A Book Written by the Spirits of the So-Called Dead Part 5

"April 10: If you could be instantaneously transferred to the planet Mars just as you are in the form you could not live a moment of time. The intensely rarefied and etherealized atmospheres surrounding that planet would not maintain animal life such as yours. Yet the time has been when beings more crude, dense and undeveloped have lived and figured on the stage of Mar's history. The law of evolution or unceasing progression applies to all planets and in a degree of unfoldment according to the periodic duration of time of each. Hence, under the operation of this inexorable law of the creation you can readily and with quick discerning eye see the ultimate destiny of all--that is to say, the utter overcoming of the crude and unrefined by the spiritual absorption of the whole, and yet this law that lifts the lower into the higher has no limit or ending.

You can therefore see in the myriad ages of future time with this law, all the while actively working, how inexpressibly refined and sublimated will become spiritual beings and spiritual essences. This const.i.tutes a grand revelation, and presents in contemplation the grand possibilities in store for man and the fittest of all things material. While the const.i.tuent elements are the same, yet in outward manifestation the atoms composing your physical bodies, and those in the form on Mars, are quite dissimilar. The same elements that exist here, either as applied to the spiritual or material, are essentially the same as exist in the remotest realms of the creation. They only differ in presentation or outward manifestation, and in the degree of their development and progression.

Here is another theme for contemplation and study, and the fact as here disclosed ought to fill us with proud satisfaction, for the inherent elements and qualities possessed by the millions of worlds, revolving in the unexplored immensity of s.p.a.ce and their countless myriad hosts of people, are possessed by our world and our denizens, only differing in the intensity of their action and the degree of unfoldment or approximation toward maturity--ah, a maturity that never matures. While the law of progression is infinite it deals with the finite, and as the finite can only advance toward but never become infinite, so will this mighty law of progression carry us onward and onward, upward and upward through all coming time, and yet will never cease from its labors or find repose. What a mighty destiny before and for man!

"April 14. In this and my next I will tell you some things that will surprise you, but they are veritably true. I am dealing with you in verities, however absurd and preposterous they may appear to the unprogressed mind. This is said, by your people, to be a remarkable age, and in many respects it is so. You are receiving some matter far in advance of the age in which you are living, but it will be properly recognized and appreciated in the years to come.

"On the planet Mars jails and prison houses for the confinement and punishment of malefactors are only historic reminiscences of the past.

There are now no punishments inflicted because there are no offenders to punish.

"The doctrine of sacrificial atonement, with its r.e.t.a.r.ding influence, was never taught to the people of that planet. They have always been taught the supreme goodness of the creator conjoined with wisdom and almighty power. G.o.d being supremely good, and supreme in the exercise of goodness, they have not for thousands of years last past entertained the slightest apprehension that any onslaught upon their peace, happiness, and future felicity, would be permitted. From this enn.o.bling conception of G.o.d came the desire to manifest a spirit of devotion and veneration, and consequently at an earlier period of the history of Mars the worship of the people was low and groveling somewhat resembling, as I am informed, the ancient idol worship of the Egyptians and Israelites. At the present time the two worlds--the spiritual and material--of Mars are so closely allied and interblended that the spiritual forces are enabled to exercise a positively restraining influence over the conduct and actions of those still connected with the physical, so they can not, if they would, commit wrong, or perpetrate infractions upon the law of right. By reason of this high condition of development those pa.s.sing out of the material form are at once intromitted into the higher conditions of the spiritual world, because they are fitted for them. All are mediums and subject absolutely to spiritual action and control. This is what your spirit world is seeking to do for you, so, if possible, to pa.s.s over and beyond some of the rough experiences of other planets, and your people do not seem to have the good sense to see it. On Mars there are no murders, arsons, robberies, forgeries, slanders, and other crimes and misdeeds, for they have progressed beyond them. Do you not perceive the sublimity of this condition? and will it not be a most glorious consummation when you shall have reached the same alt.i.tude of progress.

"April 17. Another subject of inquiry engrossed my attention, namely, marriage. I became interested to know something of the history of this people on this subject, and I found it to be an exceedingly interesting one. At this period of Mars there is no such inst.i.tution as marriage in the sense you regard it. It is not an exaggeration to say that a very large per cent of your marriages are brought about as the result of the most unholy motives. Pa.s.sion, l.u.s.t, avarice, etc., are generally the impelling influences, and seldom is witnessed a union from purely spiritual causes. It is needless to say these marriages are not only temporal, ending with the death of the body, if not sooner by an unholy judicial system of divorcement, but entail a cruel blighting curse upon the race.

