Sib 
 
THE ROBERT E. COWAN COLLECTION 
 
 I'RKSKNTKn TO THK 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 BY 
 
 C. P.. HUNTINGTON 
 
 Class 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES 
 
 GIVEN TO THE WOULD 
 
 BY JOHN BUNYAN, 
 
 THBOUGH THE INSPIRATION OF 
 
 SARAH A. RAMSDELL 
 
 SAN FRANCISCO : 
 Woman's Publishing Company, Printers, 511 Sacramento Street 
 
 1873. 
 
Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by 
 
 SARAH A. KAMSDELL, 
 In the Office of the Librarian ojf Congress, at Washington. 
 
ff UNIVERSITY 
 
 Curiosity, after all, is the hook that fishes out 
 more knowledge than any other trait in the human 
 character; and so my appeal will first touch the 
 never-satisfied hunger of the buzzard bird who sits 
 a croaker around our well-spring of thought. 
 
 In the many attempts I have made to reach the 
 tidal shores of Time, I have met the rebutting spirit 
 of incredulity; and I have said, each and every time, 
 my hour of presentation is yet in the future; wait 
 until the bride and the bridegroom say come. And 
 I have waited for the hour when no man need be 
 deceived or ashamed to face the truth of Spirit com- 
 munion. And now, when the soul craves more 
 light, shall I withhold my feeble torch? For the 
 light is to descend in its various and many ways to 
 choke out the spirit of darkness, and if my one ray 
 of individuality, given from the platform of Spirit- 
 ual growth, saves one soul from the cherishment of 
 despair, then have I done the will of Him who sent 
 
PBEFACE. 
 
 me, as did the Christ of old follow back on the line 
 of natural condition inherent from the will force of 
 Deity. And thus I return to earth, not through the 
 atoning merit of Christ's blood, but through and by 
 the same force of natural law; and were Christ to- 
 day to fulfill the mission of his second coming, the 
 world would look for the natural causes that pro- 
 pelled His journey. 
 
 And thus would I have the world look on my re- 
 turn; not as any miracle, but simple compliance 
 with the requisite conditions, which is love for my 
 fellow men, the will power to control another per- 
 son's organized brain-principles, and a recognized 
 right to do so through the harmonial blending of the 
 natural affinities of disposition and character to act 
 from the standard of duty. And so I come, dressed 
 as of old, for service. But thanks be to the Great 
 and Eternal God that no prison doors can close 
 around me, or prison bars shut out the light of this 
 glowing day. 
 
 GIVEN IN LOVE, TRUTH AND CHAKETY, 
 
 BY JOHN BUNYAN, 
 
 THROUGH THE TRANCE CONDITION OF SARAH A. RAMS- 
 DELL. 
 

 
 CHAPTEK I. 
 
 jITH flowers filling my crown I come 
 back to earth. Years have intervened 
 and stubborn facts 'have chased along 
 my pathway since the grim monster Death 
 propelled my onward march. I took on my 
 form of life in the Province of Bedford, on 
 the English coast. A provincial town or 
 township is necessarily fluted and stuccoed 
 with the sap that has run a leakage from the 
 interior fund of social knowledge. Hence the 
 beverage I drank from youth's open doorway 
 of grasping sensational life was filled with the 
 slime run from the circles or pools of upper- 
 tendom, or the interior court-rooms of pol- 
 ished fastidiousness. Youth wore no rosy 
 morn for me. Hell broke loose over all the 
 continent of youthful labor. My storm-king 
 
6 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 raged throughout my whole being. Every 
 part of mind-function was traversed and laid 
 bare, for the Angel of Destruction to riot in 
 full, and leave the citadel a broken, shattered 
 wreck, with but a dim star left a pointer from 
 the other side of angel guidance that touched 
 my heart or mind ability to see that I was 
 becoming a cumberer of the ground a curse, 
 walking in God's sunlight a fact outwrought 
 from the mind force of Deity. I shudder 
 now in recalling my youthful depravity what 
 might have been, had that lone star or germ 
 of goodness dropped from my horizon of life. 
 John Bunyan's name would never have 
 floated to the world of public favor, and John 
 Bunyan to-day would be filling the lower 
 saloons of spirit growth. Oh! God, I thank 
 Thee for that one flower that has shed its fra- 
 grance through every grade of my onward 
 march. 
 
 I do not intend, in this work which I am 
 about giving to the world, to pick up past 
 events, or linger around bygone scenes any 
 farther than to show my individuality. I 
 have felt for some time that the world needed 
 my experience portrayed from the realms of 
 Spirituality, and in giving it to the world I 
 am stepping through all the barriers of con- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 7 
 
 ventionality. I am laying low tlie postal 
 doors of oppression am swinging open the 
 broad gate whose hinges have become rusted 
 from disuse, and whose pillars need no longer 
 stand sentinels of guard around the super- 
 structure of Spirit communion. I bless God 
 that the boon of ignorance is failing in ser- 
 vice ; that the tweedledum of to-day outstrips 
 the tweedledum of bygone centuries, that laid 
 a fundamental theory for each successive 
 generation to step to and make secure that 
 unction of facts to bless the world with its 
 new found light set in the candlestick of lib- 
 erty. God designed, in his plan of super- 
 structure, that one body of purposed power 
 should waylay and assist those of weaker con- 
 stituent parts, and God never failed in pur- 
 pose or one iota of judgment, so to speak, 
 dropped fco the Devil's field of use. God 
 manages at the helm of governmental duty, 
 and picks a star of promise from every out- 
 gush of scientific knowledge that comes to 
 the world. God deals by justice of His 
 truths, outcentered, outharmonized and out- 
 hung on every typical branch of His person- 
 ality. God ranges through cause and effect 
 with the utmost skill. He never runs counter 
 to a law laid down in His book or field of 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 truthful principles that do the labor of the 
 world. God harmonizes love and labor. 
 Labor ever waits for love to touch some por- 
 tion of its merited worth before it commences 
 a nutricious movement. Love is God's cen- 
 tripetal, centrifugal, and centralization force, 
 that winds the armor of brightness around 
 all Hie law of cause and effect. God man- 
 ages by force of circumstances, as man, the 
 outwrought holocaust of liberalization, is 
 managed, controlled and governed by God's 
 internal law of circumstantial by-play. Man 
 has no free will outside of God's free will, 
 for God is the agent or agencies that starts 
 his wheels of power, whether it be in the 
 animalculse of natural functions of growth, or 
 in the high-toned spirituality of cosmopoli- 
 tan manhood. 
 
 I have never laid off the armor that cause 
 and effect produced on me. Every license 
 given to cause had its widening influence on 
 effect or effects of charactered symbolic life. 
 We live as much under that law in Spirit life 
 as in the life that gave us startling proof of 
 existence. Manhood is the counterpart of 
 childhood the limb grown from the twig 
 the arm of power that sapped up the baby 
 for a ride in the car of growth. Babyhood 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 9 
 
 is our tinsel experience the slippered foot 
 that draws on its rubber of protection as the 
 inclement season of youth advances, and with 
 each advance step on the border shore of 
 Time, the rubber casement expands, and 
 youth steps into the grown shoes of man- 
 hood, a battledoor and shuttlecock for the 
 public waves of good breeding false breed- 
 ing or no breeding at all only what has 
 leaked through the crack of public animosity. 
 When the world disfavors a criminal, on that 
 criminal's brow is stamped the brand of Cain, 
 which is left to burn and corrode, sear, 
 scorch, and damn a soul that is already bot- 
 tled up for destruction, and only awaiting the 
 light hid under a bushel to change the cur- 
 rent of hellish design. The lever that has 
 ever been the probe of use, that has reared 
 its scaffold of prizes that each generation has 
 picked from, is the great light of love hid 
 under the bushel of discontent, and when the 
 cover is removed and love shows every linea- 
 ment of her smiling face, then will the crimi- 
 nal courts of justice and the criminal courts 
 of the body police be on the line of with- 
 drawal, and God's stamp-mark, with its fleecy 
 brightness, will be the whipping-post and 
 scourging-rod used on the course of Time. I 
 
10 BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 
 
 would preface my work with this scrap of 
 truth, and then proceed with 
 
 JOUBNEY No. 1. 
 
 The letters of the alphabet are ranged ac- 
 cording to man's reason. But who arranged 
 the A B C of man's checkered footstool of 
 life ? Who digs away the fossil remains from 
 every doorway of advancement and lets out 
 the eager bird of curiosity, whose wings are 
 becoming too broad for its cage ? Y/hat but 
 the mind force of intellectuality could grapple 
 the whole basis of man's outstart, and see 
 from the beginning the stagings built along 
 the road of progress, and the step higher, 
 step higher, of the internal revenue fund of 
 man's created genius of movement. What or 
 who but God built man, and who or what 
 but man built God? What but mind can 
 fashion ? What delve and dig, plan, contrive, 
 and execute? What but this unseen force 
 this God in man, and man in God. What 
 Kepler gave the world was a part of Deity, 
 and what I shall give the world to-day is but 
 another portion, hung on another branch of 
 the God tree of life. My journeyings com- 
 menced with God, will proceed with God, 
 and, if they ever end, end with God. There- 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 11 
 
 fore, if I ever cease to be, shall cease on 
 the up-hill grade of motion, with God for 
 a leveler, with no pin of devil claim stuck 
 in my wardrobe of growth. Life's commence- 
 ment with me was almost bereft of sunshine. 
 I waded with intuitive reason God's help in 
 my hour of need on to a platform where 
 principle made a footprint, and reason sus- 
 tained the embryotic monitor of guard. 
 Earth holds me with its weight of circumstan- 
 tial evidence against my boyhood's outleap of 
 sin ; and farther on, Earth holds the changing 
 boy. Another step, and experienced man- 
 hood flung its mantle around me, and I step- 
 ped to the goal of public animosity or the 
 shooting star of liberty, which I then tried 
 to capture and hold fast by the string of jus- 
 tice the cord that the world handles lightly 
 and in accordance with the public favor of 
 opinion. Twelve years of my earth life was 
 the Sodom and Gomorrah of my existence; 
 the hell of my boyish keeping broke loose 
 in my prisoned cell for thought to linger 
 around and harvest what it could of worth. 
 The dreary cell of a prison might well be called 
 the anxious seat where one's past experiences 
 come up for show, to profit and strengthen 
 our future course, and if we have the down- 
 
12 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 ward tendency there is no heart but God's to 
 save us. And some hearts are never touched 
 from the great fountain of God's love only 
 through the channel of human kindness and 
 effort. What can be done when that source of 
 watering the prison cell with love is with- 
 drawn pent up and laid away to rust and 
 corrupt in a world of selfish monopoly. Many 
 sink to the very verge of that hell they are 
 placed there to escape. Some there are who 
 can weave a web of salvation, and mount the 
 ladder of growth, confined by ten thousand 
 prison walls; because some hearts make league 
 with God through the silent, unseen monitor 
 of conscience, and grapple for truths that 
 come borne by the winged messenger of love 
 that sits outside our conscience-room and 
 lifts the wail of despair into the court-rooms 
 of angelic Godhood; and there, away from 
 earth, and yet aware of all her selfish princi- 
 ple of deal, the work of a prisoned soul's re- 
 generation goes on. And it was thus with 
 me; shut away from man, that should have 
 been my prop to sustain, strengthen and en- 
 courage, I sought my God with new hope, 
 faith, and indomitable will; for if I ever 
 wanted God it was then and there; and as I 
 was placed there for trying to swell His prin- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 13 
 
 ciples of liberty, I felt in some way He was 
 owing me duty; and there, in my Berkshire 
 prison-house, I made my entire peace with 
 God, and ever since have been a traveler, 
 guided by his unerring hand or hands of wis- 
 dom, that opens every gateway of knowledge, 
 whereby I may near the Throne Eternal, which 
 is the height of human capacity over God's 
 outlay of scientific or scientific principles laid 
 in the underground car of natural attributes 
 the field where man ever digs, whether in 
 the world of matter or the world of Spirit for 
 every grade of life is in its natural proximity 
 to Nature. We can no more step away from 
 Nature than we can step away from God, be- 
 cause both surround the orbit of natural de- 
 sign, and both work through the harmonized 
 condition of love out to the broad field of God 
 nature, God man, and God throughout the 
 height, breadth, and depth of every world 
 motioned in space. 
 
 I would like to show in this work, if I can 
 take the medium so far, the meaning of the 
 term love. I want to wind it around every 
 branch and loophole of Gods defensive 
 world of care. I want to show its deep wells 
 of thought, its holy sanctification ground, 
 where never yet has been a soul stranded, and 
 
14 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 where never can come the footprint of error. 
 I throw it out as a prediction, that the world, 
 or its secret avenues of sorrow, and perhaps 
 guile, will one day throw to John Bunyan a 
 blessing for an exposition of that one little 
 word, love, so full of meaning and so highly 
 seasoned with the bread of life. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 JN entrance way to any place must be free 
 from rubbish, to make smooth the pas- 
 sage io fit us with a passport of ease 
 and self- reliability. When our footsteps are 
 clogged we cannot maintain a natural position 
 in walking ; and so when the avenues leading 
 to thought become obstructed with the fleecy 
 frothings of the world's nonsensical nothing- 
 ness, the stream so filled cannot float the 
 more substantial timbers of common sense, 
 and, therefore, common sense runs the 
 blockade, and sits grim and serene, await- 
 ing the removal of the fungus growth or 
 bandage of show that clogs up and some- 
 what embellishes the stream of free thought. 
 When Washington Irving joined hands 
 over the world's hollow mockery of life, he 
 took the staff that pointed heavenward, and 
 the mind of America's brightest poet ever 
 found food ripe for his picking. And now, 
 when Washington Irving greets me in my 
 home of Spiritual truth, the restraining hand 
 
16 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 of Time can pick no flaws on his line of 
 poetic march, for the hallelujahs of pure mo- 
 tive ever resounded over his earth life. I 
 might cite many a man that has lived purely, 
 truly, and in direct harmony with the light of 
 conscience, and yet have called down the an- 
 athemas of the world on their honest-topped 
 heads of worth. Socrates, with all his learn- 
 ing and canticles of power, froze up the one 
 stream that should have watered the earth 
 and left a more brilliant fruitage in his gar- 
 den seat of honor. Socrates loved the glitter 
 of show loved the ruby coloring of wine 
 loved its sparkling effect on his income of 
 knowledge that he was pruning for the world; 
 and had Socrates left the stream clear, wherein 
 floated his prize gems, for humanity's pick- 
 ing, the bugle-horn that sounded his praise 
 would have dropped more notes to his bar of 
 musical grandeur. The world imbibes by 
 force of instinct, and hazards by force of will. 
 If I start to grapple for mind education, it is 
 instinct that first shows the need. Then will 
 puts in the hook of claim, to show that power 
 has a meaning, and gloves are not needed to 
 handle the enemy at bay. Knowledge is a 
 touchstone that needs the repeated raps of 
 the chisel or peck- hammer to keep it under 
 
OF THB 
 
 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 17 
 
 the control of physical force ; for there is no 
 branch of knowledge but what must be 
 brought in direct contact with physical sinew 
 and bone service. What is worth having is 
 worth grasping for; and the hand of fate never 
 moves our car of growth or succors our main- 
 tenance until we step to the platform of give 
 w T hile we receive. The bane to growth at the 
 present day will be physical stupidity ; or, 
 more anglicized, means laziness, which will 
 yet curse the American people. Americans, 
 at the present day, if indeed there are any 
 true to the core, without the admixture of 
 foreign driblets of show, that take from in- 
 stead of adding to the birthright fund of 
 America's freedom. America can never again 
 be free, in the true sense of freedom, for the 
 staple article in her markets of outstanding 
 deal, is pride pride of wealth, of outward 
 adornment , of simply mustering dress parade 
 for every day in the week ; and as Sunday is 
 reckoned somewhat out of the week of daily 
 labor it would seem that theatrical rehears- 
 iugs were the order of street exercises, and 
 churches the drop curtains for hiding the 
 shams of life.- 
 
 The Zorastic period wears a type of medi- 
 umship or inspirational pathology that lit 
 
18 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 that age with its star crown of prizes, that has 
 graced the brow of every generation since, 
 and the tombs of tbe Zorasters never buried 
 an inkling of glory around the field of Zo- 
 rastoric labor. The lamented Theodore Par- 
 ker has said to me, in our social chat hours, 
 that he never in his earth pilgrimage blew 
 a horn of outgrowth but what some spaniel 
 scented mischief, and straightway sent out a 
 snarl that vibrated all through the puppy 
 kingdom, or the fledgeling nest of man's rea- 
 soning faculties, which are puppyish until 
 the old dog of experience has barked in every 
 tree where hung game for picking. Theodore 
 Parker was a martyr on earth. He had a 
 soul hung too high for the world's acknowl- 
 edgement, and when his messenger of release 
 came, the world saw the Christ within him 
 saw the halo of glory surrounding his brow 
 and would have picked him away from the 
 world he was journeying to, and have killed 
 the fatted calf of animosity, and hung out a 
 star of love to guide him back to the world 
 that needed him. But thanks be to the God 
 of all life, truth and love, that Theodore Par- 
 ker still maintains his high gifted soul of pur- 
 pose ; maintains his position of help to the 
 world, and maintains the sympathetic chord 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 19 
 
 whereby he will reach all hearts by the deep 
 tones of resounding truth that will be sent 
 forth from his Spirit home. I bless God 
 that Theodore Parker lived ; and I bless God 
 that every high and holy-martyred soul found 
 footing on earth that this day star of glory 
 could shine for the enlightenment of others. 
 Theodore Parker has lit a torch that never 
 can go out, because it will be fed from God's 
 eternal wells of truth, and the flame kept 
 bright by the gentle fannings of progress 
 and the gentle wooings of Spirit over mat- 
 ter. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 IEELZEBUB was accounted the father 
 of mischief, but no mother has yet been 
 found, if the Eve partakement of the 
 fruit of knowledge ingrafted on every branch 
 of scientific principle or scientific outlay of 
 strength that God propelled from His library 
 of ease and history, would assure us that by 
 some means the snake first imbibed the secret 
 of this knowledge that God was trying to 
 keep from Adam a.nd Eve. Now, in order to 
 make the Bible appear true and in sound 
 keeping with God's lofty judgment and fore- 
 thought of execution, the snake must have 
 typical significance. He must be dressed 
 with some power from the outside world 
 must present cunning and artifice to attract 
 Eve, and make himself heard in his sly re- 
 treat. It would seem, therefore, that God 
 justifies the means of evil to work out a good 
 in its principles of action. I might as well 
 start on the basis of no evil, for that is my 
 theory at the present time, and everything in 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 21 
 
 Nature, and every sentence of pointed worth 
 in God's book of saving grace that the world 
 still clings to and never can fathom, because it 
 had its origin in the brain work of ignorant 
 manhood, and, therefore, shut away from the 
 enlightenment of the present century of de- 
 velopment, which is flourishing finely from 
 the tree of promise, instead of the backgam- 
 mon board of error, that has well-nigh served 
 its purposes, and is running to the font of 
 freedom for support, as stringency will no 
 longer sustain its aim to be kept before the 
 world of public favor. Nature and Biblical 
 history proclaim there is no lasting evil- 
 no burnt offering of Jehova's wrath swells 
 the base to any tenor cord in the vibrative 
 box of universal love as the ultimate and end 
 of God's harmonical love-tune, which is as 
 lasting and pure, as the Father is lasting and 
 true to sustain. God grant that the evil of 
 to-day may be over-balanced by the good of 
 to-morrow, and that the captivating smile of 
 the arch-enemy may wear no truth of purpose 
 around the human heart; and God grant that 
 the evil of to-day may not leave our souls 
 hungered and athirst around the stringent 
 tree of worth placed in a world that God 
 once acknowledged to be good, and as we 
 
22 BACKWARD GLIMPSES, 
 
 have no record that God allowed the evil one 
 to contaminate beyond His power to redeem 
 or reclaim, we may as well suppose that the 
 world to-day is as God designed it in its 
 good and evil report. I find, as I again tra- 
 verse the earth, or bring myself to notice its 
 parts and points of growth, that the next del- 
 uge that will be needed and of service to 
 God's universal whole, will be the surging 
 waters of Spirit truth, which sprung a leak- 
 age as far back as we have any knowledge of 
 time, and was dammed up by the earthly 
 clogs of superstition and the fanatical cry of 
 earthly Heavendom. Time has started every 
 foe to Spirit communion, and is still on the 
 rampage for the lost House of Israel, or a 
 Heaven that will sprout nothing but aristo- 
 cratic bipeds, who are floating in the world 
 without purpose or power sticks to be 
 picked for the Devil's burning. I have never 
 found in my Spirit journey ings a Heaven es- 
 pecially designed for the wealthy aristocracy 
 of earth. They commence their growth with 
 the poorer children on Time's shore, and will 
 enter the Spirit house of God's love with the 
 same poor travelers that often appealed to their 
 pockets of mercy when wandering on the bread 
 and butter shores of life. God furnishes a plat- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 23 
 
 form for our straying feet, and we step there- 
 on barefooted and weak, but sustained and 
 made strong by the earth props of love and 
 care, the father, mother, brother and sister 
 relationships of time, God's viceroyalty of 
 binding grace in the world. Life is one vast 
 playground, and the slippered feet move with 
 unclad ones of sorrow, and when the play is 
 over on the thorny side, the new Jerusalem 
 will offer no sly wink to the feet that have al- 
 ways been encased with care. Each and ev- 
 ery soul, whether grown to manhood or still 
 lingering by the shiny shore of childhood, 
 will, when the cross-over of life commences, 
 pick up their own staff of travel and find 
 their own level of credit. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 jHE world of poesy is all about us, and 
 the hard stern fact of life's reality that 
 weaves its intricate web and hangs it 
 on the battlements of our widening experi- 
 ences of duties and of pleasures, is all there 
 is of growth. The mind functions of being 
 never expand under the blighting influence 
 of slothful habit. Neither can the physical 
 functions of earth life grow harmonial and 
 true to the natural instincts of progress under 
 the binding cord of non-usefulness and non- 
 ability in actual outlay of physical strength. 
 Man was made for use for the watering 
 hose to expand and cultivate the garden 
 fields of Time, and to prepare a fruitage 
 mete for the kingdom of Heaven. The ideal 
 life of sprouting manhood is his basis ground 
 for the actualities of real life. Homer, in 
 his Iliad, lived through the truths he therein 
 uttered. No person can build on the ideal 
 plane but what the structure must be in com- 
 ponent parts a life-lease of the individuality 
 
