Strange Visitors Part 27

His home no longer; He has become the denizen of a world More rare and beautiful than earth.

With quickening pulse and grand emotion He gazes down upon the globe, Whose habitations he has left forever!

Cities with their palaces and towers, Surging seas, leafy forests, and fields of grain, The towering mountain and the ma.s.sy Icebergs of the Polar sea sweep past His sight like fading visions.

ALLAN CUNNINGHAM.

_ALONE_.

Far away from earthly care, Free as a bird, I soar through air, And think of thee in thy sad, lonely home, Watching and waiting for thy love to come.

Dost thou hear me call thee, Sweet! Sweet!

Many the years till we shall meet.

My spirit home is bright and fair With flowers and birds and wonders rare.

Seraphic the faces that on me smile, But the one I love is on earth the while, Will she hear me calling, Sweet! Sweet!

Many the years till we shall meet.

Many the years I'll watch and wait Till I see thee at the golden gate, Then in my arms will I bear thee away To my jewelled home where sunbeams play.

Then together we'll sing, Sweet! Sweet!

Well worth the waiting thus to meet.

BARON VON HUMBOLDT.

_THE EARTHQUAKE_.

This mysterious and awful visitant, which convulses the earth apparently without warning, is, however, like all the manifestations of nature, preceded by signs which the observing and understanding eye can perceive and calculate upon as unerringly as the astronomer can determine the approach of a comet.

The inhabitable earth is merely a sh.e.l.l or crust over the great ma.s.s of uninhabitable matter. The world beneath the earth's surface is as diversified as the world above. It has its mountains, its streams, its plains, its caverns, and its internal volcanoes.

As fearful storms, accompanied by lightning and rumbling thunder, sweep over the earth's surface, so beneath the crust occur electric storms, accompanied with terrific combustions of gases, which in their efforts to escape convulse the outer earth, and in many cases rend the sh.e.l.l asunder.

The earthquake which has recently (August 13, 14, 15, and 16, 1868) shaken the Pacific coast was occasioned by the discharge of the pent-up gases beneath, and also in part by the heated condition of the outer surface.

The "tidal phenomenon," as it is called, is the effect of the electrical condition of the earth beneath. The chemical components of the sea form a sensitive magnetic body, which is subject to attraction and repulsion, and as the magnetic current extended for several thousands of miles, and was caused by a collision of negative and positive forces, the sea was attracted and repulsed along the whole line of the internal commotion by the action of these forces.

The northern portion of this globe has in times past suffered from convulsions similar to those which now visit the tropical climates.

The fearful privations and heart-rending calamities which visited the earlier inhabitants of the earth are only known to the student of the cosmos of nature after he has attained the second birth.

The forces within and around the earth are now in comparative subjugation, but in the earlier periods of its existence, while still it was in the process of changing from a state adapted to a lower condition of animal life to one fitted to a higher state of animal and intellectual existence, the elements were in a frequent state of rupture and disorder.

No mortal pen can depict the scene which I recently witnessed on the occurrence of the earthquake on the Pacific coast. Forty thousand souls arising amid smoke and blackened clouds of flying stones and upheaving earth, with outstretched arms, and faces strained with horror, emerging suddenly from their old bodies into their spirit-forms--looking awestruck into each other's faces; a vast swarm clinging together almost as helplessly as young bees to their hive--suddenly cut off from their occupations and their pleasures, their homes, and their familiar affairs of earth!

But what they experienced, proud and n.o.ble cities of the past have experienced likewise. Grace and ornament, art and grandeur, beauty, love, and manly strength have been swept away time and again by the bursting of the treacherous doors that lead into the heart of the earth!

Change marks the footsteps of the Creator. The solid mountain, the firm, unyielding earth, which to the unthinking mind seem durable and eternal in their strength, like mankind carry within themselves the seeds of their own dissolution.

Yet the day will come when man, by the aid of science, will, through these premonitory symptoms, foresee the coming events, even as the wise physician can discern the time when his patient's soul will leave its body.

