The Spiritual Pilgrim
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THE SPIRITUAL PILGRIM: JAMES M. PEEBLES. FOURTH EDITION. BOSTON : COLBY & RICH, PUBLISHERS, 9 MO~MEBYPLACE. 1878. SEP a81899 En--toActof Cowen,intb#yearrh.lr, BY J. 0. BARRETT, In the O5ce of the Librarian of Cmgmse, at WuhiDgtaP Swtb in iba &r.gtI : MbDm ELIZABETH PHILIPINE HAHE HELLENE, OF FRANCE. FRIENDLY EPISTLE. DEAEREADER, - My object in writing thia book is to encourage the world's reformers. In the fall of 1868, busily engaged in literary work at my residence, Mr. Peebles related some of his experiences by.way of pleasantry; when, deeply interested, I playfully said, " Why, James, such inciaents have a beautiful moral 1 you should publish them for others' benefit." Urging the claim wid cogent reasons, I 8UC- ceeded in parrying off his jokes about it, but put myself in a dilemma unexpectedly, for I must be the biographer! Embosomed in the faith .of this brother's love, it did seem a natural choice. Meeting him again the next summer, on the shore of Elkhart Lake, Wis., in that "Wigwam Bower of Prayer," I took the horsocope of his life, -the shadows of fact east in the light of the spirit. Corresponding with some of his friends- whose kindnesses are gratefully acknowledged-to procure old and new lettenr, and seizing upon hie voluminous writings, I at length had a little mountain of docamenu; and what a chaos 1 So checkered did I find his life, my greatest di5- cnlty was to reduce this sketch to consistent bounds. Much remains untold. A biography, you know, is the hardest portraiture to delineate. It is a slight task to measure by rule, and quite a different art to impress the soul till sentences think with words that bum. The writer must have sympathetically the experience of his hero,-fight his battles, weep with his tern, rejoice with his joy, feel the pulses of his heart. Oh, for Nature's art! The poet's success is what he feels; inspired feeling through a practical mind is divinely eloquent. The painter needs more than an anatomy: he must catch the soul of his subject, and stamp it upon canvas, or his effort is a failure. Sweden's song-birds, Jenny Lind and Christine Nilsson - poor peasant girls once -enchant the nations ; for theirs is the sod of music. I never would have undertaken the honored task of writing the actual biog- raphy of a man whose life-line threads over all the world, and heaven too, interlacing with the c' New Gospel " in its most delicate and refined activities, had I not been guided by a genius higber than my own, by an angel familiar with all the experiences of the '' Spiritual Pilgrim." Have I caught it, -the soul 4 Thy song, the joy and sorrow of all races, Life's contradiotiona, harmonized anew " ? a. 0. B. GLEN BE-, Wm. 6 PREFACE. BY EMMA HARDIHQE. Txnm is the great and original tonchatone of truth. Whem thin impartial jade has prononnced hb wrdict upon movemento whom nourn data back to periods antecedent to our own, the records that are left us gain force and intereat in our minds in exact proportion to our information concerning the pemnsgea who were instrumental in creating the events recorded. It is for this mon that biography M esteemed an the most acceptable and analyticsl form that history can ,asenme. All human transactions originate in the infinencea of the human spirit, whether in the visible or invisible world ; hence we can only approach the problem of cans* tion, when we begin to understand the nature of the spiritual forces that have been brought to bear upon the events we trace. When the great spiritual outpouring of the nineteenth cenhry shall be enbmitted to the judgment of posterity, and the miterion of time, unbid by paasion or prejudim, shall determine its true value to mankind, the more precious the record may become, the more eagerly will humanity march for the footprints of its pioneers, preachem, teachers, media, and martyrr. It is thin tendency to identify all human interests with human individu- alities that har led to the errors of hero-woehip, and god-men. Perhap the bea corrective that can be devised for this species of idolatry is the calm and strictly human record which biography presents ; and therefore we know of no better eerviw that the writers of the preaent era can perform to posterity than to prepare for their we trtlthfal records of the varions individualities that have been engaged in the wonderful and world-wide movement known ea "Modern Spiritualism." Perhaps none of the phenomenal personages of this movement can furnish a more striking, instructive, and interesting theme for the biographer than J. M. ' Peebles. Hie early education and connection with the ministry in phases of mligious belief utterly opposed to the great modem revelation; his long, patient, and