CTOK SB :L LOWES 700 VICTORY CROWNED THERE IS ONE GREAT SOCIETY \ ALONE ON EARTH THE NOBLE LIVING AND THE ' VICTORY CROWNED BY PAGE FELLOWES Author of "A Key To Happiness" With an Introdu&on by HORATIO W. DRESSER ** Whosoever .... belie veth in Me shall never die." Copyright, 1916 By PAUL ELDER AND COMPANY SAN FRANCISCO Appreciation is rendered to the Messrs. Fleming H. Rcvcll Company for the Dr. Patterson Smith, Dr. Charles Cuthbert Hall and Hugh Black selections; to Charles Scribner's Sons for the Robert Louis Stevenson poem "Requiem"; to Gay and Hancock, Ltd., for the Lilian Whiting selections in "Lilies of the Eternal Peace;" to Dodd Mead and Company for the Hamilton Wright Mabie selection; to John Lane Company for the Stephen Phillips selection from "The New Inferno"; to George H. Ellis Com- pany for the James Freeman Clarke selections; to The New York American for the Rev. R. J. Camp- bell selection; to the John Murphy Company for the James Cardinal Gibbons selections; to Horatio W. Dresser, Dr. Frank Crane, Hutchins Hapgood, Carolyn Frevert, EUa Wheeler Wilcox, Francis L. Garside, and other authors for like courtesy. PAGE FELLOWES. To my father and my br other > whose noble deeds inspire my undying gratitude and devotion. A Few Remarks I AM NOT a Spiritualist and I do not desire supernatural appearances. The life of the spirit may be lived now and here under the conditions appointed for it. The life of the spirit beyond death has its own conditions which we do not know in full. That is the teaching of the Bible and it is the wise and normal instinct to live the spiritual life now according to the law that has been laid down for it. To the degree we demonstrate the understanding of this spiritual Jaw, do we become conscious of the natural divine, ever present revela- tions of eternity . My object in presenting this book to the public is the hope that any doubting one may be convinced that the life beyond is real. Life is the same yes- terday, today and forever. This truth can be realized here and now and the individual consciousness of our at-one-ment with this life (God) establishes our individuality. If perchance any of my brothers and sisters are helped on their journey by a single selection from its contents , / shall consider myself amply rewarded for the love and labor expended upon the book. PAGE FELLOWES. VII Each day is a manifestation of the Divine. PAGE FELLQWES. Introduction ^ UR AGE is witnessing a great revival of interest in the future I life. The increasing number \ of books on the subject gives ( evidence of this, also the con- stant demand for such books * in our public libraries. ^ Many people are breaking j away from traditional teach- ings concerning immortality and venturing to think for themselves. Others place significant emphasis on individual experi- ence as the clue to right thought on the subject. We are perhaps in danger of intellectual con- fusion, amidst the varied theories now under consideration. Whoso would trust himself to take inner or psychical experience as his guide, must have a standard by which to test all "intima- tions of immortality," and all interpretations of psychical experiences as supposed proofs of the future life. What is needed in the first place is a more intelligible way of thinking about the present mode of existence. If we cherish the idea that conscious- ness is a product of the brain, the soul a filmy appearance sometimes visible at death, we are likely to make little headway. Sound thinking starts with the conviction that the soul is the primary reality, while the brain is the instrument of expres- sion of consciousness, not the source of conscious- [IX] Introduction ness. Starting thus, we may think from within outward, viewing the fleshly round of experiences as means of expression and development. From this point of view, the spiritual world is a reality here and now, not a far-off realm to be en- tered when we cross life's supposed "strait" to be plunged into eternity. The soul already lives in eternity, in the spiritual world; while death is only the dropping of bonds and relations uniting us with the external world. Since the spiritual world is thus near, our friends who have "crossed the border" once so dreaded \ are near too. Spirits and angels are not different in kind from ourselves, but are human beings who once tenanted the flesh. Some of these are more highly developed than we, because of their freer life, and from them we may expect guidance and assistance according to need, receptivity, and affinity. Those friends with whom we are in closest affinity in this life are the souls we are most likely to recognize in the future. Our affections and affinities already unite us with spirits and angels with whom we are akin. Our real inmost char- acter, love, wisdom, pertains to the soul, hence will survive the transition, and form the basis for our fuller, freer life. From this point of view, life is constant progress through the fleshly round and beyond, without limit, in so far as we arrive at spiritual knowledge, and take our spiritual opportunities. We have already begun to "inherit" immortality if we have begun to know ourselves as souls, to serve our fel- [x] Introduction lawmen as souls. To the extent that we thus arrive at spiritual self -knowledge the experience known as death should be an easy and natural transition , no longer to be feared, because we know its law. We may then drop the idea of death altogether and dwell in ' the great transfiguring thought of life, the fullness of life for which we exist. This thought of the continuous life, ever-present, ever-developing, should lift our thought above the level of material evidences and alleged proofs or manifestations. The sure possession of intelli- gible thought about immortality is far higher in value than supposed proof. If already in the current whose immortal tide flows on without a break, that current is the proof, the best we could ask for. All attempts to demonstrate immortality by means of an argument are forever secondary. Psychical experiences may be evidence in point, but they are not proofs. All depends on our power to see their meaning, to hold to our conviction that the spiritual world is here now. From the vantage- point of this conviction we may test both our ex- periences and our thoughts. Clear in our own thought^ we may extend the same ideas to others. Living in the conviction that the spiritual world is a near-by reality, we may touch others with life and conviction by our faith. A word from inner experience will thus convey to another the starting- point of a new consciousness. That consciousness will grow in so far as each person holds fast to the thought of the soul as the starting-point, the [XI | Introduction soul as already a denizen of the eternal world, one with all who are inwardly akin. Finally, the present life is the rightful starting- point because in it we learn that action leads to reaction, virtue is its own reward. If already suffer- ing consequences, or reaping rewards, we may know that the future life will be like the present in these respects. Our next existence will undoubt- edly begin where this one ceases, with our acquired character as its basis. Whatever degree of heavenly happiness, power, or wisdom, we may have ac- quired will still be ours as the foundation of a new beginning. Heaven cannot be taken away from us, so far as already earned. Hell cannot be thrust upon us, so far as we have arrived at years of discretion. Nor can we be deprived of inner affinities and associations. In all these respects we have a basis of sure trust, and may face the future with calmness. Such a faith should find us increasing in inner peace as the years pass, more fully enjoying the benefits of our natural existence, more fit to serve, and also more ready for whatever new test of faith the future may have in store. HORATIO W. DRESSER. :xn] VICTORY CROWNED VICTORY CROWNED HE PERMANENT thing in everything is the un seen part of it. The sound of the word dies upon the passing wind and the thought it carries lives! The out- ward form of music is momentary and the beauti- ful conception remains. The canvas fades and the stone crumbles, but the vision in the soul of the artist dies not. The world of sense and sight and sound is only appearance, but the thought of it is fact. The material changes ever, but the spiritual, the inspirational, the ideal, the imagi- nation lives in endless life. HUGH BLACK. VICTORY CROWNED REQUIEM NDER the wide and starry sky, Dig the grave and let me die Glad did I live and gladly die And I lay me down with a will. This be the verse you grave for me Here he lies where he longed to be, Home is the sailor, home from the sea. And the hunter home from the hill. ROBERT Louis STEVENSON. VICTORY CROWNED OUR other garments, these bodies serve a temporary purpose; when that is accomplished they are to be laid aside, possibly with no more sense of loss than we have at parting with our worn out clothing, and the soul will return to Him who gave it. ALFRED GATTY. 151 VICTORY CROWNED HE Catholic Doctrine of the Communion f Saints robs death of its terrors; while the reformers of the sixteenth century, in denying the Communion of Saints, not only afflicted a deadly wound on the Creed, but also severed the tenderest cords of the human heart. O, far be from us the dreary thought that death cuts off our friends entirely from us. Far be from us the heartless creed which declares a perpetual divorce between us and the just in Heaven. JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS. [6] CROWNED I MUST confess, as the experience of my own soul, that the expectation of lov- ing my friends in heaven principally kindles my love to them while on earth. If I thought I should never know, and consequently never love, them after this life, I should number them with the temporal things, and love them as such; but I now delightfully converse with my pious friends in the firm per- suasion that I shall converse with them forever; and I take comfort in those that are dead or absent, believing that I shall shortly meet them in heaven and love them with a heavenly love. RICHARD BAXTER. 