could have foretold years previous to the event.

As in the natural world the traveller in the desert beholds the mirage of
some city which is hundreds of miles distant, suddenly arising upon the
sandy waste, so, in the spirit world, the spectrum form is projected, and
events which are to take place are made visible before their actual
occurrence. But, as in the natural world spectrum forms occur only under
certain atmospheric conditions, so in the spirit world it is the
conjunction of circumstances and the blending of magnetic currents that
make it possible for coming events to be revealed upon the level plane
which is set apart for this purpose in the summer land.

Man at the present day is so constituted that a revealment to him of
coming events in detail would be injurious; and experience proves that
such disclosures, when made to him in dreams or otherwise, are
profitless, as he always fails to foil the evil of which he is
forewarned.

History and biography show that individuals have time and again, been
admonished by their assiduous friends of evils or calamities that were to
befall them, yet the admonition, though timely given, seldom enabled them
to avoid their fate. Men have been warned of murderous assaults, but they
have not evaded them; premonitions have been given of falling buildings,
and these have fallen, involving in their destruction the loss of the
individual's life at the precise date which his dream foreshadowed.

The time will come in the far future when man will understand prophecy as
a science. There are few persons living at the present day, who, looking
back upon their past history, would conscientiously wish it had been all
revealed to them at the outset of their career.

The withered, faded beauty, at the dawn of her life of youthful triumph
could not have endured a vision of the haggard unfortunate wretch which
she would represent in the course of a few years.

These remarks apply more especially to the so-called civilized state of
society at the present day.

The semi-barbarous nations, so termed, are in closer sympathy with
nature. Life and death, prosperity and adversity, are to them as natural
effects as the sunshine and rain of the terrestrial globe.

Their equanimity, their perfect repose upon the bosom of nature, causes
them to see more clearly into the future than do civilized nations. There
is a spirit of prophecy which does not comprehend the detail, and only
takes cogniza