"The history of your own planet on the subject of marriage is but feebly understood by you. Enough however is known to induce all lovers of humanity to loathe and detest it as it has been practiced in the past. It is claimed that G.o.d created animate creatures in pairs, male and female, and that, as applied to man, he cemented a union of one man and one woman in the marriage relation, and that this occurred at the commencement of the creation in the Garden of Eden. Your conspicuous bible characters, such as Abraham, David, Solomon, and others, have not only ignored and trampled upon virtue in its simplest and purest forms, but with the h.e.l.lish gluttony of the vampire feasting on blood, they debauched innocence, prost.i.tuted virtue to their unholy l.u.s.t, and thereby destroyed the holiest relation of life. Their numerous wives and concubines attest this, and yet your pious Christians are waging a relentless warfare upon the Mormons of Utah and vehemently thundering against the polygamous practices of the Latter Day Saints. Shame for Christian consistency. On this subject your advanced thinkers do not discuss those eternal and enduring spiritual laws of attraction by magnetic and soul affinity upon which alone shines forth in eternal splendor the blending of soul with soul in an everlasting conjugal union. The people of Mars understand and adopt these laws, or rather harmonize and abide in them, and now while embodied their marriages are for all unending future time. As the result we discover on that planet a race of people almost perfect in their mental, moral, and physical developments, requiring only time, experience, and progression, to disclose the still more wonderful proportions of their being. The union of one man and one woman under spiritual conditions is the highest type of marriage, and const.i.tutes the paramount and supreme intention of the deity, and is the ultimatum and consummation of the law of conjugal love--all others are fleeting, dishonoring, and only evil.

"April 20. Your candidates for matrimony, first obtaining each other's consent, and the approval of parents or guardians, apply to the legally const.i.tuted authorities for a license or permit to enter the holy state, and when procured they repair to a priest or magistrate, who for a few shekels p.r.o.nounces a few stereotyped phrases, followed by the solemn declaration p.r.o.nouncing them man and wife, closing generally with the ludicrous and farcical command, 'whom G.o.d has joined together let no man put asunder.' Oh, what a caricature and farce. It is bad enough to declare whom the law has joined together, and so forth, but to a.s.sume with such solemn gravity that G.o.d has joined in wedlock's sacred union many of the marriage alliances which are mere caricatures of marriage, is not only blasphemy, but the very apex of nonsense, and is the widest possible departure from truth.

"If it be true that G.o.d joins them together, no power, save himself could put asunder or disunite. To a.s.sert otherwise would amount to affirming that G.o.d is the author of failures. The difference between marriages that only have their basis in consent, license, and ceremony, and that marriage which G.o.d cements when two are joined by the divine laws of soul affinity and magnetic attraction--the one is of the earth earthy, the other is from the Lord through and by the operation of eternal law, and is therefore heavenly. Oh, that the children of earth might learn and conform to these subtle and glorious laws for their own good and in the interest of those to come after them.

"On the planet Mars the people have no license system on any subject.

While you on earth are wrangling about licensing the sale of intoxicating beverages, on Mars they have none to license. While here you are exercised over measures of taxation to raise revenue to support the government, on Mars no taxes whatever are imposed, and public affairs for the general public good are administered freely and without compensation, purely as a labor of love. The truth is that the mundane affairs of Mars are more regulated, controlled, and conducted by the spiritual powers of the planet than by those in the form. The two worlds are so intimately related to each other, and are so closely brought together, that this is not only practicable but desirable and profitable.

"April 21. There is on the planet Mars a subterranean pa.s.sage through it from pole to pole, which Mr. Swedenborg informs me he has thoroughly explored. There is more truth than poetry in what is known as Symmes' hole as applied to your earth. When the time comes by the settlement of your as yet vast millions of uninhabited acres, and a change takes place in northern temperature and conditions, the people of that day will discover within and through the very heart center of your earth a country nearly a third as large as the exterior surface, and by that time every thing therein will be sufficiently progressed and developed to supply the wants and invite the ambition and energies of the people of that period. But this discovery, or rather the occupation of this subterranean country, is very far off in point of time, and the human race of earth will then be quite different from what it is now. They will have so changed by the lapse of time and the law of progress as to be enabled to pa.s.s into the new country by way of the north pole with ease and safety. The north pole is the true opening, and can not be reached until the fullness of time, as I have indicated. As the area of territory of Mar's surface was about being densely covered by population, and apprehensions were being entertained for the future of the race, lo and behold, the new interior country was discovered and subsequently peopled. By the time it is crowded no more will be needed, for the planet by that time will have pa.s.sed into its spiritual orbit and into the ocean of spiritual ether, where suffering can never come from lack of room. This will be the future history of your planet, and you will pa.s.s through the same experiences and reach the same ultimate. Behold how infinitely wise all things are forearranged. Just as we need by our development new limits, new appliances and new things, they are ready for our use, and are never disclosed until we are ready for and need them.