1-7.1 VICTORY CROWNED THE BLESSINGS OF BEREAVEMENT ^ ^ T MAY seem almost like cruelty to say it, but there are compensating bless- ings in the loss of our friends. It **~ "x. seems like an unmitigated loss when they go from us, but a little reflection and some faith and philosophy will show another side to the question. Nothing compensated for their going, but we can, if we will, see some solace, some comfort in our grieving. While they are in the flesh, in this plane of life in which we live, we have so many chances for misunderstandings, so many things to drive us apart. But when they go they are our per- ennial friends, nothing can ever come between us, nothing can drive us apart. And how highly idealized they are. The years do not assail their beauty, nor does time ravage their at- tractiveness to us. Rather with the years, they grow in grace and charm to our remembering hearts. Whose saints so dear, so perfect, as those we cherish and long to know again ? Whose loves so choice and unapproachable as ours? And then it is true too, that we find some strange alchemy at work within our inner life. The loss would seem to tend to harden us and make us bitter, and sometimes it does, but for most part, the souls that have suffered most keenly come at last to their own. The hardness, the bitterness against life and people, the cyni- cism and the hatreds are done away; our souls [8] VICTORY CROWNED are somehow transmogrified, purified, sweetened. Prosperity, health, a constant union with one's friends, never gave that sweet, elusive perfume to character that comes so often from a great loss that cuts to the center of one's life. And death, that grim visitant, whom we fight to the last ditch, has his treasures that he leaves to us, after all. He leaves us memories at least which are as dear as anything that we can imagine. He takes a little child, and forever after there is the sweet innocence that is unsullied with the world, has never been coarsened by the experience which worked such havoc with the most of us. Or the summons comes to one in the very maturity of his powers. That is a shock to us and reminds us of the utter uncer- tainty of our tenure of life. But death gives us this comfort even here, that the loved one has never shown before our eyes the loss of one smallest part of his glorious vitality, and decay has never set in to show how, after all, our be- loved was but a part of a fading world. Or even if the call awaits the day when age has come and the heavy finger of time has carved its none too attractive lines upon our friends' faces, and mental breakdown has come and the soul is shrouded and unable to commune with us, even then we have a subtle compensation when the great change had been wrought. Who has not seen upon a face, where for months we have seen nothing but weakness and senility, a wondrous and serene dignity and beauty, as if the soul, [9] VICTORY CROWNED having left the earthly form, has seen the hea- venly vision and been satisfied ? Once the rooms and halls of our earthly habitations gave them welcome. Now we have to visit with them in the rooms and halls of memory. It is not so satisfying to our ordinary sense, but it is a ques- tion if we do not come nearer to them in memory, than often times we did in the sense-world. Certain it is that there we have them all our own. We can talk with them, can cherish them, have them for our very own and no one can take them away from us. And heaven dips a little nearer to us because they are there and awaiting our approach to them. Excursions we make now up into the heavenly courts, where, when they were with us, we never thought on the great problems of immortality, or thinking, banished the idea as utterly unworthy a thinking man who ought to be better occupied with more provable things. But now we do not need the proof. They exist, of that we are sure, for such as they could never die and we build our heaven afresh and fill it full of every desirable dream of bliss that they may have enough and to spare for us when we shall arrive. And so we come to think that maybe the breaking of our hearts will be like the breaking of the precious vase of Spikenard. The heart is broken, truly, but there are wonderful compensa- tions about it, wonderful results that we must dwell upon while we are still here in this lower region and not in the continuing city which is to [10] VICTORY CROWNED come. There are to be exquisite perfumes that are to be spread abroad from our hearts. There are to be anointings for mystical purposes, which we do not half appreciate as yet. God has strange ways of dealing with us. He knows our loves and needs. He does not willingly afflict nor grieve. He has seen fit to break, for a reason, our intimate associations. Be sure that He will assuage our bitter grief if we will allow Him to have His way. And be sure that comfort is not so far from us as we foolishly imagine. Our Father cannot utterly forget us and our need. Perhaps you have heard of the method strange, Of violin makers in distant lands, Who, by breaking and mending with skillful hands, Make instruments having a wider range Than was ever possible for them, so long As they were new, unshattered and strong. Have you ever thought when the heart was sad, When the days seem dark and the nights un- ending, .That the broken heart, by the Father 's mending, Was made through sorrow a helper glad. Whose service should lighten more and more The weary one's burdens as never before? Then take this simple lesson to heart, When sorrows crowd, and you cannot sing: To the truth of the Father's goodness cling; Believe that the sorrow is only a part Of the wondrous plan that gives through pain The power to sing a more glad refrain. - A. W. R. VICTORY CROWNED we know each other in the next world? Yes, far better than we know each other here. The progress of man implies a more intimate knowledge oj his fellow-man. Animals seem to know each other chiefly in their external relations. Man, in his lower state, does not enter very deeply into the souls of those nearest to him. As he ascends, he knows them better. He understands more of their character, hopes, purposes, needs, qualities, defects, and so is able to help them much more effectually. But, still, how little we know of each other, how difficult is communication, how hard to tell what is within us! How we misun- derstand each other! How we misinterpret each other's motives! How seldom comes an hour of real intercourse, when soul speaks to soul! But, in the higher world, I believe we shall enter easily and naturally into the most intimate communion, shall know as we are known. There all dis- guises and concealments, all diffidence and dis- trust, shall fall away from the soul; and we shall have the joy, perhaps the highest joy we have known on earth, of coming into the intimate union of those we love. The heart-rending misunder- standings of this life will cease. The cruelties born of ignorance will be no more. The harsh, cold, bitter judgments we pass on each other will be left behind. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. [12] VICTORY CROWNED HE recognition must be something spiritual and not depending on visible shape. Even here on earth much of our recognition is spiritual. Soul recognizes soul. We recognize, in some degree, good and evil character of souls even through the coarse covering of the body. We instinctively, as we say, trust or distrust people on first ap- pearance. Call it instinct, insight, intuition, sympathy, what you please, it is the spiritual vision soul recognizing soul. If that spiritual vision, apart from bodily shape, plays so great a part in recog nition here, may it not be all-sufficient there? J. PATTERSON SMITH. VICTORY CROWNED PROSPICE HEAR death? to feel the fog in my throat, The mist in my face? When the snows begin, and the blasts denote I am nearing the place, The power of the night, the press of the storm, The post of the foe; Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible form, Yet the strong man must go; For the journey is done and the summit attained, And the barriers fall, Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be gained, The reward of it all. I was ever a fighter, so one fight more, The best and the last! I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, and forebore, And bade me creep past, No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like my peers, The heroes of old, Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's arrears Of pain, darkness and cold. For sudden the worst turns the best to the brave, The black minute's at end, And the elements' rage, the fiend voices that rave, Shall dwindle, shall blend. Shall change, shall become first a peace out of pain, VICTORY CROWNED Then a light, then thy breast, O thou soul of mv soul! I shall clasp thee again, And with God be the rest! ROBERT BROWNING. I 'Si VICTORY CROWNED <^"-^EATH is but the opening of a door through which the man passes into the tl W next room; or rather it is the waving ^L-S of a curtain, behind which one enters, but which is always waving and never a fixed barrier." The continuity of life renders the change perfectly natural. There is nothing startling in the new experience. It is the natural sequence and outgrowth of childhood, and ma- turity of youth. It is not the supernatural, the phenomenal, but the natural, recognisable life, only more highly developed in spirituality. LILIAN WHITING. (Lilies of Eternal Peact.) DEATH is the most beautiful adventure of life. DANIEL FROHMAN. (His last words on thi "Lusitania* ', May 7, /p/5.) 