this popularity among the clergy of his church as well as among those of sister denominations, we are proud to believe comes from the wide circulation of his two famous volumes, "The Substantial Philosophy" and the "Invisible World," whose inculcation of the principles of Substantialism has touched a responsive chord earnestly yearn for confirmatory evidence of Christian truth from God's book of nature. positories of the savings of the people by thus throwing around their vaults and their systems of book-keeping the annual safeguard of the scrutiny which this official rotation will insure, and there can be no doubt but that double the amount of money would annually be entrusted to the care of such absolutely protected institutions, to what is at present risked by doubt-in tens of thousands of Christian hearts who ing and cautious depositors, with the news of bank defalcations and robberies continually ringing in their ears. Limited as is our own acquaintance among moderate capitalists, we know of hundreds who have their savings hoarded up in some safe hiding place so as to be sure that they will not be stolen by some bank cashier, teller, or treasurer. These poor men and women reluctantly forego the loss of all interest on their hard earned money, rather than trust it in any bank having the unlimited latitude to steal and rob, which now attaches to every institution of the kind in the land. Nothing, in fact, but the moral honesty of the oftentimes over-tempted official handlers of the peoples' money now stands between the bank-vaults and the financial ruin of tens of thousands of hard working depositors; whereas the enforced system of rotation here outlined, while it will be far better for the banks by inspiring universal confidence will of necessity bring conspiracies to rob to an abrupt termination. The only practical objection to the working of such a system of rotation among bank employés would seem to be the fact of a bank's not being able to provide skilled help for such a limited term as a single year at a time. This difficulty is only imaginary, since all banks would be under the same restrictions as to the rotation of their officials, and the very help required in one bank, at the end of one of these terms of service, could easily be taken from another bank of help equally skilled and experienced. This annual loss of a situation, say of a cashier or teller in one bank, being enforced by law would rather be a recommendation of his service to a neighboring bank than otherwise, for obvious reasons. We certainly congratulate Dr. Swander on his unsolicited and unexpected election no less than we congratulate the synod and the university for the wisdom of their selection. EDITOR. Our Leading Article This Month. Our only excuse for so long an article on the sound-controversy in the present number of the MICROCOSM, is that during the remaining short period of our life no time nor opportunity must be lost in placing imperishably upon record the final arguments against the motiontheories of science, by which rising investigators will have no difficulty in vanquishing their most ingenious champions should any such remain. These original discussions have already very nearly if not quite exhausted the subject, so that there now remains no excuse for any man's belief in the wave-theory or his refusal to accept Substantialism who will become a dispassionate student of the twelve bound volumes of our Scientific Library. CLOSE OF VOLUME VIII. Another Microcosmic year has come and gone, and another chapter in the great history of modern scientific investigation has been written and now becomes a part of the record as one of the philosophical land marks for the coming students of physical science. 'In the investigations and discussions which conIndeed, as the success of the entire banking stitute this volume are recorded some of the system of the country depends almost entirely most far-reaching and conclusive arguments upon the confidence with which the people for the Substantial Philosophy yet presented. can be inspired as to the trustworthiness of such institutions as depositories of their funds, These arguments have been called forth as it becomes the duty as well as the interest of the result of the attacks of physicists upon every bank-director and bank-stock owner in the principles of Substantialism, or more corthe land to look favorably upon the new departure in bank-management here suggested, rectly speaking, in consequence of the desperate and the new legislation necessary to enforce it. necessity on the part of these scientists to In this view, we propose sending this num- make some sort of show of defense for the ber of the MICROCOSM, marked, to every bank motion-theories of science in general and the official in the country, as well as to the members of all our legislatures, and we only wish wave-theory of sound in particular. we were able to obtain the address of every bank depositor, male and female, in the whole country for like purpose. PROF. J. I. SWANDER, D. D., PH. D. We have learned from a friend at Tiffin Ohio, that the recent Synod of the Reformed Church for the State of Ohio has unanimously elected our able contributor, Dr. Swander, to a professorship in the Theological Seminary of Heidelberg University at Tiffin. No man in the Reformed Church is more popular or stands higher than Dr. Swander as a sound and reliable exponent of Christian theology on its broad catholic