"April 24. At this time those living on the planet Mars do not die or pa.s.s through the change called death as you do here. They have no diseases that cause the untimely taking off of the inhabitants. Disease has long since been banished. All of the procreating elements of disease residing in the materiality of the globe or the surrounding atmosphere have been by progressive development eliminated. And even before this had fully occurred the people had learned the laws of health and the process of neutralizing and rendering harmless the lurking germs that remained. You may perceive from this what a happy people they are. There are no untimely deaths on Mars. Children grow up to manhood and womanhood; yet there is no fixed standard of time when all die, that is, no definite and invariable period of longevity. And right here comes in a great law, now operative on Mars, that the people of earth know nothing about, for it has never been communicated before, namely, children can not die there. It was never designed that they should die here. Marriage being brought about, as before stated, by the grand law of magnetic attraction or spiritual affinity, and all diseases being banished and their producing causes annihilated, nothing but absolutely sound and perfect physical and mental organizations are imparted to offspring by their progenitors. You see at once the idea, for I must be brief--the children being perfect in health of body and mind by procreation, and there being no diseases to affect them after birth, death can not touch them, in fact can touch none before the time arrives, varying in point of longevity for the separation of spirit and body. None die before the full maturity of stature, and some live to be a very advanced age. After reaching complete development or stature, they pa.s.s out of and away from the material in point of time, according to the antecedent conditions of their varied being. Some arrive after maturity to the estate of progressive experience in the form sooner than others, and when this period arrives, whether it be at thirty, forty, fifty or a hundred years, they pa.s.s on to their ultimate and higher state of being in the spiritual spheres. It is known when each shall pa.s.s out of the form long before the event transpires, and all due preparation is accordingly made therefor. Your scientists have discovered, and rightly, too, that about every seven years the atoms and particles composing your physical organizations change and give way to new ones. But this is gradual and imperceptible. On Mars, at this period of development, the changes are much more frequent, and these successive changes determine the approach of dissolution, and instead of death in an hour or a day, it goes on perceptibly and without pain or suffering for years. Every change lessens the material composites of the body, and at each a nearer approach to the spiritual takes place, until finally the physical, by the gradual process of embodied sublimation or attenuation, pa.s.ses away, and the spiritual becomes supreme. This culmination is equivalent to what you call death, except that there is no attending pain, no death struggle, and no physical body afterwards to take care of and lay away. The body, by successive changes, has seemingly vanished into nothingness and been absorbed in the atmosphere.

"April 27. We have been expecting you to inquire of us how the people live on the planet Mars, what kind of architecture in the construction of their business houses, habitations, etc.; what kind of food they eat, and with what raiment are they clothed, etc.

"You will have observed from what we have heretofore made known to you that the services of four cla.s.ses of professional worthies have been dispensed with, simply because the people have progressed beyond their utility, namely, lawyers, doctors, preachers and politicians. Lawyers can only thrive and exist professionally in a land where conscience is not permitted to exercise its native simplicity and positive purity, and where the lower pa.s.sions and propensities are largely dominant. When conscience, active, pure and simple, is allowed to manifest its functions in perfect unrestraint, and to act as the governing power in the regulation of human conduct, the presence and office of the barrister are no longer of use. Lawyers flourish as a general proposition on strife and contention, bad faith and unfair dealing; and when these shall happily end, like poor cashiered Ca.s.sio, their occupation will be gone. The doctors grow opulent by medication, because of the ignorance of the people with reference to the true laws of marriage, proper antenatal conditions, neglect of proper hygiene, and ignorance as to overcoming or rendering harmless the deleterious conditions, both atmospheric and from the undeveloped state of inherent nature. But when, by progressing beyond their harmful influences, or by enlightenment and healing gifts, the people shall obtain a complete mastery over them, disease shall be banished, then the avocation of the physician ends, and he will have to seek a livelihood in other pursuits.

"The preacher lives in comfortable indolence because of the ignorance and superst.i.tion of the people. His office is one of hypocrisy and fraud.

Hypocrisy, because if he is not a fool, he knows his teachings are not true, and of fraud, because by dissembling he extorts from his parishoners a dishonorable subsistence. When the people grow sufficiently wise they will be taught by the denizens of the spirit world truth and righteousness. Then the mission or office of the sacerdotal gentlemen will be closed, and they can seek employment in the many more honorable occupations. The politician, cunning and subtle, swims along smoothly upon the rolling current of the credulity of the people and his own duplicity.

He prospers because you have not as yet grown into full political manhood, and he succeeds in hoodwinking you with the belief that his heart is overflowing with patriotism and anxious solicitude for the public weal.

But I must leave this cla.s.s--the politicians--to the tender mercies of several gentlemen who are waiting the opportunity to contribute their part to your enterprise.

