of God, and taken care of in love and pity. Superstitious and blind as it is, a faith conducted on such principles certainly deserves some respect, and can never be offensive, either to man or the true God. Not so with that of the Roman Catholics; and hence, it is they, and secondarily, the Protestant clergy—with the exception of some foremost thinkers among them—that we purpose questioning in this work. We want to know upon what grounds they base their right to treat Hindus and Chinese spiritualists and kabalists in the way they do; denouncing them, in company with the infidels—creatures of their own making—as so many convicts sentenced to the inextinguishable fires of hell.
Far from us be the thought of the slightest irreverence—let alone blasphemy—toward the Divine Power which called into being all things, visible and invisible. Of its majesty and boundless perfection we dare not even think. It is enough for us to know that It exists and that It is all wise. Enough that in common with our fellow creatures we possess a spark of Its essence. The supreme power whom we revere is the boundless and endless one—the grand "Central Spiritual Sun" by whose attributes and the visible effects of whose inaudible will we are surrounded—the God of the ancient and the God of modern seers. His nature can be studied only in the worlds called forth by his mighty fiat. His revelation is traced with his own finger in imperishable figures of universal harmony upon the face of the Cosmos. It is the only infallible gospel we recognize.
Speaking of ancient geographers, Plutarch remarks in Theseus, that they "crowd into the edges of their maps parts of the world which they do not know about, adding notes in the margin to the effect that beyond this lies nothing but sandy deserts full of wild beasts and unapproachable bogs." Do not our theologians and scientists do the same? While the former people the invisible world with either angels or devils, our philosophers try to persuade their disciples that where there is no matter there is nothing.
How many of our inveterate skeptics belong, notwithstanding their materialism, to Masonic Lodges? The brothers of the Rosie-Cross, mysterious practitioners of the mediæval ages, still live—but in name only. They may "shed tears at the grave of their respectable Master, Hiram Abiff"; but vainly will they search for the true locality, "where the sprig of myrtle was placed." The dead letter remains alone, the spirit has fled. They are like the English or German chorus of the Italian opera, who descend in the fourth act of Ernani into the crypt of Charlemagne, singing their conspiracy in a tongue utterly unknown to them. So, our modern knights of the Sacred Arch may descend every night if they choose
