Page:Randolph, Paschal Beverly; Eulis! the history of love.djvu/189

184 boldly borrows and appropriates the mental stock of others. In all lands it depends upon, and bases its faith on media, whom it teaches man to accept as oracles, yet no two of whom tell the same story, or see facts alike. George, Peter, and Thomas, communicating through Medium A, in latititudelatitude [sic] 16, have no recollection of communicating yesterday with the same party through medium B, in latitude 17-30. We, in our investigations of the recondite, occult and mystical;—ay, even in matters of mere finance, such as specution, buying, selling, contracting, or even in purchasing tickets in a lottery, prefer the better agency of a surer power—because it never lies, falters, prevaricates, and it ever tells the same story of the same thing, to all alike, no matter what the latitude or longitude may be!

But stop we here? Oh, no! for by the same instrumentality we enter the Slumber of, and with keen glance and quickened consciousness, scan, and leisurely survey realtiesrealities [sic] denied to "Media," and with sure and rapid gaze trace the awful and majestic rush of hurricanes of glowing galaxies,—the wintry storm of falling worlds!—lamps of God flickering in the Vault! starry eyes glimpsing down into the Deeps!—pregnant earths waiting patiently to be delivered of the Humanity gestating in their bosoms.

Seers, ancient, mediæval, and modern, alike, inform the world that the supernal country is peopled by all grades of persons from the low and brutal barbarian to the high and polished civilizee; which, if true, proves that intellectual power and capacity is not a passport thither, nor a perquisite of immortality; for there are myriads—not merely of people—but of armies of savage races, tribes, and nations dwelling in that starry land.

Moral goodness is not the touchstone or key either; for no amount of that alone will warrant success, or prove the "Open Sesame" to the farther gate of the grave, nor be potent enough to ensure a man's safe arrival at the golden portals of disbodied glory; for of all mendacious people; of all pullers of the longbow; all perfected liars—on the authority of those who claim to know about it—the disembodied ones are champions, able to give long odds, and then heavily discount all embodied falsifiers from Judas Iscariot, and Peter, who denied his Lord, down to the level of—who you like. It is not