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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: 
 

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 RENDERED BY 
 
 THEODORE PARKER, 
 
 THROUGH THE TRANCE CONDITION OF 
 
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 BOSTON : 
 ADAMS & COMPANY 
 
 1870. 
 

 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1870, laj 
 
 Saeah A. Eamsdell, 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at "Washington. 
 
^|*/j>iY object iu giving a book of this kind 
 ;<>■%•. <w to the public, at the present time, is to- 
 lay aside the oppressive barriers that 
 clog up the avenues to free thought. The 
 world is teeming with literature ; the false 
 and true blend into service, to foster the 
 spirit of progression that underlies the basis 
 of materialistic conception. The world is. 
 teeming with its false precepts, [false exam- 
 ples and false theories. The world is 
 flooded, gorged and running over, with the 
 cutaneous eruptions that have blurred and 
 blotted the glory of the world's past history- 
 
4 PREFACE. 
 
 I give this work to mankind from my spiritual 
 attainment, hoping it will reach the soul ele- 
 ment and wing its way to the reasoning 
 faculties of the nineteenth century. Justice 
 reaches out a hand for this work, and 
 hope flings pearly dust in its advancing 
 pathway. 
 
!8S®EE^ 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 ^^HE world's secret springs of motion are 
 ^t)&) hidden from the external eye, and 
 ^9$jt? revealed to the inner orb of vibrative 
 ^ sensation. Hence, man's proneness to 
 doubt the detailed order that underlies all 
 the tissues of inorganic structure, man's 
 proneness to doubt facts and truths that are 
 not vividly before the outward sense of see- 
 ing, will find its solution in the ignorance of 
 thought, — in man's inability to grasp with 
 the mind the rudimental branches of the 
 earth's formative system.- The law that 
 controls matter is simply a law of progres- 
 sive movement, simply an undercurrent of 
 reformatory action, passing in and around 
 God's kingdom of strength. We see man, 
 himself, acting from that same plan of pro- 
 
6 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OS, 
 
 gressive movement ; see the spirit springs of 
 i'orce impelling him onward and upward, 
 impelling him to build for both systems of 
 .activity. Man is spirally formed, endowed 
 with attributes that only find solution in the 
 great, unexplored vista of future revelations. 
 Man is endowed with wisdom to find his 
 beginning and his ending ; to find the logic 
 of life, and the even tenor of «a just God's 
 movements. The life of man is co-existent 
 with the divinity of purpose. Man is dually 
 formed, twin-like in conception, made by 
 order of material law, and fashioned to meet 
 the exigences of spiritualistic movement. 
 
 The order that underlies the frailest part 
 <even of God's stupendous whole, would for- 
 ■ever preclude the possibility of any chance 
 work in the formation of systems and worlds 
 blended with network precision, and hung, 
 on God's word of command, in the bound- 
 less sea of space. 
 
 It is time that man should find his start- 
 ing point ; find the length, breadth and 
 depth of his purposed journey ; find the 
 solution to the great problem of life, and 
 find the true valuation of the term " death." 
 It is high time that mankind looked out 
 from under their cap of ignorance to the 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 7 
 
 real fact of life ; to the reality of a God 
 moving in and through the outspoken grand- 
 eur of earth. I have before stated that man 
 was dually formed, — made by order of ele- 
 mentary activity, and radiating from the 
 element of matter to mingle in the fine, 
 tissued web of comprehensive greatness and 
 truth. Man's starting point has engrossed 
 the minds of all thinking people for many a 
 generation, and still the dark hue of uncer- 
 tainty stands sentinel at the doorway of cor- 
 rect knowledge. 
 
 Geology has proved that the creation 
 of the world was no spasmodic effort 
 of will, but a combined effort of elements 
 circulating in space. Geology will also 
 prove that the earth-strata, or the sub- 
 terranean keynote, from which the harmony 
 of the world has been reared, is solidified 
 lava. Geologians of all ages have spread 
 their nucleus of strength to battle with the 
 primitive lessons that ancient historians 
 plunged in mystery and doubt, and then left 
 with the seal of sanctification, made fast by 
 the teutonic assumption of authority that 
 claimed to be vicegerent of God, to pro- 
 claim the world's formation and the world's 
 salvation on the mere hypothesis of God's 
 
8 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OE, 
 
 will. Geologians have been the world's 
 greatest saviors. They have placed man- 
 kind on a footing to reason from analogy to 
 search farther than history for the hidden 
 key to life everlasting. Geologians have 
 frosted society with a silver coating of 
 peace ; have fixed man's starting point on a 
 principle in matter co-existing with infinite 
 purpose. The materialist fashions his birth 
 in matter, but he finds no principle to sus- 
 tain above matter, sees no silvery lining to 
 any of the earth wrought caskets that are 
 illuminated with the interior perception that 
 the starting point is not the finale of man's 
 destiny. 
 
 My purpose is to here show at what point 
 or growth in matter God instituted the web 
 of life, or at what point the woof of sen- 
 sation mastered the embodiment of earthly 
 substance. This is no small matter, to fisli 
 backwards in the great pool of life, — to find 
 what seems impossible to find, — but the 
 solution must be met with energetic effort ; 
 the barrier must be pulled away, and the 
 basis of life be established on a principle in 
 matter running parallel with infinite plan of 
 cause and effect. The mystery that has 
 enveloped the element of progress is fast 
 
THE THOSE AND POETRY OE LIFE. 
 
 >.. 
 
 loosing its hold, and Christianity must grap- 
 ple this new basis of being with renewed 
 courage and activity : for, as the old foun- 
 dation is slipping away, becoming insecure 
 and shaky from centre to circumference, and 
 not serviceable for present need, the grap- 
 pling hook of strength and indomitable will 
 must rear another savior that the hand of 
 time cannot destroy. The rudimental strata 
 of earth is the underground car of propel- 
 ling power that hangs a world on the orbit 
 of time. The earth forces are so con- 
 tracted, so liberalized, that in giving for the 
 process of structure, the spirit camera hung 
 in space ever receives the impress, and 
 gives to the world of ethereality a branch 
 stock, that hangs its ether dew of finesse 
 substance on the great law of infinite suc- 
 cess. Spirit is the formula of matter, the 
 essence to outwrought purpose or the inte- 
 rior function that lifts an outward symbol of 
 protection through every stage of its pro- 
 
MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 CHAPTEE II. 
 
 fN fixing man's starting point, I must 
 go farther back than ancient history ; 
 ®|# must sweep that board clear of first 
 & principles from which I shall rear my 
 God-head and Savior. Ancient history has 
 done its work for the world. It has reared 
 a platform of evangelical faith, which the 
 world needed, and which the world accepted 
 without so much as a draft on common 
 sense to substantiate its truth or reliabil- 
 ity, as coming from the unseen fountain of 
 living truth and knowledge. Ancient history 
 is the by-play or secundem artem that rides 
 along the billows of time, and drops an 
 anchor of doubt to disturb the inglory of 
 false theology. In deriving facts to battle 
 with the world's primitive lessons of ego- 
 tistical assumption, we must dip deep in 
 God's storehouse of materiality and fashion 
 man within the keeping of reason to cherish 
 and hold true. 
 
THE PEOSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 11 
 
 Reason is our God-given monitor of 
 strength, our propelling escutcheon of lib- 
 erty, that fashions our destiny and helps to 
 fashion the world we live in. It has been 
 laid down as a truth in sacred history that 
 this spheroid, this world of motionary grand- 
 eur, sublimity and power, was once a mass of 
 ehaotic ruin ; that God's linger of strength 
 and wisdom pointed the way to its ultimate 
 fashion and beauty ; that God's word of 
 -command outstripped any law of cause and 
 effect ; that God's mandate of power wrought 
 symmetry and motion to the world we now 
 inhabit, — a world that lays no claim of 
 fashion or beauty to any power but the God- 
 given principle of groAvth and intuitive wis- 
 dom in nature. There is an element in mat- 
 ter that fashions to the sublimity of present 
 forces, or that builds for present use and 
 need, that sticks no pin of doubt to any 
 structure formed in systematic keeping with 
 the law of harmony and filial jurisprudence. 
 Mature has within her storehouse the key to 
 xmlock all the elements of reform, to let 
 loose the dragon of doubt, and place the 
 material universe in juxtaposition with God's 
 plan of progressive movement. Nature is 
 <God, or nature is God's system-house, in 
 
12 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; 015, 
 
 which the great principality of power rules 
 to advantage. There is no system or code of 
 laws in all of God's vast domain of power 
 but what run parallel with the finite or infi- 
 nite destiny of man. Man is the radiating 
 element of power on earth, the forces of 
 intellectual strength that help to fashion 
 the beauty of God's rudimental structure of 
 material substance. Let us go as far back 
 as present truth will admit ; let us search 
 deep and wide for the imperishable seed 
 that is rooted in all matter, and bears its 
 branches of worth into the outwroughi 
 worlds in space. Mind has ever had the 
 propelling force of circumstances to grapple 
 with, ever had the incubus or dead weight of 
 mythological teachings to ride over and 
 destroy, before the sunlight of reason could 
 lift a star of hope to the world. Mythology 
 has ever held the reigns of sacerdotal power 
 on earth, has ever had a steed of active 
 flight, ready for the spur of priest-craft or 
 the shambling heel of the autocrats in power. 
 Mythology is flapping her wings for a flight 
 beyond this world's need or aim, because 
 her power is in baiting a hook to be nibbled 
 at and then cast aside as worthless. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 >E will claim that in the beginning 
 >V££:? God created man, fashioned him to 
 '-',•■ ri suit the exigences of present need, 
 ^ built him up as a tabernacle of 
 strength to battle in the world of matter ; 
 that is, allowing our God to be a thinking, 
 moving and predominating power, capable 
 of engaging in the builders' s art, capable 
 of putting out ways and means for structure, 
 of liberalizing every element to the keeping 
 of harmonious design. God wrought in the 
 chaos that his hand of skill had imbued 
 with suitable attributes to delve out what 
 his plan demanded. God wrought in the 
 elements of his own creating. He imbued 
 his artistic genius into every part of soluble 
 matter, and laid the unction of demand in 
 close proximity to the tide of fashion which 
 ebbed and flowed in accordance with the 
 master spirit to be served. God's filial 
 
14 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 spirit of love and mercy lias found a lodg- 
 ment in all the vast arcana of nature. It 
 speaks in all the dialects of proclaimed wis- 
 dom and beauty that meet the external 
 vision of man. It speaks in all the silvery 
 harmony of earth combined effort ; in all the 
 branches of earth formula of motion ; in all 
 the tipped eaglets of power, and in all the 
 simple undertones that make musical the 
 vastness and wholeness of God's earth. 
 God is the motionary element of time, the 
 sublime Architect, who travels space and 
 gives to time the key note to progress. God 
 is the stationary element of power, — the 
 deep-seated, internal revenue fund that 
 moves at the collector's call, or the tax 
 gatherer who underlies every part of God's 
 structured whole. God moves in a mysteri- 
 ous way ; but the mystery is in noncompre- 
 hension of his attributes as a mover or 
 builder. God spans the earth and heavens 
 with his great arm of love ; fills all measure 
 with completeness, and lifts the holly branch 
 of hope to the heart-springs of ambitious 
 movement. 
 
THE PE0SE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 {ff/«OD surrounds the earth with sure suc- 
 H>v| cess ; rills all space and harmonizes 
 $£§$ every element of reform. Therefore, 
 "^ God is all in all, All-wise, Omnipotent 
 and Everlasting ; the day star of hope, the 
 tree of promise, whose branches fill the 
 material world and send their blossoms into 
 the nectar room of solvent light. 
 
 " God moves in every tiny flower, 
 In all the vast eternal whole, 
 And breaks the widest range of power, 
 To build the temple mind of man. 
 • And God is seen and felt and heard, 
 And lingers round our every thought, 
 And gushes to the fountain head 
 Of every stream out living wrought. 
 And God is majesty sublime, 
 Is poet, painter, genius, rare, 
 Fills all the Anchor-head of time 
 And gushes through the Elysian air. 
 He sweeps the present board of ill 
 Is with us now and everywhere." 
 
16 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OE, 
 
 There is always something mysterious in 
 a truth that does not come within our wis- 
 dom of understanding or power of compre- 
 hension, always something that appears 
 wizard-like and elfish in facts that require 
 the light of science to bring to reason's 
 grasp. And mankind have never until in 
 recent years ploughed in scientific fields ; 
 have never wielded a key to unlock nature's 
 storehouse of deep-seated worth, and open 
 up illustrous truths that have long clamored 
 for power on earth. Nature has taken her 
 last drug or haschish of narcotic slumber. 
 She has lain in her bed of dormant ease, 
 until God's voice speaking to the mind of 
 man is casting aside her rippling garments 
 of idle seeming, and clothing herself with 
 vestments of regal power and use to the 
 great social hunger of mankind. The mind 
 of man, ever keeping pace with nature, has 
 become liberalized in accordance with 
 nature's divine law of progressive move- 
 ment, and has never usurped any claim but 
 the one of harmonious outreach from bygone 
 nonentities. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 17 
 
 " Old nature builds her storehouse deep, 
 And inlaid gems are hid from view ; 
 But God, the mighty Architect, 
 Gives here and there a promised few 
 To awaken man to deeper thought. 
 Beside the living stream outwrought." 
 
 The earth is graded — is built in layers of 
 evangelical truth and harmony of design. 
 The rudirnental strata of earthly substance 
 is solidified lava, a conglomerate mass pro- 
 pelled from the planet Saturn. Astrono- 
 mers, in the solvient light of spirit realms, 
 have detected in the planet Saturn a crus- 
 tacious mass resembling the condition of 
 lava when expelled from the burning crater 
 or thrown out from the convulsions of 
 Mother Earth. Astronomers have also 
 detected in that same planet a disposition to 
 garner for the formation of other worlds. 
 The rings that encompass the majesty of 
 Saturn are but reflected principles to govern 
 other worlds soon to be in motion. Saturn 
 throws off from her vestibule of strength the 
 homogeneous masses that collect from her 
 great system-house of fire. Saturn was hung 
 in space centuries before the earth took form 
 in the orbit of time. Let it be here under- 
 
18 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OB, 
 
 stood that the laws which govern Saturn 
 also govern earth. That her law of motion 
 is affixed to the motionary law governing 
 time. Saturn is largely imbued with the 
 principle of fire, and earth throws off a 
 focus of fire in exact proportion as she 
 receives that element from her mother Sat- 
 urn. Some portions of earth are more 
 highly imbued with that principle than oth- 
 ers, showing the exact condition of the 
 mother when the child earth was born. 
 
THE PROSE AND E03STRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAFTE11 V. 
 
 ^yHE inhabitants of Saturn very largely 
 -■iJ'jt resemble our North American Indian ; 
 '^? therefore, a branch stock was propa- 
 ~0 L gated into the stubborn element sent 
 into space. The Indian, or Eed Man, was 
 the basis of the great brotherhood of 
 man now extant on earth. As matter 
 becomes liberalized it assumes the finer 
 shapings of refinement, and harmonizes with 
 every element in space. Baxter wrote the 
 following lines of easy rhythm and beauty, 
 but little heeded the interior brilliancy of 
 conception in his works of daring damnation 
 and sin : 
 
 ' ; Be Thou, God, exulted high, 
 And as Thy glory fills the sky, 
 So let it be on earth displayed, 
 'Till Thou art here, as there, obeyed." 
 
20 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 Baxter never could have written anything 
 more exalting to the mind than the prayer 
 or wish expressed in those four lines of sub- 
 lime meaning and worth. Baxter's Saints' 
 Best is a codicil that humanity are willing 
 to leave in the back ground, where past faith 
 slumbered in intolerant woe. Baxter wrote 
 many a true line that was never credited to 
 him, because the world at that time was 
 dipped in fanaticism and bigotry, and any 
 stray inkling of liberal faith was crushed and 
 hid from the public mind. When mythology 
 reached its height of culminating power the 
 mind became sickened, and disgust crept 
 into the fold of slavish fear, and a wider 
 platform extended itself to ensure success to 
 the new grain of truth that was sprouting 
 from the old shell of corrupt, fetish and 
 false worship that hid the true light under 
 the robe of falsehood and guile. The Jew- 
 ish nation were slaves to their heathen 
 deities ; it was their false acme of pride that 
 laid their stumbling block around the false 
 altars of worldly power. God spoke to them 
 in the tinkling of bells and clarion notes that 
 called to arms a nation's warfare and tri- 
 umph. God spoke to them in the mystery 
 of a divided wisdom and knowledge, that 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LITE. 21 
 
 sought the downfall of some and the glori- 
 fied honor of those who rode in the car of 
 assumptive power. God had no filial bear- 
 ing to their realm of dignified authority, 
 justice no claim on their attention. They 
 rode the freebooter's saddle of contempt 
 along the highway of public acceptance, and 
 feared no jar from the undercurrent of 
 nonability. 
 
 "Hold, Jewish yoke of heathen power, 
 Who.se inner temple burns but dross, 
 Your fire God sodded for an hour, 
 But gains to feel at length a loss. 
 And through the halcyon day of time 
 Did bend your bow of promise rare. 
 What beauty in ancestral line 
 That hoists a flag of black despair." 
 
 The iHiberalit}' of church creeds is dying- 
 out, and a new formula of evangelic toler- 
 ance is dipping a beak into the public pool 
 and spurting out the foamy crescents that 
 ride on the waves of time, for the benefit of 
 popular show and private animosity. The 
 God-head of to-day bears on its surface the 
 glorious stamp of a liberalized Christianity. 
 The seeds of a new religion are sprouting in 
 the soil of free thought, and people will wor- 
 
22 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 ship at the shrine where reason holds the 
 guard- chain that makes fast the bond with 
 God. 
 
 The liberal Christians, or the free-thinking 
 men and women of our nineteenth century, 
 are laying a basis for the future grandeur of 
 earth. Mankind have drank the beverage of 
 hell-fire to the soul's satisfaction and dis- 
 gust, and the spirit that barred the road of 
 progress is, for the want of nourishment, 
 becoming weak and enfeebled, and laying in 
 wait for the force of circumstances to open 
 the fields of ignorant war that are scattered 
 in the background of American civilization. 
 The Roman Empire fed their camp fires 
 from the fund of eternal damnation. Noth- 
 ing so suited their slavish hearts as crime, 
 and hence, God, to them, was the chief pro- 
 pelling engine of onslaught and devastation, 
 that hung his cloud of strength for the 
 entire benefit of the Romish temples of cun- 
 ning art and skill, that fed their demon gods 
 on the heart's blood and vital strength of 
 the serfs or snails that crept under their 
 flourishing weapons of daring power. The 
 cruelty of those olden times hangs like a pall 
 of terror in the background of ancient fame. 
 The treadwheel of time has laid many a 
 
THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 23 
 
 soothing plaster on the open wounds of slav- 
 ish discord that burrows in every locality on 
 the face of time. Egotistical assumption 
 lias driven more nails of error than bigots 
 have been able to clinch and hold fast, for 
 the reason that assumptive power claims 
 everything, and bigotry has no assurance ; 
 it sticks to the text of dogmatic rule and 
 possesses great hardihood of endurance to 
 maintain first principles. Bigotry never 
 sticks pins of doubt ; her faith is well 
 grounded, and although it may be in error 
 reason holds the key note to an open con- 
 fession, and sooner or later drops a bar of 
 music into the old chime of selfish monopoly. 
 