BACKWABD GLIMPSES. 25 
 
 that surrounded and made palpable the out- 
 wrought figure of individual design. There 
 is no harnes that fits as well as our own; 
 although other people's may be gilded with 
 the silver and gold tips, still they would not 
 serve the wear and tear of our every-day ex- 
 periences. We want the solid masonry of 
 right principles, right motives, and the right 
 judgment key to unlock the fountain of ap- 
 preciation in the outside world. If we edu- 
 cate our conscience aright, it never will or 
 can play truant, because it is founded on the 
 God rock of Truth, and will stand every emer- 
 gency of testship. Claudius, the Komish 
 lawgiver, made truth glow with Divine 
 favor. He built, and maintained his build- 
 ing on the even square. This system was to 
 fit all things by the rubic process, and hence 
 Claudius was to the world a prize gem a 
 lofty exemplifier "Do unto others as ye 
 would that others should do unto you. " The 
 world of materiality will yet have to step to 
 that basis of deal, for the lightning rod of 
 common sense must some time protect the 
 embryo principle of right, of justice, shown 
 in the milk of human kindness that goes out 
 to succor and maintain the great brotherhood 
 of man. When Rome built her fires of wrath 
 
26 BACKWRAD GLIMPSES. 
 
 and destruction, they were built on the plat- 
 form of physical hardihood of endurance. 
 The Romans would acknowledge no strength 
 superior to man's; no God superior to their 
 templed one of pomp and worldly honor. 
 Rome flooded herself; for there never can 
 be growth on any continent of the world's re- 
 nown unless the spiral point for accumulation 
 reaches to the world of God's Spiritual gran- 
 deur of purposed power. God or Nature 
 would have us acknowledge our maintenance 
 would have us throw out a spirit of thanks- 
 giving and praise, that the great life foun- 
 tain has been mindful of our daily wants; has 
 cherished us with a loving arm of protection ; 
 that^no straying wolf has entered our fold of 
 secured prizeship unless we, from careless 
 habit, have left a bar down or failed to secure 
 the door leading to God's help-house invested 
 in man. What we want to-day God has never 
 yet failed to give ; for if His stream to us 
 seem stringent, we know the withholdment 
 means purification a greater good through 
 the lesser means a Spiritual development 
 through the laceration of physical by-plays 
 of movement. We never clothe ourselves 
 for the world's eye but what we wish for 
 something better some gew-gaw of show 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 27 
 
 we think would be highly attractive and fix 
 our mark of worth in the outside world. But 
 when we come to the Spiritual clothing or 
 adornment, we are not so lavish with our de- 
 tails of show. We sometimes even shrink 
 from letting the world know that we have se- 
 cured a gem set in the crown of Spiritual 
 light. We are moved according to the wealth 
 in our mental and moral deposit. We can 
 only give as we have received, whether it be 
 from the external or internal prize-house of 
 worth. The law of equity will ever be classi- 
 cally illustrated and brought to account if 
 entailed upon or in any way misled or abused. 
 What I propose in this work which I am 
 striving to give the world is, to illustrate and 
 make clear my journey ings and pilgrimage 
 as I have wended my way from earth. It 
 will simply be a recounting of my travels, 
 my restings, and my gleanings, and I hope 
 the world will see that Christian's pack or 
 burden that weighed him down on earth was 
 but the typified expression of sin, and how 
 each successive movement on the up-hill 
 principles that govern and stake our onward 
 life is more or less ruled by our past beverages 
 drank from the cesspools of earth. Time was 
 when man was slow to perceive the debt he 
 
28 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 owed to God or conscience ; but the swift and 
 fleeting feet of progress Lave brought man to 
 see that apology to our interior manhood is 
 ofttimes due from the winding course of out- 
 side life. 
 / 
 
 God grant that the earthly journey may pick new stars 
 
 of light, 
 
 As Time's wafting breezes make onward her flight, 
 And the glory that's found in the tombs of the past, 
 Be the star of reflection that cannot hold fast. 
 For the booming gun points and is sure to discharge 
 Its contents of fire to the enemy at large, 
 Who has wriggled and shuffled and fought to secure 
 A stronghold for creediste that would ever endure. 
 But Time's changing finger points out to the light, 
 Where the glory of error is found in its flight; 
 Then let God be the watchword let Satan hang low; 
 And we're freed from His pincers wherever we go. 
 
 JOURNEY No. 2. 
 
 The time has been when John Bunyan's 
 attempt to visit earth would have settled 
 around the minds of earth as a hallucination 
 on the part of a writer, or one giving the 
 facts of my present or past locomotive pow- 
 er to be a tangible embodiment, bearing the 
 stamp mark of individuality possessed by no 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 29 
 
 one but John Bunyan; and the reason I have 
 not before made my appearance and related 
 my experiences in the world of ether light 
 is, because the spirit of unbelief has ever 
 stared me in the face, and to use a homely, 
 but old and trite expression, it was like casting 
 pearls before swine to force myself back be- 
 fore the world was ready to receive me ; and my 
 second coming shall be like a thief in the 
 night, and I will draw all hearts around me 
 by the truth marks of circumstantial evi- 
 dence that I can lay before the public mind. 
 The lady I have chosen to do my work is ob- 
 scure to the great world-heart of popularity, 
 and in no way anxious to become a shining 
 light on the road of public favor. She is 
 simply acting from the standpoint of duty; 
 but I will try and gather the roses for her 
 Spiritual crown from a bush that has discard- 
 ed the thorny emblems of life, and in the 
 days that she shall be shut away from the 
 world, but holding entire communion with 
 me, I will lay before her those fields of living 
 green that are watered and kept in pristine 
 beauty by the key-notes of harmony sound- 
 ing from the river streams of Spiritual life. 
 God grant that there may be many workers 
 from a sense of duty more that are willing 
 
30 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 to take a plunge in the pools of public ani- 
 mosity for the fish or shark that wears the 
 fins that only protrude when the helpless fig- 
 ure or figures of Truth come slowly twinkling 
 by; and God grant that the spicy shades of 
 life may throw wide and free the aroma that 
 gladdens the secret springs of a happy life- 
 hood. 
 
 "We do not give out our happying forces as 
 much as we should. We twine ourselves too 
 much within the range of our own encom- 
 passment, and live on the basis of selfish mo- 
 nopoly. The time has gone by when the face- 
 marks of error that have arisen by the fire- 
 side of our own selfishness can be wiped out 
 without leaving the indellible stain that lasts 
 through the wear and tear of earth's fabric 
 of experience, and nestles itself, by force of 
 habit, into our Spiritual garment or vesture 
 of change. When selfishness takes posses- 
 sion of a person, there is but one tune for 
 them to be played on the great fiddle of use, 
 and that is the quick-time footstep to every 
 whim of selfish desire. Another's wants 
 might claim their attention and stick a pin of 
 trust about their hedgerow of willingness, 
 which ever hangs an idle figure of show, to 
 be made use of in casting off our froth of 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 31 
 
 wonder at another person's non-ability to take 
 care of number one, which, to a selfish per- 
 son's mind, seems to.be the acme of God's 
 whole the one warbling note cast but from 
 the keystone of God's one love. The selfish- 
 ness that rides along the crested waves of 
 Time is strange and wonderful to a soul after 
 having taken on its wardrobe of immortality, 
 for we then, to a great extent, lose sight of 
 the physical basis of deal, and are brought in 
 direct contact with the higher elements that 
 surround our orbit of growth. We learn 
 more of the fullness of content by coming 
 out to God's broad and sunny platform of 
 united handiwork. That whatever I have to 
 give, take ye therefrom, is the paean of God's 
 sounding message to the world. And we in 
 spirit life, to accumulate the starry gems that 
 fall from the Lord's supper house or table- 
 land, must glean for the well being of all 
 must open our fields to the Euths and Naomis 
 that are found in all the social walks of life, 
 and who are strugglers to maintain the prin- 
 ciples of right and well doing in the world of 
 materiality, as well as in the world of Spirit- 
 uality. God has raised up this world land 
 of Judea for a prize emblem or figure-head to 
 mount the rostrum of planetary evolution of 
 
3 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 fame, and its board must and will be swept 
 clear of the binding spirit that drives a hitch- 
 ing post for another where they would not be 
 willing to stop themselves. 
 
 The inequality of position, and the body 
 show of worldly maintenance is, after all, 
 but the instruments on which the interior 
 principles or attributes play their tunes of 
 merit or demerit, and to a person where 
 much is given, much will be required ; as in 
 Hamlet, the Ghost will ever be ready to make 
 its appearance, and claim for itself the 
 shadow of something real. How strangely 
 we are formed! How intricately fashioned 
 for the great world of use! If a thread 
 breaks in our machinery-house of external 
 proportion, we feel the sensitive jar through- 
 out the whole fabric of motion ; and so when 
 our interior screws are loose we have a rick- 
 ety sensation of being all wrong, and some- 
 body else must be at fault ; for one little mis- 
 take on our part, that meant everything so 
 clever and nice, would not, of course, make 
 so great a break. The screw that needs at- 
 tending to must be in some other body's 
 work-house of deal. And thus we try to rea- 
 son ourselves away from any attempt at re- 
 construction, and the breaks, of course, accu- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 33 
 
 mulate, and before we are fully aware of the 
 fact, we are seemingly past repair. But, as 
 Theodore Parker, or some other illustrious 
 mind has said, God holds aloft the signal 
 gun to awaken us from dark despair and push 
 us away from our Sedan chair of ease, and 
 unfold within us the right purposes for ac- 
 tive measures of copartnerships in this world 
 of typehood for eternity. The shores of the 
 better land ever mingle in our schedule of 
 defense that we hold out to pacify conscience 
 and make clear the breastwork presented to 
 the world. We, from the standpoint of cos- 
 mopolite citizenship, wear our clothing with 
 reference to the sun and tide. If we see the 
 flumes open leading to the smokestack of 
 earth, we reach for the garment best suiting 
 the occasion, for we well know that the scent- 
 hound of distrust is ever ready to tear and 
 lacerate the throat of Truth. Therefore the 
 road leading from the heart-shaped fountain 
 of Paradise was first traversed, as earth is 
 well aware, by the non-sensitive ones that 
 could beat a retreat when the door of incredu- 
 lity was shut in the face of a Spirit messen- 
 ger. Earth is asking to-day why the olden 
 leaders on Time's footstool do not return with 
 the first threads of their second advent to 
 
34 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 pierce the needle eye of earth, that her per- 
 ceptive faculties may be made strong by a 
 warranty deed from the headquarters of the 
 Spiritual glory of movement. Truth ever 
 reaches us through the lesser channels of our 
 understanding. The streams that water and 
 irrigate the earth are only the lesser influen- 
 ces to tell us of the great body-head of ocean 
 grandeur that sends out her rippling waves 
 to fathom and supply the hungry needs of 
 material forces. The sunbeam is but a ray 
 from the rounded-out majesty of the crimson 
 ball that gives to the earth her lights and 
 shades of worth. And still we accept the 
 Sun as a demonstrative fact, when it is only 
 the outstretched arms of the great planetary 
 fire that we discover with the mind or eye 
 focus of sight. We also accept the Ocean as 
 a veritable truth, when we only see her sur- 
 face show and feel her riplets of power in 
 the outside world. And so, because the body- 
 head of God's Spiritual realms do not usher 
 the new Jerusalem from head to foot, instead of 
 feet first as Truth is ever borne to the plat- 
 form of worldly vision and credulity the world 
 feels the abuse of God's using small means 
 to first make known the fact of Spirit com- 
 munion, when the larger powers seem more 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 35 
 
 dignified, more capable of giving food or 
 knowledge to the aristocratic mind of earth. 
 A rosy tinted sunset prognosticates a twenty- 
 four hours of pleasant successive time, and 
 so everything that is necessary for us to know 
 is foreshadowed to us by some sign hung on 
 the external camera of our comprehension. 
 And thus we are left for every age to cut its 
 own wisdom teeth; and we, with the sharp 
 points of our ripened understanding, may help 
 to pierce the cobwebs hung in the sky that 
 the old lady tried so hard to reach with her 
 broom. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 iHEKE is no one point in my life's his- 
 tory that seems so fraught with interest, 
 so woven together with substantial evi- 
 dences of reformatory activity to outpurpose 
 the changes my soul felt, as the era that took 
 me from my outward pent-house and inner 
 temple of reconstruction. The scales where- 
 with I weighed my deeds of error hung even- 
 ly balanced, for I had suffered and grown 
 strong in the purpose and power to manifest 
 myself a man amongst men; to live my own 
 individuality; and if God purposed for me 
 growth under the bonds of creedism, I was 
 willing to accept whatever channel God and 
 earthly reason I now know the terms to be 
 synonymous had formed for me to walk in 
 and make a display of my then truthful light 
 to others. The darksome billows of trouble 
 were rolling under my feet and seemingly 
 forever away from me, for I ever wore my 
 nightcap of duty to strengthen the daylight 
 of Time's experiences. What came to me 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 37 
 
 through intuitive perception, I called the 
 voice of God speaking in direct harmony with 
 my inclination of obeyance. I now know it 
 was the God-given power of angel brother- 
 hood speaking to my inner sanctuary of re- 
 pose, and asking me to pick aloft for grains 
 to feed my hungry soul. And the unseen 
 power or powers are ever watching to pour 
 oil into the wasting-out lamps of earthly 
 lighting. My steed of merit was ever tied 
 with the cord of youthful error; and although 
 I had walked away from that past, the public 
 mind ever tied for me a knot that I could 
 never slip without a hurt to some part of my 
 being. This spirit of unforgiveness has done 
 more harm in the world than the crimes or 
 pettifogging spirit of thievery, for which the 
 world must jump accounts when the great 
 day of settlement rides to the brink of indi- 
 vidual note-paying of this world's life ac- 
 count. Socrates, the world-wide fameist, 
 possessed philosophical merit of sufficient 
 strength and import of bearing to sway and 
 even master the popular mind of his day of 
 grace on earth. Socrates was skilled in the 
 art of fishing for public notice and favor. 
 He even tied his council packages with the 
 blue ribbon of peace, emblematical of the 
 
38 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 structured body that he wished formed around 
 his temple of rule. And Socrates left his 
 unfurled banner in the bygone world, where 
 the breezes of love have fluttered it before 
 each successive generation, until Socrates, 
 from his world of Spiritual glory, ever finds 
 himself in the front ranks of Time's illustri- 
 ous and honored men. When Forsythe, the 
 English Baronet, played his figure card to 
 secure his titled honors, he sprung a trap 
 that caught him in its rebound of clashing 
 merit, and he went down to the bottom round 
 of his consequential grandeur with his top- 
 knot displaced by the Cromwellian power of 
 government. 
 
 Stringency has ever been followed by the 
 running stream of more liberal views until 
 the present time, when the world seems to be 
 chasing the gauntlet for a wide extension of 
 the silvery coating that makes palatable the 
 pill of peace. Emerson, the English poet, 
 was a somnambulist, walking in the very face 
 of danger, with his feet and hands tied with 
 the rope of double security; for the angels 
 pinioned his flight, that when the world grew 
 bitter and hard to please, the arrows of Truth 
 flew faster and firmer, and settled in the rank- 
 ling wounds of the world's financial difficul- 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 39 
 
 ties. Emerson fought with the poignard of 
 peace, and doubled his influence by every 
 turn that has been made by the rumbling 
 wheel of progress. How cozy and nice one 
 can be tucked away in the 'arm-chair of ease, 
 with no thought of the outside world of care 
 and strife with no awakened sensation that 
 they have a work to do that their fingers are 
 needed to fashion and form some article of 
 use for somebody, or some place on the course 
 ship of Time. Idleness begets slothfulness, 
 and slothfulness is a bugbear around the 
 altars of pride. 
 
 Sampson was accounted a very strong man, 
 and yet Delilah, with her coaxing and subtle 
 ways, found his key of strength and applied 
 her battery for a renovation, whereby Samp- 
 son might deduce wisdom, and learn that all 
 strength is not of an outward character, or 
 all wisdom a surface show. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 iHE ruling King of the Ishmaelitic force 
 of government was King Solomon 
 wise, no doubt, for his day of wisdom ; 
 but he was a debauchee on a grander scale 
 than earth has since cared to follow, -if, in- 
 deed, we except modern Mormonism, which 
 is the blue-dragon that has reached out his 
 fangs from the old templed witchery of Solo- 
 mon's power of monarchial reign. The Brig- 
 ham Young of to-day has no power outside 
 his weakling crew of licentious body-servants, 
 and the armistice that he is there forming in 
 those Salt Lake valleys will one day shake off 
 the miasma or fetish that has crept in from 
 the olden wisdom of Bible teachings. The 
 Bible can in no way stand the pressure of 
 coming events, for God lights up every path- 
 way of reform and advancement by a brighter 
 torch picked from the tree of Purity. The 
 Bible will lose caste as a saving fund for hu- 
 manity's sinful robe in accordance with in- 
 
or THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 41 
 
 tellectual capacity for improvement. The 
 Bible was a dropped star when mind was 
 groveling in darkness. It came when needed ' 
 and will be sustained as long as the God abil- 
 ity of human intellect requires succor from 
 that branching stream put forth from the 
 great fountain of overflowing waters. God is 
 a merciful God. Pouring out His favors to the 
 just and the unjust, His rays of mercy reach 
 all hearts. The stubble fields are made avail- 
 able in the due course of the sweeping love 
 arm of growth that brings everything under 
 the harrow of culture. When God's man- 
 date says come, and conditional circumstan- 
 ces that God twines around all law, says go, 
 we can no more help growth than can the 
 corn that bursts its little socket or germ-bed 
 under the favorable condition of sun and 
 moisture; for the corn will grow under favor- 
 able atmospheric pressure and by-play of 
 planetary movement, and man's growth and 
 culture from the stream of wisdom depends 
 on the irrigated soil and pruning hooks of 
 merciful deal cast about each other. 
 
 When God lights the torch of advance- 
 ment, mind is on the rack to find out what 
 change of clothing God has purposed for the 
 world; and if the shadings of truth and error 
 
42 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 blend and form a compact to be a united 
 force until mind unhitches from the rack of 
 uncertainty and glories in its garment of en- 
 tire truth and pleasure of wearing, then 
 has mind found its rightful dress, and God 
 has worked through law to fashion its fitness. 
 There is no study so complicated as God, for 
 in the fact and truth of rny Spiritual glean- 
 ings there is no study but God no mind but 
 the one God mind, whose branching sprays 
 are picked by the world tree of use, and hung 
 in each and every temple bearing the dust 
 mark of God's pointed finger of material view. 
 Therefore, God is the one study the one 
 mind from which to choose and fashion a lit- 
 tle world mind of our own that we can fasten 
 to'advantage and glorification to the one mind 
 force of the ruling Deity. God's monuments 
 of power on earth are all stamped f with a 
 clipped wing, else God might have been su- 
 perseded by some specialty of human wis- 
 dom that is ever claiming a ride of superior 
 merit in God's boat of acknowledged partiality. 
 "When will the world see and make known the 
 fact that we are all drifters, all sinkers, and 
 all swimmers; that we are born, that we are 
 ble*d, and suffering is the sure result of being 
 born and bled, and purification is the pay- 
 ment for the sin of suffering? 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 43 
 
 Galileo pinned his faith on the starry firma- 
 ment, and all the exhortation from Divinity's 
 call-house of show was from the open mouth- 
 piece of firmamental grandeur. God, to Gali- 
 leo's mind, rode in the overarching heavens, 
 and pinned His mantle of glory with the stars 
 he was trying to fathom. Astronomers of all 
 ages and of all degrees of knowledge have 
 supposed that in searching the planetary 
 world or worlds that they were coming near- 
 er the great hocus pocus of first cause, when 
 God is no nearer other worlds than the world 
 of earth; and for a systematic hunting-ground, 
 where a great variety of game is to be cap- 
 tured, earth holds the stellar key that will un- 
 lock more scientific law force than any other 
 planet yet discovered or discoverable by 
 the intelligent mind of man. The worlds in 
 space are co-operatic with our earth planet, 
 and move as much at the call of earth as earth 
 gives from her body-house for the satisfaction 
 of elementary hunger. There is no stingi- 
 ness in the laws that govern the system-house 
 of worlds. It is give and take, from center 
 to circumference of God's body-head of 
 worlds hung on His arm of love, that is 
 swayed by no power but Truth, and shaken by 
 no force but the hopeful heart of humanity. 
 
