nature, their eternal record. Thus, in a spiritual sense, whatever has been, is now. No mountain ever stood that stands not now; no human being ever shed an influence, who sheds it not now. Only the spiritual is the abiding.

"The air," says Professor Babbage, "is one vast library, on whose pages are for ever written all that man has ever said, or woman whispered."

The spirit, when it passes on, takes with it every thing necessary for the continuance of its individuality. Deprive a man at once of his good or his bad tendencies, and you rob him of his identity: he becomes somebody else at once. God is very patient, since he has an eternity in which to deal with us. He can put up with very slow gradations of progress; even with retrogressions. The loss will be our own; and the effort must be our own if we would make up for the loss.

Psychometry tells us, that the soul is what Aristotle calls an entelechy, or actuality, unlimited by this enclosure of flesh. "We ought not," says Dr. Bertrand, "to consider our body as containing our soul in the manner in which a thing material contains another; but only as limiting the extent of the matter in which it is given it to act and feel."

What an incentive to a scrupulous morality * would the facts of psychometry be, if rightly pondered! They show that every act and thought of our existence are for ever reproducible for ourselves and all spiritual intelligences to scan at pleasure; that the warp and woof of our spiritual substance include all that we have desired, done, and thought; that God's judgments are

* "If nothing could be Evil, nothing would be Good,

But all things whatsoever would be indifferent and unmoral.
The possibility of Vice is the condition of Virtue.

So likewise is Evil the revelation of Good,

And Human weakness of Divine strength.

If we had no lower impulses, no meaner passions,

No drawings toward the worse, no susceptibility of temptation,

Never should we distinguish God's voice in Conscience,

Nor know that God is moral, nor frame moral judgments."

Theism, by Francis W. Newman.

THE SOUL'S DAY OF JUDGMENT.

389

recorded against us in the very structure of our being, as fast as our sins are committed.

There is no waiting for rewards and punishments. Poor conceptions of a heavenly reward must he have who regards it as something outside of the state of his own soul. Foretastes of heaven may be had even here by every righteous, loving, and aspiring spirit. All the good we do, all the pure happiness we enjoy, are happiness and good for ever. All our acquisitions in knowledge, in art, in virtue, are made for ever, and shall be the vantage-ground of ever new attainments.

On the other hand, the hell of the evil-doer yawns for him even now; and, in one sense, it is eternal; for, as we have seen, though the sinner may forsake his sin (and in every soul there is a redeeming principle antagonistic to everlasting wrong), the sin will not forsake him. Its record, which is itself, is for ever plain to the psychometrist of the spirit-world, and the sinner's own memory will not let it go.

The day of judgment, when is it, if not now? Shall He to whom the universe is a very small thing, need the forms of our poor human assizes for his purposes in the creation of man? The pressure of his laws is upon us every moment, spiritually as well as physically. We can no more violate his law of right, without a simultaneous penalty, than we can thrust our finger in the fire without injury. The spiritual, like the physical, offence, carries its punishment. We have but imperfect conceptions of the powers of our own souls. Clairvoyance, and the facts of Spiritualism, give us, here and there, a glimpse of them.

There will be no more awful tribunal than that of the awakened conscience; no more dreadful sentence than that which the roused and clear-seeing mind of man shall some day, in some stage of being, near or remote, pronounce, according to the degree of his development and his intelligence, against himself. God's pardon! Can God arbitrarily or vicariously pardon? Yes: in all the ways by which we may truly seek it, God's pardon may be had, arbitrarily or freely, directly or vicariously; through our own merits, or through another's, or through no merits at all; through reverence for a Saviour or saint of old time, or through heart-crushing affection for a poor little dying infant of to-day. Though our sins are as scarlet, his pardon goes with the asking.

