·-- - - · - _,.,. ______________ ...._. 0 AFrfER DEATH: TAlli DISEMBODIMENT OF MAN. THE WORLD OF SPIRITS, ITS LOCATION, EXTENT, APPEA.RA.NCB j THE ROUTE THITHER j INHABITANTS ; CUSTOMS j SOCIETIBS : ALSO SEX A.ND 1T8 USES THERE, ETC. ETC, ; Wl11I llVOB JU.ft'U PUT1•8•1' TO T8S 4V81TJO• 01' HUMAN IMMORTALITY. 81' PASCHAL BEVERLY RANDOLPH. FOURTH EDITION, REVISED, COltRECTED, AND ENLARGED. What I wu is pll88ed by; What I am away doth fly; What I ahall be none do see, Yet in that my beauties be. Tu Soui:.. THJ::RD ED:ITJ:ON. TOLEDO, OHIO : RANDOLPH PUBLISHING COMPANY. 18 8 6. Digitized by Google SEP291899 ( 71u &mered, acoordlug t.o ''* ofCoqnu, In the ,.ar 1881, ~ l'ASCJLU. BSV&BLT R.urDOLPR, Ia tbe Clerk'• 0111.oe of the :D..vlol Colirt for ~f Dlatrlot of l(aaq.eha,.. Digitized by Google THE THINKER AND HIS THOUGHT. aY W, a. DOWl>, GB.LWD X.ABT&R lllP&Rl.AL ORDSB OI' BOllCBVCU.. TIUDUI: ls but little thought among the world or men. The great stream rushes on, tn murmuring rivulets here, In roaring torrents there, or like the ocean billows breaking upon the barren shore In deafening thunders, devoid or thought. The thunders, the roaring, the murmurin_g of men, Is not or thought, but or money. In every age or the world the genuine thinker bas stood alone, like a solitary tree lo the vast desert. His thought hath seemed to shroud him t'rom other men, as with the pall or ages. There ls another class, however, who are called thinkers, and are lauded to the skies as geniuses, who stand In a dill'erent relationship to thA mass or men. These are poets and philosophers, who fashion "tul mould thought for their own time. Such cull the 1lowers of existence, and, having arrayed them In garbs angelically lovely, In their view, }resent them ror the acceptance and adoration of the non-thinkers. But the real thinker exhumes the primitive rocks of man's existence, and basic , nature, and Jays bare the native granite of his nature, wonderful and kaleidoscopic, which he exposes to the softening lntlueoces or storm and sunshine. It mattert1 not to him, If the excavation be deep, or the rocks be rough and 111-shapen; It ls his mission to bring them to the surface. He Is not unlike the Insect which, In the bottom of old ocean, rears Its , domes of rocks, whose only 'llluslc ls the roar of the rushing waves anc.l the dashing of spray agatnst his edifice; for he bath bullded a temple of unhewn rocks, of INFINITB THOUGHT, wherein he dwells alone; and which, like the cities of pearl In the deeps of the sea, shall yet be the foundations of a new continent of thought; shall yet be engraf'ted In the temples wherein the teeming myriads of remote ages shall worship. His thought hath not been of his own seeking. It comes upon him, as comes the hurricane upon the landscape, or over the calm breast of the slumber­ ing sea. It sometimes lays him low and desolate, In the tllth aud debris of isolation, misapprehension, misery, and decay; and at other times It carries him upon the lightning's wing, beyond the topmost clouds of the thinker's world. Foremost among the real and genuine thinkers or the age, stands oner P. D. Randolph, the author of this astounding and magnificent volume Digitized by Google 2 THE THINKER AND HIS THOUGHT. Among them, but not of them,. A mystic, ln the true sense or tlie word, and a mytitlc or the very loftiest order. Alfred Tennyson, Britaln'R laurelled poet, In his beoutlt'ul description of the Wakeful Dreamer, bad, most undonotedly, tliis man berore his mental vision when the musical lines dowed out from his soul. He says, - and, applied to the subject of this sketch, how truly: - " Angels have talked with him, and showed him thronee; Ye knew him not; he was not one of ye; - Ye scorned him with an undi:!cerning soorn; Ye oould not read the marvel in his eye, The still, serene abstaotion: be bath felt The vanities of ~r aud before; Albeit, hi~ spirit and his eooret heart The stern experienoes of oonverse lives, The linked woes of many a fiery oharge Had purified, and chastened, and made free. Always there stood before him night and day, or wayward, vari-oolored oiroumstanoe, Tho imperishable presenoes serene, Col0!'8&l, without form, or sense, or aound, Diin shadows, but unwauing presenoes, Four faoed to four oornerf! of the sky: And yet again, three sblMlows, fronting one, One forward, one respeotant, three but one; And yet again, again a.nd evermore, For the two first were not, but only seemed One shadow in the midst of a great light, One re6ex from eternity or time, One mighty oountenanou of perfect oalm, Awful with most invariable eyes. For him the silent oongregated hours, Daughters of time, divinely tall, beneath Severe and yoqthful brows, with shining eyes Smiling a godlike smile (the innooent