through John, in one of his exalted mediumistic states, whilst baptising Jesus in Jordan. It is well known that water can be magnetically spiritualized by repeatedly touching and agitating it; and that water being a conductor of electric action, can thus be made a powerful agency in curing diseases and spiritualizing body and mind. It is said that an angel, at certain times, stirred the pool of Bethesda, and whosoever then stepped into it, was healed of any disease. No doubt the angel magnetized it-charged it with spiritual vitality. A baptism therein was efficacious to the well and the sick. The water that closed over Jesus in baptism, was spiritualized by spirits through the mediumship of John, and therefore was more than a sign of purity. Spirits have been known of late to sprinkle a whole circle of inquirers with spiritualized water, the influence of which was most beneficent to harmonize the mediumistic conditions. We do not dissent from such uses of water, but recommend them. We, however, would have no special formality. Let all elements be spiritualized, even the food we eat, as an every-day eucharist. When we are intromitted into the real spiritual life, and all our being is thus harmonized to the music-ripples of "the water of life"-the divine inflowings-not only are we-in person, but all things around us, are truly baptized and consecrated to holiness. There is, then, but one true Christbaptism-the baptism of the "Holy Spirit,"—the descending, divine afflatus, lifting the soul into that sweeter, calmer fellowship of the more heavenly intelligences. In this divine baptism, whether from good men or women, or angels, we believe, and unto it continually seek.

"There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth it anderstanding."

* 66

Inspiration clothes creation in a robe of day."

Inspiration-God's outflowing breath-is man's in breathed life-a constant power. The universe is a many-toned harp with strings swept by the forces of the Infinite. Aspirations are the vibrations. All souls feel them. Uplifted, they measure the divine light poured into receptive spirits.

Spiritual illuminations,―exalted and original thoughts— evidently emanate from an over-arching world of subtile principles and invisible powers. The heavens vivify the

earth.

“Every soul is aflame with God."

·

From the Latin, inspiro, comes the word inspiration; implying inbreathings, impregnating and opening the avenues of perception, the infusion of feeling, influence, ideas from the All-perfect and the angelic-from the immortalized, and from mortals-from forests, fields, flowers, and the beautiful in nature everywhere. As God is infinite, filling immensity, inspiration is necessarily universal and perpetual as the river of life. Not creating within us new faculties, it arouses and kindles into keener activities all the hidden forces of our conscious beings. Pertaining more to souls

than books or traditionary legends, it oversweeps the epochs of all the dust-buried ages, and is even more perfect now than in those earlier mornings of time.

As water, crystal or clouded, assumes the shape of its vases, so inspiration is graded in quantity and quality. Who has not, in the higher moments of thought or aspiration, felt a sweet, hallowed inbreathing from the great pulsing soul of nature? Who has stood upon some emerald-carpeted mountains in the hush of evening, and not felt the soul expand as it caught glimpses of immortal truths? Who, walking among the lilies of the field, has not been startled and thrilled with the consciousness of those eternal principles that stream in liquid pearls through universal being?

Rising liking shafts of flame from the abysinal past, we see in Hesiod a poet, Jeremiah a weeper, Pythagoras a thinker, Socrates a philosopher, Pericles a constructor, Appeles an artist, Jesus a Spiritualist, John a mystic, Perasee a scientist, Mozart a musician, Bacon a logician, Ballou a theologian. These, with others, yielding to what Emerson facetiously terms "the broodings of the oversoul," enriching their receptive minds by the study of the spiritual laws that map the universe, and mentally appropriating the living sermons preached daily in the great Temple of Nature, with birds for singers and oceans for organs - these, we repeat, speaking words that burned, or breathing music that charmed-touched the world's heart and left their psychological imprint thereon-touched it, because divinely inspired.

Not the sacred books of India or China-not the manyversioned Bibles in use by Jews or Christians, are inspired; but rather the truths they mirror.

All truth, in Bibles or out of them-all truth, scientific philosophic or religious-is inspired. Truth is a unity. It is only in the seeming that truths clash. Octave notes do not jar. The unripe peaches of July do not contradict the blushing and mellowed ones of October. They only manifest the different stages consequent upon the law of growth. Our media, like the seers of Egypt, Greece and Rome,-like

the prophets of Hebrew history, — like the apostles and martyrs of the better dispensations, are-in their hours of abstraction or loftiest contemplation,, beautifully inspired. As one among these, "doomed to-day," we take a manly pride in acknowledging our helps from the world of spirits.

There is a general and a special inspiration-both natural. Our spirit guides inspire us, either by willing a magnetic current to touch, as with regenerating fire, our brain faculties; or the conditions previously prepared-by approaching and breathing the inmost feelings of their own heavenillumined souls into ours. God, being infinite and impartial, all humanities, constituting a fraternal unity in diversity of individualities, are inspired from higher or lower planes of conscious existence. The truer the aim, the diviner the purpose, sweeter the nature and holier the aspiration, the more exalting and ecstatic is the inspiration. Plato, mantled in Grecian grandeur, gathered his highest inspirations while summering upon the cloud-piercing Hymettus; Mahomet, from Arabian summits; Confucius, from Asian mountains, and Jesus, tearful and prayerful, from Kedron's valley, and Olive's mountain.

Inspiration comes obedient to the law of attraction; it is as natural to the mental affections as air to the lungs. It is ever ratioed to the plane of our moral status of character. Only the active, thinking, loving, aspiring mind is truly inspired. We get here what we seek. There are spiritual strata of inspiration as there are natural strata in our material atmospheres for each grade of sentient being. We may, therefore, be inspired in the department of passion, of reflection, of invention, of music, of poetry, of patriotism, of philanthropy, of the loves of childhood, of moral justice, of divine recognition, just as we adjust and habituate these functional organs and faculties. The lower the plane the grosser is the qualitative inspiration; the higher the plane the purer is the inspiration. Our status of love-life determines the degree of our heaven or spiritual sphere of use.

If we

would be ushered into holy light, the holiest purpose must animate the will to corresponding activities. Thus, and thus only, do we drink of the immortal fountains of undimmed and celestial goodness. Under such an inspiration, we are able to discover defects in our forces of character, creating a keen, sharp pain in a tender conscience that rouses up to focalize those dormant faculties to higher points of mind and heart, that then loom up in visions as an attainable glory. The holiest spirits have the deepest pain when any taint is found upon their inner life. When admitted to inspirations and consociations of such spirits, our unstrung or untouched chords of love are attuned to heavenly order, when our whole being is at length spiritually musicalized, heard and felt in raptured gratitude to the "white-vestured" come to lead us into their Edens of Innocence and Beauty.

Believing in inspiration, then, we would go up day by day on to the Mount of Transfiguration; would open the windows of our souls to the constant reception of higher truths; would be charitable to all fresh thoughts, from whatever source, to all newly conceived ideas, for they may have traveled as blessings down from sunnier zones. Behind even the faintest corruscation of some wierd, halfexpressed truth, there may gleam a star silver-shrouded, or a celestial sun awaiting earthly recognition.

God is in the present. The books of inspiration are not closed and sealed. Ideas, principles, the laws of pure intelligence, require no crutches. Americans can stand erect without spinal stiffenings from Asian monuments. Prayer need not float to heaven on the breath of ancient memories; nor assume oriental attitudes to secure a hearing.

"Where'er there's a life to be kindled by love,

Wherever a soul to inspire,

Strike this key-note of God that trembles above,

Night's silver-tongued voices of fire."

Our granite-hills and highlands, are sacred as Israel's mountains; our rivers holy as the Jordans of Asia, and our