 "The keyof Reason, ever bright. 
 
 Unlocks ;it length the darkest night; 
 
 And leads the willing mind to see 
 
 The beauty of that golden key 
 
 That hangs its loop on every brow, 
 
 To await the prestige of a vow 
 
 Made to the throne of Reason, when 
 
 ■Gross ignorance walked on earth with men. 
 
 The time is past, and Reason's sway 
 
 Is making night appear like day ; 
 
 And ever on the course of time 
 
 She'll fledge her flight to the sublime, 
 
 And never falter on her track, 
 
 ^Till God is gained and Heaven brought back, 
 
 'To mingle with the affairs of men, 
 
24 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 In Christlike purity, a gem 
 That sparkles inland and ov'rflows 
 Oar deepest joys and darkest woes, 
 And leads us with its mystic light 
 Far out to God on beacon height; 
 "Whose stranded feet have reached at last 
 The mirage that will bridge the past, 
 And sink the floating car of doubt 
 Where nought will care to find it out ; 
 And then can Reason search and find 
 The height and breadth of humankind." 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 (§$N the great social maelstrom there is 
 jgjj a disposition to break away from 
 ""^p. restraint, to fledge the demon rule for 
 <j l a flight beyond this continent of 
 acknowledged freedom, and to put no bars 
 on the course of time to impede the great 
 spirit of progress that is tearing along, 
 regardless of the fluttering wail of discon- 
 tent that moves inland for selfish monopoly. 
 Freedom is taking a wide stride and ever 
 brings an olive branch of hope to the 
 struggle in bondage. No pent-up cavern 
 of egotism is safe, where the great sentinel 
 of life is left to go or stand on a road where 
 sluggards never flourish ; freedom tunes her 
 march for every occasion, and drinks in the 
 spirit of reform with greedy thirst. The 
 harp of a thousand strings was tuned for the 
 
'26 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OH, 
 
 great, adventuresome spirit of progress, and 
 every tune has a harmonious keeping with 
 the interior thirst of mankind. The birth of 
 freedom was the miraculous conception that 
 will flourish like the green bay tree, and 
 throw out its branches of strength and com- 
 fort to mingle at every hearthstone and at 
 every institution of Christian worship. God 
 speed the day when its clarion notes will 
 sound their royal anthems in every pool 
 where life exists and where intellectuality is 
 the stamp mark to success. God speed the 
 day when Gethsemane will sprout the true 
 Christ on earth ; when the royal banner of 
 peace will wave its triumphant folds over 
 every outstanding post of slavery, and God's 
 blessing will make bright the fields of living 
 .green, whose verdure has ever borne the 
 blasting touch of moral pestilence and out- 
 wrought barbarity. Slavery has ever been 
 an institution of wrong, and her bugle notes 
 have been curses loud and long, and the 
 prolonged wail of nations have been the key 
 note to usher in a free torch that will burn to 
 the world's advantage and to the world's har- 
 monious friendship and brotherly love. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETSY OF LIFE. 27 
 
 *'• When nations sweep their board of crime, 
 Of fettered wrongs and feudal flames, 
 Then may our birthright gift proclaim 
 The glory of God's will Divine." 
 
 Civilians of eveiy era of progress have 
 planted the seeds to a Christian reformatory 
 action ; the olden pedagogue style of the 
 lash and coercive system of rule did not suit 
 the advancement of mind. The whip lost 
 its charm in family circles long ago, and the 
 ferrule has dropped from the school room by 
 the mutual consent of scholar and teacher. 
 Reform advances, whether in family circles, 
 in the social interchange of thought and 
 feeling, or in the great dynasties of politi- 
 cal power. The spirit of love is creeping in 
 to disturb the olden element of cruel despo- 
 tism ; and so God furnishes the means to 
 reformatory activity by simply dropping a 
 bar of music into the old chime of discon- 
 tent. God never breaks a promise. We are 
 the children of Israel for to-day, and the 
 promised land awaits our wandering foot- 
 steps. As we have prepared every field of 
 earth's mirage land and fitted it for the 
 harvest day, so will we be prepared to till 
 the fields of promised beauty in heaven. 
 
28 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 
 
 The law of adaptability keeps race with our 
 every movement. There is no hurry in 
 God's physical or moral laws : they are even 
 handled and prone to harmony, prone to- 
 reap the benefit of every act and feel the 
 unfaltering hand outstretched to guide the 
 way. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 |rep^HERiE is symmetry pervading every 
 H/>} portion and every minutia of the great 
 ^^ ) solar systems hung in space. This 
 ' Sv ^ world, bearing the name of earth, is 
 but a ray in the great focus of light and 
 motionary grandeur that God holds in his 
 right hand of love and strength. It is but a 
 speck in the vastness of the great river of 
 life, and we, its children, are but sojourners 
 awaiting the messenger to deliver us to a 
 liigher grade of active duty. This earth is 
 about midway in the scale of planetary 
 greatness. It is the hub, so to speak, of 
 •scientific exploration. There is no other 
 planet yet explored that presents a surface 
 of such mixed attributes as does earth. 
 There are planets that are far in advance in 
 mind, culture and research, and high intel- 
 lectual grandeur, that can scale the highest 
 
30 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 
 
 walls in God's temples of knowledge. Those 
 minds are stupendous in might and starry 
 lustre to build to the acme of God's glorious 
 whole ; their sweep of use is far removed 
 from earth ; their headland point of accumi- 
 lation ever points to the throne eternal, ever 
 reaches for God's key note of harmonious 
 blending that unites all worlds to the centric 
 force of being. God has so arranged his 
 plan of salvation that every soul bears on its 
 surface the stamp of its legitimate attain- 
 ments. Man will never lose sight of his 
 starting point, because it is so fixed in his 
 interior structure that its call is ever heard 
 and recognized by some portion of our 
 being. We only radiate from our capacity 
 of memory ; we can only take our life's solu- 
 tion from the paternal tree that sprouted our 
 advancement, and the maternal breastplate 
 of nourishment and love that protected the 
 sprouted germ of our existence. That is as 
 far as our legal claim can ever take us on 
 the retrograde road of life. If we have ever 
 had a prior existence, as some philosophers 
 assert, we have no key to unlock the dark 
 passage leading to the setting star that only 
 shines to our acceptance from our earthly 
 basis of knowledge. To that point in our 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 31' 
 
 tabernacle of structure we can ever go back 
 to and ever hold on our journey of life. If 
 we have had a prior existence, which I very 
 much doubt, because reason does not hold it 
 available to us, it would manifest itself to 
 some portion of our being, would stick a pin 
 of cosmopolite significance into some vest- 
 ment of soul or body, admitting a prior 
 existence, and we lose individuality, because,, 
 possessing the faculty of having been some- 
 thing else, we still retain the faculty of 
 becoming another structure, with no mem- 
 ory to retain this life, because memory fails, 
 us here to reach back of this life. Memory 
 is our safeguard, ever ready to leap back- 
 wards to the assistance of the present and 
 ever treasuring the present for future 
 advancement. Memory holds us to a pur- 
 pose in life. If we had no past to retain we 
 should have no aim in the future ; we should 
 be drifters on the shores of time, aimless and 
 purposeless, — a dead weight of accumulated 
 structure. 
 
 " No purpose here, no purpose there, 
 Nor mind to see nor thought to care." 
 
 Thus we should stand nonentites, or, sen- 
 tinels without the power to guard the 
 
32 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 
 
 present gifts of God. We are fearfully and 
 wonderfully made is an ancient scrip of 
 truth, but the fear and wonder lies in our 
 noncomprehension of Divine wisdom and 
 law, 
 
 ■* '( That rules us with its magic touch, 
 And guards us with its mind sublime," 
 
 Till we are prone to believe ourselves God's 
 special objects of care ; that his great pur- 
 pose was to build us for worshippers at his 
 throne, regardless of any will or desire of 
 our own ; making us machines to worship the 
 machinist, making us tools to work for his 
 benefit, without fully comprehending the 
 channel wherein we can best serve him. 
 Such has been the world's theory of God, 
 and, to some extent, the old harness of 
 ignorance remains, and its fetters are bind- 
 ing cords to the spirit of progress. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEK VIII. 
 
 llH OD lias surrounded every altar of 
 ?g|j| worship, He has left the key to 
 ^j|> knowledge beside the flourishing stream 
 o of free-thought. God is the masonic 
 temple whose every branch of office has the 
 golden seal of outwrought merit. God 
 flourishes no personality before the world 
 of matter and the world of spirit. He 
 was never cooped to a structured image 
 of power ; his face never wore the stamp 
 of individuality ; never wore the meekness of 
 the loving Jesus. His principality of power 
 surmounts every gradation of honor and 
 winds its key of strength around every 
 weakened part on the vineyard of time. 
 God was, is, and ever will be, and we can only 
 comprehend the great giver of all life and its 
 many blessings, both in the material and 
 spiritual, from the stand point of natural 
 
34 MAKIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 
 
 affinity. God is mingled with every fibre of 
 our being, — to both the outward forming 
 of materialty and the inner spirit of redeemed 
 worth that pierces through many grades of 
 wisdom and ethereal grandeur. God is our 
 starting point and the end of our proposed 
 journey. God is the finale of matter and the 
 ultimatum of spirit ; the great life stream 
 that flows through every channel whether 
 formed by nature or by the intuitive mind 
 of man. 
 
 " God folds his armor, bright with use, 
 
 Around each graded seat of care ; 
 
 And holds aloft the signal gun, 
 
 To awaken us from dark despair. 
 
 We fledge our flight, and God is near 
 
 To bind with truth the golden sphere, 
 
 And make life's journey, dulled with pain, 
 
 A loud hurrah, a wild acclaim, 
 
 Sped from the spirit, freed from earth, 
 
 In token of its new-found birth." 
 
 We cannot realize the formation spirit 
 without a keen sense of gratitude to the 
 great soul that burns an altar fire for 
 the illumination of every pent-house on the 
 outpost of time. God moves through the sys- 
 tematic law of cause and effect, and governs 
 through the law of comprehensive wisdom. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 35 
 
 The force of circumstances never alter one 
 jot or tittle of God's outspoken wisdom 
 and power, that lays an unction of hope and 
 promise beside our will of active merit, 
 which fledges itself in accordance with 
 our interior perception of truth. God is the 
 soul of honest intention towards humanity, 
 the fundamental basis on which mankind 
 can build to advantage, and hope for suc- 
 cess to follow in the rear of any adventure. 
 There has ever been a disposition on the 
 part of man to drink at the fountain of 
 the living God, to cherish a seat of power 
 above the confines of earth, but limited knowl- 
 edge has dressed the God-head of mercy and 
 love in a spurious suit that could not with- 
 stand the wear and tear of time ; and when 
 reason could grasp a basis outside of 
 mythology, the world had sprouted a truth 
 that would throw out a branch of hope to 
 every generation and build a throne of legal 
 worth, whose vastness is the great river of 
 thought to mankind. This river has been 
 bridged by error's sway until man could 
 push the spirit of freedom to the standard 
 of recognized merit in the solution of the 
 world's mysterious make-up and gradual 
 development. It has only been a question 
 
36 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; Oil, 
 
 of time with the great vibrative spirit of 
 power with regard to the unfolding of natu- 
 ral law, which would necessarily follow when 
 mind possessed the key to unlock the funda- 
 ments to first principles. Until that time 
 should arrive, the necessity for a God laid its 
 demand around the pent-up minds of unde- 
 veloped manhood and womanhood ; they 
 grasped what their minds craved in a 
 superior power ; God must be a personality, 
 wielding strength in the overarch of head- 
 land sky. Thus the olden nations that have 
 passed away have seen God from a stand 
 point of selfish monopoly. Tyranny was his 
 first law of rule, because that suited their 
 code of dealing with each other. God ever 
 assumed a guise to suit their outreach after 
 power ; and they judged of his worth by the 
 success of their feudal forces, that hung 
 their flags of terror at every outlet of reform 
 where God placed a finger of consent. 
 Those olden nations were steeped in crime ; 
 their bloody trophies were a disgrace on 
 their escutcheon of nationality ; their clarion 
 notes of war sounded the spirit of malignity, 
 and God's voice could only be heard through 
 the channel of assumptive pride and power. 
 "Who can disclaim, with the light now before 
 
THE PROSE AND TOETRY OF LIFE. 37 
 
 the world, the inappropriateness of worship- 
 ping at a shrine where ancient ignorance gath- 
 ered its holocaust of crime,and where ancient 
 bigotry steeped itself in damnation's bitter 
 cup of woe ? Who would go back to the 
 God of olden history ? Who would kneel to 
 the God of Israel, whose compassion was 
 withheld in her hour of tribulation, when the 
 heart of the whole nation went out in sorrow 
 and prayer to their God of fancied worth ? 
 The world has crept away from the halluci- 
 nations of past weakness and imbecility of 
 thought. There is no age on the calendar 
 of time that mankind, at the present time, 
 would be willing to drop back to. Where- 
 fore is it, if the past God-head was a 
 structure of truth, and competent to serve 
 every outreach of principle ? There must 
 have been a great leakage of the true 
 material, and God have been cheated of his 
 true worshippers, unless the true God 
 stepped to the rescue and planted his foot of 
 firmness on the entailed grounds of ancient 
 rubbish. 
 
 God has ever swelled his power to the full' 
 of individual comprehension. Every note of 
 compass has been in harmony with man's 
 intellectual ability to grasp the bar to the 
 
38 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 reform. God is the effulgent ray that darts 
 its splendor of conception across our 
 benighted vision and lights up every diverg- 
 ing line in our course of conduct. But we, 
 with the old mortality of sin, fail to see God 
 in the truth and beaiity of his purpose 
 towards us. We fail to note his liberal hand 
 of many comforts bestowed on our wayward, 
 lives and surrounding our feet that lead in 
 error's paths. We fail to acknowledge the 
 receipt of the blessings that are showered 
 around us regardless of our asking. God's 
 gifts are bestowed alike on the just and on 
 the unjust, on the lowly born and on the 
 fledgelings from the higher grades of social 
 bearing; all drink from the spontaneous 
 gifts of God and all give out the asking- 
 hand of help from the great interior want of 
 human needs that are so dependent on 
 God's sources of life. 
 
 It would not make our lives more blest if 
 we acknowledged God our friend, and on 
 our bended knees rendered thanks for the 
 unwearied efforts of God, our heavenly 
 father, who works through all law to main- 
 tain his systematic keeping with mankind. 
 The expression of God's mercies are mani- 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 39 
 
 fold and ever given in proportion to our 
 need and well being. Every law in the 
 physical universe is an abiding framework of 
 strength and support to our exterior frame- 
 work of earthly purpose. God's physical 
 law in earthly structure runs through all 
 matter with equal adaptiveness to the 
 structure it represents. Man's whole phy- 
 sical being is governed entirely by the law 
 of give and take : in proportion as it gives it 
 receives, else there would be a cessation of 
 funds to supply the looms of manufacture 
 which are attached to every standard work 
 in God's system-house of vast design. God's 
 vastness and incomprehensiveness will ever 
 flourish an outreach to our mental vision. 
 We cannot stop the tide of wealth that will 
 flow in upon the soul when the prison bars 
 are loosed, and the kingdom of ethereality 
 is spread before us with all its gradation 
 seats to claim our acceptance and our will to 
 accomplish. God built the earth from a 
 necessity in the law of progress, or, the law 
 of expulsion, that underlies every planet 
 fixed in space. Every planet of any magni- 
 tude throws off the forces for centralization 
 once in four thousand years, and the forces 
 thrown off harmonize to the proportion of 
 
40 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 the parent planet. The law that hangs a 
 world in space is the encircling arm of mag- 
 netic gravitation that encompasses all matter' 
 and throws its shield of enwrapment around 
 the spiral points of heaven. When Saturn 
 discharged her accumulated wealth the 
 fundaments existed in the matter thrown off 
 to a coalesce consistency, and the law of 
 gravitation pointed to centralization. The 
 world dropped into the space assigned to it 
 as naturally as a child drops into its mother's 
 arms, and undergoes a process of recuper- 
 ation and individualization in very much the 
 same manner as the child from the chrysalis 
 state takes on the conditions to complete 
 individuality. When the earth had assumed 
 her basis, or, had focalized to its central 
 shaping, it then began to attach to itself the 
 qualifications of the parent organism, and 
 build in proportion as it received the mother- 
 element and in proportion as it took heart in 
 its own responsibility, because the world 
 has a free will agency of its own, which is 
 the undergrade or financial prop which 
 makes it capable of its individual merit and. 
 individual progressive movement. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 world from its chaotic state was 
 obliged to build what might be termed 
 '@^? chaotic structure, or, in other words, 
 ^(t" to build from the material then in use, 
 which, according to history, science and 
 reason, must have been crude and unshapely, 
 and in a state of flurry and bewilderment, in 
 consequence of its new-found tokens of 
 wealth and individual keeping. The world 
 has ever built from the law of demand and 
 interior fitness of accomplishment. Hurry 
 or drive make no part in the law of progres- 
 sive movement that works out its own 
 salvation, and enters on every round of 
 ascent with easy assurance and assumptive 
 merit ; that picks its way clear of all distrust, 
 and with a self-satisfaction that cherishes 
 no ill-will to any other world on the up-hill 
 
42 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 "Mankind could there a lesson take, 
 And move aloft with easy tread, 
 
 If in their search they did not seek 
 The creedal system to break bread. 
 
 " For creeds are dogmatizers all, 
 That seek no truth outside of ken, 
 
 And wield no weapons of defence 
 But what comport with priestly men. 
 
 '• Dogmatic rule will yet succomb, 
 And priestly witchcraft have an end, 
 
 When mind can ferret out the truth, 
 And to its God in substance bend. 
 
 "The world must drink the truth at last, 
 And templed fame will drop its crest 
 
 Into the cesspool that awaits 
 
 The part of all, by God not blest. 
 
 " God's rule will surge the world at length, 
 And Mystery's shades will drop apart, 
 
 When light will to the world descend 
 Which hitherto hath seemed so dark. 
 