light or earliest youth, pierced throngh and through with all Keen knowledges of low-embowed eld) Upheld, and ever bold aloft the oloud Wbiob droops, low-bung, on either gate of life, Buth birth and death: be in the oentre fixed, Saw far on eaob side through the grated gatea Most pale and olear and lovely distanoee.. He often lying broad awake, and yet Remaining from the body, and apart In intelleot, and power, and will, batb heard Time flowing in the middle of the night, And all things creeping to a day of doom. How could ye know bian ? Ye were yet withhl Digitized by Google THE TH~KER AND HIS THOUGHT. The narrower circle; be bad well-nigh reached The last, wbiob, with a region of white 6ame, Pore witboot beat, Intl.> a larger air Upboming, and an ether of black bloe, Investeth and ingirds all other Ii ves." To him, the great surging waves of this civilization hath brought only woe. But they have not destroyed him, nor his work. From the depths of his great heart, from the garrets of poverty, hath he sent his riche~ of thought, - which the world in Its barrenness could not understand, or appreciate, - broadcast upon the ice-locked wastes .. To him the specious sophistries of the day have been only the palings of infancy. Forgetful of the little present; In view of the dead past, with Its myriad eyes all faded and lustreless, gazing out of the thickening ~ght of decay at him; forgetful of the shining orbs of the o'erarching skies of to-day; Ir · view of the darkened stars and dead worlds of the forctlme, which once blazed with pristine splendor, -he ha.th walked alone among the catacomb& of Egypt, and questioned her ruins, her py1·amids, her temples, and hcf drifting sands, and brought back her answer, which he has given to the world, a priceless legacy, under the title of "Preadamite Man," - beyon<i all question, the most exhaustl-.e, profound, convincing, and satisfactory work upon human antiquity the world ever saw, or will again for many and many. a long decade. Rested he then, after completing his great work on the Human Origines? Nay; but casting it at the feet oi' the world, -dedicating it, by direct request, to his personal friend, and the friend of mankind, the lamented ABRAHAM LINCOLN,- he, discourage~ on all hands by ungenerous rivalry and envy, forthwith applied the whole power of his exhaustless mind to the solution of a still mightier problem; and with fearless tread, lighted only by the lamp of God, he entered tht gloomiest crypts of being, and dragged from the portals of the tomb Its reluctant answer to the great question, which hath burst the hearts of men from earliest time : " If a man die, shall he II ve again?" In doing which he died to the present, as much so as they whom be ques­ tioned. This man bath not sought In college halls for the thoughts of thf' . mighty dead, but with his unaided hand hath he held aside the curtait that hides the past, -walked through the shadow, and talked face to face with the glorious founders of earth's religions, - stood dazed and appalled before the ell'ulgent glories of RosICRUCIA'S blazing temples in the hierarchies of the skies; and bowed low In the shining presences ot those whose spectra we sometimes vaguely glimpse. Freighted with gems from the golden shores of eternity, and jewels· from the crowns of the upper hosts In the farther heavens - returning­ he hath cast them also at our feet in his two works: " DEALINGS WITH THE DEAD," and "DISEMBODIED MAN," either of which works are suffi­ cient to rest the fame of any man upon, - no matter how pro.t"ound a Digitized by Google THE THINKER AND ms THOUGHT. thinker, or expert a fashioner of Thought, - and I here assert without fear of contradiction, that these two works of rare and Impassioned genius, In their scope and profound simplicity, yet majestic and surpassing range and sweep of thought, are not equalled by any other similar works in existence I - and they have made, and are Rtlll making, their mark, and intluenciog the thought and literature of the age, in spite of prolonged and envious ell'orts to hurl them down to death. They still live, thank God! to bless the world and instruct mankind. ' Not satlstled with this, and hearing much talk of a hell, he sought and found its adamantlne walls, all charred and blackened with the smoke of eternal torment, and, bursting through, stood undismayed amid th!l howl­ ing of demons and the shrieks and groans of the lost - walked unscathed amid its tlercest dames, aud dragged from its darkened caverns the IDEA Itself, and !!bowed it lo the gaping herd- the uncharitable, ungrateful, unthinking, forgetful world - which starved him for his pains - to be only in the miseducated human heart.
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