4A BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 God is a traveler at large, running the block- 
 ade with the licensed privilege of a guest at 
 home who dares to intrude, because intrusion 
 is the sticking-pin of council claim. God is 
 our Father, Mother, friend and protector 
 our law of activity and circumnavigation 
 the one budding promise that actuates our all 
 of life. God is our celestial guide, and our 
 mundane hero that is ever beckoning us to 
 the highest standard that can be reached by our 
 system-house of motionary law. God is ever 
 drawing us to the platform of accountability 
 ever saying, search well your hearts, and let 
 purity storm the castle and become the rout- 
 ing foe to the oppressive works of sin. We 
 are God's fledging birds, sent out from the 
 mother side of God's coop-house of consan- 
 guinity, and we pick the star of individuality 
 from the Christly tree of beneficent reign, 
 and wear it in accordance with our will sweep 
 of strength to conquer the difficulties that be- 
 set our pathway. 
 
 A murmuring spirit of discontent shows 
 its grevious bugbear marks in all our raiment 
 of outside show, and in the winding para- 
 phernalia that goes to form our Spiritual 
 robement for the wear and tear of eternity. 
 Christ fought against sin fought the animal 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 4 
 
 with the Spiritual the bad with the hedge- 
 hammer of good and Christ was a conquer- 
 er over the enemy at large every day of his 
 life. His merciful spirit has ever been His 
 charm of power; and Christ will ever do fora 
 saving fund; and the world at large can al- 
 ways find in His wide and extensive field of 
 loving attributes some spray of redemption 
 that could be gathered to grace the pathway 
 of salvation. Christ is the old school doctor, 
 as the world's saying is, whose medicines will 
 ever grace and heal the heart and soul wounds 
 of the home circles of civilization; and the 
 homeopathic doses have made pure and strong 
 the decoction syrup that will equalize, and, ' 
 therefore, harmonize the free will spirit that 
 has started and grown under the purest 
 treatment that the world has ever recognized. 
 Christ bears the flaming sword that is to cut 
 down and destroy evil; and Christ also bears 
 the white banner of peace. And the inscrip- 
 tion letters read: "Let Good be the hatchet, 
 and Evil or Sin the head laid on the block of 
 sacrifice." The deluge that will swallow up 
 and make available Christ's living principles of 
 worth instead of His dead gore, which has 
 well nigh served its purpose, will be the del- 
 uge of brotherly and sisterly unity, the heart 
 
46 BACKWABD GLIMPSES. 
 
 and hand purpose of united effort to sway the 
 body-head of humanity to the high tide wa- 
 ters of soul purification. For soul is the 
 mounting man, and Spirit the indwelling sav- 
 iour guarding the way over the rough crags 
 of progressive life. 
 
 Spirit fashions its own redeemer. One per- 
 son's point mark of ascension would be no 
 guiding star for another to follow along life's 
 thorny road of trouble. Each person must 
 pick their own pathway over and through the 
 hills and dales of life, and the pruning and 
 grading must be done with our own fingers 
 of care, lest our earth posters fail in the pur- 
 - pose for which they were formed. God or con- 
 science can never judge us from another's 
 standpoint of accumulated wisdom or glory, 
 because God or conscience, to the educated 
 mind of wisdom, places no confidence in creed ; 
 and if we were to judge or be judged by anoth- 
 er's standard of growth, we should be creedists, 
 and that is a mountebank structure we are try- 
 ing to get loose from and saunter away on our 
 own props of responsibility. God saves the 
 world by the care and protection of the or- 
 ganic institutions of manhood and woman- 
 hood thrown around each other, and the more 
 selfish the spirit that actuates individuality, 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 47 
 
 the less of salvation on the high tenor key 
 can reach individual movement. God fash- 
 ions to keep, and never tires of His struc- 
 tures formed, but learns from experience that 
 perfection is not of an earthly nature; but 
 the growing largeness of God's heart expands 
 and perfects everything in its own right time. 
 We cannot get away from God, because He is 
 our treasure-house where all is invested. If 
 we ascend the mountain top, God is there, 
 with his help arm of strength to sustain us in 
 our high altitude of flight and noble daring. 
 God is also with us in the valley depths of 
 bur crumbling natures, and breasts all the 
 circumstances that makes us a sinking cargo 
 on board the freight-ships of Time. There- 
 fore, we are never without our God; but we 
 often fail' to hear His voice of counsel and 
 advice, and failing to hear, we lose our inter- 
 est in the spirit that protects the right and 
 suffers the wrong. God is our shipment stall, 
 where the good, bad and indifferent articles 
 of our interior wardrobe are brought for ex- 
 amination, and whatever is worthy for further 
 use, God tries to succor, and by the use of 
 the spirit of renovation the world is moved 
 to independent footing. 
 
CHAPTEE VII. 
 
 jHEEE is no power so great and potent 
 ~ as love. It keeps time with our every 
 want, and leads us no farther than we 
 are able to go. Love is in duty bound to 
 take care of us, because love fashioned our 
 outfit and stamped us with the Divinity mark, 
 that in straying from the fold of Christian 
 duty and brotherly and sisterly unity, the 
 mark would hold good for our return, when 
 love had tried all fields and have been torn 
 by the briars and brambles that infest the 
 uncultured patch-grounds that mortals fain 
 must travel; for a hidden treasure is ofttimes 
 found in a soul that has wandered through 
 the quagmire and low-down valley depths 
 that make up the variety of earth life. A 
 mind that has only gleaned from the rosy and 
 slipper-footed side of mundane story-telling 
 can have no prize tale in his or her catalogue 
 of gifts for the world's reading; because hair- 
 breadth escapes and squalid misery must 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 49 
 
 some time enter into the fate of a hero or 
 heroine, to make a tale of fiction pass cur- 
 rent in a world that turns the cold shoulder 
 on a prototype enactment in real life. The 
 world has ever dealt more leniently and feel- 
 ingly with crime dressed fashionably, and 
 sorrow with its long vail of crape; for pov- 
 erty, mixed with crime or wrong doing, pre- 
 sents no claim of merit. It stands a sentinel 
 of pity and that, with some, is but contempt 
 at the doorway of individual mercy, asking 
 for fellowship, for counsel and advice, and 
 for the love arm of protection to strengthen 
 the weakness that could not refuse the tempt- 
 er's call. Love is better as an active agent 
 in our hours of soul and body hunger than 
 reason, if reason is to lay aside the sheeny 
 mantle of love; for reason is a cold moralizer, 
 while love is ever dressed for army service, 
 and will stand a picket on duty to warn us of 
 the approaching foe. Love never tires 
 never is afraid of getting sick from over-exer- 
 tion , for it is fed and kept warm and free by 
 the Father and Mother hand outstretched 
 from the fountain heart of Deity. Oh ! God, 
 we thank Thee for the stream that never fails, 
 and for its portrayed manifestations in all 
 the varied details of life. And we thank 
 (3) 
 
50 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 Thee, thou great and Holy Spirit, for the 
 mind gift to comprehend the glory of Thy 
 Christly reign, and for the advantage ground 
 gained over the errors of past theology; for 
 Thou, oh! Father, art the freeborn mind 
 function that comprehends, sustains and ele- 
 vates the lesser mind of man and woman par- 
 takement. Love is God's weapon of salva- 
 tion the rod that ever points to the right 
 side of humanity, digging its way through 
 the rough and uneven by-lodgments of error, 
 out to the sunny and more prosperous educa- 
 tional font of being. The word love, in its 
 sounding articulation, has the cooing thrill 
 that flashes through every part of sensational 
 life; and love, in its expressed force, leads us 
 to forget everything but the mountain weight 
 of ecstacy that overbalances and sweeps away 
 all selfish desire in the human heart. 
 
 And, again, true love never flatters ; it buoys 
 us up with the hope to become worthy of the 
 tenderness surrounding the self-sacrificing 
 spirit that stakes all for the good and well 
 being of another. God has staked all for the 
 uprising of the soul element portrayed in the 
 symbolic figure show of Christ, for Christ is 
 but the representation of all goodness classi- 
 cally illustrated in the form or figure of man- 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 51 
 
 hood. And, again, God has staked all'in hu- 
 manity; for in all the variety and vastness of 
 creation's grandest outlay, man has life from 
 the component department of the surging 
 whole. God is mysterious and strange in His 
 might and forms of expressed love; and I 
 doubt if the all-glowing first cause under- 
 stood the use of any tool in the vocabulary 
 of science but what was tipped with the star- 
 shimmer point of love ; and the welding band 
 of God escapement must first be elongated by 
 the hero or heroine who can bring the white 
 heat strength of love to fashion the belt or 
 circle badge thrown around the world king- 
 dom of social intercourse and ingrafting of 
 new fibers to the body-head of progress. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 JOVE is the awakening gun from the bat- 
 tle-field of error, and it will be heard 
 and recognized as a booming prelude 
 to the soft-toned guitar strains that ever 
 breathe co-operative harmony and peace 
 through the law of concordance. No lady's 
 bower is complete without the low-toned 
 witchery of the silver-mouthed guitar; and is 
 it not because that instrument, above all oth- 
 ers, lingers mostly around the table-land of 
 love, and fills the soul with its dropping ca- 
 dences that seem like the fluted outgushes 
 from the songster birds of Paradise? Love 
 has many tones, and none have reached the 
 full warble that shows the power invested in 
 whole notes. Agassiz, the hero of chemis- 
 try, ever lit his search ground with the fire 
 that was to warm and bless others. No pent- 
 up Spirit can labor successfully; for if we 
 give out to others, there will be an equiva- 
 lent return; and although it may not always 
 come before the outward sense of sight, our 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 53 
 
 liarmonizer within acknowledges the free-born 
 gift for the redemption of soul selfishness. 
 
 In finding my way back to earth I am caught 
 in ten thousand different channels of lively 
 existent labor, and each and every department 
 of outwrought systematic work is filled with 
 the essence or spirit of cultured love ; for love 
 needs tuning and shaping to fit each advance 
 stage of man's interior development. Love 
 to-day is in the swaddling cloth of inefficiency 
 comparatively speaking; for how many souls 
 of earthly lineage would take the poor men- 
 dicant from the street, to ride with them in 
 their carriage of ease ; and how many are there 
 in earth's staple fund-house of aristocracy 
 that send a wafting thought into the by-ways 
 and alleys that are filled with the unfortunate 
 ones of earth's forge tfulness; and, again, are 
 there many who would carry out to the suffer- 
 ing poor the loaded trays that grace the side- 
 board of their elegant dining halls? Cul- 
 tured love is never found where wealth is 
 ashamed of the -poor face "of poverty. And 
 I thank God that the blasting sentiment is 
 confined to the details of body dressment. 
 Love is an Anglo-Saxon word, used to express 
 harmony in sentiment or feeling, and will dig 
 where no other power shows even the face of 
 
54 BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 
 
 concern. It is God wise to build up the love 
 nature, for by so doing we can better commune 
 with the all-wise Jehovah of first cause, first 
 principle, and first love. We can find no bet- 
 ter teacher for the expansion of our love na- 
 ture than the Father and Mother God, whose 
 every step is an advance love movement to 
 foster some poor weakling caught in the 
 meshes of despair. 
 
 I well remember one scene in my journey 
 from earth which has ever borne with me its 
 lasting impression. I had been on a mission 
 of mercy to try and evangelize and prune 
 out the weeds that ignorance was weaving 
 about a small colony situated on the Isle of 
 Patmos. Its district locality is the interven- 
 ing hedge running between two city sites of 
 eminence and wealth, situated in the constel- 
 lation or glimmering foothold of Androme- 
 da. Now the isle or island hedge-sight of 
 Patmos is only remarkable in one point of 
 view; its name has its significance in the 
 breastwork of friendship thrown up for pro- 
 tective force around a band who at the time 
 of my sojourn there were striving to see the 
 light from God's co-operative workhouse, 
 whereby they could be made stronger and bet- 
 ter, and more worthy as props to stand the 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 55 
 
 wear and tear of protective guardianship. 
 
 The incident I here relate was of a nature 
 and quality that touched my whole love na- 
 ture, and gave me a keen, sharp sense of 
 never before having known the meaning of 
 the term love as expressed in living deeds. 
 I had journeyed far and long, and sought an 
 inland shelter for rest and quiet, and it would 
 seem that my outfit of angel vision wafted 
 me to this habitation for the precise lesson* 
 that I received. The dwelling wherein I 
 found lodgment and care was an octagonal 
 shape, built on the plan of God's eternal 
 whole, and the rough corners of eight angle- 
 dom were the standing proof that the hewer 
 of reform was needed to make the circle ideal 
 a rounded-out structure of harmonious worth. 
 In this battlement of brotherly and sisterly 
 co-partnership there appeared a man wearing 
 the radiance of every Christly attribute that 
 had been sprouted in the fiery furnace of ad- 
 versity. I asked the man, Varies, what seemed 
 to be the need in that district of straightened 
 means and dormant powers of comprehen- 
 sion. The man seemed troubled for a mo- 
 ment, when there darted across his counten- 
 ance the sunbeam ray of hope, and he, stoop- 
 ing, took from amidst the assembled group a 
 
 OF THB 
 
56 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 tiny bright-eyed child and sat him down, and 
 taking the boy the while upon his knee. Now 
 this wee pet child had learned to love this 
 man. The aroma of Yaries' nature had filled 
 the child with strength and trust, and, there- 
 fore, when Yaries said, "Ino" signifying 
 innocence "Ino, where is God?" the child 
 looked up and startled wonder crept through 
 jevery lineament of sweetest beauty. And again 
 said Yaries : " Ino, where, who and what is 
 God?" The child sprang down and stood 
 erect before his questioner, and with lisping 
 sweetness said : * 'Why, papa Yaries, I though^ 5 
 you was God." "Well, now," said Yaries, 
 " Ino, why did you suppose me to be God ?" 
 " Because/' said the child, "you mean, and 
 do, and live so much for everybody." < Well, 
 then," said Yaries, "Ino, here has come a 
 man a long way, and has sought shelter with us. 
 And he, too, wants a work to do here; but 
 since I am your God and do everything for 
 everybody, there can be nothing for him to 
 do here, can there ?" The child seemed puz- 
 zled, and there shot across his face of trust a 
 gleam of doubt, and looking up at me with 
 simple wonder said : ' ' Maybe you, too, are 
 God, for you want something to do for some- 
 body; and I will take hold of my big^ papa's 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 57 
 
 hand and lead you round until you find some- 
 thing to do, for I guess my papa Varies needs 
 cme help, for I heard him say that this place 
 must have an educational board of sound di- 
 rectors; and maybe you will fix that up for 
 good big papa, who has so much care. If I 
 was bigger and knew what them words meant, 
 J would go and do what he said." Now Ino, 
 the child innocence, taught me the full and 
 true Ineaning of the Father's uttered words : 
 "If ye love me, ye will keep my command- 
 ments." 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 MIGHT cite other incidents of interest- 
 ing merit that happened while duty kept 
 me on the Isle of Patnios, but my time 
 with this work is limited, and I must touc*h on 
 my experience in different localities of Spirit 
 life. 
 
 If circumstances should permit, which at 
 present seems doubtful, I would like to give 
 a broader and more prolix account of my ex- 
 tended journey up to its present terminus of 
 gain; but should I never again on the course 
 of Time show proof of my individuality 
 through the pen, I hope to come in rapport 
 with the public mind of earth through the 
 outgush of a John Bunyan prayer. My me- 
 dium is being bathed in the waters of devel- 
 opment, and when I shall reach my hand 
 across the stygian waters to lead her to the 
 platform of public duty, my voice shall be 
 heard saying ' ' come forth to prayer." Christ 
 spoke of His second coming; and he also 
 said, ' ' If I go from you, I shall draw all 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 59 
 
 hearts unto me." Now, Christ, wearing the 
 stamp and outfit of humanity, chose us; and 
 by us, I mean the whole race of human life, 
 to be His followers; and we being the sheep, 
 with the admixture of goatism, must follow 
 back on the shepherd's track according to 
 our ability of endurance and gift at tracing 
 the bee-line march of Christly justice of deal. 
 ' ' For I will in no way cast you off, if ye are 
 found keeping my commandments, even from 
 the least unto the greatest." Therefore, be- 
 ing prototypes of Christ, we are His by force 
 of law, and can never unwind ourselves from 
 His presence. God gave us life through the 
 natural function of growth, and placed 
 Christ's lever of strength in approximate 
 range with our development of understanding. 
 Christ was born full-fledged. His holy spirit 
 lifted him from one stage of development to 
 another, and gain in love power sat on every 
 throne of advanced life. When mind can 
 comprehend Christ, we shall be as Gods, 
 knowing good from evil ; but until that time ar- 
 rives, let us work every oar for knowledge, re- 
 membering, if we get into deep water, where the 
 whirlpools play lavish work with our strength 
 of detective force, it will be pleasanter to 
 there sink if the breakers come too heavy, 
 
60 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 than to swamp in a mud-puddle with the cord 
 of ignorance tied about our feet, and hitched 
 to the post of creedal oppression. The 
 world is filled with the systematic work of 
 priestly show, which would not cloud the face 
 of Nature so much if the banners of human 
 poverty did not wave from so many pent- 
 places of despair, showing that creeds flour- 
 ish the better and still cling to the old Phar- 
 isaic outshow of pride. God built the world 
 from the depths of his wisdom from the 
 holy ground of first principle. God stepped 
 to the world, and has ever worked through 
 the financiering pulpit of ministerial duty. 
 And when God claims the world, or its staple 
 fund of spiritual and animal life for the ani- 
 mal is the staging built round the spiritual, 
 and belongs just as essentially to first cause 
 as the spiritual and when God claims the 
 one. He also reaches for the embodiment of 
 earthly substance, that no part may slip 
 through His fingers of skillful use . When Na- 
 ture sings her great harmonica of advanced 
 tuneship , God will have another world facing 
 the sunny side of Spiritual development. The 
 classics have never yet been taught as Hudi- 
 bras, the Greek templar of fame, portrayed 
 the significance of studied arrangement, and 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 61 
 
 who shall say: "But Hudibras was taught 
 direct from God." As system was God's first 
 law, the Greek writer seems to haveimbibed 
 God's first order of things to a very great ex- 
 tent. All, or nearly all, of the old apostles 
 laid claim to direct inspirational focus of 
 truth. The one or two exceptions seem 
 muddled in their views, and quote from the 
 chip-basket of another prelate of power. I 
 cannot see why, "I, John, saw," should be 
 any more believed or appreciated at the pres- 
 ent time than the seeings of Andrew Jackson 
 Davis; fot I believe both men stand high for 
 truth and veracity in their own shoes of timely 
 wear. This spirit of unbelief only in the out- 
 standing dishes of Bible seasoning is ludi- 
 crous and worthy of a dress parade show, in 
 order to find the tack or nail that clinches 
 the mantle or spirit of non-belief thrown 
 around the mediums of modern Spiritualism. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 !T would seem from the Bible version of 
 God that he gloried in mystery that he 
 must keep himself hid in order to exer- 
 cise more power around the confused mind of 
 man ; and the ancients scarce ever thought of 
 God only as a huge masterpiece of man-like 
 skill of construction and womanly attributes 
 of tenderness and changeableness. God's dis- 
 position, if we take ancient mythology as 
 proof positive, is altogether moody and hard 
 to please. And our being on the plank of sal- 
 vation would not indicate a safe ride, because 
 the billows of God's discontent, which are ever 
 surging, would surely upset our monopoly on 
 the freight or passenger car running from the 
 God depot of will to the city set on the hill 
 of aristocratic grandeur. I have now been in 
 the Spirit world long enough to determine 
 whether I shall ever meet God only in the frag- 
 ments of his great designing power, or whether 
 I shall come en rapport with a poverty God, with 
 manl'ke abilities -Jid proportionate growth 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 63 
 
 in the great hemisphere of use. The more I 
 contemplate God, and the more I see the man- 
 ifestations of the great mind force of Deity, 
 the more I am led to wonder that finite crea- 
 tures could ever have located or personified 
 the active agency or agencies that lifted all 
 worlds from the crater of incompetent de- 
 sign, to the broad and glowing light of reve- 
 lation's pathway of wisdom. Oh ! God, I thank 
 Thee for Thy winding staircase of principles; 
 for the hidden treasures laid in the center or 
 inland vestibule of the voluminous book of 
 natural affinities or natural fixtures, from the 
 shotgun of causative methodical precision of 
 the miudality inborn, to the God movement 
 in space. 
 
 We may say that God's ways are past find- 
 ing out. But God's ways are the fixed laws 
 that scientific research is bringing to the un- 
 derstanding of reason's sway of advancement. 
 God grant that no part of his glorified honors 
 remain under the cover of ignorance; and may 
 the larger God come at length to be under- 
 stood by the lesser minds traveling in the 
 w r ake of the infinity ship of first mind, first 
 motion, and first radicalism, to establish sys- 
 tem and order from the propendity of God's 
 thinking brain of natural power's and natural 
 
64 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 expression of symboled meaning in a world 
 where mind picks the first fruits, and gives 
 for the partakement of all other minds, whether 
 in the garden of Eden, or in the world garden 
 of want. The one is but the symbol or open- 
 ing bud in the flower garden of the other. 
 There is no such thing as getting out of the 
 whirlpool of God's use. We all fill and fit 
 the niche marked out by the angling of cause 
 and effect. There is purpose in every shoot- 
 ing star in every blade of grass that sends 
 its shimmer of green out into the mingling- 
 house of matter to gladden the heart of Nature, 
 and also gladden the natural animal function 
 of want. There is purpose and forethought 
 in the budding and opening rose; in the po- 
 etic movement of every flower; for they all 
 symbol and portray the life of man. God's 
 laws are the fixed purposes that will ever en- 
 dure; and man is but a graft on the God-tree 
 of law, and each and every graft must bear 
 its own flavored fruit into the keeping-house 
 of the Father's love and mercy. 
 