 " The God of Israel hears the cry, 
 And angels whisper, peace is near ; 
 
 We'll break the fettered yoke of sin, 
 And bring mankind without a fear." 
 
 " The pearly gates are open wide, 
 But earthly vision fails to see 
 The extended hand of Christ, our guide, 
 Our Father God, the living tree 
 Whose branches wave from every port. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 43 
 
 Or loophole on the shores of time, 
 Until at length each waifling caught 
 Must sure acknowledge God its own ; 
 And with the stamp of Key Divine 
 All nature reaches the sublime," 
 
 Because all nature has a part in the resur- 
 rection morn of ethereal grandeur. All 
 nature is stamped with the divinity of 
 purpose, and leads out from every stage 
 of development unto a higher platform of 
 movement. God's system-house of natural 
 atonements will lay aside its deformities in 
 accordance with its interior ability to grasp 
 a higher schedule of attainments. There is 
 an imperceptible mind governing all matter, 
 a radiating principle that we cannot detect 
 with the earth formality of vision ; but when 
 the earth portion of our being is removed, 
 we are brought to the more subtile influences 
 that control all the gradations of earthly 
 substance. We cannot see the mind of man, 
 only in its outwrought workings : no more can 
 we see the mind in matter, only in the out- 
 ward solution that meets our vision of want, 
 and appeals to our sense of touch in myriads 
 of w T ays that our vision of earth fails in 
 detecting the key of movement. And thus 
 we are led to suppose that no underground 
 
44 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 strata of mind accomplishes the world's sys- 
 tematic growth and beauty, and we are led 
 to believe that chance is the master builder 
 and finisher of this epitome of power and 
 grandeur we now inhabit, and which throws 
 its banner of growth far into the world of 
 magnetic fervor and divine accomplishment. 
 To thee, Oh, God ! we bow with a heart 
 filled with reverential trust and mind reach- 
 ing to the precints of thy spirit locality for 
 seeds of wisdom to plant on the river shore 
 of time, and for seeds of truth, whose garner- 
 ing will be fruits mete for the hand of love 
 to cherish. 
 
 ' ' The Hand whose beauty claims our eye, 
 
 And ever proves that God is nigh, 
 
 With chastening rod and love sublime 
 
 That e'en outlasts the law of time ; 
 
 And with its filtering touch of care, 
 
 Makes earth sublime and Heaven most fair," 
 
 To gladden our interior perception and make 
 us willing strivers for the love-house of God's 
 own keeping. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 wpOD stamps the individuality of purpose 
 H^| around every soul bearing legitimate 
 %$$ attainment, to foster the seed of pro- 
 "^ gressive keeping and build a citadel or 
 fortress for home protection. In all the 
 constellation of heaven renowned celebrity, 
 Ursa Major flaunts the widest range of com- 
 bative greatness. The shimmering lights 
 from her myriad of stars proclaim her power 
 to make effulgent her glory of action. Every 
 orb hung out to the world possesses the 
 key-note to a variety of tunes in the great 
 liarmonious scale of activity and promul- 
 gation of divine command, that hung a 
 weight of glory around this "world that no 
 other world possesses, because no other 
 world possesses the innate seeds to develope 
 through all other worlds, and hang, at last, 
 a, key of strength or acknowledgement on 
 
46 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 the throne of ultimate success and ultimate 
 supremacy over the devastations of the grov- 
 elling monster sin. I do not say that other 
 worlds have no honor to sustain above the 
 present need of use, but the government of 
 some supreme driftings of powerful lustre 
 that hang on the cord of love are prelates to 
 the cause they represent, scarcely going 
 beyond their own orbit, because the egotis- 
 tical bearing of some planets surround their 
 own gradation seat, and cause the charm of 
 variety in planetary system and co-operation 
 for divine grandeur and beauty of purpose. 
 The planet Mars has a system-house of 
 divine workmanship. Her fields of living 
 green are staple funds that glow with use in 
 the vastness of an eternity in motion. The 
 beauty in planetary space follows the round 
 of each orbit according to its filial duty of 
 design. All planets hang out their flag of 
 accountability to the law that governs their 
 field of motion. Each planet moves on its 
 own axis, or, by its own cohesive strata of 
 power, — the seedling of its own accounta- 
 bility and worth. God gives to each its 
 own, in the outgrowth of planetary concep- 
 tion, in the same ratio that individuality in 
 humanity's structure receives its stamp-mark 
 
THE POETRY AND PROSE OF LIFE. 47 
 
 of approval. There is no cheat in God's 
 deal, because God is a God of justice, and 
 wears his face of approval or disapproval in 
 accordance with his laws, which science will 
 establish and maintain, as soon as mind can 
 receive the props to advantage and wear the 
 truth as an honor conferred on the intel- 
 lectual ability of the nineteenth century, that 
 is moving on the wings of the crested bird, 
 whose music will gush through the crus- 
 tations of ancient rebeldom. The Grecian 
 monarch, whose glory has arisen on every 
 outpost of historic lore, would fain have 
 grappled for the worlds in space ; but the 
 limited knowledge of antiquarian Greece 
 bound all their power of usurpation to the 
 thraldom temples of earth, and no ancestral 
 line, from the Grecian or Romanish cess- 
 pool of slavery, has partaken of the beverage 
 whose lasting worth has filled the new world 
 with the baptismal font that curtails to no 
 creed or dries up for want of the living 
 stream to surge to its brink of use. 
 
 The creedal system still maintains its 
 stronghold of power wherever the yoke of 
 ignorance is worn and impelled by dotage 
 and sackcloth and ashes antiquity. Rome 
 built her fires for the devil's service, and 
 
48 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 when the night appeared, when no man could 
 see, the monster came forth in shape of men, 
 wearing the sacerdotal cloth and umpire of 
 rule that maintained its sway to the utter 
 disregard of justice or right. Rome will one 
 day awake to her inability of service, will 
 one day acknowledge the injustice of her 
 creedal synagogues of power and fiery furn- 
 aces of woe, that burned for the honor of 
 priestly renown and wisdom of application. 
 The Roman pulates were averse to any 
 code of moral government that did not com- 
 port with their lordly sway of deal, and the 
 heterogeneous masses that ever make up 
 the bulk of society were mere fledgelings 
 with no power to act, and no skill to exact 
 power. Thus has Rome grown in bondage 
 and servility. It will take the clarion notes 
 of some might} 7, attempt to pull down her 
 bulwarks of error and pest-houses of fame, 
 that have dealt largely to some that others 
 might rot in the degredation of their hellish 
 systems of feted terror. Rome was mighty 
 in her carnage and woe ; but to-day, with 
 the light of civilization beaming over the 
 world's stricken streams, her glory is cor- 
 ruption and her breastplate of honor the 
 devil's scabbard, worn for home protection 
 
THE PKOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 49 
 
 •and deeds of daring darkness, that fleece her 
 coffers of wealth and her humanity of aim, 
 or, purpose in life. Thus has Eome become 
 a dwindler ; her once sturdy arm has 
 become inefficient and ineffectual with her 
 present stamp of use, that will find no chan- 
 nel open to her investigating touch of deal. 
 
MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR y 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Sts^HE Roman Empire is fledged for a 
 ^)c^ flight to some higher key of motion ; 
 |||| ) but it will be a work of time to move 
 V her away from her hatching ground, 
 and fit her for the enjoyment of a new 
 field of labor and consequent worth. The 
 Romans are well skilled in the arts and 
 sciences, but their old traditionary lore 
 serves as their basis from which to rear 
 their platform of accountability. I wonder 
 at the illiberal spirit maintained where intel- 
 lect can master the stubborn facts of God's 
 own creating. God is the standard bearer 
 to the world; and the color sought for by 
 mankind rears its faintest tinge and is» 
 brought out to its full glory by the reve- 
 lations from the inner temple of man, 
 God's soul, so to speak, is the fountain 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 51 
 
 where all system finds an entrance and 
 takes root in myriads of inland shapings, 
 that must be fathomed by the soul element 
 in man. God is the root of knowledge, the 
 universe, the upheaved tree, whose branches 
 have assumed all the varieties that the 
 inland seed could sprout. The germ of all 
 process lies in the embryotic state until 
 mind hurls at it a figure of use. There is in 
 every chrysalis of organic matter the pro- 
 pelling current, or, the tissue of thought, 
 that mounts its own ladder of ascent and 
 rears for its own system of use. The mind 
 that fashions the rose in all its symmetry 
 and beauty, in all its wealth to the touch, 
 and in all its splendor of fragrance to the 
 soul, could in no way, make the starry but- 
 tercup or the distilling bluebell. Each 
 effulgent flower-queen that lights up the 
 border fields of earth, and awakes to greater 
 lustre in the higher cultured fields of living 
 beauty, builds from its own monitor and 
 mind purpose in God's service. Every 
 particle of matter contains the solvent light 
 of reason, contains the embryo or intel- 
 lectuality, of its own make-up. Mind is as 
 diversified in nature and her workings as in 
 humanity's broad seal of typical cutlery. 
 
OZ MAIIIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 That breaks no rod of iron will, but serves 
 from its own stand point of active energy. 
 The growth of the natural universe, or, the 
 universe of matter, depends on God's love- 
 abiding law in nature, or, the systematic out- 
 lav of interior design. The building of the 
 earth's templed grandeur has been accom- 
 plished by repeated effort and constant, 
 energetic movement in elementary forces 
 and concert in action. Every board of deal 
 or generation of effort has wielded its 
 strength in accordance with the outside 
 grasp for a more liberal footing and beauty 
 of compass in the formalities of earth's fash- 
 ion-house. 
 
 The origin of man is hidden in a cave of 
 doubt and uncertainty. The old history 
 version of man's birth and advent into this 
 world from the chaos of God's unstable 
 mind is fast loosing its hold on the minds of 
 thinking people. That process of construc- 
 tion was the easiest to handle by the erudite 
 philosophers of ancient theism. It best 
 suited the minds of the generation then on 
 the field of action. They had no power of 
 mind or scope of wisdom to fathom a single 
 law, radiating from the God-head of purpose, 
 only what could be limited to the outspoken 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. b o 
 
 command of a personal God or Savior. It is 
 easy enough for mind, at the present day, 
 that believes in spirit communion, or believes 
 that grains of truth have found their way 
 from heaven to earth by some process or 
 procedure of conve} T ance ; I say, it is easy 
 enough- for such minds to realize how some 
 portions of ancient history glow with the 
 fervor of truths that cannot be gainsaid or 
 lost to the world, because they were given to 
 the world as keepsakes, or love tokens, of 
 use and beauty, whose lustre can never grow 
 dim ; for the rippling voices of angelic wis- 
 dom proclaimed the starry gems that 
 illuminate the pages of sacred history. 
 
 God's troop of angel guides surround the 
 throne eternal, and give as they receive from 
 the liberal hand that ever opens at the call 
 of need. Angels, at the time when the Bible 
 was written, had to deal with crude material, 
 had to fashion their grains of truth in 
 accordance with the divine sway of com- 
 mand, that allows no coercion or impulse to 
 drift mankind bej^ond the power of reason's 
 grasp of accomplishment; and hence, we find 
 Throughout the whole Bible all things in the 
 keeping of a personal God, because that 
 suited the intellect or mind capacity of 
 
54 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 attainment, when the world was in its new- 
 ness and consequent thraldom. When Plato, 
 the world renowned philosopher, lit his torch 
 for the world's benefit, the world could not 
 accept his theories, because Plato's mind 
 reached out beyond the age in which he 
 lived. His mind drank in the truths that 
 were in advance of his earth career. He 
 sprouted the dormant seed for the next 
 generation to water and keep green, for time 
 to bring to its full fruition of accomplish- 
 ment. Every age has had its Plato, or, its 
 master mind, that has left the leading strings 
 for some other hand to grasp and lead the 
 way to higher truths and higher aspirations. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XII. 
 
 HH T i s analogous with reason for mankind 
 jgy to fashion their starting point in the 
 r Qfj8 natural field of labor, as, for instance, 
 <^ the growth of any structure must 
 depend on its basil text for support. Man 
 is but a structure from the law of cause and 
 effect. There must have been a necessity 
 ior man, else the causes that fashioned his 
 outfit and career would never have been 
 brought in requisition. Man is as necessary 
 to God as God to man ; both dwell in the 
 orbit of anterior design. God never fash- 
 ioned himself. Had such have been the 
 «ase, there must have been a break in the 
 system-house of labor. Allow God to 
 have been made, and you wrap around him a 
 personality that can never fit him, because 
 
56 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 
 
 God dwells in all things ; his compass of 
 personality binds hirn to all shapings, ia 
 the tiniest footfall of the toddling child we 
 hear the voice of God, our father, and along 
 the rippling current of some daring deed of 
 heroism we hear the impending tread of 
 Jehovah's line of march. God so surrounds 
 himself that there is no leakage for any 
 other power to grasp and call its own. 
 
 " God so surrounds the walls of fate, 
 And moves nis inland car so high, 
 
 That all the glories, God await, 
 And all the temples reach the sky,. 
 
 And there abound in living worth, 
 Each typical of its Godly birth." 
 
 God has so arranged man's platform of 
 deal that his harness is fitted at his starting 
 point, and he can in no way shuffle it off^ 
 for both points of the law affix its stamp- 
 mark of defeat or success. The only line 
 given us that we can handle to advantage is 
 the rein of freedom, that will lengthen or 
 contract as we garner for the benefit of 
 maintaining study and upright principles.. 
 The Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any 
 finding him should slay him ; and thus has. 
 God put a mark upon every soul bearing 
 figurative affinity to purposes of action;, 
 
THE PEOSE AND POETP.Y OF LIFE. 57 
 
 and the linger stamp of God's indelible testi- 
 mony searches through every portion of our 
 being and finds us, whether we be laggards 
 around his temple throne of grace or servers, 
 waiting at the door of acceptance, — we are 
 sure to be found ; for by their fruits shall 
 they be known, (and by their deeds shall 
 they be accepted); is a scrap worthy to be 
 appended to every soul on the highway road 
 of life. We are all creedists as far as deeds 
 are concerned, or services rendered, to main- 
 tain our classified dealings with each other. 
 We never go outside of self for motives 
 to act from, because self is our basis of 
 structure, and maintains its supremacy 
 unflinchingly. We garner for self ; we reap 
 the benefit of others labor, for self ; we rob, 
 steal, murder, for self ; we plant thorns and 
 we gather roses to carry out some scheme of 
 fostering self to advantage. Every indi- 
 vidual acts from his own stand point, or T 
 gradation seat, of selfish monopoly. Some 
 garner for the outside man to the utter exclu- 
 sion of the inner fortress of power, that is 
 to take precedence on the road that leads to 
 life everlasting. Some pick pearls and 
 string them for all future advancement, and 
 wear them that their shimmering light may 
 
58 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 serve to light up the pathway of those stray- 
 ing ones found outside of the Christian's 
 vineyard of strength. Paul served for the 
 monopoly of selfish aim. He was a caterer 
 i'or false honors ; a Jesuit, serving God 
 through the broad channel made by the 
 devil's stride of deal. To say that Paul was 
 a sycophant would only be stating a truth ; 
 for his mode of deal had a rubber-like basis 
 that bounded a backball to himself at every 
 •throw on the stage of his eventful career. 
 Paul sought an edifice of honor to overthrow 
 the Egyptian temples of fame and build 
 to the glory of the twelve apostolic strong- 
 holds of power. 
 
 The feudal camp-fires of the old world 
 sent their smoke and ashes to the next battle 
 door of freedom for an entrance where their 
 power would yet maintain its sway. The 
 old world has been fleeced of its power. 
 The egotism and self-delusion that once 
 wrapped their prime movers is a trailing 
 badge of defect, and the innovations of the 
 new world have somewhat disturbed the 
 growth of their fancied temples of worth. 
 The spirit to build anew, or patch up, the 
 t old hedge rows of decaying lustre, is faint 
 beside the spirit of truth and liberal Christi- 
 
THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LITE. 59 
 
 anity, that is pouring its wealth of promise 
 around the more modern fields of worship. 
 "Truth is mighty and will prevail": and 
 modern Christianity is nearing the univer- 
 <ecelum of truthful purposes of action. The 
 key-note to progress is Truth, and her waving 
 folds will yet sweep the earth of prejudice, 
 and the scarecrow feet of mythological 
 •deception and devil-daring presumption, 
 that fleeces all honor away from God and 
 man. 
 
MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OB, 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 [81SNjj®HEN Christ reared his platform of 
 >iit'ji% salvation he made the floating bridge 
 S^ as broad as possible, that none need 
 * be lost for want of safe footing on the 
 right side of his holy career. Christ's deeds 
 of love are embalmed in the holy precepts 
 and examples that hearts, attuned to his 
 keeping, set along the rugged road of life- 
 Christ has never died to the world. His 
 holy mission will be everlasting and ever 
 enduring — the rock of ages, whose cleaving- 
 will last through all time, and find an anchor- 
 seat of pruning on the shores of spirit life- 
 Christ is the redeeming hand of mercy, left 
 to flourish on the border and hedge rows" of 
 earthly experience. Christ came into the 
 world to save from sin, by the light his pure 
 and loving deeds would shed abroad for 
 mankind to be led and governed by. 
 
THE PEOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 61 
 
 "His emblematic life of love 
 
 Is passport to the courts above." 
 
 At no period of the world's advancement 
 lias Christ been recognized, sustained and 
 loved, as now. He is entering on the broad 
 field of revolutionizing the world, and he 
 heads every outstanding army that is rebel 
 to the cause of freedom. Christ maintains 
 his sway with easy forbearance, knowing 
 that humanity's need will wing its way to 
 his throne of generous deal, and also 
 knowing the proneness of the human heart to 
 search in back paths for the guiding star 
 to rear an eminence in the future. Christ's 
 key of strength, or, his wide range of influ- 
 ence, was in the versatility of his adaptability 
 to every harmonious link in the great social, 
 political and financial chain that binds the 
 brotherhood of man around the altar of duty, 
 
 "That leads beside the Savior's cross, 
 An emblem pure, and free from guile," 
 
 And also an emblem, whose majesty of rear- 
 ing will ever serve the world as a scaffold of 
 pure attainment. How wide has been the 
 range of Christ's blood? How deep and 
 liow skilful theologians have dipped the err- 
 ing ones of earth, and how regardless the 
 
62 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 ceremony of saving ordinance has been of 
 any interior change or drifting out of the 
 bugbear that travels the world under s©> 
 many different guises. 
 
 " And always with a smiling face. 
 The man of God keeps even pace. 
 And shows for every quaking fear 
 A stronghold in his creed so dear, 
 That fits around each wayward heart 
 That has been called by God apart, 
 Or has been changed by faith alone, 
 To worship at the creedal throne." 
 