and scriptural basis. Much of Among these attempts may especially be noted the efforts of the distinguished author and teacher Sedley Taylor, of Cambridge University, England, who was absolutely compelled in defense of his own text-book on acoustics to try in some way to meet the crushing facts brought out against the wavetheory by Dr. George Ashdown Audsley in the presence of the most intelligent London audiences. Fortunately for the cause of true science, that eminent authority was emboldened, by his being entirely unaware of the real arguments in store against the current theory of acoustics, to hurl his scientific javelins across the Atlantic ocean in a most disastrous and pitiable attempt to storm the very headquarters of Substantialism at 23 Park Row, New York. If the reader will turn back to the March and April numbers of this volume he will there see the most sorrowful exhibit of scientific weakness ever witnessed in a great and popular author, who was coerced by circumstances into the trap of publicly defending his own false teaching. turning the wave-theory of sound as the mother and foundation of all the motiontheories of physical science. Up to that time the scientific and truly philosophical clergy throughout the world, though appalled by the overwhelming logic of this atheistic argument against human immortality, suppressed their fears and rising doubts, hoping that there was some possible way out of the apparently resistless conclusion that as death necessarily ends all material motion connected with the human organism, therefore death The collapse of that time-honored theory of ends all conscious existence if the motionacoustics under the pen of one of its most dis- doctrine be true. Not one single clergyman tinguished advocates and authorities now liv- of the whole world for one moment could ing, may well mark this volume as the cul- bring himself to the thought of questioning minating point in the substantial campaign, the correctness of the motion-theories of science since it has been universally conceded on the as the central and only successful position of part of physicists, that if the wave-theory of attacking this atheistic belief that the soul is sound shall be forced to give way to the as-but a mode of material motion that must necessaults now making against it, both here and sarily cease to exist at death. The first inin England, then the entire philosophy of Sub-timation that ever appeared in print, as all stantialism must be accepted with the com- now concede, was given to the world by the plete break-down of every motion-theory of writer, and which as now turns out opened a science. (If anything additional were needed clear highway out of the tangled wilderness of to show the total fallacy of that theory we materialistic science in which Christian evitake pleasure in referring the reader to the dence, based on natural analogy, virtually leading article in the present number.) had become lost. Every blow that has been im-struck in the MICROCOSM and Scientific Arena since that first assault in the "Problem of Human Life," has but leveled down more trees and cleared away more undergrowth in this tangled forest of infidel science, thereby making the highway of natural analogy in support of religion clearer and broader for the advocate of scientific and philosophical Christianity. Do the clergy appreciate this timely assistance on the part of a tireless investigating layman? We answer yes, as our enormous It involves even matters of still greater portance to the world than this mere revolution and reconstruction of the theories of physical science. If the wave-theory of sound, as the chief motion-theory of science shall prove not correct, then every form of physical force throughout nature must of necessity be accepted as a substantial though immaterial entity -as really an objective thing as are the material bodies upon which such force may act. And it follows, if the physical forces, such as heat, light, sound, electricity, mag-correspondence from all parts of the English netism, gravitation and cohesion shall turn out to be real forms of immaterial substances, as the collapse of the wave-theory of sound must demonstrate, then by every analogy of nature and science the vital, mental, psychical and spiritual forces which actuate and control our bodies are also substantial entities, and as such are constitutionally endowed with the possibilities of an immortal existence. No clergyman who accepts the motiontheories of science or any one of those theories, can present a single rational or logical argument against the atheistic materialist who extends this same motion-doctrine to the soul or mind, or life, making it but the vibratory tremor of the brain and nerve particles. Never was there given an answer to the doctrine of Haeckel, that the soul-force in man is but a mode of motion the same as are the forces of heat, light and sound, till it was given in the "Problem of Human Life," by first over speaking world goes to prove. They begin to see in earnest, that without this natural and philosophical analogy based on the logical necessity of the substantial character of all force there can be no sure foundation in God's book of nature for a belief in the human soul as a substantial entity capable of immortality or even of a moment's existence after the breath leaves the body and its material motions cease. They begin to see that in this crusade against the