 God is prone to let us be our own saviours, 
 lest we perish from disuse, or become but a 
 handle to the mug that contains the life forces 
 that lifts us from our bended knees of prayer 
 out as a standing guard, with hearts up- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 65 
 
 lifted and hands outstretched, saying: "Abi, 
 Father, give me a work to do; give me the 
 spirit of help, that I may not rust or become 
 touched by the mildew that ever fastens itself 
 around the cornered hedgerows of shallow 
 growth. " When mind becomes the staple ar- 
 ticle to be used for the uplifting of all the na- 
 tions in all the worlds, then may we hope for 
 a seedtime and harvest worthy of the spirit 
 of repentance. 
 
 Bacchus, the God of Wine, was a potentate 
 of mythic power; but the ancient weakling 
 intellect held carnivals in honor of the 
 God power of Bacchus. The human mind 
 is ever prone to worship power, and the 
 mythic Gods but served the reality for which 
 they stood a substitute. And it is to-day as 
 of old. The mythic God stands the power 
 of worship, while the true essence of the 
 truer God remains under the fettered yoke of 
 ignorance. There is no power so great as 
 God's power, because every expression of the 
 varying countenance of love is a show-mark 
 of integrity of purpose, indicating strength 
 of will and strength of character to maintain 
 the first principles placed in the keep-house 
 of Nature. God is worthy to be shown in 
 all the parts of His grandeured loveliness 
 
66 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 that the hand of detailed order has made 
 sufficient for every call of want, and for every 
 outburst of enthusiastic wonder from the 
 mind forces of man. God has dropped an 
 undertone bar for the uplifting and outheav- 
 ing of all the mystic calls that contain the 
 law lever to work through darkness out to the 
 broad light of reasonable forethought and 
 understanding. Let us all worship the great 
 Father and Mother Spirit that dwelleth in 
 and about the whole round of created worlds, 
 and of which we all form a part, and live 
 from the same principles that moves all ani- 
 mated Nature. Then can we become con- 
 sistent w r orshippers, and the Father's Throne 
 will be the study ground where all the har- 
 mony of principles will be developed, under- 
 stood and applied in working out the diagno- 
 sis of the Father's will. May we all hope 
 the day not far distant when mind can pick 
 from the sure Tree of Knowledge, and the 
 fibrous offshoots of sprouting worth, be the 
 retentive fund kept in every person's security- 
 house of brain monopoly of prizeship. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 1HEN Alexander the Great rode Iris 
 steed of power, the world, through 
 wisdom, was in pomp and show; that 
 the Alexandrian forces of skill and power 
 were God obtained and God ordained; that 
 God's specialty along the breastworks of 
 Time was to enforce the human intellect to a 
 basis of exterior ramification of showy fili- 
 bustering movement. It would seem that 
 the world is growing wise in its dotage ; that 
 the external symbols of decay are assuming 
 their true value, and the mind craves dress, 
 ment, for the bygone poverty of apparel can 
 in no way suit the present need of fitful wear- 
 ing. 
 
 Mark Antony, the hero of Grecian fables, 
 was slain by the power and coquetry of a 
 false woman's falser charms; and the Mark 
 Antony's of to-day are being brought to the 
 feast, and thence to the sacrifice, by the 
 power they are trying to rear in idleness and 
 shame, but which will soon be pierced by 
 
68 BACKWEAD GLIMPSES. 
 
 the asp of degradation and welter in the gore 
 of its own shamefacedness. The Cleopatra 
 of stubborn facts must soon rear a head that 
 the nationality of America's undercrust of so- 
 cial negative abuse will strike for the higher 
 wages on a platform where mind can see the 
 sham figures that are dragging the soul down 
 through the mirage of Time, and the anxious- 
 seat that will claim the attention, when the 
 passover of this life reaches us, will be the 
 non-preparation or education for which we 
 are fitted to meet the new experiences that 
 crowd to every par^ of our being. The world 
 has harnessed itself, or has been harnessed, 
 for a great work, by the two laws of cause 
 and effect, which, in simple terms, signifies 
 harmony and discord; and the world can in 
 no way throw off the responsibility imposed 
 by these two warring elements that ever work 
 together for the good of a grand whole. I 
 would that all men and all women could real- 
 ize the monarchy of spirit over matter the 
 feast of fat things prepared for the soul that 
 lives in accordance with the highest laws 
 that move and actuate the selfhood or indi- 
 viduality of the human perceptive faculties. 
 The rosy lights that spread themselves around 
 the lives of the pure in spirit are filled with 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 69 
 
 the halo of Godliness, and* no monotonous 
 weight clogs the life activities of a true 
 worker. 
 
 I have now been in the Spirit world nearly 
 two hundred years, and my soul is still crav- 
 ing the light of more knowledge still ask- 
 ing for food to ripen in my brain-work of 
 thought still seeking the mercy-seat and the 
 lover's throne, with my cloak of care ever 
 drawn around me, that its folds may serve at 
 all times to give warmth and protection to 
 some lone Spirit watcher caught on the tower 
 of forced ambition. The Spirit world offers 
 no inducement to a life of ease. No folded 
 hands are allowed to extend their taper fin- 
 gers of show, for idlers are ever caught in the 
 coil that will tighten around their own hemis- 
 phere of use. We in Spirit life aim to be 
 found at the Lord's supper table, to show our 
 willingness to eat, drink and be merry around 
 a board spread and feast prepared by One 
 who ever works on the principle of succoring 
 all that need the bread of life-giving suste- 
 nance. It is reported in ancient history, or 
 ancient historical fables, that Jacob, a good 
 man of Eastern antiquity of birth, and, as 
 report goes, stood grandfather around the im- 
 maculate conception of Christ, reared a lad- 
 
70 BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 
 
 der whereon he hoped to reach the precincts 
 of glory. Can we, at the present day, re- 
 spect the intellect that would rear an outward 
 symbol, and thereby expect to reach the God- 
 head of Power? Would not some Insane 
 Asylum offer us a sly retreat for our muddled 
 brain that was trying the same hinge of ascent 
 that our predecessor Jacob tried ? I wonder 
 at the inconsistency of the human mind that 
 can still drink a beverage of satisfaction from 
 an old gourd that has been the rounds, and 
 drifted through the slime and weakling filth 
 of every spurious synagogue that has reared 
 its head of show since Adam became the first 
 man and Eve the first woman on temptation's 
 line of march. 
 
 The Church filter from sin is laying its last 
 wires across the ignorance of man. The time 
 has been when the church offered us a high 
 seat in the church militant of heaven, but the 
 church to-day is the stumbling block that 
 hits our heels along the road of progress, for 
 it no longer awakens thought. It has stewed 
 its last stew, and the fragments that are left 
 worth preservation, could be served on a tea- 
 service and satisfy the needs of the whole world. 
 The bread and butter fishers must lay their lines 
 in a sea where the big fish have a few seed- 
 
BACKWABD GLIMPSES. 71 
 
 lings to sprout for the needs of coming gen- 
 erations; for I have always noticed that the 
 spirit of monopoly never flourishes when the 
 undercrust is left out of the pie of service. 
 Whosoever lacks the moral courage to come 
 out from a nest when every shell has been 
 picked, and the tuittering cry is food, more 
 food, must mean to strangle the hatching pro- 
 cess, and cling to the old nest that offers life, 
 if the old hen of ignorance will but step aside 
 and give the new-pledged birdlings a chance 
 to sing their delight, that setting is over and 
 hatching begun. I think mankind might take 
 a lesson from the feathered songsters of the 
 air, or the feathered prelates that move around 
 the homes of earthly comfort, for one nest 
 only satisfies for the brood in process. There 
 must be new material to fashion the birth- 
 place of every successive generation of crow- 
 ing greatness. And who shall say that hope 
 may not enter the crown of instinct, that some- 
 thing better than the last may be reared on 
 the new grounds and new material that is 
 searched out with many a sly look of puzzling 
 wonder. I would recommend the study of 
 henology to the fat old deacon sitting around 
 the mouthpieces of creedal forms and cere- 
 monies that constitute the present style of 
 
72 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 church worship. I have wandered far and 
 long, have drifted through the underbrush 
 and quagmires of all shades of social life, and 
 I have never yet found the church steeple 
 that would dive for the poor outcasts tread- 
 ing the rugged shores of life. When the 
 Church meets my view, that is dressed for a 
 campaign around all the grades of life, inde- 
 pendanfc of color, sex, moral or physical stain, 
 independant of the dimes and cents of pocket 
 show, or the dress parade of fluted flummery 
 that fills the streets and clogs the church ailes 
 with the body figures of sin. I say, when the 
 Church can fling its free banner around all 
 these stools of pentecostal reign, without the 
 formality of subscribing to the Church cata- 
 logue of forms, then has the Church met my 
 view that will work out the world's salvation 
 through the open door of extended heart and 
 hand service. John Bunyan to-day is not the 
 fettered man that left the earth tied by the 
 apron strings of another person's will. Even 
 the Presbytery never haunts my awakened 
 conscience, for the back-door of the nine- 
 teenth century will offer escapement to all the 
 regrets cast on the Creedal score of deal. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 WILL commence this chapter with my 
 experience around the equator or hemis- 
 phere of Nador, a State plot that bor- 
 ders closely about the antiquated filagree or 
 structure of Mars. Nador is situated on the 
 direct line that leads from one intellectual 
 epoch to another. It might be termed the 
 study-room of equatorial designing. My ex- 
 perience at that place is filled with the loftiest 
 visions of beauty; and the hightoned moral 
 and intellectual element that pervades the at- 
 mosphere of Nador is worthy of being shown 
 to earth as a standard by which earth could rear 
 a pinnacle that would do honor to and bless 
 her shores with the halo of ripened Godliness. 
 There is much prominence attached to the lo- 
 cal bearing of Nador. I there met some of 
 the greatest minds that have ever traveled 
 earth. I was drawn there by the congres- 
 sional hand of fellowship. The Dean or 
 Archbishop which presided at the council 
 board of government, duty found the world 
 (4) 
 
74 BACKWABD GLIMPSES. 
 
 of Nador broader than the Church of Nador; 
 and he found as he had ascended the scales 
 of progress, that the halls of congressional 
 dealings and bickerings was the doorway 
 through which we pass to the true church. 
 The functional bearing of the church will 
 ever take its cue from the Legislative council- 
 rooms of policy and worth. Let our first 
 work be to broaden, equalize and harmonize 
 the principles which are the fundaments on 
 the sleepers, so to speak, on which the great 
 building or superstructure of humanity is 
 resting, and we want no caving in of the 
 sound material from its close alliance with 
 the rotten timbers which have hitherto kept 
 the national honor in a shaky condition and 
 liable to come under the hammer of sale; for 
 the aristocracy, or upper crust, in trying to 
 get so far away from the neighborhood of the 
 undercrust which they are willing to use, 
 and must have that in spreading this plas- 
 ter to cover them up only as body-workers, 
 the rich and those in power, have well nigh 
 overturned the high-seasoned dish flavored 
 with the spirit of selfishness and pride A 
 curse around the nationality of honored 
 George Washington's standard-bearing of 
 right. 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 75 
 
 When I met George Washington around 
 the checkered plains of Nador, he had added 
 many prize jewels to his constitution that 
 now flourishes before the world bereft of the 
 true spirit that sent it out a glowing power, 
 when Washington had acheived the victory 
 and won the loving title of Father to his 
 Country, George Washington to-day is the 
 ingrafted principle that fills all the ranks of 
 America's fields of growth; and he has laid 
 many a corner-stone to be the pointing em- 
 blem along his line of ascent and growing 
 wisdom of power. What attachment of claim 
 Nador has on the brain-work of the hero that 
 battled for and upheld the Star Spangled 
 Banner, whose insignia fires the heart and 
 brain with the noblest impulses that grace 
 the sideboard of the human character is 
 this George Washington is working out the 
 eyre or fallstaff of party-spirit and color; is 
 working it on to a basis where even-handed 
 justice will mix the shadings to the bringing 
 forth of the true and lasting color of worth. 
 Fidelity to principles must yet be the clinch- 
 hook of saving grace, and no world that has 
 a surface show of individuality wrought out 
 from the mind well of God can flourish, un- 
 less principle, the scientific arrow, is shot 
 
76 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 from the motive house to pierce every effort 
 of labor. The world of earth is broadening 
 all her channels. The spirit of freedom is 
 shaking the dry bones of old theology's car- 
 cass of nominal power and the shaded eyes 
 are laying aside the goggles that have so long 
 magnified the priestly power of saving worth. 
 Aristotle weilded the pen for the upshaking 
 of all the baser passions, and he sunk his 
 own ship's crew with the daring shams that 
 served as body servants around a life of inner 
 pollution. How many Aristotles flourish the 
 outward scheming of the inner devil and how 
 many are flourishing the hell dragon in the 
 face of the would-be virtuous, but who are 
 weak as vessels tossed on the billows of 
 angry winds ? These time-servers, with the 
 wisp of virtue bound around the bundle of 
 contamination which is propelled through 
 the marts of city life by the Satanic power 
 of will, are the spots that deface the other- 
 wise beautiful camera of angel life and the 
 white cross of purity, can never hang an em- 
 blematical sign before the world vision until 
 the stubble-fields have been harrowed by the 
 hand of virtuous design. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 KNOW of nothing so conducive to hap- 
 piness as living with the sunlight of 
 8? God's truths shining into our souls. The 
 hardships, tricks and wailing blunders assume 
 a new significance, and reach around and 
 about us with almost a hallowed import. 
 God, in the light of infinite wisdom, and in 
 the truth of infinite purpose, has selected our 
 pathway through the fiery furnace of all 
 shades of life, that character may be obtained 
 by a plunge in the whirlpool that floats all 
 kinds of drifting waiflings caught on the line 
 of God-reflected march. Mind has the jas- 
 per hue of variety, and the deep shades blend 
 in harmony with the<|Jhter waves of thought, 
 making one grand monument of variegated 
 coloring that the floods and undersweeps of 
 Time's fitful flashings can only prostrate for a 
 season; for there is ever a washing current 
 that restores all the breakers have taken 
 away. Mind is the God storehouse where we 
 drop gems and pebbles, and Time, the great 
 
78 BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 
 
 sifting machine that separates the gem crys- 
 tals of worth from the dross of impure mo- 
 tive. There is nothing so flustrating to the 
 growth of soul on the harmonious key of well 
 doing as tampering with vices as letting 
 thought go out in the channel of unhallowed 
 and unsanctioned freedom of reign. Yice is 
 the giving up of our highest endeavors to be 
 governed by the external forces of unbridled 
 want. 
 
 The so-called Free Love movement, was a 
 step taken to secure selfish indulgence and a 
 promiscuous mode of co-habitation under the 
 sanction of Spirit direction and advice. There 
 is a law that sanctions the affinity of souls 
 and the affinity of outward living that, were 
 it understood and applied in the selection of 
 companionship and the uniting of two op- 
 posite forces for the object of carrying on a 
 work of beauty and harmony, the world would 
 drift away from all itsj^ink-holes of vices, 
 and become the Garden of Eden, with no 
 serpent to tempt the footsteps of woman, and 
 no willing Adams to be beguiled into a life 
 of insane satisfaction. 
 
 The social question is the hocus pocus of the 
 nineteenth century, the bugbear that floats 
 around our endeavors at a righteous presen- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 79 
 
 tation of outward living. What to-day har- 
 monizes in interior principles, disagrees with 
 the outward law of force; for the stamp mark 
 that society puts on individual effort at re- 
 construction, is non-respectability, a forcing 
 outside the pale of recognized decency. The 
 world has many a hook and crook to adjust 
 with the hand of justice before the laws of 
 man can bind together with truth and verac- 
 ity the souls of men and women. What God 
 has joined together, let no man put asunder, 
 has never been understood or applied to the 
 Spiritual part of our natures. Man and wo- 
 man live in the fields of growth, and expe- 
 rience is the teacher at large, to whom we 
 pay tribute every moment of our lives. 
 
 I can only experience to-day the things of 
 to-day. I can go back in the past with mem- 
 ory. I can reach out to the future with hope 
 and the wishful spirit of prayer; but the 
 present is mine to live, to feel, to see, to 
 smell, to hear and taste with every sense of 
 God-given life and with every sense of God- 
 given power awakened. To live the highest 
 life I can with my present knowledge gained 
 from the bitter and sweet tree of experience . 
 Life is a hazard in the great stream of press- 
 ing events, and the die once cast, we are the 
 
80 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 current swimmers that flash or flow according 
 to the outstrikes we make to breast the waves 
 of public animosity and the public fetish of 
 belief. When Webster fired the gun of 
 double dealing, he clipped his own wings 
 of power, and was a flash in the pan, that, 
 secures nothing, and is a waste of materials 
 used. Webster had the foresight to see that 
 America was traveling away from her toils, 
 and he put in a hitching proviso where the 
 germs of freedom would become entangled, 
 and be obliged to wait the culminating filter 
 of the pure and good principles that flowed 
 through the heart and brain of Abraham 
 Lincoln. The gulf stream that divides those 
 two men will admit the spirit of penance and 
 prayer, and Daniel Webster may yet drink 
 of the true spirit of freedom and join hands 
 with the martyr who "died to secure and hold 
 fast America's badge of honor. Abraham 
 Lincoln on earth was a tower of goodness 
 a fortress of strength that a nation felt secure 
 in leaning against, and now, when earth 
 misses the magnetic ring of his solidity and 
 firmness, the chambers of the air are made 
 bright and glowing with his noble presence. 
 
CHAPTEE XIV. 
 
 JND now let me take my readers into the 
 fairy scenery of Bethnomer, situated on 
 Arcadian Kiver Coast that belongs to 
 Jupiter's fund-house of glory. Jupiter is a 
 glowing satalite of power, and all the town- 
 ships that comprise its mastered greatness 
 are aglow with the combination spirit to 
 maintain its embodiment of God-given prin- 
 ciples. My raiment in this etherealized and 
 yet solidified atmosphere is a gossamer sub- 
 stance, capaple of admitting all the rays of 
 congeniality and repelling all things not de- 
 sirable to my wishes. My coat of mail is ev- 
 er ready with its protective forces, and con- 
 sequently the word fail was never placed, in 
 the vocabulary of speech used in the planet- 
 ary world of Jupiter. Death's cross bones 
 never enter our fields of living beauty. Hav- 
 ing once obtained purification through all the 
 grades of dutiful action, we live in the har- 
 mony of never-ending happiness; live for the 
 care and ultimate good of others, knowing 
 
82 BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 
 
 that our day-star will ever be bright, having 
 sparkled up through the fiery furnace of trials 
 and tribulations, the sifting processes that 
 separates the true kernels of worth from the 
 chaff of disobedience. 
 
 My home in the fairy lands of Jupiter is 
 a tenement outstretch of tessellated grand- 
 eur of design, but simplified in all its 
 parts of cunning device and workmanship 
 by the hand of love, that tones down all 
 power to the simplicity of our wants and un- 
 derstanding. I have my divan seats of ease, 
 my couches that invite me to slumber and re- 
 pose; but never, while earth or any other 
 world hung out on the God motion of law, 
 presents to my haven of security the haggard 
 faces of want, or travel to my doorway of re- 
 ception for admittance and rest, can I burrow 
 down on cushions of ease and fold my hands 
 in the security of my purpose to serve God 
 with my whole soul, mind, might and strength. 
 I always expect to be a laborer, because in 
 my proneness to serve God, I have put on 
 my armor of steel, defiant to breast every cur- 
 rent of opposition, and dig my way through 
 all the pools of evangelical discord that keeps 
 the world in the element of drifting purpose. 
 My journeyings since i left earth have led 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 83 
 
 through many a wild wood and tangled briar, 
 and death ever stared me in the face as long 
 as sin abounded over good, and my two na- 
 tures warred with each other. The world 
 drifts according to force of habit, for habit is the 
 everyday garment that is always handy and 
 ready to use ; and so we go on, sticking to the old 
 in preference to the new, because habit has 
 grown to be virtue, and we must discard all 
 new commers to our haven of repose. There 
 is an old adage that is worthy of being enrolled 
 on the tablets of memory and brought often 
 to the mind's eye, to be applied to our daily 
 course of conduct. In this way it appeals to 
 my memory : 
 
 In charity lane there lived a man 
 
 Famed for his habits old, 
 
 Which were these: to never break bread 
 
 With any new comer, 
 
 Until he had satisfied every old runner 
 
 That appealed to his pockets of gold. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 jHEN I left the Seventh Sphere my 
 Lord and Saviour said: "John Bun- 
 yan, go thou unto all worlds and preach 
 the gospel rays of truth; go and gather the 
 wheat from the tares ; go backwards and glean 
 in all the fields where thou hast traveled bur- 
 dened with a pack that became lighter at each 
 advancing step of progress." And now, when 
 all burdens or seeming weights of care 
 sit on my perch of hallowed gain, I can travel 
 with the light and happiness of the feathered 
 songsters that fill the worlds of space. So, 
 having built my home by fair Bethnomer's 
 sunny glades, I can take my wand of travel 
 and pierce the wants of any sphere or out- 
 grandeured world sprung from the trap of 
 God's command. My carpet-bag for jour- 
 neying is ever ready, ever packed for want's 
 service, and quickly opened at charity's call. 
 For God, says : he that hath not charity is a 
 sink of nonservice, with no good in, him to be 
 used for a shuttlecock in beating away error. 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 85 
 
 When Thomas Paine wrote his Age of Reason ; 
 the world called him infidel called him the 
 black sheep in the world's great flock of puny 
 intellects, that dare not investigate the pro- 
 found reasoning of one man's brain forces; 
 and so Thomas^Paine was accursed was tar- 
 red and feathered in many a man's soul, and 
 rode on the rail of public hatred for daring 
 to think the thoughts that were God placed 
 and God propelled. Thomas Paine in his 
 bright sphere of advancement, holds God in 
 reverential awe, because in God he finds his 
 basis and his ultimatum over all ascending 
 glory. God, to the mind of Thomas Paine 
 to-day is the great standard bearer of Truth ;the 
 shield over all good, and the monster spirit 
 to hunt and demolish error. Thomas Paine 
 will yet find freedom on earth, and find this 
 Age oj Reason floating more to the public 
 channel of acceptance. God is over and 
 around all well springs of thought, and is 
 moving to the understanding of all bright 
 hued intellect of this growing century in wis- 
 dom and knowledge. 
 