"April 28. The coa.r.s.e food necessary for you in order to keep up the crude materiality of which your physical make-up is composed, is not needed by the denizens of Mars. In the composition of your physical bodies is a representative of all the material elements in nature--iron, calcium, wood, earth, etc.--and it is easily demonstrated by microscopic inspection and chemical a.n.a.lysis, that in every drop of blood in the human system all these varied and numerous elements are represented. Hence man may be safely considered a microcosm, or nature in her vast domain, reflected in miniature. But you still exist in the realm of the crude, and yet you are vastly more refined than in the ages past, and forward, onward, and upward is the line of march marked out for you by the infinitely wise director of all things. On the planet Mars no animal food is used, because among other reasons the physical properties of the body do not require the elements of animal flesh to replace nature's wastes. Thousands of former species of animals have become extinct, swallowed up in the ever surging maelstrom of progression or absorbed in the higher forms. Vegetation in the planet Mars is quite different, both in expression or appearance, and const.i.tuent composition from the vegetation of your planet. Here the aroma residing in the vegetable and escaping therefrom, is largely absorbed and neutralized by the grossness of the vegetable itself, while on Mars the grossness has become so diminished that to the senses the aroma has almost become tangibly objective, and this aroma is food strengthening and invigorating, is nearly sufficient of itself to support existence in the form without the a.s.sistance of the more substantial fibers of the parent vegetable. Yet in a certain prepared form the substantial material is used. The time is not very far distant, as I am a.s.sured, when the people there will subsist on aromatic emanations from material productions, aided by magnetic, electric, and other atmospheric properties used simply by inhalation. In the water you use are to be found teeming millions of living and moving animalcules. They are enabled to live on the elements of the water in its present gross state, but on the planet Mars the water has been dispossessed of its life germinating and life sustaining properties to aquatic productions, and has thus progressed with all other things and beings. No life or form of life is now brought into being there, but such higher types as are fitted to pa.s.s with the planet into spiritual conditions; and the water being so purified by nature's refining processes is as different from your ordinary water as clear, sparkling sprays projected from your fountains and dancing in the sunbeams are to the murky waters of your rivulets immediately after a violent rain-storm. I will resume this subject in my next.

"May 1. On Mars they have learned how to produce from the soil itself any vegetable that naturally grows therefrom. In the soil itself reside all the const.i.tuent elements of all vegetation in their infinite variety. You may thoughtlessly answer, that in order to produce any species of vegetation used for table consumption, the seed or germ must first be sown in the soil beneath the surface, but you forget that this process is but the result of civilization and art, and that originally, that is before you learned how to obtain and use seed, the products sprang of themselves and apparently spontaneously from the earth. Whence did they come? and whence were their germinating and generating powers obtained? Think a little deeply on the subject, and you will be led irresistibly to the correct conclusion that in the soil exists all the requisite elements in the production of vegetation by growth. The people of Mars have acquired the knowledge which enables them to produce out of the soil, abstractly considered, all the essential qualities of the vegetable without waiting for the tedious process of growth. This process is purely chemical, and everybody there understands it. Hence you see they do not have to buy vegetables, for all can have their essential qualities for food without cost to the consumer. Long since the ownership of the soil by individuals was abandoned for the general common good, and on this subject the primitive condition of affairs in your planet prevails universally on Mars--that is to say everybody owns realty, one just as much as another.

This is pure unadulterated agrarianism in its highest and most perfect form.

"It is often asked in your intercourse with the world of spirits: What are the employments of spirits? what are they about? what do they do? etc. It is pertinent to inquire, What are the employments of the people of Mars still embodied? What do they do since we have discovered that they do not now toil for the acquisition of riches, because they have no possible use for them; no taxes to pay, no governmental machinery to support, no lawyers to annoy, no preachers to vex, torture, and maintain, no doctors to nauseate with their drugs, no politicians to hoodwink the people and feed at the public crib, no grocery bills to look after and liquidate, etc. Before we answer these and many other important queries, we shall see what the people do for raiment with which to clothe themselves, and what they do for shelter, if, indeed, shelter is necessary. If we shall discover that these are free gifts from the father, then the employments of the embodied Marsians becomes a question of very interesting and pressing importance.

"May 4. I suspect that you already antic.i.p.ate the tenor of what we have to tell you in regard to the clothing of the people of Mars, what texture, how derived, etc. Your keen perceptions and astute comprehension enables you to see at a glance that if this law of progression, as applied to the material, whereby the lowest forms are reached and operated upon, lifting with its strong arms into higher and still higher conditions, be true, it must be true and in regard to all material things--the soil, rock, wood, water, etc., animal and vegetable life, and as we shall have occasion to show further on, to the mundane atmosphere surrounding the planet. All things progress and advance in like and equal ratio, leaving nothing behind or unaffected by the law. This advancing march of matter from the crude and gross into the more refined and sublimated is seemingly slow, but nevertheless sure and unerringly, indiscriminate, and precise.

Therefore the raiment worn by the denizens of Mars has reached the same alt.i.tude of refinement as all other material things.