motion-theories of modern science we have not only founded the philosophy of Substantialism but the theology of Substantialism as well; for a theology or ecclesiasticism which can not point to a single direct passage in God's book of nature which goes to confirm the ecclesiasticism of verbal revelation, might as well close its pulpits and its churches so far as any impression to be made upon cultivated scientific minds is concerned. It is not, then, at all strange that intelligent clergymen, particularly those scientifically in- So let no reader procrastinate in making the clined, snould hail the rise of the Substantial investment, but send on for Vol. IX. with as Philosophy as a new star of Bethlehem to guide many new names as possible. We are ready the Christian traveler on his way through the to open our new books for a new era in Subwilderness of life. It is this aspect of Substan- stantialism. tialism-bringing as it does natural analogy and natural philosophy to the aid of Christianity in its battle with materialistic science -which commends it to so many Christian clergymen in all parts of the world, and which fills our files with hundreds of letters in almost every mail breathing thanks to that Providence which ever permitted the "Problem of Human Life" to see the light of day. Had this volume of the Organ of the Substantial Philosophy, now just completed, contained no other discussion than the class of articles referred to utterly annihilating the wave-theory of sound, thereby divorcing science and materialism while indissolubly wedding true religion and true science to walk hand in hand forevermore, the volume should have a priceless value to all who really hope for personal immortality in the great beyond. But this volume is replete with other matters of scientific importance which alone should make it worth many times its cost, and which should induce every subscriber to send at once for a bound copy for perpetual preservation in the family library, at the regular price $1. To our large list of subscribers we beg to say that Volume Nine will begin at once, and that the first number will issue as usual in the first week of December proximo. We can safely promise and do hereby announce some startling disclosures in a scientific way during the progress of that volume-disclosures which will, no doubt, surpass anything announced since the issue of the "Problem of Human Life." The field for substantial work has but just been scratched by the harrow-teeth of scientific investigation. The soil, though filled with numerous roots difficult to remove, and obstructed with some boulders, is, nevertheless, the finest and most substantial ground that has ever been plowed or that has ever yielded a crop. We intend to remove and burn every root and to use the boulders, like ou: Connecticut farmers, to build around Substantialism a fence that will endure forever. Will our readers aid us in this work of renovation and reconstruction? With feelings of profound gratitude for the loyal manner in which our old subscribers have stood by us during the ten years of our journalistic efforts, and with renewed energy and resolution to prosecute the work as never be fore, we close the present volume with an af fectionate but very brief adieu. VELOCITY OF LIGHT-HOW SHOWN. Editor MICROCOSM: els at a velocity of about 186,000 miles per It has been demonstrated (?) that light trav second, and that it consequently takes about eight minutes for a ray of light to pass from the sun to the earth; and about thirty times as long, or four hours, to pass from the sun to the planet Neptune. But how can we prove this to be a fact? It has been demonstrated in the case of electricity, which is closely allied to light, that the greater the frictional resistance the less its velocity; also, that all material substance interposes a certain amount of resistance to passage through or over it. By inference then, if there be no matter all the velocity will be augmented; though to resistance will be removed and, consequently, what extent we may be unable to determine. In all our investigations toward determining the velocity of light, we have two difficulties to contend with: We have a line, at one end of which is a resistance offered by an unknown quantity—our earth's atmosphere; while the greater portion, and that most inaccessible to our investigation, and also unknowable. How then can we decontains a lack of resistance equally unknown termine the velocity of light where we have two different conditions of the same question, and both phases, perhaps, equally insolvable? Whichever theory, whether undulatory or corpuscular, we take, I think the difficulty remains the same. The resistance offered by the air must diminish the velocity of light in either case. WM. BECKLER. Escondido, California. REMARKS BY THE EDITOR. Thousands of otherwise well-informed men, like Mr. Beckler, are in the dark on the subject of light-especially upon the scientific method of demonstrating its velocity. The matter is so easily explained we must take the space to give the method to our readers. When the earth is between the sun and JupiWe ask no gifts, loans or donations. We ter, or at the point nearest that planet, it is have gotten way past that stage of our jour- an easy thing for the astronomer at one of our nalistic career, thanks to the lucky star that has great telescopes to note the exact instant guided our little bark during the past three when