 Speed on earth is only determined by the 
 fleet wheel of Time, but the velocity of Spirit 
 movement outstrips Time's Code of law, and 
 is the moving processes that creates Time for 
 
86 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 the lumbering car of materiality. The for- 
 mation of individuality, whether it be in hu- 
 manity's specific designing, or in all the other 
 grades of character and kind that makes up 
 the world we live in, first starts on the Spir- 
 itual basis. The germ of life is first bathed 
 in the ether dew of Spirituality. It is God's 
 breath of love that creates and begets for- 
 mation, but it is the breath of love breathed 
 through natural formative principles. There 
 is no power of love so great as to grow an 
 apple on a peach tree unless the essences or 
 juices of the two trees blend in compact and 
 harmony of purpose. God has no power 
 outside His principles of financiering merit. 
 God could never create another world were it 
 not in the compact of his first design. Were 
 not the germ principles left for reproduction, 
 the mind of man could soon fathom the hid- 
 ing place of God. God must forever keep 
 in the advance of man must ever have a 
 spiral font for watering and purifying the 
 chambers of the soul. Whosoever dips deep- 
 est in God's well of knowledge, comes the 
 nearest to comprehending the great love 
 source of all life; and he or she that has the 
 penchant for sticking to one badge of gain, 
 will ^d no newness or variety around their 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 87 
 
 sweep of influence. I have ever had the 
 pruning hook attached to every sprouting 
 germ along my road of advancement until 
 purification sits on my apex of glory. My 
 songs now are ever songs of praise, for God 
 speaks to me through every sense of my Spir- 
 itual being, saying: "I have brought you up 
 from the valley gorge; I have placed you in 
 the sunny clime of Bethnomer, search ye; 
 now, for the right staff of duty, and whichso- 
 ever way I point your staff, go thou in the 
 course of God direction, for I will be into 
 you a tower strength, and I will build you up 
 in all parts for a symbol of great use, for I, 
 the Lord God, work by means to the accom- 
 plishment of all good." There is nothing 
 so wise as wisdom ; for wisdom is to acknowl- 
 edge the truths we meet, regardless of the 
 pinchback metal that is ever found beside the 
 true jewels of sparkling worth. 
 
 The spheres through which I have traveled 
 have each and all been as real to every sense 
 of life, as was the sphere of earth's embodi- 
 ment. Every stage of being has an out- 
 growth or sphere awaiting the march of 
 Spirit, and we can only advance in the orbit 
 mind creating, for mind ever takes care of 
 its body of support. My earth pilgrimage 
 
88 BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 
 
 was my first sphere of actuality the freight - 
 house from whence I was stored for the great 
 voyage of Time and Eternity. On earth I 
 learned the process of growth, and my exit 
 from earth only stamped me with the seal of 
 never-ending life. I passed from my earth 
 body by the same powei of law that fills the 
 world of matter yearly with new types of 
 beauty, sprung from the old shell of decay. 
 I stood above the earth, and yet I was of the 
 earth; earthy, for I still enjoyed and partook 
 of things that satisfied my earthly portions, 
 I ate and drank with my friends as of old. 
 but my food was the essence, while theirs was 
 the substance. And so with regard to earths 
 labors and duties; I still found that my desires 
 went out for the amelioration and purification 
 of the world I had left through the strength 
 and love of Divine purpose. I labored on 
 earth for years after earth missed my tangible 
 presence. Many a spray of liberality have I 
 given to the church temples of dogmatic wis- 
 dom; and who shall say to-day, that the church 
 has not received its liberal punch-stick at the 
 hands of Angel exploration. God gave me 
 the wisdom to never ingraft a principle or a 
 shoot of Divine worth, until the grounds or 
 soil wherein 1 labored were capable of repro- 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 89 
 
 duction, and also capable of germinating from 
 the true seeds of knowledge. Wisdom is the 
 holly branch of hope for the world's regener- 
 ation the purling stream that will purify and 
 irrigate the soul-garden of man's immortal 
 life. The world that benefits us most, is the 
 world we live in the world of to-day that we 
 grasp with the hand of fellowship and call our 
 own. We cannot work in the to-morrow of 
 our being. It is only the needle of to-day's 
 threading that stitches the garments of future 
 wear. Each and every day to me has been a 
 day of soul life a beverage drank on the 
 shores of Time, by a man walker in the eter- 
 nal fields of gain. The ruby tints of life are 
 the gilded staggings of youthful climbing, and 
 experience the boy that dims the gilded stair_ 
 case, making our ascent a toilsome journey. 
 Death is but a bar, let down whereby we can 
 step to greener fields, and partake of the fruits 
 of celestial life. The boon of peace ever fol. 
 lows rightful doing, and my walking-stick or 
 cane of help, has always been cut from the 
 tree of liberal sprouting, and God grant that 
 no interlopers bar my road of onward progress 
 and repletion. 
 
CHAPTEE XVI. 
 
 ^AETH holds a spell around me that eter- 
 nity's bright and flowing waters can 
 never efface or destroy its hallowed im- 
 port; and ever while I journey, earth will hold 
 the back ground scenery to John Bunyan's 
 pictured web of life. I can take long back- 
 ward strides'with momory, and fish from the 
 whirlpool of my beating life; many a jewel 
 that suffering has polished and made bright, 
 for the adorning of my spiritual crown. And 
 I would say to all who are led through the 
 fiery furnace of job like tribulations, that they 
 should be glad and prone to thankfulness, 
 that the sifting machine for their soul's puri- 
 fication was placed beside the stream of earth 
 life. Job's sufferings were illustrative of the 
 virtue of patience, of forbearance, of meeting 
 the difficulties besetting life's pathway, with 
 a cheerful and benign spirit, feeling that the 
 Father's hand of love will make smooth the 
 rugged path of rightful doing. We are all 
 more or less prone to find fault and murmur 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 91 
 
 at the winding ways of our fated ship of mo- 
 tion, little dreaming that God, the helmsman 
 is ever steering our motionary element, toward 
 the ultimate and final good; whosoever expects 
 or exacts most, will ever find a hedge-row to 
 climb before the prizes which seemed of right ? 
 their own are worthy of acceptance, or being 
 worn with honor to themselves. 
 
 God lights a feeble torch on earth, 
 Where howling winds and discord range, 
 And if that one bright ray expand, 
 Amidst the world of gloaming pain, 
 Who shall account his vigils lost, 
 If swallowed by the power of gain. 
 
 . The world is filled with the drifting shadows 
 of manhood and of womanhood. The power 
 to be idle is more apparent than the power to 
 be useful. The dogma of fashion is laying 
 waste the principle house from which we 
 build a character, and from which we ingraft 
 our waving branch of life. The destiny of 
 man is a continual rotating movement a 
 wheel within a wheel that turns on its self- 
 ability of motion. God is the whole solar 
 magnate, and man the fiscal atom or atoms 
 that dives the deepest in all the well springs 
 of Divine truth. There will ever be a foun- 
 tain head to gleam from, a God to worship, 
 
92 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 and a soul to save. And a world to drop 
 from the great crater of universal strength, 
 and the Jehova, or All Father that rules the 
 spirit of all time, and sits the crested breast- 
 work over all the shores of eternal gain, is 
 the philanthropic and eager spirit of har- 
 monial love the positive and negative forces 
 that act in unison of compact for the glory of 
 life's reproduction and the surmounting of 
 God's chariot wheel of power. There is no 
 basis for truth but God, the inlaid principle 
 that flourishes the magnetic under-current 
 from which starts every germ or bud that 
 helps to make the world we live in to-day, 
 henceforth and forever; for the world of 
 to-day is also the world of to-morrow; a vision 
 expansion, a life lease that is continually 
 drawing back pay for an investment or indem- 
 nity in the lottery of to-morrow's keeping. 
 Christ was never so much felt or recognized 
 as at this present time of world travel, and 
 the glory of the newer reign will eclipse and 
 destroy his past mythic power. 
 
 Christ has ever ruled by force of circum- 
 stances; has picked His way on foot and on 
 horseback to secure a permanency in the na- 
 tional honor and duty, and to-day His chariot 
 wheels are being heard, and the voice thereof 
 
BACKWEAD GLIMPSES. , 93 
 
 awakes a symphony in all the national heart of 
 power. I have never yet met Christ face to 
 face, as an individuality bearing the out- 
 wrought stamps of manhood or womanhood, 
 and I must confess that my opinion or belief 
 is this; had there been any one outspoken, 
 standard bearer, representing all the virtues, 
 and none of the evils that now flourish in all 
 human hearts, that specialty of wisdom, good- 
 ness and power would never have taken the 
 shape of man. I would rather have dressed 
 Christ in womanly apparel, since woman has 
 ever borne a broader stamp of virtue, and is 
 now likely to evangelize and purify the world 
 streams of life. Christ will become a boarder 
 pattern of manhood as Time cuts the strings 
 tied around the huge bundle of ignorant as- 
 sumptive power, and woman must ever carry 
 the scissors to clip away the loose threads 
 that hang around the nation's web of glory. 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 JRTEMAS WARD, in driving his fun-team 
 is disseminating the spirit of human 
 kindness, and building himself a temple 
 of lasting merit. For Truths uttered in the 
 spirit of love and kindness, will reach all hearts 
 better if propelled from the merry side of 
 human nature. I could have wished that Ar. 
 temas Ward had flourished in every genera- 
 tion, and his spicy gems have graced every 
 path of culture and growing garden of princi- 
 ples. All writers carry an influential ability 
 that is lasting or nonprized as it touches the 
 want stream of human effort of attainment^ 
 and all writers dose the public mind accord- 
 ing to their spiritual insight of the public need. 
 The literature that has ever stood the test of 
 timely wear and and durability of motion is 
 the literature that has awakened the spirit of 
 freedom, the fluttering bird that opens the 
 door of Paradise that our eager footsteps may 
 enter therein, to wander in the princely fields 
 of everlasting verdure. There is no time set 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 95 
 
 for war. It ever follows on the trail of wrong, 
 motive powers of activity, and the peace baby 
 comes up for a hug, when the Decatur of war 
 has spent its furious gun-charge of wrath and 
 destruction. The pillars of the mighty church 
 are falling to pieces, and the obsolete demi- 
 god of rule, is sinking to the bottomless pit of 
 despair; for science is likely to establish the 
 flat-boat wherein all can ride and secure a free 
 ticket to the land of all soulities. The next 
 cargo that will enter the port of common in- 
 terest, will be a body service of downright 
 facts, and the public supervisors will find 
 help from common masses of great benefit in 
 their hour of need. 
 
 Theoclytas, the Grecian monarch, made 
 fame the God star of His life, and ambition 
 was the towering hero, ever beckoning Him to 
 mount the rostrum of public favor; and he 
 dipped and delved, and at last secured a na- 
 tion's grimace and the birthright gift to peo- 
 ple the dark regions with His body props of 
 show. There is but one power to sway the 
 world, one lasting promise for life's aggran- 
 dizement, and that power is love, and the 
 promise is the soul's evacuation of all selfish 
 aims in life. Oh, God ! Thy day of splendor 
 is far in advance of mind to-day; but we hope 
 
96 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 that all channels are becoming free whereby 
 Thy glorious reign and all living and loving 
 power may surge to the brink of one common 
 understanding. Mankind has ever allowed 
 God the right and privilege to make use o, T i 
 the term justice, and seeming to fear lest God 
 should make a mistake and pick up the levet 
 of love through His great kindness of hear* 
 in dealing with His earth children. But thanks 
 be to the true purposes of life, and to the ever- 
 lasting first cause, that justice and love are 
 placed beyond the power of personality's twist- 
 ings or turnings. Love and justice are Sia- 
 mese in nature, and their working power will 
 ever be felt through the world's of detailed 
 order. Love is a fickle boy, and in the traces 
 alone would kick at every difficulty barring 
 the road to frenzied delight. Justice moder- 
 ates the boy's activity, that no first principles 
 may eb destroyed and God suffer through the 
 inharmony of Siamese compact. My will to- 
 day is as self-existant, as much embodied pur- 
 pose, as when earth claimed my skill of out- 
 ward motion. I am working out my God 
 ability of labor, am nestling by the stream of 
 never-ending happiness. I am awake to every 
 bugle cry of woe, and the fields that claim 
 me most are situated in the third hemisphere 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 97 
 
 of glory. There I find patches of culture that 
 are pregnant and deep-toned with the golden 
 fruit gathered from the tree of suffering. Man 
 wanders according to the length of chain given 
 him, and according to his fixedness of desire 
 to go through any work he may undertake. 
 Every person should have a standard ground 
 of labor to secure a prizeship in the great lot- 
 tery-house of God. We are all prone to be 
 dissemblers prone to lean on another's staff 
 of encouragement, letting our own props of 
 natural ability, become weak from disuse. It 
 seems to be easier for some people to work in 
 a channel or groove made for them, than to 
 set their own stakes or lay out their own ground 
 work of operation. Now I would say to such 
 people, and use a homely expression to con- 
 vey the truth of the remark, that if you turn 
 your own groundstone, to make sharp 
 your instruments of labor, there will be a 
 polish and eveness which cannot be obtained 
 to your character, if a helping hand is ever 
 ready to turn your wheels of motionary 
 activity. The fellowship with that which best 
 reaches the affinity of our intuitive reasoning 
 or wishing, because wishing first sounds the 
 alarm to reason. If I wish for a God, the 
 wish appeals to reason to find one, and rea- 
 (5) 
 
98 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 son starts out instanter to gratify the power 
 of appeal. Keason dips deeper than wishing; 
 but the power to wish is reason's stimulator 
 to action. Reason had just as soon search 
 for a Devil as for a God just as soon look 
 for mice as mountains. The desire, will, or 
 wish, ever propels the search of man's hero 
 of accountability. Lycurgus was an ancient 
 explorer after Truth, and he lit the torch that 
 made brighter the pathway of the next succes- 
 sive generation. He had a desire for knowl- 
 edge based on facts, and reason, hearing the 
 voice of desire, stood emperor around the 
 fields of garmered keepsakes, and struggle to 
 behold some token of Truth that would make 
 weak the towering temple of superstition, and 
 so one man's reasoning faculties makes a basis 
 ground on which another mind may rear a 
 structure of great skill and beauty. 
 
CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 Greece had many competitors 
 on the road to fame. Many minds 
 coped together beside the mythic stream 
 of superficial knowledge. The Grecian and 
 Hellenic authors wove their web of cunning 
 sophistry and art, and applied it to the mind 
 want of ignorance and efficient power. The 
 days of Herculaneum and Pompeii were days 
 of deep-toned struggles, and crime run ramp- 
 ant march where spiritual light was based on 
 God's implacable wrath and devastating 
 power of control. I have ever noticed that 
 the eras that have held God in fear and brim- 
 stone reverance, have always carried a cudgel 
 to make power impressive and, to imitate 
 the Father's style of deal. Hearts that are 
 leniently disposed in God's attributes of fin- 
 ished worth are merciful to the world in 
 which they live are more ready to let love 
 point the way in finding a remedy for evil. 
 The birch and ferule have long since lost 
 their charm and smarting physical pain never 
 
100 BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 
 
 yet caused a love flow to the heart. Demos- 
 thenes has a name in history that glows with 
 courage, and the spirit of those olden heroes 
 is still being felt around the patriotic heart of 
 Americ 's brightest stars. Gems are rarely 
 found in the smooth and undulating waves of 
 prosperous lifehood. "We need a pinch from 
 the hand of care and a hug from poverty's 
 fountain of affection, before we are strength- 
 ened for a combat in a world, where the phys- 
 ical man jars gratingly against the spiritual 
 man of finer perceptive faculties. The rubs 
 we get from mother Earth quell our exuber- 
 ant spirit and make us more tractable and reli- 
 able in the great harness of onward life. 
 "We are never so much at fault, as when com- 
 plaining of our destined road of travel, never 
 so at varience with the God monitor within, 
 as when dissatisfied with present gain. Our 
 cup is never full until it runs at the brim, 
 and no amount of stirring can cause a second 
 overflow that will be like unto the first. As 
 fresh grievances and troubles reach us, we 
 take a higher staging that we may more dar- 
 ingly breast a fresher difficulty. God or 
 conscience is prone to let us reap in our own 
 harvest field, and if we sow tares, we cannot, 
 of course, expect the pure kernels of nour- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 101 
 
 ishment, God feeds us from the dish or spoon 
 that we can best appreciate, and if the golden 
 bowl and spoon be presented, we cannot 
 receive it with due respect and wisdom 
 unless we have amicably outgrown our silver 
 condition of life. We, in our human nature, 
 are vast and incomprehensible. We are a 
 well-spring of sufficient import and reliability 
 of compact, that we harmonize throughout the 
 grandeur of the one eternal whole. We are 
 children to-day; to-morrow finds us old in ex- 
 perience, and each successive day adds a loop 
 of wisdom to our brow of God capacity of 
 movement. If we found God in the start of 
 life, our wheel of motion would soon cease 
 and a fog of utter darkness would shut around 
 us and earth become a pigment field of the 
 smallest possible account. God has dwelt in 
 the heavens and in the earth all the days of 
 Shem, Ham and Japheth, which signifies all 
 the days of love, light and knowledge, and 
 which also signifies the ambulance team in 
 which God carries souls to Heaven. 
 
 Pocahontas, the Indian maiden, of histor- 
 ical keepsake , was brave and true. Love to 
 her was sacrifice was self-immolation, and 
 there is no truth in love unless we give from 
 the full fountain of our being and ask no re- 
 
102 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 turn of the gem star sent from the ark of safety. 
 There is no selfishness in love, no wish to 
 bind the brow of another with any thorn rose 
 taken from the coronet of your own heart 
 struggles. We would have every thorn 
 removed from the path of those we love. 
 "We would ever spread their bread of life with 
 honey dew taken from the soul of our best 
 living. Oh, God, that princely ray charm is 
 gilded with the true essence of Thy whole 
 soul work. Marriage by the earthly law, is 
 thought by Earth's children the highest type 
 of love intercourse ; but there is a love in the 
 spheres of immortal life, where complete 
 blending of two or more souls makes a figure 
 show of love power, that earth can never 
 attain to, until perfect liberty has individual- 
 ized all minds to act in concert from the 
 highest stand-point of Spiritual light. There 
 will be many a wreck on the sand shores of 
 Time, before truth around the marriage altar 
 can embrace the free social intercourse and 
 fellowship necessary for the entwinement of 
 the earthly and Spiritual wrath of love. 
 Marriage, in its true significance of purposed 
 power, is God's great vehicle of use; the mill 
 in which the Gods grind slowly the pure and 
 impure motive powers of individuality; a liar- 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 103 
 
 nessed compact between man and woman to 
 amalgamate and form a character of living 
 principles that eternity can claim from the 
 hand of Time. God's power is in activity in 
 His sledge-hammer use of all the segregate 
 and aggregate parcels or particles that are 
 only brought together by the force law in 
 Nature, resulting from God's force law of love. 
 God, the full-fledged spirit power, can never 
 at a present glance accumilate and scatter all 
 wisdom to the understanding of His children. 
 It must be growth and development of soul 
 that brings the great arc of God's power to 
 the recognition of the gradual unfoldment of 
 mind capacity. The development or unfold- 
 ing of God's mysterious workshop, causes the 
 mind to wonder at its past illiberal and fan- 
 atic teachings and believings, and the farther 
 we get in knowledge the more ignorant we 
 seemingly appear. I used to think in child- 
 hood, and, in fact, maturer years found me of 
 something of the same opinion, that God was 
 a being of disposition, liberal to those whom 
 he desired to love, and to those in disfavor, 
 He would show the tricky side of His nature- 
 I am thankful that years have brought me 
 away from so pent a God, and that every 
 cycle of Time's movement gives God more ex- 
 
 OF THB 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
104 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 pansion force and more symetry and beauty 
 in expression. The days of wonder will never 
 cease, because the law of ignorance is as much 
 a fixed law, as the law of wisdom ; and to those 
 under the law of ignorance, God is a great 
 mystery that can never be understood, because 
 the purposes to have His power kept from 
 the knowledge of man. 
 
CHAPTEE XIX. 
 