 Ministers of all ages have sought strength 
 and popular footing for their system of 
 divine favors, tied up and labelled " Ortho- 
 doxy," or, Christianity systematized to meet 
 the wants of as many as "believe as I 
 believe," or, "see as I see," or, "hear the 
 voice of conscience through my channel of 
 hearing." Some there are who fellowship 
 with church organization to save the trouble 
 of thinking ; and, by linking themselves with 
 a body in the church militant, they are walk- 
 ing safely on, without the least trouble of 
 looking out ways and means to govern the 
 journey. Some there are who step into the 
 fold of Christian worship for the ostensible- 
 purpose of having the world know that 
 
THE PROSE AND POETKY OF LIFE. 63 
 
 through the atoning blood of Christ they 
 have been brought to the mercy seat of God \ 
 but from any outward symbol of change we 
 might think it was all a farce, and the church 
 was cheating God of his true worshippers. 
 I wonder at the idiosyncrasies in human 
 nature ; I wonder at man's plan of deal with 
 God ; his cunning and subtile way of cheating 
 his own conscience, and offering God the 
 pottage for which he has sold his birthright, 
 I wonder at man's inability to grasp the 
 true Savior, or, the true lover of salvation, 
 that would uproot the errors that cling to his 
 citadel of strength and clog up the avenues 
 leading to the true Messiah, that is ever 
 stationed within our interior keeping. Christ 
 is the mark set for our attainment ; and the 
 guiding monitor on the angel side of our 
 being ever points to the radiance flowing 
 from his pure life, and offering us a chance 
 beside the silvery stream of duty to flourish 
 a cross whereon shall be inscribed, " bear ye 
 one another's burdens." And what more 
 beautiful in sentiment or expression than 
 those few words so fraught with hope and 
 comfort to the human heart? Nothing so 
 ennobles humanity as the thought and care 
 put forth for another's welfare, — as the love 
 
64 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 expressed in deeds of mercy and benevolent 
 intention. That spirit of sustaining help has 
 fashioned the world in all its charming 
 variety of improvements and in all its classi- 
 cal growth of culture and refinement. Christ 
 lit his taper with love, and humanity caught 
 the effulgent rays to light up their platform 
 of movement. Without love the world could 
 not exist, because love, or, harmony, which 
 signifies love, is the pivot on which the world 
 turns in motionary evolution. Love is the 
 permeating fluid that tones all nature with 
 the aroma of success. Love is the balance 
 wheel that acts on the graded road of life, 
 and turns on its own axis of accomplishment 
 to further some other scheme of royal 
 purport, or, daring adventure, for the out- 
 standing cause of freedom. Love is no 
 trifler, although his coy wings are dipped in 
 all the pools of life ; and beside the stagnant 
 water of uncertainty and doubt he flings a 
 silver dart of hope to ripple in the undercur- 
 rent and brings to its brink some token of 
 use. If love gushes through our souls we 
 have heard the voice of God speaking from 
 the hill top, or the mount of transfiguration. 
 And if we heed the voice, and send an echo- 
 ing response in some outspoken deed of 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 65 
 
 charitable import, then has God acknowl- 
 edged our worth and given us a seat in the 
 kingdom of heaven. But if, on the other 
 hand, we hear the voice of God, and our 
 heart lights up with no answering echo, no 
 response given to his call for help beside the 
 stricken streams of life, and no sense of 
 gratitude expressed for the comforts sur- 
 rounding our homes on earth, can we then, 
 in neglecting to respond to God's call, lift 
 our hearts to his throne of grace and tri- 
 umphant love with the meekness of " thy 
 will be done on earth, even as it is done in 
 heaven " ? Can we take that prayer of 
 sanctification as lip-service and feel our- 
 selves the chosen ones of God, feel that we 
 merit his voice of approval when our con- 
 science is truant to the cause we represent ? 
 Oh ! the hollo wness and mockery of charade 
 acting in real life. It sickens and disgusts a 
 soul of true refinement and sensibility. 
 
MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR,. 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 ftp HEIST came on earth, in Bible version, 
 '^y to save sinners. Are we then to sup- 
 ^If P ose that prior to Christ's coming God 
 y made no provision for the sinner, that 
 an after consideration gave birth to th& 
 thought that his first plan could be improved 
 upon? that he had made a mistake in the 
 formula of his first design ? that Christ could 
 help to fashion a better system, whereby all 
 could be led to the altar of salvation ? Is 
 not that allowing by God's written testimony 
 that he was liable to change ? That in who- 
 ever and in whatever he needed help, there 
 he should make the demand. And does 
 not God verify that past assertion by every 
 call he makes on humanity to enlarge the 
 sphere of usefulness by liberalizing their 
 spirit of deal, and putting out the hand of 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 67 
 
 God's voice recognized in the demand ? 
 
 " God ne'er deceives. His wondrous voice 
 Proclaims its power; and we, in listening 
 To its spell, find true enchantment 
 There doth dwell." 
 
 Then we doubt the voice of God ; we 
 doubt the uprightness of our own being ; we 
 doubt our capacity to perform a loving act, 
 and thus doubting, we harden to the reality 
 of the doubt, and become niggards and 
 misers around a board spread by the loving 
 heart and hand of God. Christ spread his 
 table for all, else he never could have served 
 God, because God will have all brought unto 
 the knowledge of the truth in his own good 
 time. Christ sprouted the seeds implanted 
 in the bulwarks of God's sustaining strength 
 and love. Christ was the effulgent ray 
 floated to the world in her hour of 
 dark despair. Christ stood in the old 
 world, a miraculous interposition of Provi- 
 dence, a negotiator between heaven and 
 earth, a silver cord dropped to the world by 
 the right hand of God. But to-day, with 
 the light of Christianity beaming over the 
 face of God's earth and lighting up the 
 darkened intellect of man, Christ assumes 
 
68 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; QB, 
 
 Ills standard worth, and the purpose of his 
 mission is being recognized and labelled on 
 the heart, and taken to the inner sanctuary 
 of the soul as a test-mark of strength or a 
 badge of honor that we cannot wear in truth 
 to our mode of outside deal. In this nine- 
 teenth century God is listening for the 
 broad shout that shall proclaim Christ 
 understood, brought to the platform of 
 national honor, and taken to the hearth- 
 stone and fireside of every social altar that 
 rears a keeping in the land. Christ's mis^ 
 sion must be fully understood in order to be 
 fully believed, and must be fully believed in 
 order to work any improvement, or liberal 
 change, beside our stream of life. Christ's 
 whole character is glowing with beautiful 
 attributes of service to the world, and we 
 have only to make a choice of which key or 
 how many keys in the grand scale shall lead 
 us out to the exemplified harmonious con- 
 dition of Christ- We, as one grand body, or 
 army, are marching to the battlements of 
 salvation, and should have our journey rear 
 for us a seat of eminent worth. Then will 
 our earth career light up our whole future 
 course of action and guide us to the mercy 
 seat of God. " For as many as come I will 
 
THE THOSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 69 
 
 in no way cast off, saith the Lord my God." 
 Christ in his eminent worth laid the foun- 
 dation for a world of great beauty and 
 compass of design. Christ saw the end 
 from the beginning, saw the worth and 
 power of man's interior ability, saw the 
 great scope in God's outstanding worlds for 
 mind to range through and gather for the 
 great system-house of God's own plan. 
 Christ saw God's need of help invested in 
 man. Therefore, Christ took the broadest 
 basis at his command for liberty, and made 
 the underpinning to every movement fast by 
 the bond of love. Christ understood the 
 worth of that principle to the human heart, 
 understood that it would be the pivot on 
 which the whole social world would turn in 
 its evolutions of reform, understood that love 
 was God's watchword of call to every soul 
 on the journey of life, and understood the 
 strength, power and capability of that one 
 little word, that fills the soul with the holiest 
 aspirations and the heart with the divinest 
 acts of benevolence and mercy. Let love 
 preside beside our daily walks ; let love be 
 our motto of sustaining strength and let love 
 be our shield against the temptations of the 
 sinful man that walks beside our wandering 
 
70 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 footsteps, ever ready to lead us away from 
 our hoisied flag of trust, and ever ready 
 with the words Self and Gain to shipwreck 
 our freight of love, and leave us with hardly 
 a seed of promise to sprout a Christian 
 Mfe. 
 
THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LITE. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 f,N giving Marigolds by the Wayside to 
 the world, I am preparing humanity 
 1^3 for a step in the fields of scientific 
 "? exploration, a field wherein all should 
 garner for the kingdom of use. Science is 
 the height, breadth and depth of an out- 
 wrought purpose or design ; the shaping of a 
 thing made ; the fashion or style of any 
 given structure, let that structure be God, 
 man, or the devil, in outwrought model, it 
 must have a scientific basis of formation, 
 the whys and wherefores of construction, the 
 indwelling, paramount reason for existing, 
 and existing in the form put forth. Science 
 5s the broadest scope yet given to mankind 
 whereby mysteries can become soluble to 
 mind, whereby facts can be established and 
 mythical dealing done away with, a stampede 
 movement given to all rubbish that does not 
 
72 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 
 
 comport with reason's torchlight of investi- 
 gation. Science is on the hunter's track ; 
 and the dogs at bay, or, the outstanding 
 scouts of opposition, will stand but a poor 
 chance for bagging in any section where free 
 institutions for education and liberalization 
 have become a paramount feature in govern- 
 mental discipline. Education is the world's 
 sifting machine, and through that process is 
 the world becoming wise in its own good time. 
 Science will uphold every truth that edu- 
 cation brings to the rostrum for investigation, 
 because truth is a staple article and cannot 
 be gainsaid or thrust out of existence. It 
 may be set aside for future use or toning up 
 to meet an emergent case of doubtful 
 authority, but cannot be lost to the world's 
 view. At sometime, and, seemingly, when 
 most needed, truth ever makes her appear- 
 ance, and, with the spirit of defiant skill, 
 removes all obstacles shadowing her smiling 
 face. Truth ever stands in the background 
 of error, willing to give error precedence on a 
 track outlasting time and reaching to the 
 fountain head of every streamlet, or river 
 flow of knowledge, that picks its way to the 
 understanding of man. The infancy of mind 
 will no longer be the mighty barrier to drown 
 
THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 73 
 
 the voice of freedom's call. The stone has 
 been removed from the mouth of the sepul- 
 chre, and the chanting voice from the mighty 
 dead will proclaim the heathen world the ark 
 wherein no safety can be found and wherein 
 no knowledge can be obtained. 
 
 The heathen world, or black mail of 
 knowledge, has long since lost its charm 
 for me. I have done picking in history for 
 truths to garnish my store of accumulated 
 treasure. I have done with mankind as a 
 basis for all truth, or, as a basis from which 
 to rear a temple whose crowning worth shall 
 be a star, or gleaming light, to guide the 
 erring ones of earth along their uneven des- 
 tiny of motion, and along a journey freighted 
 with keepings for God's kingdom-house of 
 eternity. My journeyings will ever be on the 
 line of progressive research. I shall cause 
 earth by repeated effort, to disburse her 
 bank stock of scientific keepings, and give to 
 the world as I shall find time to sift and pre- 
 pare the grains of truth from the chaff which 
 is ever in attendance, and serves its purpose 
 by concealing the pearls until mankind are 
 ready for the glittering diadem to be bound 
 around the brow and heart, and treasured as 
 a panacea of sustaining strength forever and... 
 
r ,74 MAHIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 lorever. Let truth take hold of heart and 
 soul. Let God's merciful plan towards his 
 children be sought and fully comprehended, 
 and let the welkin ring of joy fill the air, 
 iifchat angels who are ever near may catch the 
 silver chimes and carry them as a feast of 
 Jatlings to the hearts awaiting at the portals 
 -of eternity to be understood and loved as of 
 yore. Oh, the mercy displayed in God's 
 great and glorious plan of salvation ! Who 
 Ibut disembodied mortals can comprehend 
 the beauty of the change called Death, the 
 hallo wedn ess and sacredness of an entrance 
 ton the untried fields of spirit life ? Who but 
 disembodied, mortals cm tell of the glories 
 that await the unredeemed of earth ? Who 
 •can picture so well as those who have seen 
 ithe reality and lived face to face with the 
 beauty of this great truth ; and lived, soul 
 answering soul, by the solemn compact made 
 Vbetween God and man, and kept sacred until 
 man himself could proclaim unto his brother 
 .man the sublime pathos of God's voice of 
 Hove, when speaking from the hill top 
 ;of Sinia, through the wisdom of angel mess- 
 ages, that have ever kept God's throne 
 ;-sacred and beyond any dividing line of 
 udoubt. Doubt is the door of darkness, 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 75 
 
 through which mankind must pass to the full 
 light of actual experience. Doubt sits beside 
 our homes on earth, a grim scarecrow, feed- 
 ing on the refuse of past generations, and 
 ever digging backwards into a hole of dis- 
 content, that offers no peace or permanence 
 of position, whereby the soul can gather 
 strength for repeated investigation. Doubt 
 is a harness that is always out of repair, 
 never ready for use or actual demonstration, 
 but hanging idly on the shoulders of the 
 foolish, or, unwise Samaritan or Sadducee of 
 present or past history in the world. 
 
 " Doubt digs a grave of wondrous width. 
 But rarely scans a field for gain, 
 Lest chance might throw a skilful hook 
 And find the truth-; bv doubt disclaimed." 
 
MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE : OR. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 /r>>HERE is no skill so great as digging im 
 ^/^ cast off rubbish for seeds to maintain 
 ^Jp illiberal sentiments, and sprout theories. 
 "S that cannot exist by the light of rea- 
 son's sway; because reason is the key-note- 
 on which God times the harmony of success, 
 and on which he plays for the advancement 
 of each and every soul bearing the lever of 
 thought to systematize what God gives in 
 abstract ideas. God has harnessed us with 
 an individuality entirely our own, and we 
 have a work to do with that purpose of 
 God's formation. We cannot shirk our indi- 
 vidulization. It clings to us with a tenacity 
 of will that sets at defiance any skill over our 
 maintainance of natural keepsakes from the 
 hand of God. What is nature with us will 
 always cling to us, because that is the God 
 within us, the imperishable seed rooted when. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 77 
 
 God purposed our existence and career. 
 When God breathed into man the breath 
 •of life, and man became a living soul, — a 
 monument of strength, with an anterior 
 purpose existing around every loop-hole of 
 individuality. We cannot escape the mark 
 ;set upon Cain, — it is branded for all time 
 -and sticks its pin of claim around, above and 
 below our outspoken effort of attainment. 
 We can no more move outside of our own 
 orbit of motion, with success to ourselves, 
 than can planetary evolution take place out- 
 side of its own given line of march, for God 
 is our propelling wheel, turning on the axis 
 of his own free will and pleasure. God 
 motions our destiny to us by signs set in the 
 foreground of our experience, and the turn- 
 ing hand of fate points the road for onr 
 wayward feet to travel in. We have no free 
 will outside of God's free will, for if we 
 moved different from what we do move, 
 we should be different individuals, and God 
 would never be sure of his own, and the 
 law of recompense never called to actual 
 •demonstration. 
 
 "For by God's law and will divine, 
 All nature reaches the sublime." 
 
78 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; Oil, 
 
 Is it right, then, for sin to tear through our- 
 natures, that the law of recompense be 
 called to actual service ? Is it right for sim 
 to abound, that good may much more 
 abound '? Is it right for God and the devil 
 to enter into partnership for the salvation or 
 destruction of machines that had no hand in 
 their own building? I ask, is it right to set 
 man afloat a sham power, ready for the pick- 
 ing hand of Satan to flourish before a just 
 God's attempt at supreme rule ? 
 
 When man flourishes creeds before the 
 world he allows God but half a share of the- 
 proceeds that he sent his son to gather in 
 full, making his plan a failure and himself 
 unreliable for the world's service, and man 
 incompetent to judge between the false and 
 true, or the good and evil, in social life, — 
 for social life is the mainspring of man's 
 ultimate destiny. It is in social intercourse^ 
 that the heart gathers strength, and the soul 
 blooms with verdure that ripens to advan- 
 tage in the kingdom of heaven. It is in 
 social intercourse that we lay the foundation 
 for grasping magnetic strength and fervor of 
 accumulation. Social intercourse opens the 
 love fountain of our natures, sifts the bread 
 of life throughout our whole being, and wafts^ 
 
THE POETRY AND PBOSE OF LIFE. 79'' 
 
 the angelic tune of harmony beside our 
 every day walks, and beside the feudal camp 
 of political and financial warfare and strife of 
 party colors and party legislative bickerings 
 that offer no good to any system that serves 
 a national board of honor. The American 
 legislative grandeur of conception could not 
 be surpassed on the earth formula of design. 
 It has a broad sweep against any nationality 
 of invasion. Its birthright gift is freedom ; , 
 and that spirit is extended throughout the 
 length and breadth of the Christian world. 
 That spirit is her nationality of success, her 
 glorious star of promise that never must 
 grow dim, — for freedom is God's watchful 
 eye that ever surrounds any outreach of 
 principle, or destiny of effort, on the part 
 of man. Freedom cherishes the bond that 
 makes all men brothers, and unites them to a 
 purpose of active duty in the broad held of 
 primitive labor and toil. Freedom cherishes 
 the evangelical platform of deal, by doing 
 unto others as ye would that others 
 should do unto you. When we can do 
 that we have taken up every cross and 
 strewn our walks with roses, that send out 
 their fragrance at every crushing footfall 
 of time. How easy it is to make hearts 
 
80 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 glad, to send a boon of pleasure where we 
 oft-times fill the soul with pain and pierce the 
 temple of confidence with the barbed arrow, 
 whose pointed thrust lays low its strength of 
 appeal and outgushing beauty of freedom 
 and love. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEK XVII. 
 