16 VICTORY CROWNED ow mysterious and how absolute is the correspondence of personalities one with another! Out of the indistin- guishable throngs of human lives emerge one and another who are to us as the special mes- sengers of God, to have come in contact with whom is to have received influences that must continue to affect us while our being lasts. This is the ministration of personality, at once the most real and the most spiritual of facts; the most actual and the most elusive. How won- derful it is to reflect upon the influence of one radiant personality, in a home, in a community, in the world! Year after year it abides among us, coming to us day after day, or returning to us after long intervals in its own beautiful unique- ness; a bright fact in our universe, a continuous force affecting our consciousness of being, a living epistle unfolding the beauty of God. We try to interpret this miracle of personality; we cannot. We ask it to give account of its secret power: its only answer is: "It is I myself." It is this of which our Christian faith affirms immortal con- tinuance. It is this that shall shine as the stars forever and ever. The catastrophe of death has come between us and this personality for a sea- son, suspending its power to have relations with us through the medium of the physical universe in which we still live and act; but over the essen- tial self of personality, over that unique blending VICTORY CROWNED of attributes through which God expressed His thought in forming this beautiful personal essence, death hath no more dominion. In the persistence of an indissoluble life it lives itself forever. CHARLES CUTHBERT HALL. 18 VICTORY CROWNED IN THE course of every friendship of some duration, there comes to us a mys- terious moment when we seem to per- ceive the exact relationship of our friend to the unknown that surrounds him when we discover the attitude destiny has assumed towards him. And it is from this moment that he truly belongs to me. MAURICE MAETERLINCK. IMMORTALITY is the glorious discovery of Chris* tianity. WM. ELLERY CHANGING. .191! VICTORY CROWNED HE gracious qualities of departed friends, their generous impulses, kindly sym- pathies, and loyal love, have not been stifled, nor even touched by death. All that makes man lovable and good belongs to Mind, over which the grave has no power. Whatever was true and good is so forever. Beauty and joy, constancy, tenderness and love were never laid away in the tomb, nor deprived of their perennial expression. These are emana- tions of the divine nature, and are not influenced by the supposed law of mortality. Mortals may find it hard to disbelieve that their friends have died, with all the phenomena of that belief before them; but Christians must sometime learn the power of Truth over this as well as over other forms of error. No sweeter assurance of man's continuous being has ever fallen upon human ears than that conveyed in our Lord's words to Mary "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die." A. W. R. [20] VICTORY CROWNED E NEED not wait for the eternity to come, before we can be sure that our dear ones that have passed into the other world know us still and watch us still. * * * \Ve are necessarily using figurative language when we describe their near- ness to us in terms borrowed from earthly asso- ciations; we have no powers to describe the man- ner of the connection of this world and its deni- zens with the other world and those who are in it. * * * It cheers us to remember that the unseen world, if in a way we cannot yet define, is very close to us. * * * They are not they could not wish to be independent of us. * * * They have not left us; we are really not alone; and we enrich all our life by already making our own in practical daily duty the un- seen but not unfelt companionship of the "great cloud of witnesses." CANON FLEMING. VICTORY CROWNED THE VALUE OF PRAYING FOR THE IDEAL E IT remembered, this, after all, is the faith of the majority of Christendom, the faith that the communion of the saints still continues after the shock of death. It has antiquity on its side, and, though greatly abused in pre-Rcformation days, satisfies such a natural instinct and is such a solace to the bereaved, that it is a pity Protes- tants everywhere should not be encouraged to return to it forthwith. If, as it seems likely enough, the disembodied soul feels somewhat bewildered at first in its new environment, as we are told many do; if it has entered that new sphere through the din and excitement of the battle, or fresh from the pain and weakness and delirium of days and weeks in hospital; if it longs for the old faces and the old fellowship of the earthly home, and feels, as we may be sure it cannot but feel, the impact of the grief and sorrow of those who mourn its loss surely the best thing one could do on this side, both for that soul and for ourselves, would be to send through nothing but earnest prayers that it may rest in peace. I say "It," but I ought to say "He" or "She" as the case may be. Our dead are not gone far; they have only begun on the other side where they left off here. If they needed us before they need us now, and we need them. [22] VICTORY CROWNED The body as the medium of communication is struck away, but that is all. Thought, feeling, memory, goodwill, are all what they were be- fore perhaps even stronger, for the clog of the flesh is gone and the spiritual can go straighter to its mark. If we can help one another by prayer while we are still on the physical plane, there is no reason, either in logic or the nature of things, why we should not continue to do so even more effectually when some of us have done with the body and passed out of sight. REV. R. J. CAMPBELL. [23 VICTORY CROWNED a good man goes, some man who seems necessary and needed by all persons and for all things; some man whose very presence near us gives us confidence, in whose existence in our city we have a guaranty of safety, a man tried in every way, and not found wanting, we seem to lose more than in any other way. The sense of loss in the community is then very great When, for example, John Andrew died, one of our city journals said that Massachusetts owed to him that she was able to duplicate her Revolu- tionary record, and for the second time to lead the nation in the war for freedom. We saw then how much one man could do. With most other men in the chair of State, we should have waited, as the other States waited, not being quite ready; and the great opportunity would have gone by. But here was a man who possessed those rare and seldom united faculties; of the mind able to see what was coming, the heart which could realize the immense importance of the right step, and the courage to take all the responsibility of doing what was needed. When you have those three qualities combined, in- tellectual sagacity, moral sense, and determined will, you have the man who can turn defeat into victory. And when God gives us such a man, He gives him forever. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. VICTORY CROWNED -j^-; C5 HE righteous live for evermore; their reward also is with the Lord, and the care of them is with the most High. "Therefore shall they receive a glorious kingdom, and a beautiful crown from the Lord's hand; for with His right hand shall He cover them, and with His arm shall He protect them." Wis. V; 15, 16. I SALUTE thee immortal, Great minds never die. Becoming invisible in one Form they become Resplendent in another. VICTOR HUGO. VICTORY CROWNED IMMORTALITY fo WHEN the old delight is born anew, And God reanimates the early bliss, Seems it not all as one first trembling kiss Ere soul knew soul with whom she had to dor O nights how desolate, O days, how few, O death in life, if life be this, be this! O weigh'd alone as one shall win or miss The faint eternity which shines therethro'! Lo, all that age is as a speck of sand, Lost on the long beach where the tides are free, And no man metes it in his hollow hand, Nor cares to ponder it, how small it be; At ebb it lies forgotten on the land, And at full tide forgotten in the sea. FREDERICK W. H. MYERS. (26 VICTORY CROWNED RESIGNATION HERE is no flock, however watched and tended, But one dead lamb is there; There is no household, howsoe'er de- fended, But has one vacant chair. The air is full of farewells to the dying And mournings for the dead; The heart of Rachel, for her children crying, Will not be comforted! Let us be patient! These severe afflictions Not from the ground arise, But oftentimes celestial benedictions Assume the dark disguise. We see but vainly through the mists and vapors; Amid these earthly damps What seem to us but sad, funereal tapers May be heaven's distant lamps. There is no Death! What seems so is transition; This life of mortal breath Is but a suburb of the life elysian Whose portals we call Death. She is not dead, the child of our affection, But gone unto that school Where she no longer needs our poor protection, And Christ Himself doth rule. VICTORY CROWNED In that great cloister's stillness and seclusion By guardian angels led, Safe from temptation, safe from sin's pollution, She lives, whom we call dead. Day after day we think what she is doing In those bright realms of air, Year after year, her tender steps pursuing, Behold her grown more fair. Thus do we walk with her, and keep unbroken The bond which nature gives, Thinking that our remembrance, though un- spoken, May reach her where she lives. Not as a child shall we again behold her, For when with raptures wild In our embraces we again enfold her She will not be a child; But a fair maiden in her Father's mansion, Clothed in celestial grace; And beautiful, with all the soul's expansion, Shall we behold her face. And though at times impetuous with emotion, And anguish long suppressed, The swelling heart heaves, moaning like the ocean That cannot be at rest, [28] VICTORY CROWNED We will be patient, and assuage the feeling We may not wholly stay; By silence sanctifying, not concealing, The grief that must have way. HENRY WADS WORTH LONGFELLOW. 