Nature misunderstood is a fearful mystery; but understood, she is a simple and beautiful piece of mechanism; and the earthquake may not be more disastrous than the flood or the avalanche when science and experience have taught men to avoid the localities of danger, and to watch the hour of its approach, that they may flee before it.

Nature is never abrupt in her actions. She heralds her intentions long before she enacts them, but as it requires the quick ear of the savage--the child of nature--to detect the far-off prey, so it requires the student of nature to discover the distant tread of the earthquake.

SIR DAVID BREWSTER

_NATURALNESS OF SPIRIT LIFE_.

The human mind is subject to false and specious reasoning, and time after time opinions which have been held and argued upon with seeming logical ac.u.men, have, by further developments and discoveries, been proven fallacious. And yet of so elastic a nature is the mind of man that he is not crushed nor discouraged by his mistakes, but immediately commences to build new theories; but as he establishes them by specialties instead of generalities, he is again defeated.

The European mind has adopted a certain line of thought respecting the future state of existence, which it substantiates by narrow reasonings and isolated facts.

Of the future we can only judge by a.n.a.logy of the past with the present.

Nature ever shadows forth her new developments upon the old.

The many periods or stages through which the earth has pa.s.sed in reaching her present state of refinement, have been stamped one upon the other so that the Geologist can determine definitely what would be the result of a certain period from the characteristics of the foregoing.

Now it is educible: if the Creator of the race of men who inhabit the terrestrial globe had intended for them a future state or destination differing in every respect from their present one, he would have prepared their minds for different pursuits, and ordained them for other occupations than those they follow to the very grave.

Take man in his most natural condition--examine those nations that are most ancient, and unmixed with other races--and you will perceive that their ideas of a future state were in accordance with the life they were living on earth.

The Asiatic race in burying its dead prepares the favorite food of the deceased, the fragrant tea, and the money so useful on earth. Also slips of paper on which messages are written to departed friends are lighted at these burial ceremonies, and reduced to ashes, that the spirit of the text may be transmitted to their friends in the world of souls.

In these "Pagan rites," as they are termed, we discern the workings of an intuitive belief that the spirit of man still retains the sensations, attributes, and desires which have accompanied it through life.

The ancient Greeks and Romans held similar opinions, likewise the Africans, Hindoos, and the Indians of North and South America.

By far the largest portion of mankind believe in a _natural state_ hereafter, corresponding to their earth existence, but the European nations which are supposed to be advanced in science, art, and philosophical attainments beyond all the nations of the earth, have, in their speculations and in their efforts to penetrate the mysteries of the world of spirits, lost sight, of the natural and entered the supernatural, where they are surrounded by fogs, clouds, and _ignes-fatui._

Now if these people are told that the spirit world is divided into states and continents, cities and towns, as is their own world (though under spirit appellations), they would scoff at the statement.

But as mankind has a natural love of locality, and as congenial minds will select similar locations, adapted to their ideas of beauty and comfort, the result is that spirit inhabitants unite and form cities and towns as on earth. Thus combining, they must have some points of interest to occupy their minds, and as they still possess their power of construction and ingenuity, their love of beautiful forms and of architecture, they prefer not to live in the open air and on the bare ground (as they can certainly do), but choose rather to employ their various faculties in building cities and habitations in accordance with their tastes and ideas of convenience.

Once grant that man is provided with a spiritual body after he emerges from his original one--accept the hypothesis that this body must possess form and sensation, and with sensation, eyes, ears, mouth, taste, and motion--then you must provide means for that body to exist. In providing these means you must place him upon a soil capable of producing vegetation, where his intelligence may compound the various articles adapted to his use.

Some individuals enter the spirit world deformed, some feeble in intellect, some incapable of constructing or arranging. All these must have provision made for them; their wants must be supplied. The effort to supply want or demand produces a system of exchange or barter.

Many of the inhabitants of the spirit world are both good and kind. They are spiritualized in their natures, and are influenced by a desire to a.s.sist those who are needy.