 ^?>>^HE mainspring of action in freedom's 
 ^})(£ line of march is the internal lever that 
 "Qj)8 uproots all theories, or olden insti- 
 ~0 L tutions, that have become leaky or 
 unsafe from non-use or corrupt fraternizing 
 of their social elements of power. What 
 mankind are willing and ready to take is 
 freedom's aim to legalize to their foot- 
 ing of acceptability. Freedom ignores all 
 restraint not compatible with growth or rea- 
 son's sway of deal, that is ever searching for 
 means to widen the old hedgerow of oppres- 
 sion. Man easily learns to sail outside the 
 beaten track of ancestral sprouting ; early 
 learns that the game of cribbage can be 
 widened at its base and admit the spectator 
 to the board of shuffle and deal that offers 
 so much employment and amusement to the 
 capitalists around the board of play. Old 
 Johnny Bull may wink and spout, and 
 try his utmost to find out the whys and 
 
82 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 wherefores of the bagging process that i® 
 enacted around the American field of honest 
 labor, and around the American field where* 
 honest accumulation ever meets the voice of 
 approval and wears the smiling face of con- 
 tent. Is it because the spirit of the old 
 world has crept into the American nest of 
 reputed freedom and hatched an egg of dis- 
 content, that is to destroy the basis, or 
 principle that underlies the system of honest 
 toil which is assuming a non-committal 
 appearance, that bespeaks little freedom ins 
 systematized effort to make the weak more 
 strong and build a fortification that shalL 
 ensure safety to all classes and grades of 
 civilization, that throng around the American, 
 footstool of labored enterprise, that, untram- 
 meled by the false spirit of pride, would be 
 the national badge of honor to be worn by 
 any country with success to its growth of 
 power and liberty of expression ? Am erica, 
 has a broader basis of liberty than any other 
 country ; and yet there seems to be a tighten- 
 ing up of the aristocratic line of social 
 encounter, and a disposition asserts itself of 
 making patchwork of every person's private 
 history not labelled to the world by the-' 
 stamp -mark of gold. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 85- 
 
 As I survey earth from my spiritual 
 locality I see how utterly worthless is the 
 tribute paid to wealth, how little claim it, 
 has at the fouutain of worth to which man- 
 kind are all hastening. God never designed 
 wealth as an object in life. We must have 
 an object paramount to its accumulation, else 
 we are idolators to the golden glitter of 
 earth's staple article of mischief. Wealth, 
 or the love of wealth, when rightly directed, 
 is accessory to the maintainance and carry- 
 ing out of plans necessary to the world's 
 improvement and growth in institutional and 
 classical reforms. Wealth should never be 
 worn as a badge of honor, lest it trail the 
 soul in the dust and cause a blindness to 
 creep over our mental vision, worse than 
 the wind sweeps or simoon whisperings to the. 
 parched-up surface of Arabia's climes. 
 
 " Wealth hid, kept, or stole away, 
 Is good for nought but devil's prey." 
 
 When the soul wanders out in search of 
 gold there should be a motive anterior to 
 the desire of accumulation, and that motive 
 should be wound around some purpose for 
 the soul's improvement and growth. If the 
 soul accumulates merely to garnish its body- 
 
84 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 liouse of clay, where is the staple fund for 
 future use, when the body has taken part 
 with its element of earth ? Where are the 
 tokens of earth's mission of labor when body 
 and soul have made a final separation, and 
 the body, so cared for, sinks to its home of 
 rest, leaving the soul a wanderer still, but 
 bereft of purpose or activity to finish a life 
 that commenced with a basil motive fixed in 
 earth? Oh, the degradation and hollow- 
 ness of a life spent on its foundation site, 
 with no star of hope pointing to the world of 
 illumination, whose lustrous truths are light- 
 ing up the by-paths of earth and causing the 
 spirit of uneasiness to float round the soul's 
 temple of ease and earthly immolation ! Oh, 
 the grandeur and beauty of living for heaven 
 while yet on the earth, of living in daily com- 
 munion with God while we are serving the 
 earthly purposes for which he designed us 
 and for which he gives us daily assurance, if 
 we but open our hearts in the direction 
 of his holy sanctuary of peace ! God offers 
 us wisdom, offers us the light of divine 
 revealment, if we but open our door of 
 understanding and reach for the things that 
 pass not away, but have hold on life eternal. 
 
TPIE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XVIII. 
 
 >'{"& OD winds our purpose around us at the 
 
 yiJ: til . . 
 
 §w| beginning of our life of responsibility,. 
 ^I 2 and we are fitted with machinery ade- 
 "e ( quate to the demand made on our 
 strength. We cannot go outside of our own 
 locomotive force, either in the office of brain 
 work or the car of bone and sinew develop- 
 ment. God never asks an impossibility of 
 us. He ever keeps his demand within the 
 pale of our gifts, but asking us, with lover- 
 like devotion, for the fulfilment of the 
 outstanding promise that our will and 
 energetic effort are capable of holding true. 
 Where there's a will there is a way, is an 
 old and trite saying, but nevertheless true, 
 and if carried the oftener into practice, the 
 spirit world would receive less half-fledged 
 
86 MAKIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 souls than it does at present. Man's wisdom 
 lies in his strength of accomplishment, in his 
 willingness and activity of zeal to fill the 
 circle marked out for his glory of achieve- 
 ment. Man, in order to fill both measures 
 of his individualization, should harness his 
 team double, must have his services ren- 
 derered on earth mingle to advantage in the 
 formation of his spiritual career, or life of 
 onward harmony or discord ; for, as we spin 
 and reel our yarn it mingles in the fabric of 
 use or becomes a tangled skein unfit for any 
 real service. There is a class of minds that 
 float along through life with no particular 
 •aim or wish to gratify, outside the keeping of 
 •earthly surroundings. Such minds rarely 
 drink at the fountain of knowledge. Their 
 -stand point of accumulation has no basis 
 depth on which to rear a social foundation 
 that can, in any way, improve other minds 
 that frequently come in contact with them. 
 It should be the aim of every individual to 
 throw out a focus of light sufficient to guide 
 some other traveller who may be wandering 
 in darkness and error, waiting for a glimmer 
 of knowledge to light the way to a happier 
 position, which they feel could be obtained, 
 and„ with a little li<?ht given, the future would 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 87 
 
 •seem less cheerless. Why is it that we do 
 not seek each other's happiness more ? Why 
 do we leave the lever of love and friendship 
 to rust in the soil of pernicious selfishness, 
 making us cold and unfeeling, unsocial and 
 unlovable? The extended hand of friend- 
 ship has saved many an erring one from 
 .sinking to the bottomless pit of despair, and 
 liow many more who are wrecked on the bil- 
 lows of time could have been saved, and 
 their lives garnished with the flower of hope, 
 had some kind heart shot into their souls the 
 arrow of sympathy, whose quivering touch 
 -changes the whole course of wrong doing in 
 the penitent receiver. We cannot have too 
 much sympathy. It is God's motive power 
 •of active duty. It braces the heart and 
 sheds the glorious light of God's favor 
 around our pathway of loving help to each 
 other. God notes the falling of the sparrow, 
 notes the roar and sweep of old ocean's 
 grandest moods, notes the wayward, truant 
 heart sealed to the purpose of destruction, 
 and notes the illiberal hand and heart that 
 move not at the call for help to wind around 
 their stronghold of error, and lift them from 
 the degradation and misery that is fast 
 creeping around them. There is no blind- 
 
88 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 ness on God's part, or failing to see the 
 battles fought and victory won, the lost 
 restored, the weak strengthened, and the good 
 made happy, by the reflection of the sunlight- 
 shed around the desolate homes of earth. 
 Oh, the beauty of doing good ! The glory 
 of achievement to the soul that starts out on 
 a mission of mercy ! The angels in heaven 
 bow with reverence, and the hushed voice of 
 smiling content rests over the new Jerusa- 
 lem, for therein is seen the breastwork to a 
 grand scheme in life, and therein is witnessed 
 Jehovah's call on a redeemed soul to come to 
 the marriage feast prepared for those that 
 serve God. For the bride and the groom 
 say come, and all nature drinks in the spirit 
 of joy over the Christian's act of mingled 
 charity and love. Christ could do no more 
 than to do good. His miracles had good- 
 ness for a basis of performance, and his 
 every deed done for humanity was radiant 
 with the spirit of goodness. That prin- 
 ciple interlaced his every movement and 
 crowned his every effort and made him a 
 successful financier around the heart of 
 human needs. Christ crowned his every 
 effort with the starry emblem of brotherly 
 love and humane sympathy. That spirit is. 
 
THE PROSE AND P0ET11Y OF LIFE. 89 
 
 worthy of the highest cultivation. It made 
 Christ divine, and restored him in all his 
 primitive beauty to the glorified seat beside 
 his father's throne of mercy. Mankind only 
 need the spirit of goodness interlaced in all 
 the business transactions of time, and rooted 
 in every effort to advance freedom and pro- 
 mote the growth and well-being of sectional 
 communities that are scattered throughout 
 the length and breadth of civilization. I 
 well remember, in travelling my round of 
 earthly duties, that the spirit of goodness 
 and Christ-like purity of purpose was the 
 oftener met beside the hearthstone of the 
 non-possessor of wealth and opulence of 
 bearing to the world. I have seen the hand 
 of poverty extended with its widow's mite 
 and a smile of accompaniment that would 
 grace an angel's brow. And I have seen the 
 hand of wealth put forth to succor the needy 
 with a grimace or abstract air that told of no 
 heart-work or sj^mpathy for the oppressed of 
 poverty. And I have wondered if of such 
 were the kingdom of heaven ; and, if the 
 kingdom of heaven sprouted no wealth of 
 earthly lustre, where was the leading strings 
 to their enjoyment, where the basis ground 
 for ultimate happiness. Oh, ye careless and 
 
DO MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 wicked ones of earth, why not live Christ 
 and him crucified ? Why not forego some of 
 the scarlet of worldly pleasures that burn 
 and scar the soul, making God seem afar off 
 .and Christ a Savior of mythical bearing. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEK XIX. 
 
 ^>-^HE world lias been wrought on by 
 HyS^ every system of oppression. No free 
 ^Qjj^? torch has been allowed to burn. The 
 <j target of defamation has been hurled 
 from the pulpit and every rostrum upheaved 
 to foster indolence and selfish principality of 
 power. This mock heroism, or Herodism, is 
 disgusting and sickening to a soul capable of 
 finding worth outside of the world's pomp 
 and glitter, — outside of her charnel-house 
 of ostentatious merit. When we in spirit 
 life look the matter of earth's showy plat- 
 form of Christian worship in the face, and 
 note its inefficiency of subduing pride or 
 weaving the spirit of Christ into its network 
 of use, we cavil at the soundness of theo- 
 logical hyperbole, or witchcraft, that travels 
 the world for the ultra purpose of harnessing 
 a team for the devil to drive, and furnishing 
 
92 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 the necessary accoutrements to please gen- 
 teel society. We in spirit life wonder at the 
 earth's fabrication of such showy material 
 whereby to evince a change of heart or pur- 
 pose to the world ; and we wonder at the 
 illiberal spirit maintained in the Christian 
 fold, wonder at the allegorical representation 
 of Christ as being believed in this age of wis- 
 dom of opinion. The atoning blood of Christ 
 never yet washed away the robe of sin, never- 
 sprouted so much as a seed in a garden field 
 of good works to mankind, never illuminated 
 the heart with a single ray of benevolent 
 intention, never cheered the soul with the 
 promise of life everlasting, and never was spilt. 
 to redeem mortality. I would say that in 
 the face of ten thousand worlds, and meet the 
 cudgel of disapproval with a gun discharge 
 of truth, aimed at every evangelical temple 
 of defamation that spouts forth its hollow 
 mockery, and has a drop curtain that shuts, 
 out every ray of divine truth from the minds, 
 of those waiting at the portals of earthly 
 knowledge for light to cheer their onward 
 march. 
 
 How deft and cunning is priestcraft ! How- 
 broad its sweep to evangelize the world I 
 How magnificent in detail to pardon the sLra. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. i'o 
 
 spotted of earth, and how horrified to find 
 the blazing star of guilt under their covered 
 sanctuary of repose. It is like a galvanic 
 battery on weakened nerves, or, a palsied 
 foot to a sprig of the law, and, I might say, 
 like the serpent in the garden of Eden. The 
 serpent, however, had no one to outwit in 
 -gaining his privileges of honor. He must 
 have been allowed of God to mingle with the 
 pure, else how came he in that retreat so 
 sacred to harmony without knowledge. The 
 •church may be likened unto the garden of 
 Eden, and priestcraft the flaming sword that 
 turns every way, to ensure safety to the tree 
 of knowledge planted in the soul garden of 
 every individual, and sometimes needing the 
 serpent's sting to awaken from its dormant 
 •condition and clothe itself with raiment 
 suited to its need and purpose. According 
 to historical evidence, Eve was dissatisfied, 
 and willing to listen to the serpent, willing to 
 be beguiled or interested from the blank 
 monotony of her surroundings. So, fair 
 Eve found by eating she could see, could 
 •distinguish good from evil, and straightway 
 imparted the knowledge to Adam, therein 
 showing man's proclivity to be taught by 
 woman and showing woman's skill in j)rob- 
 
94 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 
 
 ing secret institutions of power. Woman's; 
 field of usefulness has of late years been a, 
 libel on her page of illustrated worth, that 
 hangs before the world, a covenant made 
 luminous by effort, deed, love, hope and 
 charity, mingled in her breastplate worn for 
 the benefit of humanity. Woman must yet 
 bring her team of use to be acknowledged 
 from the stand point of intellectual ability,, 
 must cope with man in the field of literature 
 and science, and use her key of speculation 
 to ingraft womanhood with the principle of 
 financiering ability, thus doubling her capaci- 
 ties and fitting her to be self-sustaining and 
 independent of man's arm of help, which 
 oft-times proves a curse, leaving her moral 
 nature trailing in the dust and mirage of 
 earth. 
 
 My purpose is not here to show woman's 
 broad field of duty ; what she can, will and 
 must accomplish by overt, independent, free- 
 thinking, free-acting ability. The reins are 
 gradually nearing her grasp, whereby she 
 can step to the rescue of womanhood and 
 bring forth the dormant principles from her 
 casket of strength to be even-handed with 
 man, poised for an encounter with the stem 
 facts of life. I intend to build a fort ress of 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 95 
 
 strength to support woman in the arduous 
 duties consequent to her obtaining her true 
 position in life. I intend to harness the 
 lady now under my control with a life-lease 
 of my individuality, and proclaim from the 
 rostrum or pulpit, if allowed, the full and 
 detailed advantages of female suffrage to the 
 world. I intend to put the key of strength 
 in her hands to be used the following spring, 
 or as soon as May, 1871, and, until that 
 time arrives, shall make good my promise of 
 sending her to California to drink the balmy 
 softness of her sunny clime. I have been 
 canvassing the matter in spirit realms of 
 starting a paper in San Francisco, entitled 
 "The Theological Chip Basket," and I find 
 that some of the leading minds in my sphere 
 of advancement are ready and willing to 
 advance their mite of knowledge to start 
 earth out on a surer footing of salvation than 
 she now possesses. Some of the leading- 
 minds around my perch of glory would con- 
 tribute from ancient history, which has 
 undergone a process of purification, or of 
 sifting, which has separated the wheat from 
 the chaff, and, by dropping the wheat on 
 earth in its purified condition, it may assume 
 its relative value and become a staple arti- 
 
96 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE j OR, 
 
 cle, to be promulgated by theologians who 
 wish to use the white bread of truth in 
 preference to the brown bread of error. 
 There are other minds here who will give 
 facts from travels in higher localities, and 
 also in the lower grades of social life and 
 bearing to the world they inhabit. Alto- 
 gether, it will be a paper of interest and 
 relative worth to mankind. The reason of 
 my introducing my paper in this book is to 
 somewhat advertise it and prepare the pub- 
 lic for its advent, which will, I think, be in 
 July or August. The great Irish tragedian 
 always announced his plays several weeks in 
 advance of their peformanee, to ensure a 
 successful house and give Bon Vivant to the 
 play. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 <§®N Baxter's Saints' Rest is a passage, 
 gjj) which, I think, nearly compor ts with 
 ¥$& Schiller's fearful wail over the lost ones 
 "^ of earth. Schiller and Baxter both 
 drank from God's high pressure-house of 
 wrath, and folded their hearts and hands com- 
 placently over their works inspired by their 
 belief. The world is now playing dodge 
 with those olden authors, who burnished 
 their works with God's implacable enmity 
 and wrath. Baxter headed his puffs and 
 tit-bits of savory knowledge by the flaming 
 sword, made keen and sure by God's prom- 
 ise laid down in Holy Writ and revealed to 
 men on earth who could drink truth and 
 beauty from a God of such glowing attri- 
 butes of power. 
 
 How God has softened in his feelings 
 7 
 
98 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 towards humanity ! How lie lias allowed the 
 church to become liberalized ! How sorry he 
 must have been to acknowledge his error 
 in so broad and harmonious a manner, to 
 allow the sheep and goats to travel out on 
 the road of progress together, to drink at the 
 same fountain and be fed by the same liberal 
 hand of mercy ! Oh, God, I thank thee for 
 thy change of heart, for the change thou 
 hast made around thy great pool of sal- 
 vation. And, oh, God, I thank thee for thy 
 wondrous storehouse of knowledge, for the 
 variety expressed in thy kingdom-house of 
 use. And, oh, God, for the perceptive facul- 
 ties in man, I bow in reverence before thy 
 throne of universal keepsakes, ready to be 
 distributed when mind calls for its own, and 
 thou, oh, God, art conditioned to give in full 
 to the glory of the Lamb which is in Christ 
 Jesus. 
 
THE PEOSE AXD POETilY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 $J\jV;£>HEN God created man, lie made him 
 g$sf$j from the dust of the earth and 
 ^if-f breathed into his nostrils the breath 
 * of life, and man became a living soul. 
 The Bible has never stated by what process 
 God fashioned man from the earth, Avhether 
 it was systematic outreach on God's part or 
 a combined process or elementary activity, 
 called into operation at God's word of com- 
 mand. It seems to me that were God a 
 personality, capable of knoAving and capable 
 of telling all things, he would have revealed 
 to man the origin of his birth, and not have 
 left that all important matter a subject for so 
 much speculation. I suppose some would 
 say God knew best in what condition to leave 
 man, and we should not speculate on God's 
 ways, for they are past finding out. But, 
 by some process or hocus-pocus of God's 
 
100 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 
 
 will, the truth is leaking through its nest 
 of rubbish, and man is coming to the knowl- 
 edge of his birth-hour in matter. God 
 fashioned man from the exigency of an out- 
 side want in nature. If we go back to chaos 
 we will find, interlaced in her roomy recep- 
 tacles, the finesse dictum, or seedling, which 
 has reared, or grown, man to his present 
 condition in life. As it is spiritualistic 
 movement in matter that gyrates to the 
 course of time, we may well suppose that 
 when spirit has done with the matter it 
 forms, it hays it away, for other combined 
 forces to operate upon, and takes on a 
 higher grade of bearing, distinguishable to 
 the next locality in progress. First, the 
 seedling, then the graft, and then the spirit 
 of the full grown apple, which ripens and is 
 sent on earth to propagate new species and 
 in a higher state of cultivation. And so we 
 might say with regard to man. He is first 
 but a seedling, until the ingrafting of God's 
 scientific plan commences, and then he is 
 reared for propagating through the natural 
 functions of animal law. But what we most 
 wish made clear to the mind is, at what point 
 in matter spirit undertakes to master crude 
 material ; at what point matter assumes 
 
THE PEOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 101 
 
 capacity or research to move on independent 
 principle. 
 