129] VICTORY CROWNED HE CHANGE we call death is, really what? ^ an we define or describe this supreme occurrence? "Death is not the end of life; it is one event in life," said the Rt. Rev. Dr. Phillips Brooks, Bishop of Massa- chusetts; it is simply one of the events in the evolutionary progress of the soul. The spiritual man has been released from the physical body, which was the instrument, the mechanism, that related him to the physical universe. He has emerged from it as one lays off his clothing. LILIAN WHITING. (Lilies oj Eternal Peace.) [30] VICTORY CROWNED y GREAT and sublime virtues are meant those which are called into action on great and trying occasions, which de- mand the sacrifice of the dearest in- terests and prospects of human life, and some- times of life itself; the virtues, in a word, which, by their rarity and splendour, draw admiration, and have rendered illustrious the character of patriots, martyrs, and confessors. It requires but little reflection to perceive that whatever veils a future world, and contracts the limits of existence within the present life, must tend in a proportionable degree, to diminish the grandeur and narrow the sphere of human agency. ROBERT HALL. VICTORY CROWNED *W -^EAVEN will not be pure stagnation, not w^^V idleness, not any more luxurious m dreaming over the spiritual repose that ^ -^V has been safely and forever won; but active, tireless, earnest work; fresh, live enthu- siasm for the high labours which eternity will offer. These vivid inspirations will play through our deep repose, and make it more mighty in the service of God than any feverish and unsatisfied toil of earth has ever been. The sea of glass will be mingled with fire. PHILLIPS BROOKS. [32] VICTORY CROWNED OULD it be like God to create such beautiful unselfish loves, most like the love of heaven of any type we know just for our three-score years and ten? Would it be like Him to let two souls grow together here, so that the separation of the day is pain, and then wrench them apart for eternity? What is meant by such expression as "risen to- .gether, sitting together in heavenly places"? If they mean anything, they mean recognition, friendship, enjoyment. Our friends are not dead, nor asleep; they go on living; they are near us always, and God has said, we should "know each other there." ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS. [33] H VICTORY CROWNED IMMORTALITY 'OILED by our fellow-men, depressed, out- worn, We leave the brutal world to take its way, And, Patience! in another life, we say, The world shall be thrust down, and we upborne, And will not then the immortal armies scorn The world's poor, routed leavings? or will they Who failed under the heat of this life's day Support the fervors of the heavenly morn? No, no! the energy of life may be Kept on after the grave, but not begun And he who flagged not in the earthly life, From strength to strength advancing only he, His soul well knit, and all kin battles won, Mounts, and that hardly, to Eternal Life. MATTHEW ARNOLD. VICTORY CROWNED HE FACE which, duly as the sun, Rose up for me with life begun, To mark all bright hours of the day With hourly love, is dimmed away, And yet my days go on, go on. The heart which, like a staff, was one For mine to lean and rest upon, The strongest on the longest day With steadfast love, is caught away, And yet my days go on, go on. The past rolls forward on the sun And makes all night. O dreams begun, Not to be ended! Ended bliss. And life that will not end in this! My days go on, my days go on. By anguish which made pale the sun, I hear Him charge His saints that none Among His creatures anywhere Blaspheme against Him with despair However darkly days go on. [35 VICTORY CROWNED For us, whatever's undergone, Thou knowest, wiliest what is done, Grief may be joy understood; Only the Good discerns the good. I trust Thee while my days go on. Whatever 's lost, it first was won; He will not struggle nor impugn, Perhaps the cup was broken here, That Heaven's new wine might show more clear, I praise Thee while my days go on. I praise Thee while my days go on ; I love Thee while my days go on: Through dark and dearth, through fire and frost, With emptied arms and treasure lost, I thank Thee while my days go on. And having in Thy life-depth thrown Being and suffering (which are one) As a child drops his pebble small Down some deep well, and hears it fall Smiling so I. THY DAYS GO ON. ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. (Df ProfunJis.) [36] VICTORY CROWNED HY SHOULD you have a morbid dread of ^ eath > Soldiers f tlle Cross? Let the infidel fear death, who hopes in his heart that there is no God. Let the obdurate sinner fear death, who offends the Majesty of Heaven by his sins. But why should you dread death? Has He not lifted up the veil and given you an insight into that boundless realm beyond the grave? Why should you fear to pass through the gate which leads to the regions of bliss eternal? JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS. GOD'S FINGER touched him, and he slept. TENNYSON. DEATH is only a bend in the road of life. REV. R. J. CAMPBELL. [371 VICTORY CROWNED ASSURANCES I NEED no assurances I am a man who is preoccupied, of his own soul; I do not doubt that from under the feet, and beside the hands and face I am cognizant of, are now looking faces I am not cognizant of calm and actual faces; I do not doubt but that the majesty and beauty of the world are latent in any iota of the world; I do not doubt I am limitless, and that the uni- verses are limitless in vain I try to think how limitless; I do not doubt that the orbs, and the systems of orbs, play their swift sports through the air on purpose and that I'shall one day be eligible to do as much as they, and more than they; I do not doubt that the temporary affairs keep on and on, millions of years. I do not doubt interiors have their interiors, and exteriors have their exteriors, and that the eyesight has another eyesight, and the hearing another hearing, and the voice another voice; I do not doubt that the passionately wept deaths of young men are provided for and that the deaths of young women, and the deaths of little children are provided for; (Did you think Life was so well provided for and Death, the purport of all life, is not so well provided for?) [38] VICTORY CROWNED I do not doubt that wrecks at sea, no matter what the horrors of them no matter whose wife, child, husband, father, lover, has gone down, are provided for, to the minutest points: I do not doubt that whatever can possibly hap- pen, anywhere, at any time, is provided for, in the inherence of things: I do not think Life provides for all, and for Time and Space but I believe Heavenly Death provides for all. WALT WHITMAN. [39] VICTORY CROWNED SONG OF SPIRITS OVER THE WATERS HE soul of man Is like the water; From heaven it cometh, To heaven it mounteth, And again under The earth it resisteth Ever changing. Streams from the lofty Rocky wall The flashing crystal, Then dusts it silvery With waves of vapor, The slippery cliff, And received lightly, It boils up veiling, And showers back softly To the depths beneath. In gentle channel It steals the meadowy valley along, And in the unruffled lake All stars delighted Behold their faces. The soul of man Is like the water From heaven it cometh, To heaven returneth, To heaven it mounteth. GOETHE. VICTORY CROWNED HIKEWISE with love. Few men and women love as you and I would like to have them, with that deep interior bond that ever draws two souls more closely together. When it is the soul's love, not the fleshy affection, may we not reasonably ex- pect that this bond will draw the two into deeper union even when one has left the flesh and must await the other during many a year? Surely this is a reasonable belief. It is allowable, also, to hold that even during a visible separation lasting ten, fifteen, even twenty or thirty years, the two will grow in unison, knowing each other better all the while, ready for quick recognition when the lingerer shall be free. And recogni- tion, let us remember, is not of the eye but of the heart, the soul. HORATIO W. DRESSER. VICTORY CROWNED HILST my mind shrinks more and more from the world, and feels in its inde- pendence less yearning to external ob- jects, the ideas of friendship return oftener, they busy me, and warm me more. Is it that we grow more tender as the moment of our great separation approaches? Or is it that they who are to live together in another state (for friendship exists but for the good) begin to feel more strongly that divine sympathy which is to be the great bond of their future society? BULWER LYTTON. L4l VICTORY CROWNED NOT because thou hast no touch ner Nor any sound of voice, or whispered word, Nor sudden sight by moonbeam, that at times She is not very near to thee, unseen. * * * Or earthward gazes, stung with pain of thee She deems that thou has better in thy soul Than still to rail on at the world's neglect Than still to coarsen what was once so fine. * * * Fear thou, then, and have care lest thou attract To be thy close companions and thy friends Those, whom, perchance, a passing lawless thought Has given the easy pass-word to thy mind. * * * Nor on the one side dread the fiery lake Nor on the other hope the sapphire heaven. But as we die, the same, not otherwise, The ever-ending journey we pursue. * * * That the discarding of the body of Earth