 WILL now take my readers along 
 the Fifth shore of Progress, reaching 
 back with memory to recount a tale of 
 interest that may be of service to the world 
 of reading minds. The fifth stage of experi- 
 ence to me, at times, fills me with sore regret. 
 I desired to become a lawyer; to understand 
 justice in its broadest sense; to understand 
 all the hooks and crooks of policy, and to un- 
 derstand why the Devil enters the lawyer's 
 field of labor, with so much skill and right of 
 bearing. I sought to know these things to 
 become a sifting machine on the legal course 
 track of Time. After I had deliberately 
 weighed, all the difficulties, and surmounted 
 them, as I thought, I betook myself to one of 
 the most classical lawyers that Summerside 
 afforded. He was old in experience , having 
 gone through with all the grades of dissect- 
 ing; knew just where to commence his work 
 every time, and where to leave off; if the 
 bladder pouch of the law victim was averse 
 
106 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 to another squeeze from the fingers of avari- 
 cious law hunters. I stated my desire to this 
 man of powerful intellect : told him that in no 
 way did I wish to give up the clergy; but I 
 thought my work would be broader if I could 
 have a taste of the pie, whose filling was in- 
 justice, seasoned by the money-God, Whoever 
 has a seat in the court-rooms of legal - 
 zed policy. This man, whose whole time 
 and life had been given to his work, under- 
 stood, of course , that I must be very ignorant 
 of the work I was about to enter into. And 
 he said to me: " I fear, my friend, you have 
 not counted the cost, not thought how much 
 of suffering you will entail upon yourself, and 
 how much unpleasantness of feeling will always 
 be about you if you mix up religion with these 
 knotty law questions, which seem as widely 
 apart as the northern and southern poles of the 
 equator." ' ' But," said I to my friend, "how is 
 religion to benefit us if not taken into the 
 business walks of life ; how serve us if not laid 
 as a corner-stone beside our every act?" This 
 man of massive brow, full of strength and 
 will, said to me: " What you say appears true 
 and right; but is not talk handier than prac- 
 tice, and is it not more fashionable and easier 
 of control?" I was somewhat shocked at the 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 107 
 
 lack of the true balance-wheel in the man's 
 character, and I thought to myself, I shall 
 never imbibe those ideas. I have come here 
 to this man to learn; therefore, I must learn 
 his way, but shun the contagion of error while 
 I walk through its pools to become as a bea- 
 con-star guiding manhood away from the sand 
 bars that impede the spirit's growth. I soon 
 learned that my work was broader than I had 
 anticipated; that it is not so easy to be in 
 daily contact and in daily communication 
 with the evil sides of life and not receive 
 some portion of the moral effluvia that be- 
 smears the soul life of a wrong-doer. Well, 
 I labored in the law business until I grew weary 
 of the hashing and bickering. The lies told 
 without compunction of spirit, and the lies 
 told with the quiver attachment of a secret 
 quiltiness, showing a mind ill at ease, with sin 
 resting beside its daily course of labor, I 
 thought, as I had wandered so far away from 
 earth, had passed through so many changes 
 and arrived at the Fifth Seat of Progress, 
 that the legal profession must have attained 
 some eminence in purity of expression and 
 in its purposes to deal honestly and candidly 
 by all men. And as women had then uttered 
 no complaint, it must have been taken for grant- 
 
108 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 ed that they were fully satisfied with all the law 
 arrangements, and only man was the sufferer 
 through the intrigue and falsity of deal that 
 interlaces the whole government of law en- 
 forced authority. I shall thank God or the 
 holy spirit of right when no law enactment 
 or law enforcement be necessary, but the one 
 voice speaking from soul to soul, saying: 
 ' ' Bury ye the hatchet, for I am greater than 
 the law of men; I am principle; the voice of 
 God speaking from the hilltops of mount 
 Sinai, that the whole world or worlds hearing 
 the sound of wisdom may be guided into the 
 right channel of duty." 
 
 To say that law can not prosper with me, 
 or I did not succumb to its teachings of error, 
 would, of course, make me non-serviceable in 
 and about sunnyside. I found that I was 
 very much hampered, because so few found 
 religion pleasant in business affairs; and I had 
 no way then of reaching back to earth with 
 my gleanings, for no passage had been made 
 of sufficient width that I could traverse with 
 any benefit to myself or hope of recognition 
 by the world I had left. I have since thought 
 that in doing a broad evangelical work, that 
 persistency was a necessary qualification, and 
 we have no right to shrink from a duty, for 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 109 
 
 God's whole plan of universal workmanship 
 is based on love and duty, and can we, the 
 children of the great love principle, fail io do 
 as the all spirit of right is ever admonishing 
 us to do. 
 
 The fifth degree of advancement has many 
 a rainbow hue of merit. It is peopled with 
 some of the greatest minds that have ever 
 lived, that desire repose and tranauility of 
 soul. I there met many of the ancient phil- 
 osophers who had chosen their retirement 
 bowers in the rosy atmosphere of Sunnyside. 
 I found that the principle study with those 
 olden fanciests was the right and proper use 
 of the true key of power a branch of study 
 that would be well for Earth to examine. 
 The majority of the inhabitants of Sunny- 
 side live in groups, or a classified number 
 join interests and labor for the establishment 
 of standard elements to help God's plan of 
 glory safe and sound beyond cavil or daring 
 of skill to demolish. Freedom has a broad 
 Kcense in and about Sunnyside. No fingers 
 of discontent meddle in its baptismal font 
 that carries the liquid foam of peace. Thomas 
 Carlysle said to me: "Bunyan, is not life 
 here a glorious crown of enjoyment; a mid- 
 summer's day of brilliancy and power, whose 
 
110 BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 
 
 hazy atmosphere fills the soul with soft repose. 
 I would forever linger around this bath of 
 peace, forever swell the praises of Sunnyside, 
 and forever reach to Earth, from this, my 
 present corner of enjoyment." I could not 
 prosper as a lawyer. I could not subscribe 
 to so much network to get at a truth that was 
 plain until it was covered up. Law in the 
 spheres of spiritual growth is not contamin- 
 ated by any influx of sordid motives ; but the 
 layer or basis has so long been charged with 
 the electic currents shot from the fingers of 
 old moneybags that time is required to fur- 
 nish the proper material for amalgamation. 
 What comes to us intuitively should be lis- 
 tened to and heeded as a voice speaking to our 
 conscience monitor of strength. If we would 
 so educate ourselves we might always hold 
 converse with our speaking guide within, and 
 not call on the outside world, that can in no 
 way judge for us, simply because our experi- 
 ences are not for others to meddle with, and 
 we have no right to accept another person's 
 favor or disfavor when sitting in judgment 
 over our acts. It is this dependency on other 
 people's criticisms that waylays us in our 
 growth as individualities, and makes us pau - 
 per-- in the distinguishment of good and evil. 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. Ill 
 
 St. Paul has said that "evil be to him that 
 evil thinks." In that case, who has a right 
 to think for another; who a right to say, do 
 ye so and so, for this way serves me, and of 
 course you can be guided by the same voice 
 that I can. Now this giving up our own 
 anchor or monitor of safety, and trying to be 
 served from another's stand-point of opera- 
 tion is what kills our influence and makes us 
 dependent, on the life currents of another 
 person's resources. Life is always aggressive ; 
 a power within its own linkings of meritori- 
 ous attachment. And if we abide by 
 another's standard poise of accumulation, we 
 have sunk our own life-boat into the Dead 
 Sea from which no independent traveler ever 
 returns. Therefore, it is well for us to sub- 
 scribe to individuality, well for us to think 
 and abide by the thought, and that by and 
 through God ordination of holy means and 
 ways, we are called as a specialty to gather 
 for our own lamp burning, and if we can 
 assist another advantageously to themselves, 
 we are performing a double service, and 
 building a platform of strength and encour- 
 agement for many a weary soul to traverse at 
 will. Life is neither a holiday or a season of 
 penance, but chippings from both sides of its 
 
112 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 shaded curtain grace the measure of its 
 march. 
 
U.NTVEBS 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 life signifies an eternity of 
 individuality ; a linking to the wheel of 
 God purpose ; a master masonship with 
 the full degrees in attendance. I would ask 
 now from my seventh degree of glory, why 
 life is so tampered with, why thistles grow 
 where roses should bloom perpetual, why 
 sorrow shades the brow, when hope should 
 be the cherub boy to face all the shades of 
 discontent ; and marvel at nothing so much 
 as a gloom crested brow of a grumbler. 
 We often plant thorns, expecting to reap a 
 harvest of flowers. God, the Father Creator, 
 the soul principle and living germ in all natu- 
 ral outbreak, has not always* pressed the 
 couch of ease. For, over angry billows and 
 rough, stupendous ways has God climbed by 
 force of will ; and we are only the lesser gods, 
 who will ever revolve around the King orbit 
 of all power. We are the fractional part, or 
 parts of the one soul system, that is por- 
 trayed in the tiny shell ; and in everything, 
 
114: BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 both great and small. Do we feel God's sys- 
 tem, love, mercy, and of tried goodness ? 
 That should leave no doubt in our minds of 
 the ultimate success of good over evil. Who- 
 soever strives to obtain wisdom will ever find 
 God ready and willing to turn the leaves for 
 their reading. 
 
 God moves in a mysterious way His wis- 
 dom to proclaim ; and we are the mind re- 
 cipients that go even handed with God, and 
 should proclaim our knowledge and truth as 
 we receive it. I do not mean, with a loud 
 voice, and braggadocia air of one having 
 much learning, and brain to display it, but in 
 a quiet and unobstrusive manner that carries 
 a conviction of its reliability to us. We are 
 all sowers and reapers ; and we should be 
 mindful of the seed we plant, lest our gather- 
 ings be unprofitable and easy of destruction. 
 God is the Father side of life, the structured 
 plan to our upright figure-head, the marshal- 
 ing of material river streams of action to be 
 laid by the mother side of wisdom, which is 
 the open bud of negative condition. God is 
 positive, the Father stream that waters the 
 tree of knowledge standing in his garden of 
 reproduction. Adam and Eve are a fair 
 illustration of God and wisdom, the father 
 
BACKWKAD GLIMPSES. 115 
 
 and mother side of all actual demonstrative 
 being. God pulls the wire and wisdom, the 
 intuitive heedist jogs evenly along, and a 
 branching system is acted upon, when first 
 principles have gained full control. There is 
 no complication in the God nature of work- 
 manship, the understanding compact, no 
 illicit beverage is ever drunk by the love 
 pool of wisdom ; no freak of discontent mars 
 the surface of the marriage vow made at the 
 altar of God, matter and wisdom spirit or the 
 God principle of all holy interior law. If 
 man and woman should glean a lesson from 
 nature's compact of affinity, there would be 
 no tearing assunder of the marriage bonds, 
 binding the souls of men and women. Marriage 
 by law is marriage by proxy, and if the streams 
 of outward compact and the inner sources 
 of reliability mingle and harmonize to a per- 
 fect adaptability, then is a proxy marriage 
 one of truth binding principles, qf lasting vir- 
 tue and peace ; but if, on the other hand, mar- 
 riage is stripped of its fibres of soul con- 
 geniality, and is w6rn as a mantle of outside 
 show, a body protection against the public 
 voice that shows no charity for things not 
 understood, then is the proxy voice in the 
 in the marriage contract, the devils howl of 
 
116 BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 
 
 hatred against truth and virtue, around 
 the altar of man and woman compact of 
 hallowed purity and peace. True marriage 
 is the death-blow to all social inharmony of 
 spirit, and corruption of action. Love, pure 
 and true to the natural instinct of magnetic 
 forces, is the God side of human nature, 
 working out its glory of achievement, no third 
 voice is needed in the binding ceremony be- 
 tween man and woman unless they are mar- 
 rying for the world of public opinion ; and 
 then, perhaps, a form is necessary to insure 
 respectability. Marriage is a term signify- 
 ing assent between two parties, to be a law 
 of love and consequent happiness unto each 
 other ; therefore, if we touch the rights of 
 the case, what third party has a right to say, 
 I pronounce you man and wife in the name of 
 any power, but the love power of unity ? The 
 law of man that makes men and women hus- 
 bands and wives is a necessity to those not 
 united by the firm and lasting cord of silvery 
 love, that makes home a paradise of earthly 
 nestling. The law of outside marriage never 
 hurts when the interior ceremony has already 
 been performed ; therefore, I would say to 
 those who require the ritual of church sanc- 
 tity, to make the love noose better understood 
 
BACKWARD GLMPSES. 117 
 
 by the world, by all means procure that stem 
 of satisfaction ; it can do no harm, but the 
 harm lies with those who grasp the law for 
 some selfish bodily advancement in life, and, 
 thereby, live a curse, and also entail a curse 
 upon others. I would like to give the defini- 
 tion of true marriage in a little budget of 
 allegory. 
 
 Suppose we take for instance a shoemaker 
 and his wife, who are generally supposed to 
 be amicably disposed towards each other, and 
 the man finds that some secret spring in his 
 wife's character has never been touched, in 
 their enrapport condition. The man being 
 ignorant of the laws that govern the interior 
 make up of individuality, supposes that 
 with a new pair of shoes that his wife will 
 unburden all the secret avenues to her soul 
 and he can walk freely therein. Now, the 
 shoes may be received with gratitude, but 
 the gulf broadens, and no amount of shoeing 
 or clothing, on external principle, can make 
 plain the secret of non-understanding. The 
 shoes seem a rough plaster to heal a delicate 
 wound, and we see no truth in the mingling 
 of shoe leather and sentiment. True marriage 
 is intuitive understanding. Many wives there 
 are who are shoemakers around their hus- 
 
118 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 band's field of sentiment, and come no nearer 
 to the inner temple of their true lives than 
 the foot to the head. A leather wife to a sen- 
 sitive husband or a leather husband to a sen- 
 sitive wife are like the mingling of thistles 
 and roses. The rose is continually receiving 
 pricks, while the thistle stands paramount in 
 its thistlehood. The Greek slave was a won- 
 derful statuesque of art, and in its dead letter 
 of service to the world may be likened to the 
 dead figures of speech in the marriage vows 
 between men and women. Oh ! ye of little 
 faith, when you need anything but God's 
 holy word, spoken from the mouth of natural 
 affinity, to make two souls a law of love unto 
 each other. There is no death to truthful 
 love ; no covering that can conceal its care 
 and protection. We always know when we 
 are loved ; there is that still, small voice that 
 speaks in its silvery monotone, and our 
 awakened heart catches the chime of sym- 
 pathy, and never more are we alone, for, 
 another heart beats responsive to our own. 
 Love is a great tattler, for it is continually 
 talking with its varied tongue of mischief ; 
 and the wide world is awake to receive its 
 merry tones of comfort and of peace. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 world of spirit has ever favored me 
 with its service of love and protection; 
 if we will to do right the whole arm of 
 rightful law envelopes our missioned soul of 
 duty. There is no feeling in the spirit world 
 of progressed minds, what another will say, 
 if we do thus, and so we act from the equi- 
 librium of common sense to move from our 
 own stand-point of observation, and if mis- 
 takes are made, we have that levy of experi- 
 ence and a chance of broadening our knowl- 
 edge on some other expedient of movement. 
 There is no superfluous measures adopted to 
 guide us through the channels of spiritual 
 growth, all circulating forces of mind educated 
 ability act from the standard hub of principle. 
 I do not mean that instantaneous change is 
 wrought in our sentiments and opinions, as 
 soon as we drop the earth curtain and plant our 
 feet on spirit soil, but all preparation that we 
 have made in the direction of upright, moral 
 and intellectual improvement and culture, is 
 
120 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 a well-planned fundament on which to rest 
 our weary soul. The basis of life is action, 
 therefore no death can occur, it is an evolution 
 of life continually, a broadening of principle, 
 an influx of divine fervor, that our inheritance, 
 and the inheritance of all the natural orbits 
 of individuality may be worthy of the great 
 mind or will force of Deity. God never tarn, 
 pers with the crildren of men, no life is hung 
 out for a show, there is a background princi- 
 ple to every current movement of God en- 
 forced law. I live to-day John Bunyan. I 
 retain a memory of my gradual unfoldment, 
 until now, of course there are incidental cir- 
 cumstances connected with my past life, that 
 I might not now be able to recall, but the 
 great woof of my existence is a plain and 
 real fact. I have no reason to suppose that 
 God will ever drop me out of my orbit of life. 
 I expect to some day mingle in the machinery 
 house of world constructing, but it will be 
 when my mind can comprehend the idea of 
 first motion or the principles that unite all the 
 points of natural law. It may seem strange 
 to the people of world life that I can have so 
 much assurance as to suppose that I am to 
 some day mingle my forces with the great 
 heart purpose of Deity, but it is, nevertheless, a 
 
BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 121 
 
 fixed fact in the spiral point of spiritual law ra- 
 diates that individuality to the focus of God 
 power, there is no other way of meeting with 
 reason the issue of mind unfoldment. God's 
 cause is a prosperous one, and the united effort 
 of mind power, keeps the structured system safe 
 in hands of Deific principle. The world is 
 based on love and will, one cannot exist without 
 the other, they are the opposite forces that wear 
 the wedding ring of compact. Marriage 
 is not confined to man and woman, the beasts 
 of the field, or the birds of the air, but the 
 spirit of unity and reproduction, or. the spirit 
 of love and marriage is the natural friction 
 press, where God makes matter to form 
 worlds and worlds, to form systems of worlds 
 that stretch into the infinitude of space. It 
 is loves various moods that stamps the differ- 
 ences in objective life. Will takes love in all 
 her varied costumes of appearance, and the pet- 
 ting process or the mingling of hydrogen 
 with the electrogen, causes the affinity from 
 which is produced the shadings aud shapings 
 of all life. Love is ever true to her compact 
 with will, if will is weak. Love is necessar- 
 ily prone to easiness and the production from 
 two indolent sources of action is weak and 
 vacilliating. You can only coax love with will. 
 6 
 
122 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 The power may be softened to the gilded 
 cooing of a warbler bird, and still be all- 
 sufficient in its power and strength to sop up 
 the cozy nrestler, love. What but the one 
 vast mind of a holy harmonions God, or the 
 holy harmony of first principles could so 
 mind everything to the two focuses of inlaid 
 gem work, that their blending could produce 
 or outstamp the great variety field of God 
 planning. None but God can do God's work. 
 The mind of man can imitate and deduce 
 from God's system the way of instituting 
 compact between the things of God produc- 
 tion, and that power in man to imitate God, 
 shows that when the basis points of God act- 
 ing are fully understood, man will join hands 
 with his creator, even though the travel to 
 the summit of God speculative theory. Is it 
 not worthy the effort of man and woman, to 
 build to the temple of Godly spirit of under- 
 standing. I am drifting about earth, that earth 
 may know that there is a united effort on the 
 part of angel wisdom to show the life outside 
 of time, or to show the life of time stretches 
 to the eternal shores of godly building and 
 perfecting. The noose of love is ever slipped 
 about my heart, and I can work in all legiti- 
 mate fields that need the spicy gems of spirit 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 123 
 
 communion. The beverage of peace and love 
 that is being given to the nineteenth century 
 should brace all receptive hearts, and make 
 the earth life, roseate and bright with the 
 spirit of duties well performed. We, in 
 spirit life, use the media assigned to us in 
 the way best suiting our purposes of acting 
 for the enlightenment of humanity. It is no 
 easy work on the part of a progressed spirit 
 to labor physicologically with a mind that is 
 scarcely in corresponding order, and I would 
 say that it is no pleasant labor for a medium 
 to be drafted of strength and individuality 
 necessary to subject themselves to a recep- 
 tive condition. Therefore, few are chosen 
 compared to the great mass of people that 
 roam the world to day, and that few are 
 working in the clear and lucid light of revel- 
 ation, and who shall say are not chosen as 
 were the prophets of old to carry the sub- 
 stance of things sought for to the heart and 
 soul of needful humanity, Andrew Jackson 
 Davis is a Christ by right of spiritual gifts. 
 His nature's divine relation is a holy bible to 
 the century of its date, and he alone can tell 
 whether life has been all bright, though he 
 has been enrapport with the father's home of 
 glory. Cora L. Y. Tappan the spiritual law- 
 
124 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 giver of th'e present age is a gush of womanly 
 power and love toned by God's scriphic band 
 of angel voices that make glad her path of 
 dnty, and buoy up the otherwise troubled 
 heart of womanly love and mercy, and so I 
 might cite many others who are working to 
 establish truth and bring the two worlds to 
 approximate condition of love lit harmony. 
 Before another century shall roll its car pro- 
 gress along the track course of time, spirit com- 
 munion will be the only branch of commuun- 
 ion on earth. Spirit will speak to spirit. 
 Mind will commune with mind, and then 
 ehall earth become in truth the spirit world. 
 
CHAPTEK XXII. 
 
 jY mind has been long made up to work 
 spiritually, wherever and whenever I 
 do work to dig through the soil of 
 outside monopoly, and fit the spiritual tree 
 for the garden of Eden and I hope the ser- 
 pent of evil-doing, may be kept away from 
 man's Paradise of happiness, by the closed 
 and bolted door of justice. The reigns of 
 government have too long been in the hands 
 of the worldly spirit of monopoly, all crush- 
 ing powers need toning down by the peck 
 hammer of love that there may be no outcast 
 tributaries to flourish the spirit of misery 
 and discontent. The world of human nature 
 bears its high cultured patches of mind ele- 
 vation, and its waste corners, that afford no 
 beauty or strength around the fields of intel- 
 lectual culture and advancement. Therefore 
 there is a broad duty on the part of intellec- 
 tuallity, to furnish sources of restoration to 
 the weakened functions of mind being. The 
 wild Indian is susceptible of improvement, 
 
126 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 susceptible to the winning power of love and 
 kindness, their warwhoops may become soft- 
 ened and the tones of peircing strength and 
 power, bear less hatred to the organs of feel- 
 ing and sound. The world will always need 
 the evangelical spirit of love to be thrown 
 around some lone hunter for mercy and puri- 
 fication. We, in spirit life, work more for 
 the general whole, than earth has any idea 
 of; we search out the places where seed will 
 sprout to fill the general granery of human 
 knowledge. He or she who thinks the spirit 
 life is one of inaction, will find how wide was 
 their mistake, and how much the Spirit can 
 find to do when not possessing the body house 
 of clay. The world is filled with the dry bones 
 of body service, when the right spirit prevails 
 on earth there will be one broad community 
 system, and its groupings will be types of the 
 family altars of love in spirit realms. I see 
 a disposition creeping around the heart and 
 brain of some noble minds of earth, to start 
 out and see what can be done towards har- 
 monizing a plan to act on, and in case the 
 movement be a success, and meet with the 
 spirit of acquiescence. 
 
