Among leading clergymen who are cited are the Rev. Minot J. Savage, the Rev. H. R. Haweis, Bishop John P. Newman, the Rev. W. H. Thomas of Chicago, the Rev. Lyman Abbott, and Canon Wilberforce. Mr. Savage observes:

"The result of my investigation leads me to believe that the spirits of the dead communicate with us. I have received communications from people whom I know to have lived on earth. If anybody can offer some other hypothesis than spiritual communication I shall be glad to investigate it; but I have never heard of one. It is a great question to the Christian Church to-day."

The late Rev. H. R. Haweis, M.A., who was for many years the pastor of the poet Tennyson, and who is widely known as the author of "Music and Morals" and "My Musical Life," said:

"I am putting in a plea for the harmony of Spiritualism with Scripture, in order that the clergy shall recognize how much they are indebted to Spiritualism... I say that Spiritualism has finally taken away from us the capricious, fanciful, irrational kind of God who is supposed to judge His creatures in a way that would be a disgrace to a common magistrate, without intelligence, pity, sympathy, or knowledge; such a God as has revolted so many sensible religious people; and Spiritualism has done away with him. Spiritualism has pointed us to One who judges righteously, One who does not change, who is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever, loving man through all, bringing him back by slow degrees, back to the diviner self; One whose policy can never alter, because He can never alter. Spiritualism has told us of this remedial world beyond. "Yes, it leads us to the center and source of life; it reveals to us the bright galaxy of ministering spirits, the Jacob's ladder which reaches from earth to heaven and upon which the angels of God are ascending and descending. Spiritualism has given us back our Bible, given us back our Christ, given us back our immortality, and given us back our God."

The following interesting description of the last moments of the Rev. Dwight L. Moody constitutes one of a great number of experiences that have been reported from time to time through the ages, in which it has been given to those who are about to pass from this life to see around them the friends who have gone before:

"Earth is receding, heaven is approaching. God and His holy angels are calling me. If this is death, there is no valley. This is glorious.

I have been within the gates, and I have seen the children, Dwight and Irene." These were his two grandchildren who had passed to spirit life.

Now, then, did this dying evangelist Moody tell the truth? If so, he had already been "within the gates," he had heard "the angels calling him," he had seen his spirit grandchildren, Irene and Dwight. And further, if his dying testimony be true, then Spiritualism is true.

Space renders it impossible for me even to mention by name the great array of educators, poets, philosophers, dramatists, actors, editors, and men and women eminent in all lines. of work and research who are here cited as among those who through investigation have been forced to the conclusion that there is another life and that the spirits of those who have passed beyond not infrequently become guardian angels to those who remain.

Here is an interesting incident from the life of Chopin:

He was a

Chopin's music rendered his name on earth immortal. spiritual medium from his earliest childhood, as the following proves : "One night when about five years old, the nurse, hearing a noise, rose from her bed just in time to see Fritz-Frycek, as this child was called, marching downstairs into the drawing-room in his long white night-dress. Following him, she saw him, to her amazement, a few minutes later, standing and playing upon the piano, playing the very pieces that had been played in the previous portion of the evening. Hastening back to the master and mistress of the house, she told them that their child was 'either mad or possessed by an evil spirit;' for surely no child could play like that. Madame Chopin soon appeared, and, listening in the doorway for a few moments to the marvelous melody that his fingers evoked from the piano, was as charmed as surprised, and with motherly love she threw her shawl around him and taking him back to his room said, 'Sleep now, my dear child, and you shall play the piano to-morrow all you desire!'' The mother of Chopin was a magnificent pianist, and here was a genius, a sensitive, with an inherited tendency for music; and musical spirits from the higher spheres, seeing it, influenced him to discourse or evoke those sweet and heavenly strains of music. In after years he had visions, and entered a mental state generally denominated ecstasy.

In his closing chapter Dr. Peebles says:

Spiritualism is the higher naturalism, and spiritual law, like life, is everywhere. The supernatural is the natural upon the spiritual plane of existence. Personally, I know that the dead are alive-know that friends departed live and manifest to us still-know by careful observa

.

tion and patient experience, in connection with reason and my best judgment, that the angels of God are about us and minister to us. It is knowledge. And I can rejoicingly say with the apostle, "For we know that if the earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens."