Sends not to sudden pain, or sudden joy; But the loosed spirit the lone journey takes Perhaps for aeons to work out its fate. STEPHEN PHILLIPS. (The New Inferno.) [43! VICTORY CROWNED ow WISE and happy is he that now laboureth to be such an one in his life as he wisheth to be found at his death. A perfect contempt of the world, a fervent desire to go forward in virtue, the love of discipline, the toil of penance, the readiness of obedience, the denying of ourselves and the bearing of any adversity whatsoever for the love of Christ, will give us great confidence and we shall die happily. THOMAS A KEMPIS, DEATH borders upon our birth; and our cradle stands in our grave. BISHOP HALL. HE WHOM we thought dead is only gone before us. SENECA. (Consolatory on the death of his son.) 44) VICTORY CROWNED HOMES in heaven, like the homes on earth, will, no doubt, contain souls in different degrees of progress. As in our homes we have the aged, the in- fant, the child, the youth and those in mature life, so in the homes hereafter there will be united around a common centre and in one group, higher and lower souls, some old in spiritual wisdom and some childlike in their in- sight and infantile in their development. Har- mony always implies variety. Each celestial group will be a harmony of those in various de- grees of progress and attainment, the angelic teachers and the humbler souls longing to be taught. JAMES FREEMAN CLARKE. [45] VICTORY CROWNED indeed who go on before us may outgrow their relationships with peo- ple in the flesh and may not be recog- nized by any whom they know there. But these changing relationships are occurring all about us now. Most of our acquaintances are for a time only. Many ties of blood are external simply. A man's real relationships are with those who are near him in type, just as in a church one finds men and women of a certain sort of faith, constituting a spiritual group. Such groups need not be alone constituted of those in the flesh, or out of it, but may include all souls whether incarnate or disincarnate who think and live in the same general way. Very likely we all belong to such groups large or small. If so, we are likely to know and to be known by those who are quickened in the same degree. HORATIO W. DRESSER. [461 VICTORY CROWNED THE WAGES OF GOING ON HE conviction that there is life after death is not a product of reasoning. You cannot prove it nor disprove it. All you can do is to feel it or not to feel it. It is a thing to be perceived, to be apprehended, by a faculty in us that is greater than mind. It is to be grasped, as a Turner sunset is grasped; to be realized (i. e., felt to be real), as you realize the beauty of Keat's Endy- mion, the integrity of Washington, the manhood of Lincoln, the majesty of Jesus. The persuasion of immortality is a secretion of virtue. It is the invariable precipitation deposited in the mind of high moral principles. It is because humanity is good that it believes that it will be immortal. Whenever you find perversion, moral lesion, the reign of sensuality, there you find the strong suspicion that death ends all. Pessimism is the religion of the voluptuary. Death is the welcome finish of the beast life. But wherever you find any feeling like the fol- lowing, you find the belief in that same heart that life will, or ought to, go after the dissolving of the body, to-wit: Love, not sensual, but devoted; The pleasure of helping others; The joy of spiritual victory, where one de- [471 VICTORY CROWNED nies himself a lower gratification to get a higher. Kindness, sympathy, and all those emotions whereby we project our life into the life of others; Devotion to an idea, so that one finds satis- faction in giving one's labor or giving up one's life for some "cause," as for the state (patriotism), for humanity (religion), for a party, for anything we feel to be larger than self; Passion for righteousness; not doing right from duty or prudence or wisdom, but be- cause we are enamored of it, and it burns in our hearts; Wherever these things exist you discover the stubborn conviction that death is not the last word. The conviction of immortality is the natural phosphoresence of goodness. In other words, as the proverb has it, "Virtue is its own reward." That is to say, the effect of virtue is to make its possessor feel that he cannot die. It is the thing that most marks him off from the brute. A hog might learn to consul; it could not learn the difference between right and wrong. There's only one thing virtue asks; that is to go on living. Its instinctive demand is life. [48] VICTORY CROWNED The belief in the life beyond is the distillation of all human goodness. Tennyson expresses it: The wages of sin is death; if the wages of Virtue be dust, Would she have the heart to endure, for the life of the worm and the fly She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet seats of the just, To rest in golden grove, or to bask in a summer sky: Give her THE WAGES OF GOING ON, AND NOT TO DIE! DR. FRANK CRANE. VICTORY CROWNED IF THE soul be immortal, it requires to be cultivated with attention, not only for what we call the time of life, but for that which is to follow -I mean eternity and the least neglect in this point may be attended with endless conse- quences. If death were the final dissolution of being, the wicked would be great gainers by it, by being delivered at once from their bodies, their souls and their vices; but as the soul is immortal, it has no other means of being freed from its evils, nor any safety for it, but in be- coming very good and very wise; for it carried nothing with it but its bad or good deeds, its virtues and vices, which are commonly the con- sequences of the education it has received and the causes of eternal happiness or misery. SOCRATES. [50] VICTORV CROWNED ROWNING'S philosophy of life is that man is a spiritual being, his spiritual body clothed with a temporary physi- cal body, formed to correspond with the physical world during his temporary sojourn for disciplinary and experimental experience that he withdraws from his body to enter on the next plane of experience in this evolutionary progres- sion but that this change of condition constitutes no break in consciousness. "No work begun shall ever pause for death." LILIAN WHITING. VICTORY CROWNED DO NOT understand what Heaven really means. They think of it as something outside them which any- body could enjoy if he could only get there. They do not understand Heaven means joy of being in the union with God that the outward Heaven has no meaning till the inward Heaven has begun in ourselves. I need not point to you that our immortal spirits would find little happiness in golden pavement and gates of pearl. People on this earth, who have their fill of gold and pearl, do not always derive much happiness from them. They are mere external things they cannot give eternal joy because that comes from within, not from without. It depends not on what we have, but on what we are, not on the riches of our possession, but on the beauty of our lives. J. PATTERSON SMITH. S*. VICTORY CROWNED THAT WHICH IS TO BE Do HUMAN heart has ever here quite sung its song, or done its work, or even dreamed its dreams, to perfection. There has always been the falling short, the little failure which has spoiled the desired whole. How many talents have not been trained, how much of life has not been tasted? We have dreamed of leisure time that we may give some attention to our own souls, but have been so busy that we have never been able to polish the work or draw out the half-concealed ability that we felt that we possessed. And in the immediate hereafter in the Church Expectant, it may well be that we shall still be under limitations. Indeed we know that they are under limitations, for is it not said of them that "they without us, are not made perfect?" It might well be that even in Heaven we shall be pressing ever forward, that we shall be climb- ing stairs ever higher and higher and nearer the golden throne of God. For it would seem that we must progress, that we cannot attain at any time or under any conditions. What the spiritual condition is to be at last we do not clearly know, and can only judge from what we know of present conditions. But we should imagine that we shall have to have occupations, that we shall be enabled to grow, and if there be any chance to grow, then there must be progress. But it will ever be a freer and nobler progress [53] VICTORY CROWNED that we shall make. For here somehow the effort is always but partly successful. There is ever a "rift in the lute." We never utter just the right thought, never get quite the right har- mony in life. We have ever here something most inviting ahead of us, but what we have done does not suffice us. But there we must feel that the adjustments are as they should be, there must be joy in work, a freedom and fullness in our accomplishments, not a joy in mere living but a chance to live so largely that eternity may well be filled with what we do and can accom- plish. It will be enough if we can see of the travail of our souls and be satisfied. A. W. R. 54] VICTORY CROWNED "s CIVILIZATION has advanced, our ideas regarding death have changed rapidly. Only a few years ago materialistic in- fluences prevailed. At present the materialist is out of date and the majority be- lieve that the change called "death" is only the passing on to another world. There can be no reasonable doubt that the individual enters on the next stage of experience in this evolutionary progression and that this change of condition constitutes no break in consciousness. As we are to go on where we leave off here, it behooves us to live each day at our best, attaining the ideal as nearly as possible. Our attitude toward wearing mourning has progressed from barbaric