 It wants energetic movers and planners; 
 men and women who are willing to go outside 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 127 
 
 of self and labor for poverty and for crime, 
 who are willing to give up their portion to 
 make brighter and happier the condition of 
 another. Suppose that through our gifts for 
 the general good we become better acquaint- 
 ed with the spirit of self-sacrifice, is not that 
 a beautiful gem to be set in our crown of spir- 
 itual elevation ? 
 
 There must be founders to this new system 
 of branching life, and a starting point once 
 gained, it may become a broad and inductive 
 school of general lifehood. When a change 
 in the social affairs of a community, or a na- 
 tionality of interests is to be dealt with; we 
 in spirit life harmonize to the best of our 
 ability, and shape our course of action for 
 the general welfare of the systemed whole. 
 Life is a beverage that is not easily drank, 
 and we take so many other lives to our foun- 
 tain of accumilation, that it can hardly be 
 said with truth, that we live our own lives; 
 we adhere to some and mingle our shades of 
 thought together, and with others we may 
 never have a wish in common, and so our 
 lives go on, on and forever, if I may be allow- 
 ed the expression of forever. Time is the 
 baby -patch of experience ; we learn to creep 
 to walk to say our A B C our catechism, and 
 
128 BACKWABB GLIMPSES. 
 
 if spared here long enough and receive the right 
 direction, we coin some gems that are worthy 
 of being transplanted to a more softened at- 
 mosphere of friendly feeling and intercourse. 
 I well remember one scene which may be 
 well here to recall. I had occasion et one 
 time of my angelhood of experience, and after 
 I had passed my third realm of growth, to 
 make a visit backwards, and my travels took 
 me to the first platform of spirit stoppings; 
 an old gentleman said to me. "Why, sir, 
 this new gush of life seems more real than the 
 past, and it seems as I look back , I must 
 have lived in shadow and the sunshine is just 
 breaking through; but, I regret," said he, 
 "that I trifled so much with the principles 
 that govern life, and only took what time 
 could easily destroy, and therefore lam weak 
 on the basal shore of spirit life;" said he, 
 "they tell me here there is a law of com- 
 munication with earth, but I know not even 
 the first rudiments whereby I can touch a 
 single cord of vibration ;" for, said he, ' ' the 
 church bound every faculty of thought that I 
 possessed, "and I now see that the church doors 
 will not open for my reception ; and I must 
 now try the broad church of soul enlighten- 
 ment, and find a God that never existed in 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 129 
 
 the church of time. " And so I left my friend, 
 knowing that he will surely find the God he 
 seeks. The time has been when I would have 
 visited earth, and rapped for admittance on 
 doors that were forever closed against me; 
 but I never believed in frightening people to 
 a subject that were better gained through 
 study and a care to find the truth, but other 
 spirits have thought differently and would be 
 recognized though fear, pride or indifference 
 stood at the portals of common sense. And 
 so all phases of spirit power and ability 
 that we now see have found their way to 
 Earth. But the future holds its own council, 
 else I might predict or make the assertion 
 that there are many things that will soon be 
 available to the children of time, that must 
 open the hearts and minds of seekers and 
 non-seekers after spiritual props of comfort to 
 garnish the bread and butter side of life. I 
 have no faith in a language that is only a 
 mouth utterance of sound, there must be the 
 true ring of soul motive to make it worthy 
 the stringing of words to convey ideas from 
 one mind to another. Language is the es- 
 sence or the aroma that feeds the soul of 
 individuality and can never be perfected un- 
 til man is perfected in God. I could have 
 
130 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 given this work in a different wording 
 or metre of language, but the medium 
 through which I labor would have worked to 
 great disadvantage and earth has not grown 
 to the comprehension of the language in the 
 seventh sphere, therefore, it is best to feed 
 people with the spoon that will, in some way 
 fit the mouth. I expect soon to be able 
 to give lessons in the flower language as 
 it is called, nothing exceeds the beauty of 
 its utterance, or the drifting melody that fills 
 the soul of the giver and receiver of sounds 
 that are as sweetly scented as the air from 
 off a garden patch of heliotrope. I have 
 never yet seen the perfection of flowers, 
 never yet caught the height of their fragrant 
 diffusion. I have seen the roses in my 
 travels that were resplendant with beauty and 
 meaning. The rose in the spirit world ac- 
 cording to its shadings is a typical illustration 
 of the progressive character of men and wo- 
 men. A boquet of purely white roses im- 
 plies to the receiver, you have drifted through 
 adversity, have shaken hands with poverty, 
 and have breasted the white waves of scorn, 
 all in duty to truth and God the conscience 
 monitor to your unselfish life. Therefore, 
 thou art pure as these white lipped messages 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 131 
 
 of love are pure, and Christ is waiting in the 
 reception room of peace and fellowship. Go 
 thou in and receive the bath of redemption. 
 A boquet of red roses, says you have dashed 
 my hopes; although your gildings were fine 
 I see that pride was the body guard that ever 
 surrounded your life, and I fear to link my 
 fate with yours, lest in adverse hours you 
 trample your fate in the dust. With regard 
 to the growing or cultivation of flowers 
 in the spirit world much has been said and 
 also in regard to vegetation of any kind and 
 character. The query has been, is it real, 
 is it tangible to sense, and do we eat and 
 drink and find ways and means to support all 
 of our life principles as when earth claimed 
 the rotundity of our physical presence? 
 Vegetation in the Spirit world, is produced 
 or I might say is an inherent principle that is 
 thrown out from the system of earth and is 
 perfected as man is perfected, and that is by 
 being cultured. All labor in spirit life is 
 systematized or thrown on to a base of even 
 and progressive balance wheels of motion. 
 To ask if we eat is to ask if we live, since 
 life cannot be sustained without a gift from 
 its fountain of resources. We partake of 
 refreshments as earth's children do, and in 
 
132 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 very like the same manner, only we have pro- 
 gressive forms to observe, and food that has 
 become etherealized as we have become more 
 ethereal. All species in the vegetable king- 
 dom and all the floral kingdom is here awake 
 to a brilliant and useful growth. Flowers 
 have been picked by spirits as a gift to an 
 earth friend, and in making the journey to 
 earth the flowers would take on the earth con- 
 dition, by coming en rap'po with the natural 
 germinal world. But the substance that is so 
 deduced is very fleeting, and hence the real 
 flowers that are of ttimes given seem like haunt- 
 ing shadows of the imagination. Desdemona 
 has immortalized the rose by giving it the 
 significance of lasting virtues and attaching 
 to it honor and principle. Flowers are 
 nature's boon of poesy. The speaking sata- 
 lites that crown the face of earth with sub- 
 limity and lasting beauty. Flowers have a 
 harmonizing influence over the fitful and flashy 
 natures of men, women and children. They 
 seem to say be calm as I am calm, and take 
 your beauty therefrom. There is a lesson in 
 every flower, a proverb in every blade of grass. 
 They all tell us that life is and ever will be, that 
 changes come, decay takes place, and we are 
 in the lifeboat of progressive earnings. 
 
CHAPTEE XXIII. 
 
 IIFE is a school, and experience the law- 
 ful teacher. We only gain one lesson 
 
 'well, and with advantage to one soul- 
 elevation, when experience lifts the curtain 
 to earth's varied scenery. One course track 
 may be sufficient to some, whose natures are 
 pent up and narrowed down to the force-bent 
 of one idea, but such natures are rare in this 
 time of world-growth and elongated prin- 
 ciples of working merit. God no more says, 
 if he ever did say it, Thus far shalt thou go, 
 and no farther; for the mandate now is, Strive 
 to perfect yourselves in all the branches of 
 education that I hold before thee, for I am 
 the living God, grown from the branching 
 tree of experience, and I would have all lesser 
 Gods travel in the footsteps of the Greater; 
 that Heaven may present a breast-plate of 
 starry minds that will accord in one har- 
 monious strain of outgrowth. The world is 
 afloat to-day, and minds are the sea-gulls that 
 flutter around the great banquet of knowl- 
 edge, spread for the generalissimo of all man- 
 
134 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 kind, and the covered dishes are only await- 
 ing the keenness of appetite to remove. God 
 is supernal, and we also have a life lease of 
 perpetual growth, and hence prosperity. 
 Death never finds us idle, although our 
 physical hands be tied, our spirit fingers 
 untie the knotty cords that bound us, and we 
 go free to another platform of honest labor. 
 There are few people in the world to-day that 
 will realize or comprehend my present exist- 
 ence, so long has earth looked upon me as 
 having passed beyond any remembrance of 
 past lifehood; but some will reach to me a 
 heart and mind of belief, and to such, John 
 Bunyan is still an individual keepsake of 
 godly power and purpose ; still willing to strive 
 for truth; still willing to give for the glory 
 and upbuilding of man. Not very long since, 
 I had a vision, which I will here relate, as it 
 seems appropriate in this opening valve of 
 Backward Glimpses. I had been entertain- 
 ing some of my most classical friends, one 
 leisure day. We were all buoyant and happy, 
 feeling at ease with conscience, and for the 
 sake of diversion and instruction we were 
 asking each other knotty and intricate ques- 
 tions. General Wool of Revolutionary an- 
 tiqr-'y, said to me, Bunyan, tell me God's 
 
BACKWABD GLIMPSES. 135 
 
 object and purpose in human life. I sat a 
 a moment in deep thought. I made no 
 attempt to answer, knowing well that the 
 silence would lift me out of all difficulty. 
 Suddenly there arose before me two angels. 
 They had progressed far beyond me, and had 
 come back with the golden shimmer of godly 
 heritage. One bore a lamb, the other was 
 fondling the shaggy mane of a ferocious lion. 
 Now, said I, comes my answer. I dared not 
 move, lest the pictured words would vanish. 
 There was a hand laid upon my head, and a 
 voice whispered in my ear, ' ' Tell General 
 Wool, that God's object in human life, is 
 love, and my lion would in no way devour my 
 neighbor's lamb; for power united with love 
 is God's own weapon of deal." My angel 
 visitants vanished, and I said to General 
 Wool, "We have been entertaining angels 
 unawares"; and now I comprehend the blend- 
 ing powers of Deity, and comprehend God's 
 object and aim in the constitution of man, 
 that love may be three-fold : first, embryotic 
 condition; second, wisdom of understanding; 
 and third and last, union of forces, by the 
 hand of Divine benediction; and the compact 
 thus united forms principle, which is God. 
 We may call God selfish, with truth, for the 
 
136 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 background of the assertion for everything 
 is taken to his great heart of comfort; nothing 
 is left unprotected, although we may some- 
 times think that Satan has won the advan- 
 tage in some localities and with some people. 
 Still there is a treasured corner in every field 
 of living principle, and in every human heart, 
 where the dragon of evil can never find an 
 entrance, for that is God's parlor where every 
 thing choice has been laid away, and is only 
 opened when the good messenger .raps for 
 admittance. My present condition of exter- 
 nal bearing, could not become tangible to 
 the earthly condition of external sight. We 
 are in every degree of life suited to the atmos- 
 phere surrounding us. I am en rapport with 
 my medium, consequently I am in her atmos- 
 phere, but only tangible to her mentality, or 
 spiritual sense of sight. I never go alone to 
 earth; the atmosphere is filled with circles of 
 intelligences, going and coming, and like 
 unto the pilgrimage to Mecca, where each 
 soul is striving to carry or bring tithes mete 
 for repentance. 
 
 To say that we walk, in spirit life, would 
 be a misnomer, since our feet only serve in 
 the propelling motion that wafts our body to 
 the tune of our will. All motion is depend- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 137 
 
 enton will. The motion of the waving grass, 
 and the undulating play of the forest trees, 
 are whispered to prove the almost imper- 
 ceptible will of atmospheric pressure. We 
 float, we dance, we play, we always possess 
 the buoyancy of youth, T^ecau^e spirit is 
 elasticity; the floating aroma that pins its 
 star of truth in all the worlds of ether blue. 
 My robes of protection are simple and un- 
 pretending.- To earth they would seem gos- 
 samer-like and shadowy, but to my spiritual 
 condition and locality, perfectly tangible, and 
 true to service. We manufacture fabrics for 
 all wearing purposes. Ideality has here, room 
 to expand, and nothing can exceed in beauty 
 the design and finish of some articles of 
 spirit apparel. I have seen here a web of 
 cloth drawn out to yards and yards of such 
 fine and glowing texture, that the eye could 
 never weary in admiration of its beauty. The 
 sunset dye of the deepening reddish hue is 
 here a favorite color for a mantle of protec- 
 tion, and its significance is strength, and 
 glory of achievement. I often visit earth in 
 my sunset gown of dashing brightness; it 
 seems to buoy me up in fervor, to act from 
 a standpoint of brilliant motive power. I 
 think the shading of our robes affect our 
 
138 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 lives more than we think for; bright colors 
 are truly essential to some people; they lend 
 a keenness and charm to life. We should 
 ever robe ourselves to suit our own ideality, for 
 in pleasing ourselves we are in a better con- 
 dition to please others. If a brilliant cos- 
 tume suit our .physical development of man- 
 hood or womanhood, and suit our fancy fires 
 of display, let us please our fancy when no 
 harm can come to the physical by so doing. 
 Sombre shades are apt to be in keeping with 
 sombre dispositions. We always fraternize 
 or harmonize the outward condition of robe- 
 ment with the interior shapings of mind. 
 Goethe found somewhere in study or travel, 
 I suppose the terms are synonymous and 
 agree in object, found that colors shape our 
 destiny. That may seem strange, but the 
 strangeness lies in our noncomprehension of 
 chemical effluvia, steering our ship's crew of 
 action. Has it ever been definitely under- 
 stood why sailors dress almost uniformly in 
 blue? Because in any other color harmony 
 would be incomplete. The blue arch of 
 heaven, the rolling sea that presents its blue 
 flecked face give to the mariner a sense of 
 oneness with heaven and sea. God's glory 
 lies in the chief art of blending to perfect- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 139 
 
 ness. Color is as essential to God as man, 
 and man as God. It has never yet been de- 
 termined the analysis of color, its formative 
 principles, and how deduced from the world 
 of natural keep-sakes, to enter into all the 
 life-work of man. The best artists that the 
 world has ever recognized, and adopted as 
 standard models of power and influence, 
 have been the workers who have best blended 
 colors, and found the exact line of mingling 
 merit; and in that one idea lies all the ex- 
 pression and beauty in pictured scenery, and 
 in the facial illustrations of individual char- 
 acters. I often visit the picture rooms and 
 galleries of art on earth, and in more advanced 
 localities of human effort and workmanship, 
 and I find art fast progressing to nature; find 
 that human effort is fast approaching to godly 
 effort ; and so in all the branches of mind glean- 
 ings. Progress is the watchword calling to 
 duty. God's angel world is alive to the 
 sounding term that bids all things follow in 
 the godly wake of growth. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 tBIENDSHIP implies interest in anothers 
 welfare, and a willingness to make a 
 sacrifice for that person's good. Sacri- 
 fice, is the border land of love. I may talk 
 love by the hour, and look love in the face 
 smirkingly and shyly, but if I have never given 
 of the gifts I have most treasured then love 
 has never opened the door of my heart; never 
 left its rich cadences of musical suffocation 
 along my soul-land of reciprocity. Love 
 carries us away from self, to breast the diffi- 
 culties besetting the path way of the loved one. 
 The eagle builds its nest in the mountain 
 eyrie, that no harm may come to its family 
 nest of young, and no prey that the mother 
 eagle can secure, is held too sacred for her 
 devouring love for her offspring. 
 
 The eagles power to love is grand, 
 Is bold in flight, is deep in skill, 
 And naught can break its will of strife 
 To well prolong its loved one's life. 
 Or stop the current of its power 
 Where love is guardian of the hour. 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 141 
 
 God's love strokes of deep laid power and 
 skill. The children of time can but little 
 realize, but when the great Arcana of natural 
 law is unfolded, then may we understand 
 something of our God of love ; something of the 
 first principles that bespoke the God-Head of 
 past and even present mythological keepsakes. 
 The grandeur of Godly conception will ever be 
 in advance of the mindality of man ; there will 
 always be a spiral point called God, and man 
 will be the satellites of moving cosmopolitan 
 power and will of daring. I always expect to be 
 John Bunyan, because I have always been John 
 Bunyan since God's forces shaped my individ- 
 uality, and that is to remain, for there is prin- 
 ciple underlying every part and parcel of 
 my structure. The principles that formed 
 me could not form another like me ; and why ! 
 because the conditions under which I was 
 constituted an individual power of consequent 
 manhood, would never be the same again, 
 and hence the variety in physiognomy and 
 character in the same household of children. 
 I never expect to be God, never expect to be 
 Christ even, but shall expand to whatever 
 God's call of natural abilities leads me out 
 to. Old Homer was claimed by many cities 
 of power, and Christ's birth place has been 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
142 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 under the lash of disputation ; simply because 
 he was Christ carrying the key to all the vir- 
 tues, therefore many places would liked to 
 have claimed His birth and consequent growth, 
 but there is no law-place or time to chain 
 growth unless we chain God, the propelling 
 engineer, working the great lever of univer- 
 sal law. Theodore Parker has stated that man 
 travels to God, in the direct line of natural re- 
 search, and is expanded to the mind, forma- 
 tive principles of God; that is sound reason- 
 ing for the great hero of liberal thought and 
 as Theodore Parker ever reasoned from 
 cause to effect, we may with truth expect he 
 will find the end of his chain, if end there be, 
 and if its staple ring be enclosed in God's 
 great caldron of circular beneficent purpose, 
 then will Theodore Parker become a lesser 
 God, to work out the established principles 
 of the greater. Oh, man ! why doubt of your 
 ultimate success over death ; why doubt that 
 the destroying angel is one of mercy, and that 
 God's face of love is the silver lining that 
 beams through every clouded atmosphere of 
 life. I thank God for this great boon of hap- 
 piness I now enjoy, and for the promised con- 
 tinuance which I witness in the flower gar- 
 den, and ivy covered rocks of standard prin- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 143 
 
 ciple, that meet me at every turn my wonder- 
 ing footsteps lead the way. I am no longer 
 a pilgrim burdened with a load of disappoint- 
 ments and sorrows, trying to reach the celes- 
 tial city of God's love and mercy, but I am 
 stranded on the shore of Faith, Hope and 
 Charity, and am a pilgrim traveling at the 
 call of these three angel monitions of power- 
 ful appeal. God never finds me idle, there 
 is always something for John Bunyan to do, 
 always some corner in which to rear a school 
 for the protection and elevation of the human 
 mind divine. There is here no St. Peter's or 
 St. Paul's church, no church of the Trinity, 
 or Grace Church of sanctified towering mo- 
 nopoly, but here the Church is freedom, and 
 God the minister at large, that drops a text 
 from the waving mind of deocratic adjunct 
 of symbolic representation. God's flower 
 garden is nature's field, and art can never cause 
 a life, beat to a single flower or a stem of wav- 
 in green, that makes landscape yiews of regal 
 beauty ; but God is as glorious in art as in 
 nature, for both art and nature are soul mon- 
 archs of the principles on which their work 
 is based. The locality which ! now inhabit, 
 is literally filled, so to speak, with gems of 
 art; the sculptor has here, seemingly perfected 
 
144 BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 
 
 his art of white capped grandeur, and here 
 are representations of manhood and woman- 
 hood, that seem to be asking for the breath 
 of life, to start away from the dread silence 
 surrounding them. There is soon to be 
 dropped to earth another branch of educa- 
 tional knowledge, and its diffusive system 
 must expel ignorance, and make broad -base 
 over the theocratic principles of past genera- 
 tions. The idiosyncracies that have found 
 attachment to religion, or would be religion, 
 have been of man making and fixing. God 
 has never said, " pay to any minister of the 
 gospel $10,000 a year for preaching". Christ 
 Jesus God would sooner say, if he could 
 make a verbal communication, give to the 
 poor in your midst, $10, 000 a year, and there- 
 by practice Christ Jesus; and again is it God's 
 command that the face of earth is here and 
 there dotted with costly churches, that reach 
 their spiral points heavenward, while the face 
 of earth is here and there dotted with travel- 
 ing vagabonds and outcasts, that reach no 
 spiral point heavenward; and why? because 
 frail human nature has had no standard beams 
 of support. The church can boast of its 
 plentiful means to make a show and faster 
 the pride of man in dead symbols, but where 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 145 
 
 is the friendship, love, and pride that can 
 give to the newly outstainps of Godly prin- 
 ciple, that flood the cities of the world to-day, 
 without a grimace of discontent and a wish 
 that God's poor, were more genteel and less 
 beggarly. God never says, "let your sab- 
 bath day service, be the dry husks and dead 
 pottage gathered from the olden rookery of 
 ancient theology, " and labeled, ' ' Holy Bible, " 
 because God to-day, does not fashion mind to 
 be as receptive from that olden book of fables, 
 as from the newer source springs of interest 
 and truth, and labeled, "God's progressive 
 Era. *' The church has spent its fury of truth, 
 the road leading backwards is becoming 
 bridged up, and a newer passage gained by 
 the solvient light of reason, is carrying the 
 nineteenth century away from the bottomless 
 pit of despair, away from God's holy wrath, 
 and away from the devil's field of glory. The 
 new Jerusalem is lying all about us. We do 
 not have to change our condition, our local- 
 ity or our creed, to find the work that fits us 
 for happiness, and fits us for God. The work 
 is here, is everywhere, that shall make us ef- 
 ficient apostles to grace the pages of modern 
 theology. Let forms and ceremonies be the 
 background scenery, and deeds make the pic- 
 
 (7) 
 
146 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 ture of lasting virtue, to be hung before the 
 world of want. My backward course of study 
 has been what fate brought in my way; I have 
 never turned the crank to my own movements, 
 I do not mean by that, I am not an individu- 
 al capable of will forces of activity, but I 
 mean this ; that there is ever a higher arm of 
 law, guiding our life-beats of purpose. We 
 are inside the wheel of locomotive evolution, 
 and turn or move as God's purpose attaches 
 to our need. Fate is a stern boy, that often 
 presents a smiling exterior to coy us into the 
 channel best adapted to the individualization 
 of character. 
 
