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, there will always be an unvarying round of tearing down
and upbuilding in the whole wide realm of nature. Nothing, not the
tiniest grain or the most ponderous production of skilled hands, ever
stands still. All things are in vibration, and their permanency
depends wholly upon the rate of vibratory motion. Here and there all
the way along, from the earliest times of which there has been any
record, great souls have blossomed out, and have carried aloft the
God-given light of intelligence and culture. These inspired minds,
great souls, have persisted in announcing their message to a darkened
world, often in the face of direct want and persecutions; misunderstood
and maligned, they were and are the saviors of the people of this
undeveloped planet. Even yet, they are known and valued by but a
limited number of supposedly intelligent people. While these inspired
light-bringers were seeking to shed abroad in the minds of men the
truths that shall make men free, the Church was devoted to closing, and
holding fast shut every avenue of the human mind that might have a
tendency to teach the people anything outside of their tenets which
were the outcome of their weird imaginations. If anything could cause
a doubt to arise in the Creative Mind as to the wisdom of letting loose
on this small planet the pestiferous peoples that have swarmed over and
possessed it, it must have been aroused by their demoniacal
performances in the name of religion, that have disgraced the nature of
man from the beginning of our knowledge of the world. While a
perception of beauty and harmony is latent in the minds of men, it is
the last of the attributes of the soul to develop. The figured
semblances of God, hewn out of stone or wood by the primitive races,
are mostly hideous inventions of the evil thoughts of evil minds. From
the terrifying African God, "Mumbo-Jumbo," to the artistic bronze
representations of the Deity of the nations of the East all are marked
with awe-enforcing ferocity and ugliness, instead of by the
soul-inspiring lineaments of love and beauty. Tremblingly the minds of
men have groped their way along through the mazes of ignorance and
enforced darkness to a degree of personal liberty; and every picture
painted, every bit of sculpture achieved in the interest of harmony and
beauty is testimony to the persistency of the inspiration vouchsafed to
man of the Creator's love of beauty, and of the final state of harmony
to be reached by humanity.