"The seasons, once resembling yours, spring, summer, autumn, and winter, have nearly merged, that is to say, have nearly blended into one perpetual season of summer loveliness. The austerity of winter, with its stormy blasts and cold, piercing wind waves has long since ceased to be; no frosts to nip and blight the fruits and flowers; no chilling autumns, with withering leaf, to inspire with melancholy and sadness. What will surprise you in this connection is, that, while the cold temperature has wrought its work in the development of the past, and is only known to have once existed by historic relation, the intense heat of summer has also disappeared. When you have severely cold winters, almost unendurable even in your temperate zones, your wise philosophers theorize that your ultimate destiny is to freeze out; that the icebergs and ice glaziers of the north are ultimately either to roll over the now fair portions of the earth, destroying all things animate, or that their freezing breath will sweep over the globe involving in death all the fair and lovely forms of nature's productions, including G.o.dlike man, the apex and crowning glory of creation. But lo! when the earth straightens up on her axis and the cold waves retreat and sink away in their northern hiding place, and the genial and vernal season with its pleasant temperature returns, these same philosophers take a breathing spell, rest awhile, and conclude that it has not been so very cold after all; and when the summer comes, if it happens to be unusual in the intensity of its heat, and the solar rays seem to almost melt into molten ruin all things, and to scorch the forest leaves and wilt the waving harvests, these same philosophical wiseacres change tactics, reverse their position, and with one heroic bound jump to a directly opposite conclusion, namely: that we are all destined ultimately to burn up and become annihilated in a general conflagration by solar heat igniting the combustible material of the planet and its surrounding atmosphere. Oh, how impotent in philosophy! A simple and humble inquiry settles the question. Why destroy this fair earth, daily and hourly becoming still fairer? Does G.o.d do any thing without an allwise and beneficent purpose? Is it possible for Him to do a silly, foolish thing?

He would certainly not destroy the earth unless there was thereby some n.o.ble and beneficent purpose to subserve. What grand purpose, good and wise, can be accomplished by ending the existence of a planet that has as yet scarcely begun to live? To a.s.sume that He will do such a thing, is to a.s.sume that He has become disappointed and disgusted with his own creation, which annuls His wisdom and foresight, or that He delights in folly, making a world and then destroying it because He can, or for any other silly and insufficient reason. To thus a.s.sume is to dishonor Him as a G.o.d, and to invest Him with the attributes of a devil.

"Wonderful changes do occur marking epochs, or cycles, in the history of all planets. Where you live to-day, thousands upon thousands of years ago another race of human beings lived, attaining a certain degree of development in science and art, but upon the fulfillment of their mission they pa.s.sed away from the face of the earth. Where you now live was once swept over by old ocean, and where the deep waters and angry billows of the Atlantic now roll and revel once lived a race of people called the Atlantians, but their land with its embellishments of art and progressive development became submerged by the changes of the mighty waters, and now lies buried beneath its rolling deep and lashing waves. But observe in all this that the globe goes on, and succeeding developments of man and material things come forth far in advance of the former order of things.

What, if in the womb of time it is reserved for Atlantis to arise from her watery entombment and to flourish again with renewed and increased grandeur, involving the submersion of other portions of the earth's surface, including your own? This would not be death to any portion of the planet in any high and exalted sense, but a progressive change, a revivifying of life, a quickening and impulsion of being in the grand advancing march of development and sublimation. As we write, the theme expands and enlarges, and as the power begins to wane we find we have not discoursed minutely on the subject of raiment, and beg your indulgence for a resume of the subject in our next.

"May 5. There being, at this stage of development on Mars, no winter with its concomitants of winds and storm, snow and ice, you have no difficulty in apprehending that very light material only is needed to protect and render comfortable the persons of the people. Material of the texture of your lightest flannel underwear would be oppressively and uncomfortably warm, and indeed insufferable. Thin and quite gauzy robes composed of finely attenuated and exquisitely refined material const.i.tute their apparel. I have told you hitherto that of the animal kingdom only the fittest have survived the marvelous successive changes in the infinite series of progressive advancements. Among those now living with the ability of propagation is an animal species somewhat resembling your sheep, but so exceedingly refined as to be remarkably striking in contrast. Of course, and in the very nature of things, the fleecy wool, or, rather velvety down, that grows upon this n.o.ble animal, so distinguished for innocence, aesthetic tastes in food and refinement in habits of life, is eminently suited for purposes of habilament, and accordingly is thus utilized. They are propagated in unlimited numbers, live to an advanced age, are the common property of all the people, and have within themselves the qualities of eternal being.

"The forest and other trees, shrubs and flowers, have advanced under the same law of progress. Very many species of the olden time disappearing--the fittest only having survived. Among those now extant on the planet, is a peculiar and quite extensively cultivated species, from which is produced a fabric resembling somewhat your cotton production, with the same difference in refinement of texture as exists between your wool and that developed on Mars as herein stated. This is utilized for raiment also. Besides the people there have mastered the law that spirits employ in the materialization of garments at your materializing seances, only much finer, and out of the ambient atmosphere, filled as it is with sublimated atoms and emanations, they are enabled to collect and magnetize into solidified form appropriate garments for their use and comfort. When thus magnetized into objective and tangible being it partakes of and a.s.sumes a varied hue and color, according to the progressed and advanced state of the person using the garments. In other words the magnetic aura and spiritual emanations proceeding from the individual infiltrates and becomes interwoven in the delicate fibers of the new garment extracted and brought into being from the viewless air, imparting hue and coloration presenting different appearances, whereby the grade or degree of advancement of the individual wearer is made known and determined. Here you inquire of the spirits to know what sphere you are fitted to enter in the spirit world, there they know by this means in advance of leaving the body. Your spirits in imparting light and knowledge to you concerning their state, tell you that a spirit and its proper sphere are known by the peculiar aura, or surroundings and clothing of the individual spirit, and this is true to the letter. But on Mars this law of spirit designation that belongs to the spiritual spheres of your planet, reaches out and reveals itself in the persons of the people of Mars before they have actually entered upon the spiritual journey of life in the spiritual spheres.