 Some minds need the rough and trouble of life 
 to make a foothold whereon to rest our ac- 
 countability. Self-reliance is a staff that 
 every person should carry, and some gain it 
 through the fiery furnace of a troubled career 
 in life, while others may always travel the 
 rosy walks, and be lulled to forgetfulness 
 beside the silver stream of content, and still 
 manifest a self poise of power and strength, 
 to battle, if occasion requires, with the ad- 
 verse minds that sweep along the course of 
 life's battle ground. Every person should 
 have a pride of character to maintain, a self- 
 reliant spirit to meet the difficulties and dis- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 147 
 
 appointments that will ever surround tlie pur- 
 posed work of man. The prevailing spirit 
 to-day, in the world of earth, is inefficiency 
 a dropping to a seat of ease and the desire to 
 lay the burdens of life into the arms or on to 
 the back of a more prosperous power. Some 
 there are who would shuffle off all responsi- 
 bility, and drop into the indolent chair of re- 
 pose, and fold their hands over life's burdens 
 with the self complacency of a perfect hum- 
 bug , and I would say to such, that the day 
 of reckoning is surely awaiting them ; for, 
 every talent sprouted must grow ; and if there 
 are any that think that with the cessation of 
 earth, life ceases responsibility, let them way- 
 lay the error at once; for, it is a mighty mis- 
 take, and one that will do untold mischief. 
 The harbinger of health and peace is in this 
 new dispensation, and we may look for a 
 waking up of all the dormant faculties, and 
 look for more self-reliant spirits to enter the 
 portals of spirit life. George Washington 
 told me, not long since, that life had only 
 seemingly commenced with him ; for, said 
 he, ' ' So much of my time passed in the un- 
 conscious atmosphere of disability, I could 
 not see God's pledge mark of the future 
 handling of events. I could only do my duty 
 
148 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 as it stepped before me ;" to be sure, said 
 he, " I laid a fundament every day in regard 
 to the future, hoping and trusting that my 
 platform was solid ground ; but the knowl- 
 edge direct that I was sure of life and its ac- 
 tive details of interest forever on was witheld 
 from me, until I had passed the rubicon of 
 selfish desire;" and now, said he, I am living, 
 I am blessed with a staple fund of beautiful 
 prospects, and life presents the sheeny hue of 
 a broad and glowing purpose." I wonder if 
 the Church to-day could recognize any beauty 
 in the life of Thomas Paine, and what was it, 
 and is it now, that made and makes the 
 man so unpopular. It was, and is, ignorance, 
 for Thomas Paine never did a mean act in 
 his life ; he was ever true to the honest con- 
 victions of his reason ; he laid before the 
 world the whys and wherefores of his not be- 
 lieving the Bible to be a verbal command 
 from God ; and Thomas Paine was as true in 
 his reasoning as he could be in that age of 
 advancement. People to-day can look in his 
 age of reason without the galvanic shock of 
 horror that used to be felt in the fingers and 
 toes of the would be religious world. Thomas 
 Paine, in the lighthouse of spiritual advance- 
 ment, sees the sheaves of truth in the Bible 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 149 
 
 array of witchery and enthusiasm, that caught 
 the inspiration it could best digest, and hold 
 before the world in the symbolical assump- 
 tion of Godly merit. 
 
 Truth will stand ; whether found in the 
 Bible, the Koran, or the fabled story of 
 1 'Jack the Giant Killer;" for truth is the pure 
 grain called for the harrowed ground of the 
 next generation. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 |T seems by some hook and crook of Godly 
 purpose or manly purpose, that the 
 iff? world is becoming topsy turvy. People 
 are drifting to the shores of a reasonable 
 light ; and the olden hue of anarchy and op- 
 pression over the thinking part of man's 
 nature, is becoming more shaded with the 
 bright colors of lasting virtue. 
 
 A person to-day can say, I do not believe 
 thus, and so, without being termed a spy, 
 sent out from the Courts of Deviltry. I honor 
 the person, who, after a careful scrutiny and 
 investigation of a subject, can come out with 
 true manly or womanly courage, as the case 
 may be, and say, " I do not believe thus and 
 so ; or, I do believe, because my reason 
 approves or disapproves ; and I cannot help 
 my opinion formed." We may look in that 
 person's soul for honor, and integrity of 
 motive. Charles Lamb possessed great ver- 
 satility of thought ; and when a truth was made 
 manifest to him, he acknowledged its power 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 151 
 
 over his soul. Why do people shrink from 
 the acknowledgement of truth ? Why bind 
 the unction of error around the heart pur- 
 poses of life, and create stormy seas where 
 it might be fair sailing. I know of no sorrow 
 so great as a continual dodging of truth ; a 
 desire to slip the noose of accountability ; 
 and in order to do that, people many times will 
 make themselves out to be nobodies ; with 
 the thought perfectly unfledged and in the 
 pin feather of discontent ; because, in failing 
 to acknowledge truth we fail to grow right- 
 fully, and are completely muddled over our 
 bone of error. There is a right way and a 
 wrong way in life, and both are perfectly 
 tangible to reason, when reason is allowed a 
 seat at our hearth stone of honest deal. He 
 who abides by a wrong, reaps wrong culture ; 
 and where thistles are imbedded, the sweet 
 anemone or shaded faced pink cannot grow 
 in luxuriant freedom. Therefore, Oh, man and 
 woman, sow the seeds that will sprout virtues 
 and the harvest will be peace. The children 
 of life's Abbey are growing in power, and the 
 base condition of that power will be the free 
 unity of heart and mind, to grapple with the 
 spirit of progress that is in all the atmos- 
 phere about us ; and from every tone sent out 
 from the great organ of God's love. 
 
152 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 The age of mystery is breaking to the com- 
 prehensive spirit of man, and no dismal bird 
 of prey will croak around the pool of infidel- 
 ity. Christ's second coming is drawing all 
 to the righiful stream of salvation, and there 
 need never be any more Jonah's in the 
 whale's belly of ignorance ; for man has 
 learned that one generation plants the ani- 
 malcule or molecular particles on which the 
 next stage of life rears succesf ul tabernacles of 
 strength. The ministry, by force of outside 
 agreement, is dropping its spirit of control, 
 and the free thinkers are giving out an element 
 that buoys up the soul; and life is felt to be 
 a power within itself. God has a work for 
 every heart beat of individuality; and the 
 frail ones of earth often do a service for God 
 and humanity, that a stronger power could 
 not accomplish. It takes the weak ever to 
 confound the wise, and that is so from a force 
 of natural law, for weakness is negative con- 
 dition, and positive force controls and sub- 
 jects the springs that can convey intelligence. 
 The law that governs the minutia of elemen- 
 tary activity, is the force law of prepondera- 
 ting particles of superior strength. The 
 mother governs the child, because superior 
 weight and measure and superior will func- 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 153 
 
 tions, create the subjective spirit in the 
 child. Is it not God's immensity that fills us 
 with awe and solemnity, more than it is God's 
 love. There is a spirit in humanity that re- 
 spects and caters to strength, when weakness 
 might pass along unheeded, or excite the 
 heart to pity, or it might be a contemptuous 
 feeling would pass the portals of our 
 judgment. We are born to sorrow, and the 
 pleasures are thrown in to fill up the meas- 
 ure of experience and discontent. We are 
 never so happy as when we think we might 
 be, because imagination is ever exagerative, 
 always borrowing, but never giving back the 
 full amount. Life is a school of rehearsal ; 
 and the play is only perfected when the drop 
 curtain is lifted to our advantage on the 
 shores of the immortal life. Pearls have 
 great significance in the spirit world ; they are 
 the embossment to a pure and holy life. We 
 can only call around us the emblems that cor- 
 respond or affinitize with our social and re- 
 ligious natures. Peace never attracts turmoil, 
 the two elements conflict ; and a free passage 
 is sought by one or both of the opposing 
 parties. There must be a modicum of con- 
 geniality that attracts any two forces of 
 superior or inferior strength. There must 
 
154 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 be a mingling of the magnetic currents to 
 produce an equilibrium in the affectional 
 caskets of power. We are never so strong as 
 when drawn to the right element of mag- 
 netic attraction ; because then we have met 
 our equilibrium, and our weakened forces 
 have gained strength, and also imparted the 
 vitalizing movement in the opposite condition 
 of life. Truth is ever stronger than fiction, 
 and when the harmonial law is fully and 
 perfectly developed and understood there will 
 be no impurity attached to the mingling of 
 the sexes. We are coming out to the light 
 where we must give heed to our needs, where 
 we must endeavor to grow scientifically, and 
 therein grow truthfully. No person can 
 know the needs or requirements of another 
 person, and, moreover they never can know; 
 for every person has an especial house to 
 keep, and it is well understood that no two 
 buildings of time's pleasure of destruction 
 are swept and garnished alike, or with the 
 same implements of use, therefore, we may 
 infer that each individual casket must find its 
 own means of growth and purification. 
 
 Hamlin the great organ builder, associated 
 everything with sound ; nothing so beautiful 
 to him as music, and he seemed to think that 
 
BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 155 
 
 if a person had not music in their soul, they 
 were almost devoid of interest, and the whole 
 world seem to have taken Hamlin's platform, 
 and pass condemnation on the private and 
 public lives of each other ; that spirit is all 
 wrong, t and grows from the noncomprehen- 
 tion of the natural laws that control our drift- 
 ings to each other. We are in God's orbit of 
 love, and we must all partake of the quantity 
 and quality, that is the best adapted to our 
 mental and physical structures of reception. 
 1 ' Whom the God's love die young, " is a 
 quotation or translation from the old Hebrewic 
 canticles of mythological keepsakes; but I 
 should say in these later days, that whom the 
 God's love and propel out to do a service for 
 the world at large, are misunderstood and 
 sorely afflicted, and beset by doubts, from 
 the same public they are giving their life en- 
 ergies to make happier ; all persons have the 
 right to a legitimate pursuit of happiness ; 
 but all persons are not allowed its pursuance 
 in the most harmonious channel, and are often 
 circumvented by powers or circumstances 
 beyond their control. What might have been 
 we have no business to meddle with, because 
 there is no shadow of hope resting around 
 that ideal fountain of little worth we must call 
 
156 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 our benefits, from the works before us, and 
 trudge along with our packs empty or filled, 
 as we have been diligent in our dutious search. 
 Christian's pack or burden has-been strapped 
 to the back and felt around the heart of many 
 a monarch soul, traveling the stubborn road 
 of life ; and God's mansion house of love 
 seems afar off, but there is ever some point to 
 be gained, some halting place where we stop 
 and count the cost of our journey, and try 
 and realize what we have gained from 
 what we have expended. It is oftentimes 
 well and consistent with reason, to count 
 the cost before we make a purchase in 
 the moral, intellectual or physical field of 
 action, and then again some people meet with 
 better results by stepping out to meet what 
 may come, trusting in the good genie of fate 
 to make smooth the unattempted future even 
 in thought. What I most wish to impress 
 upon the minds of all thinking people, is the 
 necessity of instituting a self-governing or 
 regulating spiral rule of action. Let us take 
 the platform that we are ascending, mono- 
 cules capable of great expansion and growth, 
 capable of joining hands with God, and min- 
 gling our forces of accumulation in the great 
 centripetal foci of world building. God is 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 157 
 
 mundane as well as spiritual, and as we are 
 prototypes of the first seedling fruit, it is not 
 assumption but a pleas urableiact, that we 
 verge towards and mingle in the vestibule of 
 Godly greatness. My Backward Glimpses 
 have called up many a reminiscense of the 
 past, and the items I thought would best suit 
 and be of advantage to the world, I have 
 gathered together in book form, and I send 
 it forth, hoping the refrain will be glad tid- 
 ings of great joy, and hoping that earth will 
 receive me, although I come dressed in the 
 freedom suit that somewhat conflicts with 
 my past darkened garb of earthly apparel. 
 
 God grant this era of world knowledge may 
 have a fundament of truth whereon to rest 
 the growth of individuality, and whereon to 
 stand firm when the dashing waves of priestly 
 power shall seek the door-way of spirit com- 
 munion. My friends of earthly relationship, 
 I would that I could reach you, I would that 
 I could speak to you in a verbal language, 
 asking you to come higher, that God's tem- 
 ple is filled with true and loving friends, only 
 waiting for the signal that shall say, I am 
 wanted. Then, Oh, friends, will your homes 
 and all the walks of life be strengthened, and 
 thereby purified by the knowledge that God 
 
158 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 has raised us up to become a help to Himself, 
 has clothed us with every attribute of Godly 
 wearing, and has stamped us that we may be 
 'ever recognized as the sheep straying to the 
 fold of Christly love and merit. So there- 
 fore, oh world, be diligent in search, and be 
 true to the honest convictions that surge 
 through your soul lives, and thus may we 
 meet the smiling face of God, the herald 
 whole ; a blessing to the world and a gift of 
 peace and fellowship, while we all journey 
 towards the height of spiritual unfoldment. 
 I will give a short poem handed to me by 
 Elizabeth Browning, and is a gem in the 
 great setting house of truth. 
 
THE WORLD'S NEED. 
 
 JY ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING. 
 
 A fountain plays beside my door, 
 And dreamland forest, stretched beyond, 
 Which makes my home an Eden bovver, 
 Filled with perfume from many a flower; 
 And here I live and call for time, 
 The sprays of truth from lands divine. 
 
 Here am I seated, this bright morn, 
 With flowing raiment, book in hand, 
 And asking my bright muse to guide 
 My wandering thoughts to timely tide, 
 And open wide my wisdom cell, 
 That I may labor long and well. 
 
 I asked my muse what earth most needs, 
 And sat me still, to await reply, 
 Well knowing that my angel friend, 
 Would brightest council to me lend; 
 And give me what at present time, 
 The world would to degree incline. 
 
 Her needs are many, said my fiiend, 
 And we are gleaners gone before, 
 Now let us drop our staple wheat, 
 That is so glorious and sweet, 
 Beside the shriveled grain of earth, 
 And thus commence a better birth . 
 
160 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 The world is filled with talents fine, 
 
 And wisdom sits beside her springs; 
 
 Bat love the cupid archer sly, 
 
 Has evee waited, bye and bye, 
 
 To do the things that's now required, 
 
 For, strange to say the creeds seem tired. 
 
 Tired of chasing errors old, 
 And see no growth i'rom efforts made, 
 No minds expanding hearts made pure, 
 Their stream of knowledge is secure, 
 And Christ the sufferer still at large, 
 Is keeping thought and sins in charge. 
 
 Oh ! world, a woman weak I am, 
 
 A traveler on the sunny side, 
 
 But well I know you need more love, 
 
 More Noah's arks and friendly doves; 
 
 To rest the weary tired soul, 
 
 And carry hope to hearts grown cold. 
 
 What can I give, to bless and save, 
 
 Since woman's worth is scarcely proved, 
 
 And little heeded in the strife, 
 
 Of principle with erring life; 
 
 But well I know another need, 
 
 Is woman's power with man's to lead? 
 
 Another force to counterplay, 
 And balance even justice' scales, 
 Which have too long weighed to the full, 
 The power that could the money pull; 
 And also tax to pay a debt, 
 What justice fails to represent. 
 
IVERSITY 
 
 BACKWAKD GLIMPSES. 
 
 You have a need, Oh world, to live, 
 Upon a moral, high-toned plane, 
 A need to sprout and grow the seed, 
 That will to virtue truly lead; 
 And join the male and female hand, 
 In loving purpose, noby planned. 
 
 Since Adam could not live alone, 
 
 Or Eve consent to idle be, 
 
 God surely had some broad design 
 
 In seeking thus to man entwine; 
 
 A love of home with active measures, 
 
 To consumate his highest measures. 
 
 Man truly needs a sovereign balm, 
 
 In form of virtue, peace, and hope, 
 
 That life may claim its rightful due, 
 
 And not be cheated by a few, 
 
 Whose monied power God ne'er defends, 
 
 But constant seeks the rightful ends. 
 
 161 
 
 Why should we seek to crush a part 
 Of brothers, sisters to us given, 
 To make earth life a social field, 
 Where hearts may oft to duty yield 
 And never seek to murder love, 
 The Peace-king from the Courts above. 
 
 Earth'little heeds her starry flag, 
 The banner that for freedom speaks, 
 For woman is the voiceless bird 
 That Congress never yet has heard, 
 And does not now intend to give 
 The right to independence live. 
 
162 BACKWAED GLIMPSES. 
 
 Oh! God we scorn this fettered yoke 
 That is so galling and so base, 
 That hearts of womanhood must feel 
 The wrong that's done in manly deal, 
 And ask why so the mother's heart 
 Should feel so long the bitter smart. 
 
 Why sisters should be left to grope 
 Along a path with darkness laid, 
 And see no friendship in earth's laws, 
 No interest in their working cause, 
 No friendly voice of mercy given 
 When they with virtue long have striven. 
 
 Great God! we need amendments true, 
 
 We need and must obtain the right 
 
 To work in union side by side 
 
 With man in cause of country's pride, 
 
 And to secure by freedom's letter, 
 
 The spirit which will prove much better. 
 
 We need a dog on error's track, 
 A huntsman clad to breast the tide, 
 Whose armor will reflect a will 
 To say old wrongs henceforth be still; 
 Henceforth let virtue lead the way, 
 Let justice be the God of day. 
 
 Let man and woman, God's own power, 
 Join heart and hand for equal rights, 
 Nor seek to blast each others name 
 For love or power of worldly fame; 
 For our true errand is to give 
 A rightful purpose while we live. 
 
BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 163 
 
 We spirit soldiers passing on, 
 Do often step to earthly homes 
 And 4 feel the wrongs in social ties, 
 Feel friendship oft her name belies, 
 And love, the king and queen of hearts 
 Is sadly changed in all its parts. 
 
 God grant that rightful powers may sway 
 The nation in her present need, 
 And all the gathered force of mind 
 Work for the good of all combined, 
 And then can God, the heroed king, 
 See all things verging to his ring. 
 
 I ask of earth this smallest boon 
 
 To search above for rays of light, 
 
 Nor bind the soul to worldly gain, 
 
 The moth that doth corrupt the brain, 
 
 When motives sordid and apart, 
 
 From God's own field the common mart. 
 
 Fair world you need the flower divine, 
 The blossom that shall never fade, 
 Sweeter by far than anemone 
 Dipped in the nectardew of home , 
 And set apart for favored guest, 
 And bitter sweet for all the rest. 
 
 This flower is love, whose sheeny light 
 Would beautify a desert wild, 
 And cause the human heart to speak 
 To erring ones, both kind and sweet 
 That true repentance may be gained 
 And all hearts by one God reclaimed. 
 
164 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 There is no Heaven apart from love, 
 No God that roams Elysian fields, 
 Unless the smile that lights his face 
 Is meant for every time and place, 
 And meant at last to reach false deal, 
 And to all sin in law repeal. 
 
 We know that progress mounts the stage 
 Of active life's dramatic scenes, 
 And what has been can ne'er return 
 To burn its incense on our urn, 
 For, we have nothing set apart 
 To favor working in the dark. 
 
 More light we crave more light we ask 
 For reason never more can sleep 
 Beside the active stream of life 
 When progress is the God of strife, 
 Whose chariot wheels crush mythic art, 
 The darksome badge 'round God's true heart. 
 
 The world needs Christ in golden sheen, 
 A spirit bright with deeds of love, 
 Enrapport with each human heart, 
 And in all general terms take part, 
 That go to make the world of earth 
 Fit traveler for celestial birth. 
 
 Christ has, too long, stood idly by 
 With suction forces wrongly laid, 
 His blood has served to soul enthrall, 
 And cover mind with darkness' pall ; 
 But, in this nineteenth century bland, 
 Christ must appear with spirit hand. 
 
BACKWABD GLIMPSES. 165 
 
 Earth needs God's arc of wisdom true, 
 To beautify and bless her shores ; 
 Needs moral strength and courage brave, 
 To chase all despots to their grave ; 
 And ne'er give heed to slavery's call, 
 Whose voice no music can recall. 
 
 Earth, truly, needs her spirit springs 
 Made ready for the contest bold ; 
 For, spirit mind and voice, at last 
 Will blow on earth one long, loud blast ; 
 And its refrain, so long and sweet 
 Will, nevermore, find mind asleep. 
 
 One other need has earth to-day 
 
 To carry on her work of love, 
 
 Joint stock in principle and hearts all strong, 
 
 To multiply no public wrong, 
 
 And seek to make the public poor 
 
 A gift from God, to us secure. 
 
 Let not our souls all selfish be ; 
 For, naught of chattels can we take 
 But deeds of love, and kindness given 
 Can never from our souls be riven ; 
 But will in Heaven find ample scope 
 And crown our brow with Christly hope. 
 
 One need has earth, I'd quite forgotten, 
 
 To make her ring forever heard. 
 
 It is the power to trace and feel 
 
 The needs of others, when they kneel 
 
 With sorrowing hearts and anguished face 
 
 Unto God's table land of grace, 
 
166 BACKWARD GLIMPSES. 
 
 And ask of mortal man to give 
 The smallest pittance e'en to live. 
 It may be Mercy, Pardon, Gold 
 That's asked, by penitence made bold ; 
 What'er it be, if love's extended, 
 Our peace with God is well defended. 
 
 ELIZABETH B. BROWNING. 
 

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