakes, wars and rumors 
 
188 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 of wars, murders, suicides, shipwrecks, and gen- 
 eral unrest and anxiety are but some of the 
 methods employed by nature to bring about a 
 readjustment of the breaches of the law of 
 brotherhood. 
 
 Only by working for the good of all and not 
 for ourselves alone, can we secure the best 
 results even for ourselves; for only thus do we 
 work in harmony with the One Life of which we 
 are a part. 
 
 The crying need of the world is that all 
 should recognize that they are indissolubly 
 linked together, and that, none can help or in- 
 jure another without doing as much for himself. 
 There should be a determined movement to act 
 in accordance with Brotherhood, and weld it 
 into our institutions, social, national and 
 political; not merely as a theory, but applying 
 it as a practical remedy for suffering. 
 
 The Song of Life is heard by those who can 
 attune themselves to the harmony of the One 
 Life, which may be awakened in every heart. 
 
 There is a movement on foot to start a Uni- 
 versal Brotherhood. All true Souls who desire 
 to live up to the rules which will govern this 
 Brotherhood, and are truly desirous to lend 
 their assistance in the uplifting of Humanity 
 
TRUE SPIRITUALISM 189 
 
 by Thought, Word and Deed are Welcome. 
 There will be no charge of dues or any money 
 obligations. This Brotherhood shall be as free 
 as possible from " Commercialism. ' ' 
 
 All those truly interested and willing to work 
 for an Universal Brotherhood and willing to 
 subscribe to these articles, should address 
 
 BR. R. SWINBURNE CLYMER, 
 
 Allentown, Pa. 
 
 The Universal Brotherhood of Man draws 
 no lines of demarkation ; it separates itself from 
 no good thing. It stands for the impartial in- 
 vestigation of thought, and all human experi- 
 ences and the acceptance of all the truth which 
 can thus be discovered. 
 
 No matter if you are not a Mystic or a stu- 
 dent of the Occult, you can become one of us if 
 you are but willing to live up to the rules laid 
 down and if you can subscribe to the foregoing 
 Prospectus. No matter to what church you 
 belong or to what creed you subscribe, if you 
 are willing to obey the rules and give others the 
 same free will of belief you can become one of 
 us. Remember that this is not a money-making 
 affair. There are no fees, no dues, all that is 
 asked of you is that "You do unto others as 
 you would that they should do unto you. * ' Not 
 
190 TRUE SPIRITUALISM 
 
 only in one thing, but in all things. This is 
 Universal Brotherhood. 
 
 You are at perfect liberty to do as you 
 please so long as you treat others as God, the 
 Father, would have you treat them. 
 
 The Brotherhood stands for the overcoming 
 of Evil— the negative of good— not by antago- 
 nism, but with good, the good that is irresistible, 
 because of its courage and verity. We demand 
 that you condemn nothing and no one but that 
 you give the helping hand instead and help your 
 fallen brother or sister to stand up and face the 
 world. 
 
 If you wish to study and become a teacher, 
 we can place you under the care of such who 
 know how to teach you the Truth and Higher 
 Science. We ask that you get as many inter- 
 ested as you can and do not forget that all, no 
 matter what their belief, can join us if they join 
 as Brothers and Sisters of one great family, 
 recognizing the Fatherhood of God over all. 
 
 NOTE:— Complete rules and all teachings 
 of the Brotherhood are contained in the book 
 " Militia Crucifera Evangelica." This book is 
 bound in cloth and stamped in gold, contains 
 200 pages, obligation, etc. Price, $2.00. Those 
 that order before June, 1907, $1.00. 
 
The Thompsonian System of 
 Medicine 
 
 By R. SWINBURNE CLYMER, Ph.D., M.D. 
 
 Honorary Fellow of the ThompsoDian Physio- Medical College 
 of England, Diplomate in Osteopathy of The English 
 School of Osteopathy, and Member of Physio-Medical 
 Board of Great Britian and Ireland. 
 
 This book is just what it claims to be, a complete 
 system of Medicine. No poisons enter into the 
 Physio-Medical system of Medicine. It is such a 
 system that even the layman can understand,. 
 This book is from the teachings of Dr. Samuel 
 Thompson, the founder of the Botanical System of 
 medication. 
 
 This work has been prepared especially for the 
 beginner in medicine and also for the father of 
 every family. It is so plain that he who reads can 
 understand. If the teachings are followed, and 
 they are so plain that everyone can understand 
 them, it will seldom be found necessary to call in a 
 physician. 
 
 When one considers the awful amount of harm 
 done by the present system of practice, it will be 
 seen why such a book is become a necessity. No 
 one can afford to be without a copy of the work. 
 
 Published by the English school, and the first 
 1000 copies will be sold at $1.00 per copy. Bound 
 only in cloth. 
 
 Address all orders ; 
 
 The Philosophical Publishing Co. , 
 
 Allentown, Pa. 
 