"Now the additional fact is disclosed to you that by reason of this mode of obtaining raiment the avocation of the merchant is of slender dimensions, and the manufacturer's art and pursuit, except as known and practiced by all alike, are now unknown on the planet Mars.

"In our next we will discourse on buildings, habitations, etc. We had hoped to reach this part of the subject in this communication, but as we advance the themes and subjects broaden and expand, and we sincerely regret that the power by this process--independent slate writing--although the purest of all, will not last us at one sitting sufficiently to fully elaborate our thoughts and descriptive delineations on a given subject. It has this advantage, however, it comes directly from the materialized fingers of the spirit without the direct use of the brain of another in transmission. Adieu until our next.

"May 8. The same reasons a.s.signed in our last, why very light garments only were needed for the bodily comfort and happiness of the people of Mars apply with equal propriety, force, and truth, to the subject of their habitations.

"Your rains are produced by vapors, mists, and emanations from your oceans, rivers, lakes, etc., which by virtue of solar attraction or a reversal of the law of gravitation the vapors, mists, etc., are drawn upward in s.p.a.ce until a certain density is reached, differing in alt.i.tudes of height, when they become congealed by the force of the cold attenuated atmosphere there into small particles called rain drops, and these are carried along by the undercurrents of uncongealed clouds until a certain electro-magnetic condition is reached, when the clouds begin to empty and rid themselves of their burdened contents.

"Now we have informed you of the progress the water of Mars has made in being dispossessed of its gross and weighty elements; hence there are none of these to ascend and to commingle in the formation of rain drops; hence none but the purer and refined elements of the water are exhaled and drawn upward, and consequently none but the pure and refined descend.

These are in themselves comparatively light and of greatly diminished gravity, and therefore mild and pleasant in their effect. Especially does this become true as a resulting necessity, from the fact that there are no fierce winds or storms or cold temperature in the surrounding atmospheric belts or zones. The rains on Mars are more like your gentle dews of early autumn than your rains and showers. You at once take in the situation from this and preceding statements of facts that crude material structures are not necessary, even if the material for their construction could be found, and we have seen that such is not the case, for all things, including the material in detail out of which edifices are constructed, have progressed beyond and above their crude grossness.

"In some portions of Mars no structures are used at all, owing to the mildness of the climate and the total absence of inclemency in the slightest degree. In other portions the beautifully developed trees, and especially those that spread out their branches near the surface of the soil, are ample for the purposes of shelter. Still in others they have a sort of building which is a grand pavilion, embracing a vast area of territory, thousands of miles in extent, under the same roof or cover, which during certain periods of the year and day become luminous and transparent. The temples and gorgeous structures, cities, and magnificent edifices have been transferred in spiritual essence to the spiritual spheres, and have ceased to be as material ent.i.ties, so when the planet pa.s.ses into the spiritual condition outright and in toto, all that Mars could ever boast of in architectural grandeur and excellence is preserved and perpetuated with additional l.u.s.ter and beauty from the finishing spiritual touches by the Infinite Master Builder. And now you perceive that other questions come up right here and require recognition and treatment. Among them these: Do the people on Mars sleep? If so, how often and how much?

"May 11. Why is it that you require repose in sleep? In the infinitely wise arrangement of all things there are amply satisfactory reasons for every demand, every requirement, every manifestation, and therefore there are reasons why sleep is induced and is an imperative necessity in your present and past states of existence.

"When rest in sleep is long deferred from nervous derangements or other causes, your physicians administer narcotics to induce it, for they well know, as you all do, that sleep is necessary after intervals of wakefulness in order to protract your being in the form, and why?

"You have voluntary and involuntary functions or organs; the voluntary only, the involuntary never, can be suspended for certain periods of time.

Your respiration and blood circulation are involuntary, and as long as you remain embodied in flesh will continue to perform their appropriate functions, whether you wake or sleep, for they are not subject to or influenced by the will. And it is by the unconscious operation of these that your voluntary functions when suspended in sleep are replenished and reinvigorated. You are, as at present const.i.tuted, made up corporally of gross material, which becomes wearied and exhausted by the active exercise or operation of the voluntary functions, and the nerve force will expend itself unless periodically reimbursed and replenished, and restored to its normal condition by the intervention and recuperative power of sleep. When in the ages to come your people lose this grossness in their material composition, your inclination to sleep and the necessity for it will abate and become lessened correspondingly to your successive stages of advancement in progressive development.