 Geologians have sifted earth to find the 
 key-note to intellectuality, but have never 
 found the blazing star shot at one particular 
 element composing the vice-royalty of earth. 
 Are we, then, to conclude that God has so 
 far hid the basis of being that mind can 
 never ferret the truth from the depth of his 
 almighty kept-house of knowledge, and so 
 lay idly on our oars, waiting for the tide to 
 drift us to the promised land of safety, with 
 no more knowledge of the principle of navi- 
 gation than Avhen we started our life boat of 
 ease ? God forbid that we should be drifters 
 throughout the course of time, and enter on 
 the untried fields of spirit life with clipped 
 wings and banners flapping idly by our sides. 
 God wrought man out of confusion : now let 
 us bring reason to the rostrum, or, in other 
 words, let us use reason instead of any per- 
 sonal God, for I contend that man's reason 
 is his God personified within himself, and 
 any other God that his God appeals to is the 
 interior financiering element or elements in 
 nature. I do not say this interior power 
 in nature is not comprehensive, all-wise and 
 benevolent in intents and purposes, but I do 
 
102 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 say, this comprehensive power uses the lever 
 of law in every detail or niinntia of labor, 
 and picks its strength of accomplishment 
 from system laid down in the start of chaotic 
 building. God's chaotic-house of. fire and 
 water mingled its crater of strength for the- 
 spasmodic outlay of earth, and when earth 
 assumed a spheroid shape, the soil was lava 
 with large tracts of water, broadcast and 
 free, swaying the molten lava like a lever of 
 use in God's hand of mighty architecture. 
 As time crept along on the wing of God's 
 law, water had done noble duty and lava 
 showed it had not been appealed to in vain, 
 What had once been a mass of molten ruin 
 was coming into the traces, to be wrought 
 on by cause and effect. I do not mean to 
 say that the law of cause and effect was not 
 anterior to the birth of the world, but I am 
 bringing it to the point of use in matter 
 where mind can comprehend its instigation 
 and merit of appeal. As lava became strati- 
 fied it began to show its particles of worth, 
 began to show its attributes in financiering 
 ability, and show how much Saturn had 
 entailed her precepts and examples into the 
 brain receptacles of her child thrown from 
 her crater of benevolent intention. Some 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 103 
 
 will ask what is this, inlaid principle running 
 through all worlds that acts in the right 
 time and place ? Is it God ? Is it mind 
 superior to mind in man, or is it chance- 
 work from beginning to end, or chance- 
 system wrought on by an internal revenue 
 fund, or a tax-gatherer working for the 
 benefit of outwrought principle ? There is 
 no power of mind so grand as nature, and if 
 God be apart from nature he must have 
 rested since the seventh day, for we find no 
 account of his labor since. He built the 
 world, and rested on the seventh day of 
 time, but nature has never ceased to build, 
 ever at work, taking on new forms and new 
 expressions of beauty, to gladden the eye of 
 man and keep good her power of maintenance 
 and duty of design. 
 
 Let me here state God's essentialities and 
 proclivities as a builder and finisher. Let 
 us drink as deep as we can of God, quench- 
 ing our thirst at every passport offered to 
 our acceptance. Let us not think because 
 God is power, majesty, grandeur and all in 
 all, that we must bow in ignorance and 
 humility before his throne of outlayed prin- 
 ciples and seek no pickaxe of use to delve in 
 the storehouse that contains our first seed- 
 
104 MAEIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 
 
 ling fruits. God forbid that we should show 
 no interest in our birth-hour fixed in matter, 
 show no inclination to locate ourselves on 
 the topmost round of the ladder of ascent, 
 and pick our way backwards with the easy 
 formula of a practical ambitionist. God in 
 nature surrounds every loop-hole of defence, 
 fills every brigade of error, and lights up 
 every pool of truth, and sweeps every board 
 of progress of the haschish of narcotic 
 slumber. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEPw XXLT. 
 
 •jfitfVjpHEN lava had assumed ability to- 
 (*ifis^ fashion life, God's grandeur of design 
 O9&? was in its swaddling cloth of capac- 
 ~<^ ity, and earth had to fashion from the 
 mind in keeping. Earth can only build from 
 the law of intelligence, or intellectuality, 
 which runs parallel and co-equal with cause 
 and effect, and is the head or brain work 
 that precedes motion, the thought impelling 
 movement, and it heralds its approach by 
 the structure formed. Every casket in out- 
 wrought shape containing life has its own 
 seed or God-head of power to fashion its 
 own individuality or animality of purpose. 
 The point fixed on by all scientific explorers 
 for the mind's birth in matter is where 
 instinct and reason cope for the mastery- 
 The bare fact of life proves nothing outside 
 of nature, for nature is life. You cannot 
 
108 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OR, 
 
 divorce one atom of animalcule from her 
 claim, and every atom of matter is life and 
 every particle of dust is a fibre thrown from 
 the great volcano of nature and contains the 
 •electricity of motion. Every draught of air 
 we take into our organs of respiration is 
 formed of solvent dust particles, and there- 
 fore belongs to nature, but a step in advance 
 of earth vision, for the sense of visual 
 observation fails to detect atmospheric law 
 condition. When matter becomes too 
 refined for our vision of matter, it is then in 
 <& spiritualized condition and appeals to our 
 spirit nature. It is a part and parcel of us, 
 holding its attachment to our internal 
 capacity of thought, or our internal capacity 
 of conscience, the monitor that guides, gov- 
 erns and directs our more clumsy team of 
 earth proportions. What we now wish to 
 compass with the mind portion of our being 
 is, what constitutes mind and what element 
 in the outside world had the hook of power 
 to grapple mind from instinct, or separate 
 the grains of wheat from the barley of 
 -animal use. Instinct is a want of the flesh, 
 a need inwrought in nature, a fibre that runs 
 through the molten lava of first principle, 
 "The power in matter to build is but a fashion 
 
THE PROSE AND TOETSY OF LE?E. 107 
 
 in God's eye of rise, a drop in the lake of 
 fire and brimstone, that lifts an appeal on to 
 the surface of eventful career. The breath of 
 instinct breathed into man as the breath 
 ■of life is the soul element in matter. It is 
 matter itself; it is God in decimal propor- 
 tion, or in the fractional part of the universal 
 whole. There is no such thing as dead mat- 
 ter, dead principle or dead God. The terms 
 are co-equal in import, but fashion has 
 picked a line of difference that reason is fast 
 trailing in the dust. Were it possible for 
 matter to become dead, there would be a 
 cessation in the wheel of time, a screw loose 
 in God's machinery-house, and first princi- 
 ples would suffer. God himself would suffer 
 and humanity would be on unsafe footing. 
 Let us allow, then, the impossibility of 
 extinct matter, the utter ^comprehensive- 
 ness of a blow destroying God ; for if we 
 destroy a single attribute in his structure- 
 house, we make God incomplete and insecure 
 as a basis on which to rest our salvation. 
 God's fundaments, so to speak, are laid in 
 matter, or they are a part and parcel of 
 matter. Let structured matter, or matter 
 en masse, undergo decomposition : — it is 
 matter still. You cannot change the solid- 
 
108 MARIGOLDS EY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 
 
 ity of matter : yon may change its form,, 
 change its locality, but every element is still 
 in its native dignity of purpose, making- 
 God unchangeable at the basis of struct- 
 ure and unchangeable with his elements of 
 purpose. 
 
 The first structures of animal life that 
 found shape on external principle were gas- 
 eous bodies of huge proportions, because in 
 the newness of earthly outlay the atmosphere 
 contained more gas than carbon. Hence, 
 gas assumed the lead in the builder's art,, 
 and blew forth monstrosities, shapeless and 
 almost senseless, for the reason that gas is 
 the element that contains the haschish of 
 slumber. In the summer solstice, when the- 
 atmosphere contains more gas, there is* 
 always a predisposition for more sleep ; but, 
 as the days shorten and carbon mingles its 
 exhilarating influence with the gaseous 
 fluids in atmospheric condition, we are toned, 
 up to meet the exigences of the change, as- 
 in the beginning, when God created man. 
 from the dust of the earth, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life, and man 
 became a living soul, an exhilarated structure 
 through the combined forces of atmospheric 
 gases. Everything in nature depends on. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LTFE. 109 
 
 ♦God's breathing atmospheric spirit, or elec- 
 iric life, into the function of reception. The 
 blade of grass is as dependant on God's 
 breathing as any formation of animal life. 
 "We note decay in the vegetable world, sup- 
 posing there is a loss, when 'tis but a supply 
 gone forth to keep good the vitalizing force 
 necessary for promulgation. For as the seed 
 is sown, so would it he but for the decay of 
 vegetable matter to keep good the condition 
 of vegetable growth. Every variety in the 
 vegetable or floral kingdom sends into space 
 its own particular element for recuperation. 
 .Each element in matter throws off a corres- 
 ponding spirit element to keep good the law 
 ■of reproduction. We see a barren tract of 
 land, and we necessarily conclude the fault 
 of non-productiveness to be in the interior 
 secretions of that portion of earth's locality, 
 when the real and true fault lies at the door 
 of non-conformity to law in outside principle. 
 The earth contains the elements to foster 
 whatever nature, or God, sows the seed for, 
 but the breath of life breathed from the out- 
 side world may be too highly inflated with 
 the obnoxious principles surrounding some 
 other field of cultured worth. What is meat 
 for some is poison to others : — that adage 
 
- 110 MARIGOLDS BY THE -WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 will apply as well to vegetable production as 
 to the well-being of humanity. The breath 
 of life maybe tainted with the moral leprosy 
 of sin, thereby throwing its glamour of 
 deceit around our prized bed of earthly sow- 
 ing. We are not proof against the alluring 
 breath of the tempter's call, unless firmness- 
 stand sentinel at our doorway of appeal, and 
 turn no willing ear to the fair-faced visitor 
 whose offers porteod destruction to the 
 receiver. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAP TEE XXIII. 
 
 en masse, is only soluble by 
 
 'sly® ^e l aw °f gravitation that tends to 
 L ir' ; ^f a focus of power. The earth is but 
 * the centre of atmospheric by-play,, 
 the tendency to solidity of purpose, God's 
 finger-mark of actual demonstration to the 
 mind of man. Saturn desired to locate 
 another territory analagous to her code of 
 deal. Atmospheric law was called to active- 
 duty by Saturn's demand on the galvanic 
 pressure law circulating in space. The 
 world of motion is hidden from our external 
 gaze. We only live in the present tense of 
 actuality. All other life is in the orbit of to 
 be, to our activity of demonstration. We 
 can only grasp within our power of compre- 
 hension, and so run into the channel that 
 there is no other world or worlds, because 
 our earth vision has limited us within the 
 
112 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 Tange of the organ of comprehension. All 
 motion commences before the eye can make 
 <;laim to detection. Motion is anterior to 
 sight. It is God's breath stirring every fibre 
 of soul and demonstrative to the eye of faith 
 and interior capacity of mind. Motion runs 
 a line of march from the law of cause and 
 effect. It is want that causes motion, 
 whether it be physical or mental. Its power 
 ■of appeal vibrates on the springs of action, 
 showing that the interior contains the circu- 
 lar saw of motionary evolution. Our man of 
 time is the first to make an appeal on our 
 interior capacity of movement, for the reason 
 that the time-man must first be served. 
 First come, first served, is a law of respect 
 that is well to be observed, and as the 
 figurative man first claimed the board of 
 attention, we may well suppose that the con- 
 structed claimed of the constructor. God 
 fashioned man from the dust of the earth. 
 Man grew into being from an earthly basis 
 of movement on God's part, from a link in 
 his chain of animal financiering. The for- 
 mation of animal life, or animal matter, — 
 the terms are synonymous in significant 
 appeal to reason, — is stratified and running 
 in direct line from the fossil or vegetable 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 113 
 
 kingdom of growth. The vegetable world 
 has its soul element hung in space, and it 
 also retains the outreach of principle to fos- 
 ter its own keepsakes to a higher standard of 
 growth in the outside world. The power 
 of respiration is as much a law in the vege- 
 table or floral univerccelum of matter as in 
 the higher outreach of animal life. All 
 vegetation breathes, drinks and eats. All 
 nature opens the receptive valves and takes 
 to the fount of being the element or elements 
 of sustaining life. Man is but an outreach 
 from vegetable, floral, animal and mineral 
 substances, and, as each possess the combi- 
 nation process, you cannot dissolve the 
 unitarian compact existing in their broad 
 field of labor without detriment to the 
 structured greatness of their fashionable 
 designs. Man partakes of all the essentiali- 
 ties in nature's wardrobe of use, and you 
 find the mixtured emblems throughout his 
 whole structure of earthly proportion. What 
 man claims above the brute creation, and 
 what he holds superior and above animal 
 law to accomplish, is a mind-focus of power 
 that has drifted along God's line of march 
 unto its present degree of illuminated bear- 
 ing to the world. 
 
114 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OK, 
 
 " To fathom mind is to fathom God : 
 For God, his grandeur to express, 
 Built Man upright, and did him bless ; 
 And, to fulfil his law divine, 
 He gave to Man the key sublime" 
 
 To unlock the fountain head of truth, and 
 bring God to be recognized as a part of the 
 structure he formed. 
 
THE THOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 ^YSiOD is the circulating element in space; 
 
 ||g& the undertone that moves the wheel of 
 ©|g(e> motion ; the great " I Am," and the 
 
 ^4! always " To Be " ; the monitor that 
 governs time and stretches the arm of 
 strength around the vastness of the eternal 
 shores of progress. God spelt the A B C of 
 earth, and moved along the grade of intuitive 
 knowledge up to the point where instinct 
 or reason would lead the day-march of time. 
 And when instinct claimed her measure full 
 and running at the brim, God placed a spiral 
 hook around the running waste and caught it 
 above the element of time. We must allow 
 the deftness and cunning of God's skill in 
 winding matter to its full fruition before 
 instituting the key of reason, because matter 
 must be full grown in all its soluble parts 
 before it attains capacity to reconstruct or 
 
116 MAKIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 organize on a higher or broader basis of 
 movement. Matter springs at the touch 
 of reason, and moves from the life-giving 
 forces in elementary commotion. Are we, 
 then, to suppose that life and reason are 
 synonymous, — that reason holds no higher 
 use than animal existence ? God forbid that 
 mind, the key-note of God's power, should 
 not possess the faculty of picking itself clear 
 of matter. I say, God forbid that mankind 
 face matter as the ultimate and finale, when 
 the great heart cry from God's nationality of 
 worlds is for an ascension robe of life ever- 
 lasting. Reason instituted power when 
 instinct had glorified itself in the upright 
 position of apehood, showing that matter 
 has the spiral attributes of growth ; showing 
 that God, the magnet and propeller, flour- 
 ishes the proviso condition above the 
 creeping things of earth when instinct had 
 assumed the upright posture. There must 
 either be a bar let down, or a step taken 
 in advance, because there is no cessation 
 to God's wheel of motion. It must turn in 
 advance rotation or go back on a retrograde 
 movement, and, as God does not fashion to 
 kill, there is but one conclusion to arrive at, 
 and that is, outgrowth from the God-head 
 
Tip: PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 117 
 
 of power, or the God-head of natural sys- 
 tematic law, — -the terms are co-existing in 
 and for each other. There is but one 
 moving power, and that power must fill the 
 whole range of thought ; must beat against 
 every cell of our being ; must climb to the 
 highest point of intellectual growth and sink 
 to the lowest depths of human misery and woe. 
 It must fill all nature with its sublime pathos 
 of glory, light and love ; must meet and fill 
 the great mind want of God the Father; must 
 reach around all worlds and encompass the 
 beginning and the end ; must move in and 
 about all things, and, finally, must quench 
 the thirst of God by becoming God. For 
 God is all there is. We are all God, a part 
 of the tree of life, a branch or twig cut for 
 the hand of use that is moving to keep God's 
 platform safe and sound, and beyond the 
 suspicion of a break. 
 
 Let us attempt to analyze God. The 
 thought may seem strange and in advance 
 of our reason to maintain, but in the book of 
 sacred keepings we are commanded, or 
 invited, to " search, and ye shall find ; knock, 
 and it shall be opened unto you." There- 
 fore, with the Scripture permission and our 
 eye of faith wide oj)en, we proceed with 
 
118 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OB, 
 
 our investigation or analysis of God's stu- 
 pendous whole. In the beginning was God. 
 And God caused a great void to appear. 
 We might as well say that God was space, 
 and God, or Nature, desired space to be 
 filled, and, as God was the beginning, space 
 must be filled with God. And God caused a 
 separation to be wrought in chaos. There 
 should be earth and there should be heaven, 
 and water should cover the face of the earth 
 and stars should shine in the firmament 
 above. Now, I ask, what had God to do 
 with but himself, herself or itself? (for I 
 have never yet found the point where the 
 gender of God could be located). We call 
 God " Our Father," when we might with as 
 much truth say God our Mother, or God our 
 Universal Whole, because God has no climax 
 or personality of power. He rides upon the 
 winds and the waves, dives to the lowest 
 depths of mineral, vegetable and animal sub- 
 stance, and mounts the day-god of splendor 
 that rides in the eternal arch of heaven. 
 All nature claims its God of purpose, and no 
 other God mounts the chariot wheel of time 
 or rides along the meandering stream of 
 eternity's bright and flowing waters. God 
 is purpose, is energetic principle, the master- 
 
THE PE0SE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 119 
 
 builder and mover of the great machinery- 
 house that claims its all in God. We cannot 
 ojDen our eyes but God claims the move- 
 ment ; we cannot take to our casket of being 
 the particles that sustain life and individu- 
 ality but we take that much of God. "We 
 breathe, eat and drink God, clothe ourselves 
 with every article of his apparel, and don our 
 interior robe from the system-house of inte- 
 rior design, which is God's work-shop of 
 moving grace and filial bearing to the world. 
 Christ said, " except ye become as little chil- 
 dren, ye cannot enter the kingdom of 
 heaven." Did Christ mean, merging our- 
 selves to the smallness of childhood in 
 simplicity and guilelessness of heart, or were 
 we to become childish in parts to constitute 
 the whole in keeping of heaven. Now, in 
 order to become God's, it is not necessary to 
 change one iota of our structured being, 
 either on external or internal principle, 
 because we are so much of God, legitimate 
 in every part and parcel of our making or 
 forming; for we are formed and we are 
 made, — formed from the dust of the earth, 
 and made serviceable and lasting by the 
 clinch-hook of God's indomitable will, that 
 could not rest beside the apeish stream of 
 
120 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE J OP, 
 
 growth. And so to prolong power and keep 
 the channel free for the spirit of progress, he 
 imbued the acme of his whole being into 
 the mind estate of man, and man became 
 gifted and partook of the tree of knowledge, 
 placed by the hand of God broadcast and 
 free for mind to grapple and call its own. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETEY OE LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXV. 
 