customs to higher planes. The general effort at this day is to do one's best to go on the same as before our dear ones started on their last journey. True Chris- tians should show by their outward appearance that the one who has passed away has gone where life is peace and sunshine, instead of garb- ing themselves in sombre black and going about with long faces, and making the atmosphere on earth gruesome. The supreme authority in spiritual things has " brought immortality to light.' ' To confirm our faith in the unseen world, we turn to the writers who have caught glimpses of the light: Cicero, Seneca, Socrates, Robert and Elizabeth Brown- issi VICTORY CROWNED ing, Tennyson, Longfellow, Walt Whitman, Phillips Brooks, Matthew Arnold, Hugh Black, Maurice Maeterlinck, Sir Oliver Lodge, Lilian Whiting, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louise Chan- dler Moulton and many others. PAGE FELLOWES. (56! VICTORY CROWNED IF, THEN, you would "inherit eternal life/' begin to be worthy to be known by your friends in the future by living for the moral values and the spiritual essentials of life. By these I mean the actual attainments, the heart-interests, and inmost states which draw us into the conditions of real life development. We begin to know these when we judge righteously, and righteous judgment is not so difficult as might appear. At heart we would all like to pass for what we are, be frank, open, honest, making no claims, in gentle defer- ence and kindness preferring that our betters should take the lead; what makes us such diffi- cult and unpleasant creatures is what is external, conventional, worldly. Begin to pass for what you are and people will bestow confidence upon you, honestly speaking from the heart. Give the inmost center and your fellows will respond from that center. HORATIO W. DRESSER. [57] VICTORV CROWNED DEATH OUR FEELING about death passes through three well-marked stages. When we are children death is mean- ingless. We are told about it, we sec dead things, we know that people die, we know that all things in nature die, but we do not realize it in our feeling, in our imagination. It does not come home to us. Our joy as children is without the alloy of the thought of death. We live as if we would live forever. The quality of eternity is in our very thought and feeling. Death is a fact to our minds, but an unreality to our feeling. A few of us feel that way about death to the end. A few of us remain children all our lives. Such are the poets and the religious seers. To them death remains only a mode, an aspect of life- one of the ways in which our experience is ex, pressed and ordered. Most people, however, enter the second period in the feeling about death. This comes at no set time of life. The age of thirty-eight or forty sees its advent in many cases. This is the period when we realize death. We cannot shake it off. It haunts us. Perhaps a friend has died. Perhaps we are alone, all the others of a group have passed beyond. Perhaps our loss is even greater, more poignant. But it is likely that no one event is the cause of this realization of death. We have lived a certain time, seen and [58] VICTORY CROWNED felt a certain amount, and the result is the new feeling about death its reality. We are no longer children, and we see the grim truth. It is in this mood that the old play of " Everyman' ' was conceived. Or French's statue of the Angel of Death interrupting the sculptor at work. The mood of death is now in all our occupations, in our work, our pleasures. It affects everything. It gives everything greater meaning. It lends melancholy and a sad beauty. It adds to our fever for enjoyment, for work, for love, because we realize we have only a moment. This mood of the sadness of beauty, because it must pass away, is felt by many poets. Shelley, Heine, De Musset, at once occur to us. The melancholy pleasures of beauty. That is the note. With most of us this second period in the feeling about death lasts only a few months or a few years, and insensibly passes away into the third period. We are now adjusting ourselves to the thought of death. It has become so intimate a reality to our physical constitutions, which are changing, that death seems gradually more natural to us. Death becomes a part of ourselves. It becomes more friendly. In the second stage we were impatient with the thought of interruption. Now, in the third stage, we see that in our allotted span we can accomplish all important things we can love, we can do the best work we are capable of, we can transmit the species. There is time enough. Now we have it. [59] VICTORY CROWNED Therefore, we are calmer, more cheerful. We can enjoy as much as ever, but more quietly. It now lacks the melancholy of the second period. Death gradually loses the aspect of the intruder, and as in the first period, the period of child- hood, it begins to assume an unreality from that of the child's feeling. The child does not realize death. He is there- fore gay. We in the third period, are gay, too, because we have passed through the realization of death and have accepted it as a part of life, an aspect, a mode of all nature. We no longer resist and cry out our rebellion. Death is be- coming a part of us, and we are becoming a part of it. There is a genial intimacy about it. Now we neither seek nor avoid death. We love life calmly and greatly, with a quiet acceptance of the background of the picture, which is death. \Ve see that without death life would lack its final charm, its final beauty. In the third period we accept, and are glad, but not eager. HUTCHINS HAPGOOD. [60] VICTORY CROWNED HE LIGHTS begin to tremble from the rocks ; The long day wanes; the slow moon climbs; the deep Moans 'round with many voices. Come my friends, Tis not too late to seek a newer world. Push off, and sitting well in order smite The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths Of all the western stars until I die. It may be that the gulfs will wash us down: It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles. ALFRED, X.ORD TENNYSON. [61] e> VICTORY CROWNED HERE COMES to me, from one in whom I believe, a story of clear seeing a vision of a wonderful city, on another plane, outside of the earth realm. A city with beautiful streets and fine archi- tecture and fair statuary and alive with action, peopled with beings like, and yet unlike, the denizens of the earth. The friend who saw these things asks nothing of me, not even belief; he is one who has studied the psychic questions of the day for many years from a purely critical and scientific standpoint; and he goes about his daily avocations like any other practical and sensible human being, and is not seeking for money or glory or a following of devotees. He says little, indeed, to anyone of what he has been enabled to learn of matters called supernormal or spiritual. And only by an accident of similar tastes and interests and aspirations the information of his latest and most interesting experience came to me. Hundreds of my good friends will smile at my credulity for believing this man's vision to be more than the result of a disordered brain or excited imagination. Hundreds of the friends of Cyrus Field pitied those few deluded people who believed in his vision of an ocean cable. [62] VICTORY CROWNED Hundreds of the friends of Morse and Franklin and Marconi and Edison have been " sorry* ' for the poor victims of "hallucinations," yet all these friends have lived to acknowledge their own mistakes of judgment. And so why may not all my doubting friends, if they live long enough, be forced to acknowledge here on earth their own lack of judgment in de- claring the reports of the "advance guards" along the spiritual picket line to be delusions? It is a curious phase of the mortal mind which causes it to be so vehemently opposed to beliefs which are of the utmost importance to human happiness and human development. There is no geographical fact no possible dis- covery of any other continent on earth of such vast import to humanity as the proof of realms beyond, or outside of, this earth. Should the discovery of a wonderful and fertile continent at the North Pole be made, it could only interest us for a limited period of time; one hundred years from now no one would remain to enjoy its products or be entertained by its sights. But the absolute knowledge and convincing proof that other continents existed beyond the earth, and the ability to see them with spiritual vision whenever we so desired, would render time im- potent and take the sting indeed from death. Personally, I do not imagine my friend saw VICTORY CROWNED "heaven," for I do not believe in any one locality in the further lands which bear that name. But I believe "In my Father 's house are many mansions," and in my Father's universe are many continents and cities. And I think my friend saw one of the many. I have no doubt it was a spiritual city, inhabited by spiritual beings, and that innumerable others exist in space cities beautiful and unbeautiful, on higher and lower planes, according to the spiritual workmanship of the inhabitants. I believe you and I today, and every hour of the day, are helping to build one of those cities; and just as we build, so shall our structure be when we leave this particular chemical formation in which our spirits now dwell and pass on to new realms. And when we reach that new region, we shall find for neighbors those who have thought similar thoughts, held similar ambitions and committed similar actions while on this sphere. The scientific world has decided that "Thought is Energy." This energy will select our place of habitation in the life beyond, and therefore, it behooves both you and me to direct our energy to good and beautiful purposes if we wish a desirable location in one of the many "cities not built by hands," but by thoughts. There is something wonderfully stimulating to the human mind in the very vaguest dream of such a city. VICTORY CROWNED It gives great impetus to worthy action, new wings to hope, new comfort to sorrow, new solace to disappointment and failure. It makes everything good, seem enduring and everything that is not good, trivial and of small import. It makes the hurried transit of time in this little life seem of less importance, and arouses the heart from sad reveries over broken earthly ties to a consciousness of renewed friendships and affections in worlds beyond. For those who have always longed for the beau- tiful and ideal, while compelled to live in sordid and commonplace surroundings, it gives the ex- quisite hope of compensation for disappointment and reward for patience. All hail to the Cities beyond! May our eyes receive the inner vision to behold them while we are yet in the temporal body upon this plane. And a new name shall Science henceforth wear. The Great Religion of the Universe. ELLA WHEELER WILCOX. VICTORY CROWNED INTIMATIONS OF IMMORTALITY RE was a time when meadow, grove, and stream, The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem Apparelled in celestial light, The glory and the freshness of a dream. It is not now as it has been of yore; Turn wheresoe'r I may, By night or day, The things which I have seen I now can see no more. The rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose, The Moon doth with delight Look round her when the heavens are bare; Waters on a starry night Are beautiful and fair; The sunshine is a glorious birth; But yet I know where'er I go, That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting; The Soul that rises with us, our life's star, Hath had elsewhere its setting, And cometh from afar; Not in entire forge tfulness, And not in utter nakedness, [66] VICTORY CROWNED But trailing clouds of glory do we come From God, who is our home; Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison house begin to close Upon the growing Boy, But He beholds the light, and whence it flows, He sees it in his joy; The youth, who daily farther from the east Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, And by the vision splendid Is on his way attended; At length the Man perceives it die away, And fade into the light of common day. O joy! that in our embers Is something that doth live, That Nature yet remembers What was so fugitive! The thought of our past years in me doth breed Perpetual benedictions; not indeed For that which is most worthy to be blessed; Delight and liberty, the simple creed Of Childhood, whether busy or at rest, With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his breast; Not for these I raise The song of thanks and praise; But for those obstinate questionings Of sense and outward things, Falling from us, vanishings, Black misgivings of a Creature Moving about in worlds not realized, VICTORY CROWNED High instincts before which our mortal Nature Did tremble like a mortal Thing surprised ! But for those first affections, Those shadowy recollections, Which, be they what they may, Are yet the fountain light of all our day, Are yet a master light of all our seeing; Uphold us cherish and have power to make Our noisy years seem moments in the being Of the eternal Silence; truths that wake, To perish never; Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavor, Nor Man nor Boy, Nor all that is at enmity with joy, Can utterly abolish or destroy! Hence, in a season of calm weather Though inland far we be, Our souls have sight of that immortal sea Which brought us hither, Can in a moment travel thither, And see the children sport upon the shore, And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore. WILLIAM WORDSWORTH. [681 VICTORY CROWNED ^^ ^s SAW Eternity the other night, Like a great ring of pure and endless light, **~ ^ All calm, as it was bright . - . . . This ring the Bridegroom did for none provide, But for His Bride. HENRY VAUGHAN. THE EARLY habit of having a life in God, above the trials and occupations of the world, is an all-sufficient practical proof of immortality. Every triumph over the flesh is a help to realise after death. Shut out the world. Live in the consciousness of God, and you will know of the mysteries of life and death. MOZOOMDAR. [69] VICTORY CROWNED A VOICE FROM THE WEST eooo-BvE, Dave ! I never knew you, but that is to say I never held your hand in mine; and yet, the other day I told my pardner you's a faller that I'd like to know, Because you've give us lots o' pleasure out at Cross-Bar O. Read 'most ever' thing you've written, and 'twas proper stuff We'll all be lonesome now, when night comes most of us are rough An' cuss, an' drink an* dig up hell some, but, I'll tell you Dave, We've got respec' for all good women, an' we hate a knave! Lots o' ideas you have give us that we'd never Ve had If that man-paper that you wrote fur (an' it ain't half bad) Should 'a' missed us. But each Sad'day, out at Cross-Bar O We'd gether roun* the cayuse mail-hoss an' ol' Injun Jo. Well, Dave, boy, a coward got ye damn his lights and hide! An' if he hadn't gone with ye over the Divide, [701 VICTORY CROWNED I sure would pack my kit tomorrer, an* I'd hit his trail, Nor stop, nor rest, until I'd fixed *im if I went to jail! Mighty lonesome! When we read it s me an* my old pard, Jes* set down with that newspaper, an' we took it hard. Cussin' didn't ease us any; whiskey wouldn't do; But two pipes o* strong tobacker helped to pull us through. Good-Bye, Dave! Good-Bye! My gizzard's feelin' mighty queer Lord I But, boy, we'll miss you powerful in this coming year! Proud to've met you though I've never seen you with my eyes, Some day maybe (now I'm gittin' soft) good- bye! good-bye! EDWIN CARLILE LITSEY. (After reading of the death of David Graham Phillips.) VICTORY CROWNED OUR LORD'S death .... was the gath- ering up of the mighty love of God in all its mass behind the barrier, that separated the Father's soul from the confined and hampered love, poured in and flooded the hungry soul of "whosoever be- lieveth". It was not done without a struggle. The agony, the strong cryings and tears, the blood and insult of Gethsemane and Calvary, are everlasting pictures of what it cost. But it was done. I hear the breaking and tearing of the obstacles of sin, and the rush of great love set free to find the soul, when with the thin voice of the dying conquerer that cry of victory, that, "It is finished" was spoken so loud that it has pierced through history and rung round the world. It was the deepest and most original and spiritual nature of God, that "love," which "God is," breaking through every encumbrance, and declaring itself supreme. This is the triumph of the Christhood. PHILLIPS BROOKS. VICTORY CROWNED OEATH is the best of counsellors. It tempers the ardor of our feverish aspirations, reconciles us to defeats and disappointments, moderates the exuberance of our complacency in success, and teaches us to view with composure the lights and shadows of the earthly scenes through which we are rushing towards the shores of eternity. JAMES CARDINAL GIBBONS. 173. VICTORY CROWNED THE COWBOY'S PRAYER OLoRD, I've never lived where churches grow, I love creation better as it stood That day you finished it so long ago, And looked upon your work and called it good, I know that others find you in the light That filters down through tinted window panes. And yet I seem to feel you near tonight In this dim, quiet star-light on the plains. I thank you, Lord, that I am placed so well, That you have made my freedom so complete, That I am no slave to whistle, clock or bell Or weak eyed prisoner to wall or street. Just let me live my life as I've begun And give me work that's open to the sky, Make me a partner of the wind and sun And I won't ask a life that's soft and light, Let me be easy on a man that's down, And make me square and generous with all, I'm careless sometimes, Lord, when I'm in town, But never let them say I'm mean or small. Make me as big and open as the plains, As honest as the horse between my knees, Clean as the wind that blows beyond the rains, Free as a hawk that circles down the breeze. Forgive me, God, when I sometimes forget. You understand the reasons that are hid, You know the little things that gall and fret, You know me better than my mother did. Just keep an eye on all that's done and said [74] VICTORY CROWNED Just right me sometimes when I turn aside, And guide me on the long dim trail ahead That stretches upward toward the great divide. .75. VICTORY CROWNED UNFALTERING dndlsav at it were a sea of glass mingled with fire. REV. xvr 2. I WILL not falter; Thou dost know The way in which my feet should go; With Thee all hope and all desire Must pass that sea of glass and fire. I will not falter; in Thy hand I lay my own; at Thy command To tread the Wilderness were sweet, O'er blazing stones, with bleeding feet. I will not falter, but fulfill The purpose Thy heavenly will Reveals to me, as day by day, This marvelous life unfolds its way. I will not falter; thought is free, And all my faith looks up to Thee; The Mount of Vision gleams afar, And o'er it shines the Bethlehem star! LILIAN WHITING. 