"Thus is revealed to you the fact that on Mars, at this time, the inhabitants have but very little need of sleep. They sleep, but in a modified sense as to periods, duration and manner. They rest when fatigued, and for brief periods pa.s.s into a state of languor or stupidity, to some extent a.n.a.logous to your sleeping state, which is never required oftener than once a week, and then only for a few hours.

"Your spirit friends will tell you that they never sleep, but rest, and ever keep in mind that the people of Mars are closely approximating the spiritual. Then, again, on Mars they do not have night as you do, and consequently not the same nocturnal influences to suggest and invite sleep. This suggests another subject germane to our line of thought. In nature you find always two extremes, that seem to stand in antipodal relations to each other. Let us give a few instances in ill.u.s.tration: You have day and night, cold and heat, male and female, fire and water, good and evil, etc. Some of these seem to be at fierce war with each other, and yet what a delusion! This seeming antagonism is but the working of a law that shall eventuate in the production of the completest harmony.

Undeveloped people, ignorant of the jewel-crowned truths, as yet concealed from them in the grand arcana of nature and the progressive sciences, laugh and sneer at the idea of marriages in spirit life, when the unvarnished truth is that man, considered in his independent and separate s.e.xual relation, is but a half man, and can not become rounded out into fully developed manhood until consociated in conjunctive union with the opposite s.e.x--not indeed and truly until the man and woman become twain, one flesh, or, in better phraseology, spiritually unitized.

"The day and night will continue until finally and by gradual processes the night is banished, and vanishes in the splendor of a continuously refulgent and sunlit atmosphere. On Mars this condition is almost reached, and the night there resembles the shadings thrown over the earth when a cloud pa.s.ses over the face of your moon at hightide, and ultimately even this shall be no more, for in the spiritual spheres of Mars, as in your exalted ones, there are no shadows to obscure or mar the radiant light of the spiritual sun, and Mars itself is fast approaching this sublime condition. We must withhold what we have to say in regard to the seeming strife between good and evil for our next.

"May 12. The people of christendom have had it rung in their ears for nearly two thousand years that man is essentially bad, unutterably wicked, unspeakably depraved, and, worst of all, this horrid state comes to him, not of his own creating, but by inevitable and unavoidable inheritance.

In our ignorance and credulity how we have wept over the weakness and folly of our first parents in yielding to the flattery and persuasive eloquence of the cruel serpent in the pure and primitive bowers of Eden.

Our tears have flown and flown, with no gentle, soothing hand to touch our eyes and bid them cease; no voice panoplied with authority to speak to; no words of hope and cheer. We have been told in answer to our anxious entreaties for blissful hope and loving counsel that there is a superabundance of evil in us, and a trifling, insignificant quant.i.ty of good, and that nothing short of a miracle of regeneration can save us from unutterable and unending misery in the life to come; that without this miraculous interposition of divine grace, the little good that is in us will be swallowed up and devoured by the appalling evil of our sinfully inherited natures. Oh, man, how you degrade your true n.o.bility, your G.o.dlike and divine n.o.bility, by bowing the knee to this hideous monster of falsehood, and by kneeling at this unholy shrine. In direct opposition to this abominable and degrading doctrine stands the truth in its pristine and n.o.ble beauty.

"According to this Christian doctrine we behold in man a combination of good and evil, and in the struggle for the mastery the evil is to be mightier than the good. The good emanating from and partaking of the majestic excellence of the eternal, infinite G.o.d must, alas, succ.u.mb to and be overthrown by evil, its unholy rival. Can man conceive of a scheme more degrading and heartless, and more completely dishonoring to G.o.d and his infinite perfections of wisdom, goodness and power--a doctrine more utterly subversive of moral goodness, deific excellence, and that more completely wrecks the moral government of G.o.d and dumps into one common funeral heap the hopes and happiness of the human race. No, no, this is not true; it is false, false, basely false.

"What is the true theory of good and evil? Man, oh, man, hearken to the voice of truth, and be wooed and won by its gentle entreaties. Let the scales of ignorance and superst.i.tion fall from your eyes. Look upward for truth, and be baptized in its beauteous light, and cleansed in its pure and holy waters. Evil is the a.s.semblage of elements in the concrete, if I may be permitted so to speak, and is simply undeveloped good, or good in a lesser degree. Evil is evanescent and transitory, good is permanent and eternally enduring. The fittest of all things in the grand scheme of progression only survive, while all else is doomed to perish. The good and the true are as enduring and everlasting as the eternal G.o.d himself, while the evil and the false are fleeting, unenduring, and carry within themselves the insatiate and unappeasable elements of ultimate annihilation. Be a.s.sured of this, for no truth in G.o.d's illimitable universe has been more firmly established on a more indestructible foundation. Good day.