 }®HEN Judas betrayed his master, and 
 for thirty pieces of silver gave hiin 
 into the hands of his enemies, Jesus 
 was fulfilling the divine wisdom of 
 decree, and Judas was serving the hand 
 of God in his instrumentality of purpose. 
 Both moved in their orbit of to be ; both ful- 
 filled their destiny of movement, and both 
 were anchored on the eternal shores of prog- 
 ress. Both found their true seat along the 
 glorious line of march that found its starting 
 point on the field of time, and whose end no 
 man hath seen ; no, not one, not even the 
 Christ who was caught to the bosom of 
 the father, and made one with the father in 
 purposes of activity and zeal in building up 
 the platform whereon would rest the sal- 
 vation seat of man's accomplishment. Jesus 
 can never arrive at the end of God's pro- 
 
122 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 
 
 gressive line. God, the maker and finisher 
 of nature's divine law, can never see the end 
 from the beginning, can never find the 
 place Stop, never find the word Halt in all 
 the vocabulary of motion ; for God is pro- 
 gressive, the baby-key that unlocks the 
 endless tomb of the greater God. God was 
 space, was the element of water, was earth 
 and all therein contained, the grovelling 
 brute, and the upright figure of man ; the 
 spiral point dropped to the figure head of 
 upright position, the growing line of intel- 
 lectual culture, the maintenance of pure and 
 holy purposes of activity in the world where 
 God is forming daily, and moving on to 
 fashion or create from the olden fashion a 
 truer God to keep good the line of con- 
 tinual march. 
 
 " God lifts aloft a bead of power, 
 And weakened footsteps trail behind. 
 Until the summer solstice hour, 
 When every bud becomes a flower, 
 And every laggard on the chase 
 Meets God in fragments face to face." 
 
 God claims himself in all the minutia of 
 the vast whole, — in the dewdrop that hangs 
 a crystal ball upon the nectar lips of the 
 blushing rose, and in the rose itself, the mon- 
 
THE PEOSE AND POETEY OF LIFE. 123 
 
 arcli of sweetness and beauty in the floral 
 kingdom ; in the grassy plots of verdured 
 green that dot the earth's surface and send 
 their shimmering splendor into the blue 
 vault of heaven ; and God claims himself in 
 old ocean's broad expanse of consequential 
 grandeur, in her fitness and aptitude at howl- 
 ing discord, and in her quiet and silvery 
 ripple that breathes nought but harmony 
 across her undulating waves of easy motion 
 and quiet beauty. And so I might trace 
 God through all the vast arena of nature, 
 find him in every locality in the pent-house 
 that spreads no liberal wing for the flight of 
 time, and find him in the great social eman- 
 cipation question that is stirring the heart of 
 the earth's wide range of intellectual wisdom 
 and sophistry of bearing in the world. God 
 is the God of Abraham, Isaac and, Jacob; 
 the God of all modern theism and all modern 
 hashing and bickering after truth; and God 
 is truth, and all there is of truth ; is good- 
 ness, and all there is of goodness, and all 
 there is of evil ; for God is all-in-all, all-wise, 
 almighty, and all-sufficient for time and for 
 eternity. Therefore, let us be content that 
 God has no partner in the world's formation 
 system. Let us be content that he masters 
 
124 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 
 
 every emotion of guile and spreads his wing 
 of safety around the devil's corner of use. 
 There is no pent-house on the shores of 
 time but God placed the cover and will 
 remove it when he needs that unction of 
 glory to crown another principle dropped into 
 the mind of man. The grandeur of earth 
 and the glory of heaven are in the keeping of 
 a God of system. No will or act of man 
 changes the rotation of his wheel of motion. 
 No interior principle suffers from neglect of 
 use. God moves when the occasion demands 
 a movement ; and when his mind, implanted 
 in the organic structure of man, can compre- 
 hend the component parts of the great 
 whole, then will his every movement be 
 understood, and man will grasp the hand of 
 God with the friendly clasp of recognition. 
 Man has never comprehended the glory of 
 God ; it has been a mountebank of super- 
 stition and a mythical structure for mind to 
 ramble around and become fogged under the 
 shadow of God's wing:. 
 
THE THOSE AND TOETEY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXYI. 
 
 W*f*r> H -^ Christian world have always 
 <^)g3 dressed God in the sham clothing of 
 
 T^jt 5 figurative assumption; have ever seated 
 ~0 L him so far away that reason faltered 
 
 in the chase. It was like searching for the 
 lost Tribes of Israel who having wandered 
 from the fold of God, ever after found 
 unsafe footing, and to-day have become 
 a myth along the rugged shores of time. 
 And so has reason wandered from the fold 
 of the true God and seated itself on the 
 scarecrow of public favor, and biased by 
 the bank stock in church creed that 
 flourishes nought but the golden calf and 
 fatlings from the first flocks of monied 
 monopoly. Church creed is a libel on the 
 
126 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 true breastplate of God's glory that should 
 be worn by the reasoning faculties of man. 
 The church has monopolized the entire 
 fabric of man's platform of fidelity to God. 
 What but a graven image of man-worship 
 is our mother Church of England, our 
 mother Church of Kome, and, I might say, 
 our mother Church of the American field of 
 worship that winds its sluggard footsteps 
 around no God of soul elevation or v heartfelt 
 sympathy of emotion. The church is God's 
 pent-house of scorn ; his mock ceremonial 
 service that does away with thought, and 
 charms the captive soul with the promise of 
 honor and distinctive merit in the kingdom 
 of heaven. How, I ask, can the binding of 
 faith to the altar of ceremonial service 
 affect the great natural law-heart of God ; 
 affect the still later dispensation, whose 
 binding charm and glowing face reflected 
 deeds instead of the falsity and sham that 
 cover the truth and purposes of religion, 
 and cast the dampness of doubt around the 
 heart that is seeking for the bread of 
 heaven to cast before the mind's eye, and 
 become sustaining food when the shadows 
 fall across our rosy walks in life ? 
 
 We cannot love what we do not under- 
 
THE TKOSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 127 
 
 stand or appreciate as true, — that would be 
 an inconsistency in human nature, — and to 
 love, reverence and keep God, we must hold 
 on to every garment in his wardrobe of use 
 and every attribute in his field of labor. 
 Every gem in his casket of world renowned 
 splendor must be brought to our shaded 
 eyes, that we, catching the glimmer of a 
 single gem, may bare our sight to the lustre 
 of the whole. No separate part can we take 
 as a beverage that will satisfy our thirst, 
 from a drink at the great pool of life that is 
 running its even course up to every dormant 
 faculty in the nature of man. God's spirit is 
 abroad in this summer of noontide splendor 
 in the world. God shoots his effulgent rays 
 of promise to the understanding and to the 
 wants of human hearts that have suffered in 
 the bondage and toils of mythological errors, 
 sprouted by the hand of man from seed sown 
 on barren waste. There is no part in God's 
 kingdom but what must undergo a thorough 
 searching. The schedule is wide, deep, and 
 filled with every variety of interesting won- 
 ders and interesting facts that will bring 
 man to a stand point of decision with regard 
 to his outfit and mission in life. God keeps 
 man's wheel of motion under the hamper of 
 
128 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 discontent ; keeps liim beside the litter of 
 care, perplexities and discouragements, that 
 banish the thought of rest. There is no rest 
 for man, no rest for God. Both act in uni- 
 son in and for each other. Both fill the 
 orb of constitutional oneness and both bal- 
 ance on the pivot of success, and, I might 
 add, both surround the throne eternal with 
 the evident intention of picking their way to 
 the height of science to maintain. God 
 places man on the direct line of research 
 with himself, and his beckoning hand ever 
 appeals to man's reason ; ever says, come 
 thou, for the way is open, and I will lead 
 through all the devious ways that seem pent 
 and dark to the unreasoning faculties of 
 man. God's truth is God himself, the vice- 
 gerent of success, the ploughshare that cuts 
 to the centre of all shades of error, and 
 flaunts its spotless garments around the 
 towering pinnacles of false fame. When 
 the last trump shall sound, then will the 
 last truth be told, and man himself will be 
 all there is of truth and all there is of 
 God, for God will then be applied to every 
 portion of our being, and we be caught to the 
 bosom of the true father and flourish our key 
 of strength, with the wisdom that follows, in 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 129 
 
 every footstep of progress along the mean- 
 dering stream that starts on the border 
 course of time, and flourishes its apex of 
 glory around every starry realm that lifts a 
 head of grandeur against the defiant skill of 
 
MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE I OR, 
 
 CHAPTER XXYII. 
 
 Sfe^HERE is one more point concerning 
 ^)^ the platform on which individuality 
 ^jS must maintain its own principality of 
 ^ power, and also maintain its free, 
 in-born gift of rinding God by the light of 
 its own reason. Every person should be a 
 distinct power, or weapon of use, to flourish 
 before the vineyard of the Lord ; should be 
 the sailor of his own destiny-ship, and let no 
 insecure hand grasp his rudder of travel. 
 There is no place from the cradle to the 
 grave for man to halt or play truant beside 
 the roadside of onward career ; no place to 
 drift into the sloughpools of indolent habit 
 or weave a web of idle dreaming that sifts no 
 knowledge in our pathway of accomplish- 
 ments for eternity. The web of life, — how 
 intricate and how beautiful we can make its 
 
THE rnOSE AXD POETRY OF LIFE. 131 
 
 blended colorings ; how easily we can patch 
 up all the deformities that arise from sources 
 outside of .our own control, by the willing- 
 ness of the Christian's heart to see good in 
 every movement of the extended hand of 
 God the Father, and God the Mother, of our 
 outspoken destiny that never leaves us. 
 That one word, fraught with so much mean- 
 ing, ever stares us in the face ; ever holds 
 aloft the transmission key that unlocks the 
 ordeal rooms for our untried feet to traverse, 
 and ever lights God's treasure-house with 
 the promises of our fulfilment. God never 
 requires beyond our capacity to perform. 
 Our tapers of use are lit at our commence- 
 ment hour. Some culminate in dazzling 
 splendor, while others waste away or only 
 serve to light a darkened pathway. When 
 mankind can look spirit communion in the 
 face as an absolute fact, and as the truth 
 for which mankind have jungled into all 
 sorts of isms to obtain and make fast with 
 the clinch-hook of reason, then will spirit- 
 communion become the elongated method 
 by which mind will become acquainted with 
 all its God-given attributes, and become 
 acquainted with the throne eternal and all 
 the keepsakes therein contained, -and all the 
 
132 marigo:lds by the wayside ; or, 
 
 mansions of the blest shall undergo the 
 scrutiny of the lovers of the Lord. 
 
 When Haman sought the overthrow of 
 the Shushamites, he was laying waste his 
 earth career and laying low his pinnacle of 
 glory on which he hoped to reach the 
 extended hand of God. How many there 
 are who dig a pit for themselves in seeking 
 the destruction or downfall of others who are 
 climbing the ascending hill of life. Haman's 
 gibbet which he caused to be erected filled 
 his measure of content, until the tables were 
 turned and he was doomed to meet the fate 
 destined for another. Selfishness is the 
 great besetting sin that is overwhelming 
 mankind with its cloven foot of distinctive 
 elements of worship. Mankind are gaining 
 on that one error, and its tendency is to 
 stupify all the noble energies and impulses 
 that would drift out to the world with the 
 succoring hand of help. God speed the day 
 when Gethsemane will sprout a broader 
 platform than the stool of selfish monopoly 
 that carries no waif of comfort outside of its 
 own precints of utter abandon to self. From 
 my spiritual locality I have tested all party 
 spirit ; have tested the fundamental work- 
 ings that actuate the erreat heart of societv, 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LD7E. 133 
 
 and my mind conviction is, that the great 
 army of Armadgeddon is wallowing in the 
 hot-bed of selfish delusion and trickery, that 
 only serves a purpose on the earthly basis 
 of life ; and the awakening on the portals of 
 immortality's glowing realms finds the spirit 
 bereft of the true seed of growth, a dangler 
 around the cushioned seats of empty pride. 
 "Wo unto the Scribes and Pharisees of this 
 generation of learned greatness and piggish 
 sectarianism, that blows the trumpet for the 
 golden monarchs of empty reign. The learn- 
 ing of Socrates never rilled his measure of 
 content ; never filled his cycle of greatness. 
 The tombs of the Zoroasters never covered 
 the glory of their reign. Solomon's temple, 
 that reared its mighty head of fabulous 
 worth, was a libel on the escutcheon of liberal 
 grandeur that reared the golden palaces for 
 the buried altars of dead minds sacrificed to 
 the god of mammon, and bent no weight of 
 glory around the home of accumulation that 
 ever stares us in the face with its .shining 
 armor of promise, hung on the walls of our 
 Jericho of action. 
 
MA.RI60LDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 $&i' 
 
 CHAPTEE XXVIII. 
 
 city o£ the dead is stretched along 
 c^ the actual experiences of every-day 
 
 \? 
 
 g&< life. It looms before us when we fail 
 ^ in duty to any cause our soul agitates ; 
 when we fail in the purposes that meet our 
 mind's eye, and with the approving voice 
 of conscience say, " thy will be done. Oh, 
 SOul, conquer and be steadfast to accomplish 
 the works that are God-designed and God- 
 capacitated." The lumbering wheel of time, 
 how slow is its measured tread of motion to 
 the idling waifs that be*at the heel of discon- 
 tent against the non-deeds of actual service. 
 Every talent that remains a dead letter in 
 the organic structure of man must be 
 brought to the acknowledgement seat of 
 supreme understanding, and undergo the 
 process of recuperation, and; Tjmwint} the ball 
 q£ life back to its starting point, or back tt> 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIIE. 135 
 
 the period of legitimate accountability. 
 Man should be above the grovelling con- 
 dition of life. He should try his skill at 
 meeting God half-way in the interior 
 capacity of workmanship ; should learn to 
 take God for his standard of accumulation, 
 and beat the bars of flight with the wide- 
 spread wings that encompass more than the 
 air that gives them motion. Man should be 
 no Bird of Paradise to flaunt a gay exterior 
 before a world he helps to form and helps to 
 fill, and also helps to govern by the reins 
 placed within the reach of mind exertion. 
 Man should be above the platform of toy- 
 ship. He should ride the exultant waves of 
 noble daring to the accomplishment of noble 
 deeds. A mock heroism surfeits society 
 with its promises that never reach the stand- 
 ard of success ; never folds guilt or the 
 appearance of evil "within the pale of succor 
 or within the harbor of retrospection, until 
 the pruning hook of good example and 
 kindly forbearai*ce clears the rubbish away 
 from the good seed that will sprout under 
 the genial atmosphere of love and appreci- 
 ation. Kindness is an inlaid principle, by 
 which one human being reaches the heart- 
 preeinct of another ; by ^hich the barriers of 
 
136 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 restraint are cast aside, and the confiding 
 element that surges to the hea^t of every 
 individual surrounded by the tempter's foot 
 of daring cunning and crafty malice. Kind- 
 ness ever steps to the open doorway of slack 
 principle, willing to lay its weakness into 
 the anchor-house of another's keeping, and 
 drift to the promised land of safety by indi- 
 vidual help, God's instruments of salvation 
 around the lighted tapers of earth-life. 
 
 Each and every soul must rear its weight of 
 sustaining strength, wisdom and council, 
 around the brother and sister souls that 
 appeal at the entrance track of harmony and 
 affinity of motion. Love should become the 
 ruling element in society ; the aroma that 
 sweetens every beverage presented to the 
 lips of -another ; the essence that underlies 
 and overtops every movement of reformation 
 and every individual charity effort that rears 
 its spiral point of beauty to the harmonious 
 evangelical mercy-house of God. For there 
 is nothing that so sweetens the soul and 
 lends its charm to the whole individual 
 exterior as love. Its silver-tipped arrow 
 perforates the groundwork of God's immense 
 whole and enters the interior design-work 
 of every structured monument of success. 
 
THE PKOSE ANTJ POETP.Y OF LIFE. 137 
 
 Love ! it is the glory of the world, whose 
 Hypical effulgence lights the pathway of 
 heaven, and sends its starry points into the 
 new Jerusalem awaiting the time-worn feet 
 of man. There is no world so beautiful as 
 the one where love presides at its board of 
 ambitious movement ; as that Avhere love 
 handles the aggressive and defensive weap- 
 ons that move around the social and political 
 warfarings of society. Love is the great 
 pillar of strength whose downy softness lulls 
 the soul into the forgetfulness of the sin 
 enemy who ever roams around us when 
 unhappiness strikes our citadel of strength. 
 We are all creatures of tenrptation's call to 
 action ; all besieged by the enemy at large,, 
 and all hold the stag at bay until our devil 
 hound scents the prey and pulls our trigger 
 of discontent. "We are then ready for a- 
 hunt in the field of sin, unless the angel on 
 the other side beckons us away with the 
 smile of love and an outstretched hand to 
 lead us back to the path of duty. Some 
 have larger fields of waste land than others ;. 
 some a wider range for devil culture ; but all 
 need and are sustained and strengthened by 
 the love prop, or corner stone, that upholds 
 the great masonio temple-house of God.. 
 
13S MARIGOLDS BT THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 Lore builds a nest for every child of eaTth, 
 but the lever of hard usage is applied, and 
 the nest becomes torn and shattered and 
 unable to contain the child, who is thrust 
 forth to become a prey to the danglers that 
 ever hang around society and are fashioned 
 to a great extent in the kiln of unkind 
 treatment. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY 01? LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTEE XXIX. 
 
 'y^jOW much do circumstances outside of 
 W$3& om " own cou trol bias and form our 
 'ygkp character presented to the world. 
 "V How much Ave go out from self and 
 imbibe the whole characteristics of another. 
 How easily we learn to assume the stand 
 point of another's opinion and how easily we 
 take on degrees of fellowship in the business 
 transactions pertaining to the well-doing of 
 our brother man. Yie all reach the hand 
 of want to the outside world and to the gar- 
 nered stores of another's keeping. We live 
 for and by the help and magnetic fervor ws, 
 lend and receive from eacli othfty. Outside 
 of the atmosphere of love we woukl perish. 
 or become automatons to rusi on Qur own 
 ■harfi&s. Love is as essentia! to the sfcral 
 as food to the body, — both maintain the 
 essentialities of. purpose and work in uni&on 
 
140 MAEIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 of compact to further God's scheme of 
 being of the earth, earthy, and of the heav- 
 ens, heavenly. What so frustrates our whole 
 being with discontent as the gathering spirit 
 of non-appreciation ? . What so charms the 
 every day life and sends its silvery sheen of 
 brightness around the future as the halo 
 of loving kindness, not bought or seen with 
 the golden glitter of wealth ? Love should 
 be the staple article, moving the masses to 
 a position of harmonious combination. It 
 should rear a flag of liberty beside every 
 stream made dark and turbid by the simoon 
 sweep of slavery, that sends its pestilential 
 death blow to all spirit of progression that 
 lifts its head for tho glory of man. Nature 
 is love, and God is nature, and God is love, — 
 the purest, holiest and divinest of all the 
 attributes in his make-house of motion. 
 Therefore, love must be the conquering hero 
 over whom death can have no power, for the 
 last enemy is death, and love will flap her 
 wings at the burial service, and with the 
 loud acclaim of thanksgiving and praise pro- 
 nounce the heavens and earth united. 
 