But the soul's own pardon, what of that? God, in his infinite mercy, may let the waters of Lethe serve us for a time; but, by the inexorable laws of our spiritual constitution, the soul's day of judgment must come, sooner or later, and the later the more terrible. The fearfulest judgment-seat will be that which in some moment of illumination, of expansion of our natural powers, we shall find established within the domain of our own intellectual being. Judge, jury, witnesses, will be there,

"There is no shuffling; there the action lies
In his true nature; and we ourselves compelled,
Even to the teeth and forehead of our faults,
To give in evidence."

In that day of the soul, we can no more escape the ineffaceable brand which conscience will put upon us, than we can run from our own shadow in the sunlight.

Such are the teachings of psychometry.

CHAPTER XIV.

COGNATE FACTS AND PHENOMENA.

All life is Thy life, O Infinite One, and only the religious eye penetrates to the realm of True Beauty." - F. G. Fichte.

N°

TO one who has carefully examined the facts of modern Spiritualism, can fail of being struck by the analogy they bear to many of the miraculous incidents recorded in the Bible. Nothing can be more certain than that the Bible distinctly recognizes a class of phenomena, rejected by modern skepticism as contrary to the order of nature, but the possibility of which is clearly proved in the attestations of thousands of intelligent contemporaries to similar occurrences.

Instances of the exercise of the prophetic faculty, by somnambulists and others, have been not unfrequent during the present century. The prophet Hosea represents God as saying, "I have spoken by the prophets, I have multiplied visions."

What clearer recognition of some of the higher experiences of somnambulism and trance can we have than the following: "God speaketh once, yea, twice, yet man perceiveth not; in a dream, in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon men, in slumberings upon the bed, and sealeth their instruction, that he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide pride from man."

Among the earliest spiritual manifestations of the Old Testament are the spirit-voices. The Lord spake face to face with Adam and Eve (Gen. ii. 16, and again, Gen. iii. 9-22); again, he spake with Cain (Gen. iv. 6), and also spake and walked with Enoch.

What a life of spiritual experiences was that of Abraham! In Gen. xviii. is related the memorable visit of the three angels to him, and afterwards their visit to Lot, "Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares." Angels of the Lord met Jacob on his return from Padanaram (Gen. xxxii. 1.); also at Peniel an angel met and wrestled with Jacob: refusing to give his name, he wrestled all the night, until he said, "Let me go, for the day breaketh." Moses was evidently in constant communication with the spiritworld.

An angel appeared to Hagar (Gen. xvi.); and two to Lot (Gen. xix.). One called to Hagar (Gen. xxxi.); and to Abraham (Gen. xxii.); one spake to Jacob in a dream (Gen. xxxi.); one appeared to Moses (Exod. iii.); one went before the camp of Israel (Exod. xiv.); one spake to all the children of Israel (Judges ii.); one spake to Gideon (Judges vi.); and to the wife of Manoah (Judges xiii.); one appeared to Elijah (1 Kings xix.); one stood by the threshing-floor of Ornan (1 Chron. xxi.); one talked with Zachariah (Zach. i.); one appeared to the two Marys at the sepulchre (Matt. xxviii.); one foretold the birth of John the Baptist (Luke i.); one appeared to the Virgin Mary (ibid.); to the shepherds (Luke ii.); one opened the door of Peter's prison (Acts v.); two were seen by Jesus, Peter, Jamés, and John (Luke ix.). It will not do for scriptural objectors to say these angels were a distinct order of beings from man; for those seen by the apostles were Moses and Elias, and that seen by John (Rev. xxii.), though called by him an angel, avowed himself to be his fellow-servant, and "one of his brethren, the prophets."

The instances of miraculous cures are numerous. Read Lev. xv. and xvi., Num. v., 1 Kings xiii., 1 Kings xvii., 2 Kings ii. 4; iv. 5; xix. 20; Josh. x., &c. Hundreds of such cases could be cited from the Old Testament, hundreds from the New Testament. Christ said this power would continue, and that these signs should always follow those that believe: "In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover" (Mark xvi. 17, 18).