A NEW BOOK 
 
 44 
 
 THE PHILOSOPHY OF FIRE" 
 
 (Love, God) 
 
 The History of Its Teachings 
 
 The "Fire Philosophy" is the basis of all Religious Mysteries 
 and all the secret philosophies of the Universe. It, is also the underly- 
 ing principles on which AllSecret Occult Brotherhoods are founded. 
 It, was taught in the Ancient Mysteries and, although the knowledge 
 of it has long been lost to the world, it has always been preserved in 
 the Occult Fraternities. In the admirable work, "The Philosophy of 
 the Living Fire" Dr. Clymer, a Mystic and Initiate, has set, forth the 
 histoy of this Sublime Philosophy of the Ancient "Fire Philosophers," 
 whose teachings are embodied in the Occult Brotherhood now known 
 as the Philosophers of the Living Fire of the Western World. 
 
 In this admirable work he has given us glimpses of nearly every 
 Mystic Order, of both Ancient and Mediaeval times, tracing the teach- 
 ing from their first inception on the lost, " Atlantis" up to the present 
 time. Some of the subjects touched upon are the Ancient Mysteries, 
 Secret Doctrines, Regeneration, the finding of the Cnrist, the Templars 
 andRosicruciansas" Fire Philosophers," the Therapeutae and Essenes 
 and their Initiation, the lost " Atlantis" and how and why it disap- 
 peared from off the face of the earth, and many other subjects of pro- 
 found interest to the true Occult scholar. 
 
 Says a woman who is known by practically every New Thought or Occult Stud- 
 ent in the country: 
 
 " It is a book that every true woman in the land should have, for 
 where is there a woman to whom the word 'Love' does not appeal? 
 I believe that if our women knew what the book contains there would 
 not be one who would be without it for an hour. It contains the secret 
 of Life and Immortality and is the basis of a true Religion and the 
 Universal Brotherhood ot Man. 
 
 "Truly, all men should have the book but it appeals especially to 
 the nobler nature of woman for her very existence is dependent on 
 Love. Success to you in your work." 
 
 There are hundreds of testimonials here and the above few are 
 only picked from private correspondence. 
 
 The book is ready, contains 200 pages and is bound in cloth, 
 stamped in gold. Price of the first edition is only $1.50, and these are 
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 Address all letters and make all Money payable ONLY to 
 
 The Philosophical Publishing, Co. 
 
 ALLENTOWN, PA. 
 
Ihe ROSICRUCIANS 
 
 and their TEACHINGS 
 
 By REV. DR. R. SWINBURNE CLYMER. 
 
 This is just what the title implies It is not 
 only a complete History of that mighty Fraternity ,, 
 but it gives all the Manifestoes as issued by the 
 Fraternity and gives them in the natural order as 
 they were issued. Not only this but it gives many 
 of their teachings which could not be otherwise 
 had as only single copies are in existence. 
 
 No student of Mysticism, no matter how poor, 
 can afford to be without a copy of this book. It 
 appeals to Masons as it contains things not gener- 
 ally known. At the same time, those who are not 
 now Masons but who may some time wish to be, 
 should have the book. It appeals to women espec- 
 ially as it contains a message for them. 
 
 It is a book of 300 pages, printed on the best 
 of paper and bound in cloth with Title and side 
 symbol in gold, price $3.00 to those who Order at 
 once. In leather with Title and side symbol in 
 gold at $4.00. 
 
 Order from 
 
 The Philosophical Publishing Co., 
 
 ALLENTOWN, PA. 
 
 Tnis book contains no ndvoitining. matter. 
 
VACCINATION 
 
 BROUGHT HOME TO YOU — by Dr. R. S. Cly mer. 
 
 Are you interested in the the well being of yourself or your 
 family? If you are you want to know the facts about this 
 important question, — vaccination. 
 
 "Vaccination Brought Home to you" contains just the 
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 that readeth may understand. 
 
 .. It tells what vaccine is and how it is procured from the 
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 [poison]; gives facts and figures showing the results of vacci- 
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 interesting facts all in a nice little booklet of about a hundred 
 pages. i! ..:.. . , -- v . . 
 
 Illustrations; showing specimen cases of "successful" vac- 
 cination, and the processes of securing 'vaccine Virus. A 
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 nation." 
 
 This book is not published as a money making scheme 
 but for the enlightenment of the people. ,: '"* 
 
 . • Send for a copy .today. It may be> the means of saying, 
 your life or that of a dear friend. Sepd for several .copies and 
 sell or distribute them among your friends, thus helping along 
 the good work. ' " • "* ' ' 
 
 Bound in cloth; single copy .'; .>.,'. 50 cents. 
 
 Bound in papery ( sijpgle, .copy*. : ......... 4 . ..... .25 cents. 
 
 Write for special rates oh quantities and send orders to 
 
 >.:% TtoPHiLi^OMlGAL PUBLISHING CO.. 
 

 
 
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