 The mission of Spiritualism, or spirit 
 communion, is to evangelize the world ; to 
 lift up the children of earth io the platform 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 141 
 
 of heaven's keeping ; to open the road for 
 the salvation of all ; to give the sinner — 
 and that embraces all humanity — a chance 
 to reach God through their own development 
 of understanding and pick their own seat in 
 the vastness of eternity. God rides upon the 
 waves of human events. The surging waters 
 of oppression are being toned anew from the 
 rippling stream of free-thought that is run- 
 ning the grade of public favor and admission 
 to the seat of reason. When mankind plant 
 the tree of knowledge beside every hedgerow 
 of ignorance, the mystery will drop away, 
 and God will be recognized as the substance 
 of things seen, not merely heard of as some 
 far off being of immense grandeur, but no 
 power of expression that we can grasp with 
 the intellect of comprehension. God has too 
 long dwelt in mystery to the mind's eye of 
 man, and the cloak can no longer be worn 
 with fitting ease, for the great whirlpool of 
 doubt is surging to the utter destruction 
 of all garments of show, and God can no 
 longer keep his policy of worth in the 
 pent-house of mystery and personality. 
 God travels abroad in this age and era 
 of time's progressive march. God lifts a 
 head of mightier power than ever before 
 
142 MAXtl&OLDB BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 tampered with the skill of man's ability qf 
 conception. God dwells in the whole arcana 
 of nature ; in the whole atmospheric pres- 
 sure of vibratory love that fills every air cell 
 of motion floating in and around the world. 
 God grants a hand of skill to every waifling 
 caught in the meshes of despair, and meeting 
 the hurling volcanic dashes sent from the 
 blasting rocks of personal animosity and 
 the de-vil-to-do will of mischief. God grant 
 that in these days of sharpened wisdom, 
 the glory of the peacemaker will illuminate 
 the broad fields of social intercourse, and 
 make radiant the garden of Eden, which 
 term should apply to every home circle and 
 .to every nest of fellowship where love has lit 
 the torch of travel. God grant the day not- 
 far distant when love shall become a prevail- 
 ing epidemic ; when the contagion arising 
 from its cutaneous eruptions shall enter into 
 every heart and flood it with the moral fever 
 of upright deal. 
 
THE THOSE AND roETUY OF LIFE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 <§^F mankind would sift more gems into 
 *g|} the hard and barren waste of sonl- 
 !^j® soil, earth would possess more rosy 
 ^ patches, and the pathway to heaven 
 would become filled with substantial grains 
 of pillared worth, that the soul should hang 
 on its altar of pride to become the talisman 
 to open the world renowned gates of para- 
 dise, and plant its glory of accumulation 
 on the topmost round of accountability. The 
 soul element, or the element that masters 
 the crude affinity of nature, is placed in 
 juxtaposition or approximate affinity with 
 the sounding line of spirit communion. 
 When spirits have a plan to mature, or ball 
 to put in motion, to give light and truth to- 
 mankind, they seek in humanity what they 
 can best control ; seek the element of pur- 
 pose in degree as they can find it, and seek an 
 
144 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE; OR, 
 
 affinity in organic structure to make harmo- 
 nious the line of communication. Spiritual- 
 ists, or those who have proof positive of 
 spirit communion, cannot ignore the fact 
 or the conditions requisite to the mainte- 
 nance of symmetry and the even balance of 
 intellectuality. We in spirit life seek our 
 mediums from a combination of reasons. 
 Those that come en rapport with us are easier 
 of control, and those that surge to our 
 brink of safety are more readily reached by 
 ihe law of sympathy that runs an even 
 motion throughout the work-house of nature. 
 Spirit communion, to the uninitiated in any 
 of the laws that control the truth and 
 beauty of the design, think it a farce to 
 cheat the credulous part of community, 
 and rob them of a few of their dollars 
 and cents. We in spirit life do feel and 
 know the deceptions that have been prac- 
 tised, but we also feel and know that the 
 great car of truth will ride triumphantly 
 oyer the waves of error. Spiritualism will 
 no longer be a concealed fact ; its destiny is 
 on and over every shattered empire of false 
 glory and pride. It will be the " monarch of 
 all I survey" in all the spheres of active 
 duty, and in all the spheres where life has 
 
THE PROSE AXD POETRY OF LIFE. 145 
 
 taken the form of individuality. Spirit com- 
 munion is the grandest thought from the 
 great fountain of knowledge that could be 
 dropped to the earthly wisdom of man. It 
 is the beverage that time has ever thirsted 
 for ; and as soon as reason could maintain its 
 sway, and feel secure of a basil stand point 
 from which to rear its truth, it crept to the 
 world in a simple and unobtrusive manner, 
 for thought to linger around and make easy 
 the conquest of comfort. Ifc has now gained 
 a footing where naught can disturb its tran- 
 quillity of movement ; where all surface 
 shadows will only tend to show the transpar- 
 ency of their flimsy nothingness. The tide of 
 earthly reason is emigrating to the shores 
 of spirit lodgment, and the two worlds shall 
 join in compact of governmental duty. Then 
 church creeds will find no footing in the para- 
 mount house of God, for there shall be no 
 graven images to take the place of the true 
 father, says the later dispensation of Christ- 
 ian benevolence and duty to first principles 
 in the great drama of the world's salvation. 
 Plato picked in the fields of barren waste 
 for the minds that then made up the board 
 of the world's nationality, and to-day, when 
 
146 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OE, 
 
 reason is fledged for a broad flight, this new 
 system of worship scarcely seems tangible 
 and in keeping with the egotism and pride 
 that has ever clamored for God's best opin- 
 ion, and ever sought it through the channel 
 of the church filter from sin. Plato's mind is 
 fast merging to God's seat of power. He 
 is so far advanced from the world's ideal of 
 knowledge that the world could in no way 
 understand the illuminated pages given to the 
 students in his classic field of lore. Oh, 
 the wisdom, power, expansion and scope given 
 to the mind of man ! At its highest altitude 
 it picks the crown from the histrionic brow 
 of power, and places its excelsior notes on 
 the grandest scale of intellectual march. 
 Oh, thou God in man, to thee we bow with 
 the reverential trust, knowing that thy power 
 to save is the indwelling spirit of love, that 
 permeates all the vastness of thy design cul- 
 minating in the personal God-head of man. 
 Some will ask with holy horror if I am 
 making man to be God, or God to be 
 man, — which seems sacrilegious in either 
 sense, — robbing God of all dignity and 
 building up man on the downfall of God's 
 influential ability ? My object lies in neither 
 of these points which the public will choose 
 
THE PROSE AND FOETEY OF LIFE. 147 
 
 to take up, but in the rippling truth that 
 floods my soul with its golden armor of 
 brightness. I hear God speaking from the 
 hill top of scientific truth, wearing the per- 
 sonality of intellectual manhood. The 
 figure head of shipendous power may travel 
 through all God's worlds and ever find the 
 law of co-operation and co-partnership run- 
 ning the race of even intensity of purpose. 
 
SfAMGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE'; Oil, 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI, 
 
 i/S^HE rasping hand of fate inoves every 
 ■ g$$ element in our capacity-house of 
 'y^j8 strength. If the God within our 
 ~^ interior make-up desires to ride tri- 
 umphantly the waves of every reform, the 
 builder's art is brought into requisition. 
 The carpenter and joiner work of interior 
 ability is the God workman within the 
 capacity-line of native talent and imprint of 
 divine wisdom. The growth of man com- 
 menced with the growth of God. Both were 
 in the orbit of natural design. Both dropped 
 to the world of use when the great crater of 
 strength heaved forth the effort at centrali- 
 zation. God tunes his march with the 
 correct understanding that no flitting shad- 
 ows of surface show can impede the free-will 
 agency of natural by-laws, of playful activity, 
 that surround, encompass and enthrall, and, 
 
THE PR0S3 AM) POETEY OP LIFE. 140 
 
 I might also add, create the God whom we 
 all adore and Hold by the right hand of 
 fellowship, to become one with God in filial 
 bearing and love to the world. Juno's figure 
 head of God captivated the eye of faith in the 
 heathen dynasties of power. All glitter and 
 show of significant importance was thought 
 to be pleasing to the supreme commander 
 of human destiny. Faith works according 
 to the by-play of educational knowledge, 
 which rears a foundation for faith to build 
 upon. Faith is the substance of_ things 
 hoped for ; the reality that is wrought and 
 lived in the imaginary field of demonstration 
 before it comes to the actual experience of 
 physical testimony of trial. What but the 
 spirit of faith leads us out into the field of 
 actual labor, to try our chances with the ele- 
 ments of success or defeat that rise in our 
 pathway or meet us in the various windings 
 of daily toil that seem to be apportioned for 
 mental and moral experience? (for no part of 
 earth's gleanings but ripen for the soul's 
 enjoyment and improvement). What but 
 they spirit of trust* or faith, leads us to 
 search the untried fields of spirit life and 
 hold communion with our dear departed 
 oiaes, whom death had not the power to 
 
150 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 steal away from our knowledge. In no act 
 of the father's do we recognize and feel the 
 beauty of the hand divine as in the great 
 love-surges that gather our dead to the love- 
 lit haven of a more glorious life. Christ died 
 that we, through the power of his resur- 
 rection, might also become partakers in the 
 resurrection of eternal life. Is there no 
 principle involved in Christ's release from 
 earthly bondage ? In his departure to a 
 world of spiritual light, was there no law to 
 be obeyed to fix his destiny of . movement, 
 and pin it with the star of truth to the end- 
 less chain of natural progressive law ? If 
 not, if Christ's demise from earth and extinc- 
 tion of physical function had no basis of 
 active design, only what comported with the 
 will of personality, then is life a farce and 
 Christ a myth that floated on the world of 
 matter to serve the unction of material 
 demand. If life has only will for a basis of 
 consideration and precision of movement, 
 then are we stranded on the shore of every 
 day life, and our ship freighted with a cargo 
 that would run the blockade of time, and 
 anchor in the storehouse of natural affinity. 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIES. 
 
 CTAPTEH XXXII. 
 
 if^OD gave the world a foundation system 
 M& whose every attribute is strength ; and 
 ^Md power to maintain the world's sal- 
 ^ vation is the law-lever used by the 
 hand of divine harmony that exultingly 
 sways the orbit of all motion ary chaotic 
 elements of progress. If will is at the basis 
 of the world's harmony of movement, and 
 will be an attribute, or power of mind radi- 
 ation, dependant on the construction of 
 animal function of being, or spiritualistic 
 epilogue of zeal, or finish of man-head or 
 God-head, (the terms being synonymous and 
 bearing the same affinity of soul maintenance 
 to the cause represented), then will is the 
 
152 3IARIG0LDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OK, 
 
 basis of structure on the personality of rep- 
 resentation or principle in throwing out 
 worlds and sustaining them in the orbit of 
 sensible rotation, and affixing them by the 
 cord of sympathy, or loye chain, to the Ari- 
 gosa, or inlaid tributaries, in nature that 
 hold the God- of cause and effect. Then the 
 God personality blends will with the God- 
 ality of natural law, making harmonious the 
 coupling power of God and man, or, in other 
 words, blending will, which is an attribute 
 depending on organic structure, with the 
 will power running through chaotic orga- 
 nization. If God has affixed will as the 
 fundament, or primary note, that sounds 
 • the bugle horn of outlay, then God is will, 
 or the inharmony that creates harmony 
 from the elements of discord. You cannot 
 affix or prefix one particular attribute or 
 principle to the beginning of time, and 
 say, " I have found God ; my one ray of 
 light has penetrated to the centre of a first 
 cause ; my one torch has lighted up the 
 whole arc of God's field of command ;, 
 my one fledgling bird can sing the great 
 harmonarchy of natural law, outspoken^ 
 outgushing, and forever throwing out its. 
 invitation or appeal to the centre "figure 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 15.3 
 
 encompassed in the ideality of man's for- 
 mality of motion, asking for fellowship and 
 cohesive assimilation to find God's whole in 
 the grandeur of scheme, and in the finish or 
 polish of all native lintings that stretch 
 through the coliseum of man's figurative 
 appeal to the arm system of law, and in the 
 drifting halo that surrounds the infinite pur- 
 poses of principles in motion, underpinning 
 the se.ctarianship of God's nationality of 
 wisdom and display of talent that rides the 
 waves of time,, and floats the sceptre of sal- 
 vation to the soul-God of all things, made or 
 fashioned by or from the deep-seated 
 internal power of inspiration, that one word 
 that fills the great dome of God's whole is 
 the summing up of all the scattered prelates 
 of power that surround the throne eternal,, 
 and clamor for the voice of God to swell the 
 anthem of claim to the oneness of a supreme 
 rule." It is time that God assumed a stand- 
 ard footing on the platform of fact and 
 justice of principle. It is time God's perso- 
 nality be wound around all figurative outlay,, 
 and spread to ensnare the footsteps of every 
 generation that is walking towards the trap 
 set in the field of truth to gladden the far- 
 reaching faculties, and bring out the golden 
 
154: MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 glimmer of ripened intellect that surges to 
 the hill of science to meet, as did the Moses 
 -of old, the face of God, but reflected from 
 the verge of every living thing, and seen with 
 the mind's eye of faith and vision of soul the 
 high toned characteristics in every feature of 
 the grand whole. Oh, God, thy visage rare 
 we face, and see in each smiling lineament 
 thy thoughtful care for the wandering steps 
 of man. And, oh, God, we trace through all 
 tlry countenance of love its diligent appeal 
 to the searching instinctive faculties drawn to 
 the shaping of intellectual manhood, and 
 there fostered and toned to dwell in the 
 mountain eyry, or God's nest of fellowship, 
 which is the success of intellectuality, the 
 God-stamp that fashions and creates the sys- 
 tem of law, motion and life. God's whole is 
 in the beginning ; in the mind's eye that 
 •struck out a first cause, and peopled it with 
 all things necessary for the stimulating hand 
 of time to bring to the fruition seat of prog- 
 ress. There is nothing made outside of first 
 effort : the one signal gun was the shot of 
 success, whose prolonged sound awoke every 
 faculty outside the power of love and har- 
 mony to fathom. What is to be will be. 
 There is no getting away from one's orbit of 
 
THE PROSE AND POETRY OF LIFE. 155 
 
 motion ; the track is laid, and we, the des- 
 tined travellers, journey along, without the 
 power to cease our motion or change 
 the course laid down by fate. God has 
 placed a lock and key over all possessions 
 foreign to our capacity of understanding, 
 and no receptacle of God's truth is laid open 
 for investigation until the lock is picked by 
 the spirit of traverse, that seeks an entrance 
 into all the mysterious lodgment rooms in 
 nature. The truth of man's ability lies in his' 
 future attainments. Until the energetic 
 monitor of research is applied to our car of 
 thought, we are in the babyhood of incipient 
 .activity ; goslings, aiming to be geese, with 
 the green dress of uulledgment still hanging 
 as a drapery of truth to our position. Mind 
 is a principle that will 7iot flourish in an 
 atmosphere of coercion. It needs the gentle, 
 -coaxing, lover-like way of being brought out 
 to the confidence seat of self approval. 
 Mind grows rugged and full of healthful 
 activity under the bracing element of love 
 and the outside voice of appreciation. All 
 vegetation culminates to a more honorable 
 appearance under the gentle love strokes of 
 sunshine and shower, and human nature 
 iiourishes best when touched by the illumi- 
 
158 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE ; OR, 
 
 Eating spirit of suavity and grace. "When 
 God made Adam for the first man, he 
 showed his failure in attempt at perfection, 
 for Adam displayed majry points of weakness 
 to the world. He held out the spirit of cun- 
 ning and sophistry, which must have met 
 God's approval, else wherefore, in command- 
 ing his structure, was the platform laid for 
 a footprint of deception '? Wherefore does 
 God institute the means to work out the end 
 designed, if it be not in keeping with his far- 
 searching aud harmonious spirit, that sees, 
 the end from the beginning ; sees the buried 
 talents needed to awaken the sleepy and idle- 
 spirit of progress ? 
 
 God never works in doubt ; if he sticks a 
 pin here, lie knows where the next one is 
 needed, or required, to keep the fabric whole 
 for the incision of time to cut or work out 
 the garment, or principle, desired from that 
 particular moiety of encompassment. The 
 jugular vein that contains the current or elec- 
 tric fluid for all life runs through the centri- 
 fugal and centripetal forces that constitute 
 the harmony of existence. What God gives 
 lie also keeps, and fosters with lover-like 
 precision of movement. And thus when 
 human effort is a gift, the spirit of the gift. 
 
THE THOSE AND POETRI OF LIFE. 157 
 
 is fostered by the giver. Remember that, 
 je who deal out to others, if your gifts be 
 tokens of love, love will be reflected on the 
 soul camera of life, and if the spirit of hate 
 or indifference dictates or sways the out- 
 stretched hand or heart in its benificent 
 workings for another, that spirit is retained 
 by its possessor and grows brighter and 
 more effulgent in the hand of use. The spirit 
 of a dead letter serves no good, but the 
 spirit that fosters a living principle into 
 the harbor of safety from impending storms 
 gathers a seed into the Christian's fold of 
 worship that time sprouts for the advantage 
 of God and man, And thus let us journey 
 for the benefit of all sovereign and minor 
 considerations of power, knowing that the 
 finale is as the beginning, — the wheel within 
 the wheel of all natural accomplishment. 
 
 My journey by the roadside of life is 
 nearly ended, the thread of my jottings 
 broken in twain ; but when again reunited 
 by the hand of fate, I shall move with a 
 different individuality of purpose, and wind 
 my key of strength to the speaker's field cf 
 use. 
 
158 MARIGOLDS BY THE WAYSIDE. 
 
 "Marigolds by the Wayside," I Lave 
 gathered as best I could ; as I could find my 
 medium in a condition to assist me. There- 
 fore, if a straying grass or inappropriate 
 weed mar the collection here tied together r 
 do not cast the bouquet aside as worthless T 
 but remember that there is always chaff in 
 wheat, and dust where pearls are imbedded. 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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