FRAGMENT.

And when you have attained a high estate,
Look you not down in pomp on those below;
For they like you are fighting Life and Fate.

They may be "scum"; but, man, you once were so!

If there were none in such array as these,

The height which you now hold would lose its worth. Lean down, and lend a hand, nor cant or tease,

But help to lift them to their right by birth.

JAC LOWELL.

HOW OFTEN we find ourselves spending time and money on scenic performances utterly worthless, while neglecting Nature's grand dramatic and operatic exhibitions, which, with all their sublime and soul-elevating pathos, are nevertheless gratuitous and within the reach of the poorest! "We often wonder at what men suffer, but seldom at what they lose." Nature is grateful; for every feeling of admiration we tender her, she responds by sharpening our comprehension, elevating our ideals, and consecrating our efforts. She is in league and reciprocity with every department of human intelligence and virtue, paying back, in terms of living, practical knowledge, every attention shown her by an appreciation of her beauty and loveliness.-Dr. Axel Emil Gibson.

I WILL not hold one a prisoner in my affection. I will hasten to speed him who wishes to depart. I have no room for unwilling guests. My own will abide.-Muriel Strode.

THE HIGHER PHILANTHROPY.

BY J. H. A. MARSHALL.

The questions referring to the general reformation of men and morals that have been agitated for centuries seem to be in a fair way to settle themselves, and that after a manner unexpected and as yet scarcely recognized. It is doubtful whether the schemes and labors of the various classes of philanthropists have accomplished as much as has been commonly supposed. In the light of the new recognitions into which the world is slowly and cautiously entering,-revealing definite but broad ethics as the only possible, the only scientific basis for human advance,―modes of operation very different from the accepted ones must be adopted.

First and last we need to consider the revelations of that subtle and exact science which indicates the inevitable interaction between mind and matter. The postulation that mind and matter may be but the two opposing aspects of one and the same thing scarcely needs to be considered here. What we have to do with is the direct working of that law which obtains between the positive and the negative in all cases. In this case Mind, as the positive aspect, surpasses the physical limit of operation in that it is self-conscious-is the living, omnipotent Will, with the supreme endowment of the power of transfiguration. In the scale of creation this power of Will is proportionally dominant as it runs up from the blurred borderline that divides the inert from the sentient.

In the dim stirrings of the almost breathless protococcus begins the indefinable individualization of the Will that rises increasingly through the ascendent kingdoms until it is lost to mortal ken in the unguessed possibilities of the deific. In the protococcus such individualization is developed only suffi

ciently to enable the creature blindly to seek to obey the universal law of self-preservation. In the next higher rank of manifested life it may be endowed with some power of distinction, some definite instinct. And so it expands as it grows. But only in the higher animals and the lower man does this individualization begin to actuate as a moral force, as a perceiver and doer of right and wrong, with a sense of responsibility.

In these lower minds, as inapt vehicles, the old instinctual habit still prevails and tries to force the evolutionary progress of the being along sharply drawn lines. Prescribed doctrines and moral ruts are followed. The critical faculty is developed, and it is only with great difficulty and after sorrowful struggles that the growing ego escapes its bonds and finds liberty in the relativity of all things, and the unity of being. Once emancipated he discovers his place in the order of creation, and looking about him perceives that the loftier the ideal that leads a soul the wider will be its view and the broader its conceptions. And among these conceptions is the clear one of the inherent brotherhood not only of man but of all things.

Hitherto benevolence has been hardly more than an instinct, feeling its way and frequently mistaking it. So it has come to pass that in its name vast charities that have fed, clothed, and educated thousands have also proved to be training-schools for the active promulgation of vanity, hypocrisy, and dishonesty. Moreover, of the countless beneficiaries who owe their material well-being to solicitous sentimentalism, few appear to have felt incumbent the obligation to pass on the good work of succor of the weak and unprotected. And these facts, considered in the light of the law that like produces like, suggest that somewhere in the hidden source of causes a mistaken beginning has been made.

That evil can and does come from seeming good has always been a paralyzing proposition in the history of ethical progress. Yet such painful realizations do not argue that we should do less in the way of charities, but rather much more.