In the next state, to which I in common with all men who have not passed some hundreds of years in the spirit world belong, individuals pass through a condition analogous to death upon the earth.

Spiritual bodies are subject to a process of refinement and decay; and the soul, as the winged butterfly to which it is likened, throws off its cerement and assumes a new form.

But with us the transmigration is not veiled in darkness and mystery as with you.  We can watch the transformation; we can see the spirit emerge from its old casement more ethereal than ourselves, but still visible; and we can hold communion with it.

So slight is this change with us that your mediums seldom touch upon the fact.

Spirit is inseparable from matter, and can give neither form nor expression without it.

The Great Invisible Creator of the Universe must have thought of trees, flowers, beasts, birds, fish, and the wonderful exhibitions of form through the vast realm of matter, previous to their existence.

But he had to give them shape in matter—­perishable but re-creative matter; and if the Master-mind of all cannot express his thought otherwise than with this ever changing, yet ever reconstructing thing called matter, how can the human soul manifest but through a spiritualized condition of matter, ever changing yet ever re-creating and refining, mounting higher and higher, from the earthly to the spiritual, from the spiritual-to the celestial, on—­on—­till finally reaches Deity—­himself!

JUNIUS BRUTUS BOOTH

ACTING.

All great actors are media for spirit influx.  It would be a marvellous sight if the curtain which hangs between the spirit world and the stage were uplifted, and the invisible drama which is being enacted exposed to view.  Then would you behold “the airy spirits” to whom Shakspeare so truthfully alludes, moving like comets in gorgeous light around the inspired actor!

Inspiration is motion, acceleration, intensity; it has no part or parcel with lethargy.

I recall my past experience, portions of which I review with regret.  In endeavoring to obtain this energy, this motion, this acceleration, I was obliged in my ignorance to resort to artificial means.  A knowledge of the laws of spirit life would have enabled me to have avoided this mistake; but that knowledge I did not possess.

The actor of the present day is blessed with the knowledge that he has merely to throw himself into the magnetic state, and become en rapport with spiritual conditions, to find himself inspired—­inflated with the divine magnetic current which flows from the spirit world to the inhabitants of earth.  If a player desires to represent a certain character,—­let it be the subtle, fiend-like Richard III. or the crafty Richelieu,—­the customary mode of studying such characters is to endeavor to imagine one’s