"May 15. Astronomers will tell you that in their observations through the telescope the planet Mars presents a red brilliancy not observably characteristic of the other planets in your solar system, which they are unable to account for. Considering the vastness of the subject, the immense distance in s.p.a.ce where the scintillating orbs are chanting their silent songs of praise to G.o.d, the difficulties in the way of observation, etc., the discoveries in the domain of astronomy have been fully as remarkable, important, and satisfactory, as in any other field of scientific investigation. But still only a very little compared with the immensity of the subject has been disclosed and some of that mixed and interlarded with error. Astronomy will become the greatest of all sciences when by new apparatus and new appliances the spiritual spheres belonging to the various planets shall have been discovered. This success will be achieved in the coming time. On Mars the people have mastered this problem, and I was surprised to learn that they knew all about our spiritual spheres from their far distant standpoint of observation, and that they knew minutely all the characteristic and inherent qualities of your planetary atmosphere. They have long since invented instruments by which they are enabled to photograph in minute detail and perfect fidelity of representation every material object on the earth. And you will be surprised when I tell you that I inspected Stockholm, London, Paris, New York, your own queen city, Cincinnati, etc., in a more perfect form of presentation than your artists can reproduce on canvas with pencil and brush, and at the same time I was standing in spirit in the immeasurable immensity of s.p.a.ce on the planet Mars. I can not give you even in outline, much less in detail, the modus operandi of this achievement, and will only say that the rays of light in reflective power will yet dawn upon your scientists and philosophers as the agent of discoveries and accomplishments not now even dreamed of by the people of earth. I want to add right here a prophetic statement, which you may carefully note, that the time is not so very far distant when your inspired inventors will devise and construct an instrument that will disclose to the human material eye, to the astonishment of the world, your own spirit land; for let it be well understood that your spirit world has a real, tangible, objective existence, that will yet yield its rich treasures in scientific revealments for the enlightenment and progress of your race. In very truth the spirit world is the only real and permanent one, constructed by the infinite master builder for all eternal time, while your physical and material, except their spiritual essences, are but the shadows and temporary projections from the spiritual. Logically and metaphysically speaking, the spirit world is the pre-eminent cause of your world, the mere transitory effect. This being true, your keen sense hastens you at once to the conclusion, founded in reason and truth, that an effect can not be greater or more enduring than the cause that produced it, but must of necessity and in the very nature of things be infinitely less.

"May 18. A people so pre-eminently advanced in all that appertains to the sublimation of their being, and all that surrounds them, and in which they come in contact, must necessarily be exceedingly refined and aesthetic in their mannerisms, habits of life, intercourse with each other, and in their vocations and employments. In the very nature of things it could not be otherwise. From what has been heretofore said relating to the highly favored and inestimably progressed denizens of Mars, it is not difficult to see that their pursuits must necessarily and almost entirely relate to the realm of the intellectual and spiritual, as they have pa.s.sed beyond the requirements and demands of that which pertains to the material phase of existence. Physical wants require physical exertion to supply them.

Material requirements necessitate attention to and labor in the domain of the material, and this, for obvious reasons, that need not be stated or discussed. It may be prudent, however, to premise that when the physical const.i.tution requires substantially gross materials to keep up and maintain the corporealities of our nature, we must look to the productions of the farm and the fruitage of the forest, and also to animal food, which are always in quality and degree in exact correspondence to our status or state of progression. But when we lose the const.i.tuent elements of corporeal being that belong to the lower strata of the const.i.tution of things, we require something more refined and sublimated, and lo, always it is at hand to meet the exigency, for let it ever be borne in mind that the law that is incessantly and without intermission working away in solving the great problem of life and being, moving upward from the lower to the higher, is not confined in its operations to only form or species of being, but applies to and operates upon all, whether rational or irrational, animate or inanimate, and pushes all forward and upward with perfect and precise equability and in exact and equally proportional degree, none advancing more rapidly than the rest and none lagging behind.

Thus, you perceive the infinite order and the beautiful symmetry of the great law of evolution and progression. Herein is necessitated varied changes in the value and character of vocation and employments, suited to the continued mutations of things in the endless series of progressive changes.

"At one period in the history of Mars the art of photography was discovered. Of course it attracted great attention and challenged admiration. It was regarded not only as wonderful but marvelous. The discoverer was almost deified, for he was thought to be endowed with something of the divine nature not discoverable in others, until the art advanced step by step, improvement on improvement, when the divinity with which the discoverer had been invested by the admiring mult.i.tudes dwindled into insignificance, and the very sensible conclusion reached that he was merely highly gifted and spiritually inspired, but altogether human still.

Compare the primitive system of photography, limited as it was, to objects of immediate presence to that now existing, whereby worlds and systems of worlds are made tributary to its discoveries and achievements. Now, instead of the wonders of the art inspiring hero worship of the men engaged in its studies and who produce the wondrous results, a feeling of awe and veneration for the continually increasing wonders of the creation is inspired. The admiration is justly transferred from man to the creator and the stupendous majesty of his laws and works. On Mars photography is now and has been for a long time a favorite and delightful employment pursued by the many, for all have the advantages of it. Therefore the study, not only of their own world, but numerous others, const.i.tutes a pleasant, instructive, and intellectually remunerative employment. Nor is this confined and limited to material worlds, but reaches out and embraces the spiritual spheres of each.