eelf-aacrificing labors for the promotion of Spirltdi, when, Sad-like, he became inspired M ito apoatle; hie admirable and scholarly contributions to ita literature, and the vast geographical areas over which his experiences have been extended in both hemispheree, - all contribute to render this biography at once one of the most intereating and important that the movement can furnish. Wi the bright angelic visitors, whose presence here is now so clearly demon- P 8 PREFACE, ~trated,continue their mieaionary labom amongst earth's children 1 Can they, if they would, do so? or are these bright forernnnera of oar immortal destiny to perform the work of building the temple of the new Zion, and then to pass away from the longing eyes of mortality? Will Spiritualism be absorbed by sectarian organizations, and used simply as an agent for the promotion of liberal ideas? or will it remain a concrete movement, itself absorbing all other religious associations in the vortex of ita irrepressible powers of demonstration and reason ? Will the spirits continne to experiment nntil they have perfected their glorioua telegraph between heaven and earth? or, weary of our apathy, shortcomings, and . indifference, will they permit # glimpses only of the possibilities that lie dor- mant within the human soul. Ad then leave the earth to await the uprising of a more faithful and spiritually-minded generation ? Theee are questions upon which the Spiritualiste have fonned widely diverse opinions, and upon which no Cassandra's voice will be accepted as authority until the resulta shall be proven in time; but, however these may ultimate, the immense importance of clear, concise histories of what has been done, said, thought, and suffered in the earlier phaaes of this movement can never be exaggerated. The causes which operated to convert so many various grades of character and intellect as Spiritualism inclndes should all be weighed and duly considered. The ' world's reception of its spiritual teachers, - the effects of their unparalleled labors, and too frequently of their sufferings, in the performance of their mission, -the records of all this should be preserved as milestones on the road of human prog- ress, without which the pilgrims of the future are liable to fall into precisely the same toils and snares as have beset the paths of the pioneers. The writer hss herself proved the impossibility of condensing the events of the world-wide movement known as Spiritualism into any more comprehensive form than a mere compendium; but, to do justice to the personages who have so faith- fully and toilfully created the chain of spiritual history, nothing but individualized biographies will suffice. Aa a brother laborer in the canae of Spiritualism, as a writer whose pearls of glowing eloquence and gems of historic research always formed felicitous aub- jecte for quotation, the writer has long known and gratefully eeteemed J. M. Peebles. As a laborer on the older soil of Europe, where the fogs of tradition and the stern spirit of religious bigotry and conservatism weave a pall aronnd the mind as fatal to the new life of Spiritualism as the panoply of the grave, Mr. Peebles has been equally bold, indefatigable, and successful. Returning to his native country, freighted with the rich treasures of knowledge and experience gathered up in many lands and from contact with many minds, Mr. Peebles is eminently fitted to perform his share of the mighty work of knitting together in the ties of divine fatherhood and human brotherhood all the broken and scattered lines of humanity distributed over life's ocean, from the farthest East to the remotest West. The man that has stood on the last foothold of Western civilization, on the golden sands of California, and wandered amongst the pioneer men whose ancestors first numbered up the mystery of the solemn stars on the plains of Ars- PREFACE. 9 bia, -the man who has been enabled to compare the influences of the spiritual outpouring orer nearly all the vast breadth of the equatorial belt, and speak Spirit nalism in the ears of the wandering Arab, the fateful Mnssulman, the degenerate Roman, the fickle' Frenchman, the sternly orthodox Briton, and the inquisitive cosmopolitan American, - such a Spiritualist, faithful in his belief and its expres- sion to all persons and in all places alike, is an historical man whom the world ought to know, and of whom the ranks of Spiritnalism have just cause to be proud. That a scholar, a thinker, and a man of large lieart, broad principles, and high intellectual attainments has been inspired to the work of collating the materials which form the snbject of the following pages is also a source of congratulation, and can not fail to aecnre for their pernsal respectful and candid consideration.