India is seen in the spirit world by the sign of the circle-full-orbed and golden. Egypt is the child of India, less affectional in faith, but more astronomical, philosophical, and practical-the daughter, whose name is Science. The Ganges and the Himalayas are so vast, clouded, mystic, they inspire awe, and, in so sunny a clime, unfold an exuberant contemplation of soul-a poetic religious idealism that enchants every sense and imparadises every thought. Egypt is tamer, not so melancholy, not so vast and spiring, not so cloudy and luxurious, not so mellow and musical. The Nile, mysterious as the Ganges, alluvial and inundating, is not so sweetly imbosomed in the shadows of great mountains and protective banyan forests. Egypt has more burning sands, more raging sea from the north vexed with storms, more poison in her desert winds. Hence, her inhabitants have more angularity of character. She is spiritually tropical; but nature's battles make her contentious, intellectual, fiercely just, the manufacturer of an implacable hell, and of a delightful Elysium across the stormy lake of death. She is, therefore, the circle geometrically changed into a right-angletriangle. She is three-sided, pyramidal, with stars for heart-beats. Egypt courting science from very love, her horoscopic sign in the spirit world is the right-angle-triangle. But there must be body to this trinity; the perfect individuality of principle. Palestine, whose people were born and disciplined in the slaveries of Egypt, is a little colder, variegated, and on a smaller scale. The Mediterranean, dashing with awful roar against her shores, is the warning voice of the great Jehovah, angry at the sins of his chosen children. The Jordan is swift and acrid. The valleys and brooks are contracted. Horeb and Sinai and Lebanon are wrapt in jealous soli- . tudes. The Egyptio-codes of Moses, intensified to rigorous penalty, enforce order and racial nationality. What, then, is the Jewish character? Selfish, arrogant, narrow, jealous, and arbitrary. Judaism, spiritualized, is Pauline Christianity-the aggressive sword-the Protestantism of India-the body in the triune development-the religious body for the soul of Egypt and the spirit of India. What, then, is the sign X of Christianity in the immortal horoscope? The cross, indicative of doctrine, of individuality, of progress towards the circle of the Harmonial Philosophy. So religion, like every other law of life, repeats itself; moves in circles; inversely from circles in incarnations to angles and crosses, and from these back to the circle, spirally climbing round and round in infinite progression. Nothing, then, is lost. All that India gives, or Egypt, or Judea, or America, are translated into newness of life, as the inheritance of the ages to come. THE PASTOPHORA, thus set in prism, is this beautiful trinity expressed -all religions essentially comprised in its circle of philosophy, dividing and sparkling with angular points of electric thought, and blending again in rainbowed drops for oceanic love. Read then, O world searching for light, carefully read these breathing pages, redolent with words that burn; and then rank the book where it belongs, with the standards of Spiritualism, and, with gratitude, thank God and take courage under the glory that flashes from all inspired pens, and throbs in all honest bosoms, bared so freely to the arrows of persecution as a bulwark of defence to more spiritual and angelic generations coming. If this volume severs a mental chain, frees a creed-crushed soul, plucks a thorn from a human pathway, planting a rose there, sheds a kindling ray of light upon a pilgrim's path, or causes even a tremulous smile to brighten the brow of sorrow and suffering, then is the author satisfied— aye, richly blessed, for he finds his highest happiness and sweetest blessing in blessing others. NEW YEAR'S DAY, 1869. J. O. BARRETT. "My soul is not a palace of the past, Where priest-worn creeds, like Rome's gray Senate, quake, Hearing afar the vandal's trumpet hoarse. The time is ripe and rotten ripe for change; Then let it come !" Progress is God's right hand angel! It is the Christ in our midst, working by methods mystic as the pictured symbols in the Patmos Visions. Its laws diverse, inverse, and often unfathomable, ever act to the same divine purpose of physical refinement and spiritual unfoldment. Causation is infinite. Change is a necessity of nature. Essential Spirit-that all-interfusing force-presence, filling immensity, and being causative, does and eternally will act upon matter. Something from nothing, a self-evident absurdity, there are no absolute creations in the universe, only new and higher formations. Spirit and matter both eternal; spiritual substance in connection with physical substance in its various gradations, constitute one co-eternal duality. Spirit is independent of matter relative to mere existence; yet dependent upon it for its manifestations. |