discords into harmony, and shown to his delighted vision the calm
perfection of the stellar system. So, too, in the moral world he
has lifted the shrouds from many a dark problem, and extended the
empire of light and love far out over the ancient realm of
darkness and terror. But the secret of Death, the mystery of the
Future, remains yet, as of old, unfathomed and inscrutable to his
inquiries. Still, as of old, he kneels before that unlifted veil
and beseeches the oracles for a response to faith.

The ancient Mysteries in their principal ceremony but copied the
ordination and followed the overawing spirit of Nature herself.
The religious reserve and awe about the entrance into the adytum
of their traditions were like those about the entrance into the
invisible scenes beyond the veils of time and mortality. Their
initiation was but a miniature symbol of the great initiation
through which, and that upon impartial terms, every mortal, from
King Solomon to the idiot pauper, must sooner or later pass to
immortality. When a fit applicant, after the preliminary
probation, kneels with fainting sense and pallid brow before the
veil of the unutterable Unknown, and the last pulsations of his
heart tap at the door of eternity, and he reverentially asks
admission to partake in the secrets shrouded from profane vision,
the infinite Hierophant directs the call to be answered by Death,
the speechless and solemn steward of the celestial Mysteries. He
comes, pushes the curtain aside, leads the awe struck initiate in,
takes the blinding bandage of the body from his soul; and
straightway the trembling neophyte receives light in the midst of
that innumerable Fraternity of Immortals over whom the Supreme
Author of the Universe presides.

CHAPTER II.

METEMPSYCHOSIS; OR, TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS.

NO other doctrine has exerted so extensive, controlling, and
permanent an influence upon mankind as that of the metempsychosis,
the notion that when the soul leaves the body it is born anew in
another body, its rank, character, circumstances, and experience
in each successive existence depending on its qualities, deeds,
and attainments in its preceding lives. Such a theory, well
matured, bore unresisted sway through the great Eastern world,
long before Moses slept in his little ark of bulrushes on the
shore of the Egyptian river; Alexander the Great gazed with
amazement on the self immolation by fire to which it inspired the
Gymnosophists; Ca