CHAPTER XIX. THE PRELUDE. 66 Through the harsh noises of our day That angel song, now low and far .Circles are the highest symbols. There are probably no straight-line motions in the universe. Those seeming such are on a scale so vast the curve cannot be perceived. Fragments are all parts of circular bodies, as a piece of granite rock is a part of those primitive formations that encircle the earth. Atoms gyrate upon their axes and follow the line of their strongest attractions. Things move in spirals, and generally with the sun, from left to right. Sea-shells are built up spirally. Vines ascend forest trees spirally. Particles of steel flying toward a magnet move spirally. This law, with few exceptions, applies to atoms, worlds, systems, civilizations, and all those historic cycles of ever-recurring spiritual epochs and eras that distinguish antiquity. Progress underlies all things, and Spiritualism, though ever majestic in its past windings, may be compared to the ocean waves that rise and fall. It has had its mornings and evenings of decline. Its careers fleck the nights and days of earth's varied rovolutions with splendors unspeakable, and its heaven-illumined truths, voiced by angelic inspired chieftains, have rolled in solemn grandeur all along the sunlit periods of the half-buried ages; and its musical echoes add to the glories of the nineteeth century. Each spiritual wave, in accordance with the laws of accelerated motion, rose above the preceding, bearing the masses higher up the altitudes of wisdom. The impetus was greater; the spray from the wave more glittering; the principles involved, coupled with its holy teachings, were, during each succeeding period, more widely diffused. Under some name and in some form Spiritualism, as herein demonstrated, has constituted the basic foundation, and been the motive force of all religions in their incipient stages. The Spiritualism of to-day differs from that of five thousand years since only in the better understanding of its philosophy, the general concession of its naturalness and its wider dissemination through the different grades of society. It has been and is God's visible seal of love to all climes and ages. The spirit-world is the world of causes; this of effects. Objective entities are but the projections of etherealized spirit-substances. Inventions relating to industrial activities, or the spiritual exaltation of the races, have their first birth in the inner life. All great projects for the moral redemption of humanity, primarily conceived in the upper deeps of infinity, are inflowed from immortal minds to receptive mortals by the law of influx. These mediumized souls, impressionally catching the shadowy dim-defined plans, fashion them into forms; or perhaps partially constructing, push them out into the sensuous world. As spirit moulds and takes on form, so wisdom ceaselessly descends from the heavens. Cognizant of a rising spiritual wave, Congresses of Angels devised the noble project of laying the foundation-stone of this new Temple, majestic, cosmopolitan, and strikingly sublime, in America-land of free thought, free speech, free press-land where the people, conscious of their God-given rights, and cringing before no cowled priests, feel themselves sovereigns" kings and priests unto God." Premonitions and prophecies are announcing heralds, breathing And coming events cast their shadows before." The record stands undisputed, that Swedenborg, just before his departure to spirit-life, in 1772, prophesied that, in about eighty years, wonderful phenomena of a spiritual nature would occur on the earth. The four score years expired in 1852. A young man, residing in Western New York, 1836, and other individuals in different localities, examining the merits of Mesmerism, fell into trance conditions, disclosing the fact, that within twelve or fourteen years a remarkable book would be published, the contents of which would not be as startling as the source from whence it originated. In about eleven years, "Nature's Divine Revelations" was dictated by spirits through A. J. Davis, in his clairvoyant state, and issued from the press. In 1835, and several years thereafter, Wm. Miller and adherents, were impressed with great impending changes, denominated "the end of the world and the second coming of Christ to judgment." They interpreted the "word" of the Scriptures literally, thus confounding the personal with the spiritual coming. The blunder was fatal to the progress of the sect. The end of the theologic world of creeds and popish dogmas was approaching, and Christ was speedily coming as a spirit spiritually in the "clouds of heaven, with all his holy angels with him." These "holy angels" were the ministering spirits with whom many of earth's inhabitants now hold converse. About this period immortalized spirits, India, China, Persia, European countries, dians, visited the various Shaker communi |