76] VICTORY CROWNED eoD washes the eyes by tears, until they can behold the invisible land where tears shall come no more. O Good! O Affliction! Ye are the guides that show us the way through the quiet airy space where our loved ones walked. HENRY WARD BEECHER. THE FEAR of death is dreadful, but death itself is not so. CARDINAL BON A. : 177. VICTORY CROWNED is only one way to get ready f r immortality, and that is to love this life and live it as bravely and faithfully, and cheerfully as we can. HENRY VAN DYKE. As UNDER every stone there is moisture, So under every sorrow there is joy; and when we understand life rightly, we see that sorrow after all, is but the minister of joy. Sorrow is a condition of time, but joy is the condition of eternity. ST. BONAVENTURA. VICTORY CROWNED I suffer for him that I love? So wouldst Thou so wilt thou! So shall crown Thee the topmost, in- effablest, uttermost crown And Thy love fill infinitude wholly, nor leave up nor down One spot for the creature to stand in! It is by no breath, Turn of eye, wave of hand, that salvation joins issue with death! As thy Love is discovered almighty, almighty be proved Thy power, that exists with and for it, of being Beloved! He who did most shall bear most; the strongest shall stand the most weak. 'Tis the weakness in strength that I cry for! my flesh that I seek In the Godhead! I seek and I find it. O Saul, it shall be A Face like my face that receives thee: a Man like to me, Thou shalt love and be loved by, forever: a Hand like this hand Shall throw open the gates of new life to thee! See the Christ stand! ROBERT BROWNING. .79. VICTORY CROWNED NEVER was wedge of gold that did not pass the fire: There never was pure grain that did not undergo the flail Let who will, hope to walk upon roses and violets to the throne of heaven: O Savior, let me trace Thee by the track of Thy blood, and by Thy red steps follow Thee to Thy eternal rest and happiness. BISHOP HALL. 8c] VICTORY CROWNED IF GOD be in us, dwelling in every thought and desire, in every pure affection, in every lovely and gracious feeling of our hearts, then we have eternal life. It is not a thing to be looked for- ward to: it is a thing we have now. HENRY VAN DYKE. IF THOU wouldst live continually in the pres- ence of thy Lord, and lie in the dust, He would thence take thee up: descend first with Him into the grave, and then thou mayst ascend with Him to glory. RICHARD BAXTER. 81] VICTORY CROWNED /OME MEN make a womanish complaint ^that it is a great misfortune to die be* fore our time. I would ask what time? Is it that of nature? But she, indeed, has lent us life, as we do a sum of money, only no certain day is fixed for payment. What reason then to complain if she demands it at pleasure, since it was on this condition that you received it. CICERO. WHEN EVERY creature shall see it was ever tended, even when it seemed most neglected: it was improved to the best advantage, when it seemed most cast off: it could never have wished so well for itself, as it is provided for: its Death, Life, Misery, Happiness, were all acted under a veil, and were none of them what it took them to be, but were all of them what it was best for it they should be .... Then, at last, when all is done, when it is wholly fin- ished, then the meaning of all these things, the mystery of God, God in His mystery, shall be opened: and then, Eternal Joy, Ever- lasting Life, shall break forth 1 ISAAC PENINGTON. [82] VICTORY CROWNED Y SHOW respect for the dead by mak- m g life gloomier for the living? We have a system of robbing Peter to pay Paul. Paul is gone and nothing matters Peter remains and suffers. The man on the Great White Horse, whose warning we must all some day heed, goes riding by. He stops at a house, gets off his steed, knocks at the door. When he resumes his journey he doesn't ride alone. There is sorrow in the home left behind. With this sorrow, there comes always a regret that there was ever a misunderstanding, a cold- ness, a lack of attention, a denying of love to the one who rode away. With this regret there comes the resolution to leave nothing undone to show that the one who is gone was loved and is missed. "We must pay respect to the dead!" say those left behind. The one who rode away so recently loved life and sunshine. Those who are left behind recognize that love by piling on black. They refuse to heed the objections of those who are gone, to such burial trappings. They recognize only what they regard as the VICTORY CROWNED rights of the dead, and forget the rights of the living. In other words they rob Peter to pay Paul. Paul is gone. * * * If they shut out the sunshine from their homes, their attire and their countenances, he doesn't know it. In the land he has reached the usages, the facts and the problems of this life have no mode of entry. Nothing they can do now will add to his due or take from it. * * * But what they do does make a difference to the living Peter. * * * They show respect to the dead by making life gloomier for the living. They darken the day for the living, out of a false sense of duty to one who has gone. There is nothing more depressing than the sight of a family of women all showing respect to one who is gone. No one ever saw a widowed pillar of woe on the streets without a sigh of regret that such things are possible in a civilized country. We wear mourning not out of respect to the dead, as we claim, but because we are afraid of the comments of the living. VICTORY CROWNED Unfortunately, when it comes to tradition, we haven't any sense of humor. At least we haven't enough to laugh out of existence a very morbid and unhealthful custom. FRANCIS L. GARSIDE. VICTORY CROWNED THAT love beyond the world, can- not be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits be divided that live and love in the same divine principle: the root and record of their friendship. If our absence is not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas: They live in one another still. WILLIAM PENX. CAN THE last parting do much to hurt such friendships between good souls, who have so long learnt to say farewell, to love in absence, to trust through silence, and to have faith in re- union? MRS. EWIXG. 86; VICTORY CROWNED DATURE has no more inspiring truth for us than this constant and complete enfolding of our life by a higher and vaster life; this unbroken play of a divine purpose and force through us. Nothing is lost, nothing really dies; all things are con- served by an energy which transforms, reorgan- izes, and perpetuates in new and finer forms all visible things. The silence of winter counter- feits the repose of death, but it is not even a pause of life; invisibly to us the great movement goes on in the earth under our feet. While we watch by our household fires, the unseen archi- tects are planning the summer and the sublime march of the stars is noiselessly bringing back the bloom and the perfume that seems to have vanished forever. Every day morning restores something we thought lost, recalls some charm that seemed to have escaped. HAMILTON WRIGHT MABIE. ( Under the Trees and Elsewhere.) [8 7 ] VICTORY CROWNED IN THIS age the noble soul renders itself unto God, and awaits the end of this life with much desire; and to itself it seems that it goes out from the inn to return to the Father's mansion; to itself it seems to have come to the end of a long journey and to have reached the City; to itself it seems to have crossed the wide sea and to have returned into the port. DANTE. I THINK that the two things above all others that have made men n all ages believe in immor- tality .... have been the broken loves and broken friendships of the world. THACKERAY. INDEX Index ANON DANTE The Cowboy's Prayer, 74 Selection, 88 ARNOLD, MATTHEW DRESSER, HORATIO W. Immortality, 34 Introduction, ix BAXTER, RICHARD Selection, 41 Selection, 7 Selection, 46 Selection, 81 Selection, 57 BEECHER, HENRY WARD EWING, MRS. Selection, 77 Selection, 86 BLACK, HUGH FELLOWES, PAGE Selection, 3 A Few Remarks, vn BONA, CARDINAL Selection, vin Selection, 77 Selection, 55 BROOKS, PHILLIPS FLEMING, CANON Selection, 32 Selection, 21 Selection, 72 FROHMAN DANIEL BROWNING, ELIZABETH BAR- His Last Wor ds, 16 RETT GARSIDE, FRANCIS L. From De Profundis, 35 Selection, 83 BROWNING, ROBERT GATTY, ALFRED Prospice, 14 Selection, 5 From Saul, 79 GIBBONS, JAMES CARDINAL CAMPBELL, REV. R. J. Selection, 6 The Value of Praying for the \ :t ! on 37 Ideal, 22 Selection, 7;> Selection, 37 G * THE , . Q .. n CHANNING, WILLIAM ELLERY *$* f the ***** Ver thc 01 waters. 40 ^Selection, 19 HALL, BISHOP Selection,^ Selection, 82 Selection, 80 CLARKE, JAMES FREEMAN HALL, CHARLES CUTHBERT Selection, 12 Selection, 17 Selection, 24 HALL, ROBERT Selection, 45 Selection, 31 CRANE, DR. FRAKK HAPGOOD, HUTCHINS The Wages of Going On, 47 Death, 58 [90] INDEX HUGO, VICTOR SENECA Selection, 25 Selection, 44 A'KEMPIS, THOMAS SMITH, J. PATTERSON Selection, 44 Selection, 13 LITSEY, EDWIN CARLILE Selection, 52 A Voice from the West, 70 SOCRATES LONGFELLOW, HENRY WADS- Selection, 50 WORTH STEVENSON, ROBERT Louis Resignation, 27 Requiem, 4 LYTTON, BULWER TENNYSON, ALFRED LORD Selection, 42 Selection, 37 MABIE, HAMILTON WRIGHT Selection, 61 From Under the Trees and THACKERAY, WILLIAM M. Elsewhere, 87 Selection, 88 MAETERLINCK, MAURICE VAN DYKE, HENRY Selection, 19 Selection, 78 MOZOOMDAR Selection, 81 Selection, 69 VAUGHAN, HENRY MYERS, FREDERICK WATT Selection, 69 Immortality, 26 WHITING, LILIAN PENN, WILLIAM From Lilies of Kternal Selection, 86 JJj* l6 PENINGTON, ISAAC * b i d ? Selection, 82 Sdection, 51 Selection, 76 PHELPS, ELIZABETH STUART WHITMAN WALT Selection, 33 Assurances, 38 PHILLIPS, STEPHEN WILCOX, ELLA WHEELER From The New Inferno, 43 Selection, 62 R- , A. W. Wis. V; 15-16 The Blessings of Bereave- Selection, 25 ment, 8 WORDSWORTH, WILLIAM Selection,2o The Noble Living and the That Which Is To Be, 53 Noble Dead, Frontispiece SAINT BONOVENTURA, Intimations of Immortality, Selection, 78 66 HERE ENDS "VICTORY CROWNED," A COMPILA- TION or TRUTHS CONCERNING THE LIFE OF THE SPIRIT BY PAGE FELLOWES. DONE INTO BOOK FORM BY PAI L ELDER AND COMPANY, AND SEEN THROUGH THEIR TOMOYE PRESS UNDER THE DIRECTION OF HERMAN A. FUNKK, IN THE Cm' OF SAN FRANCISCO, DURING THE MONTH OF DECEMBER, NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIXTEEN. VA 01866 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY