t
grain of her possessions has ever, or will ever escape from her hand,
and the daily debris from all earth-made bodies is her constant toll.
When the forms are set free from the life principle which has pervaded
them in their earthly career, the circle is rounded, and when the
grave-rite, dust to native dust we here restore to our great mother is
uttered, she is the gainer; for the operation of thus passing the
material of which the planet is made through the highest created forms
of life, brings it into a certain relationship to spirit, and thus the
evolution, the spiritualization of the world-stuff of the planet itself
is going forward.

DEATH A BENEFACTOR.

Death is a benefactor to the human race. How could we bear the burden
of existence if Nature did not somewhere on the march "call a halt"
while the angels of dissolution tenderly unloose our burdens of pain
and sorrow, and disappointment, and stultifying regrets, and remorses
for past ill doings and shortcomings?

WORLD PROGRESS.

It is known only to the lesser gods, who keep the celestial "accounts,"
how many times the swaggering, bully-ragging, brawling, piratical, and
murderous human family has swept around this globe. Here and there
relics of their status, their growth in the external, material
conditions of life are being exhumed, wrung from the faithful clasp of
Mother Earth, to excite the wonder of the day and time. Many of the
attributes of these lost races, their arts and their religions, have
come to light; but whence they came, and how they perished, is an
unsolved mystery. From the processes of disintegration--earthquakes,
and widespread volcanic action--now going on, we can readily conceive
of the manner in which vast multitudes of humanity have been removed
from this planet to make room for still other races and peoples. The
great pilgrimage still goes on. Unnumbered hordes following the secret
instinct of evolution, unceasingly press forward from the East toward
the setting sun. This same army, in a former incarnation, went forth
over the land where they lived to slay and exterminate; in this
embodiment, here in America, they hew out the rocks, and toil in the
mines. They harvest the grain that is to feed the hungry multitude
that is speeding on toward this new land as fast as the modern
conveniences can fetch them. Thus they serve instead of destroying
humanity--a great advance toward civilization.

There has been, ther