one of Jupiter's moons becomes eclipsed, years. We propose that for every fifty cent or disappears behind the body of that planet. subscription received at this office, we will re- Now it is evident that this moon has a regular turn a full-weight silver dollar's worth of Mi-periodic revolution around Jupiter, like our crocosmic reading before the year shall expire. own moon around the earth, and that it will be eclipsed to the same observer at precisely the same instant of time, if the earth is in the same direction from that planet, whether at a greater or less distance, provided the velocity of light is instantaneous. But, the astronomer finds, when the earth has traveled a little more than half a year and has thus reached the side of the sun opposite the planet, being now 190,000,000 miles farther from Jupiter than before, that this moon of Jupiter is sixteen minutes later in disappearing behind the planet than when the earth was on the other side of the sun, or 190,000,000 miles nearer Jupiter. This is considered for all practical purposes a sufficiently near demonstration that it takes light eight minutes to travel from the sun to the earth-95,000,000 miles. Of course the trifling thickness of our atmosphere, as compared with the whole distance under observation, is such a bagatelle that it is considered not worth taking into account. If there is any resistance to the travel of light through air it is evidently too small a factor to be calculated by any means within human reach. THE GODS UNVEILED. BY PROF. I. N. VAIL. No. 1. We enter the boundless waste of mythology through apparently an impenetrable tangle of moss-covered fiction. The outlying prospect, though a chaos, is by no means a desert, but an utter wilderness of world-thought, darkened by the tantalizing shades of unnumbered centuries. Into this region of “no light, but rather darkness visible," let us now carry the lamp of the "Annular Theory," for here we are to re-discover the glories of a forgotten world. We must go back far enough in time to see the earth in its swaddling bands of annular vapors, just as we see the planet Jupiter to day. A darkly striated and variegated canopy, ever changing as the earth revolved in the full light of the sun, shut out every other view from the gaze of man. Dense columns, black as night, towered up from the east and west, and joined their titan hands in the zenith, just as they do in Jupiter's annular canopy to-day. Between these columns, or giants, stood light vapor-columns, shining like torches of eternal light. So that in the dark world of mythology, the physical world enjoyed an era of eternal day. The optician will have no difficulty in understanding how the earth-enveloping vapors were brilliantly illuminated by the diffusing and tranfusing tendency of solar light. The earth was simply surrounded by bands, broad and deep, some of which carried the mild, mellow light of eternal day all around the globe. These are facts of easy occular and experimental demonstration. So that I say, that just as surely as this planet has followed in the tread of philosophical world-building, so surely was it surrounded by a lightgiving and heat-supplying ocean of vapors; and was, in the fullest sense, an Eden world, without change of seasons and without the alternation of day and night as we now see. Why should man be informed by the voice of Deity, immediately after the deluge, when the canopy had fallen and the rain-bow became a possibility and a reality, that henceforth summer and winter, seed-time and harvest, and day and night should alternate forever. We now know why. They could not alternate before. Neither could there be a rain-bow with that annular curtain before the sun. It is near high time that all men should be gin to realize the fact that the Mosaic cosmology stands upon this rock, and stands there forever. But what a measureless view is now before us! The plant did not receive the direct action of the solar beams, and the consequence is very obvious. Unless the sun shines upon the plant, it can not reproduce itself. Seeds grown without the vitalizing aid of the solar ray will not germinate, but the plant will grow on and on, an emblem of eternal life. The non-vitalization of plants means life, but its vitalization means fruit-bearing, reproduction and death. Man lived under a canopy that sifted this vitalizing and death-dealing chemism from the solar beam. In a greenwould bend under the beck of this inexorable house world the plant and all animated nature law. If the ripening process ever planted the elements of death in the plant, it also planted them in man's physical being! What, then, does it mean, that immediately after man was deprived of his original Eden home, the God of Nature informed the race that it should now begin to reproduce itself? "I will multiply thy conception," etc. (see Gen. iii. 16). What does it mean that not until man's Eden life was taken from him that he begat offspring? What does it mean that at this very time this sentence of death was carried into execution? And what does it mean that during all that period from the so-called expulsion till the fall of the deluge-waters and the advent of the rainbow, man's reproducing capacity was so inactive? And why did the latter become more active immediately after the water's fell? There is but one answer, and that answer is backed by the God of Nature in all his dealings with the universal cosmos: man's Eden home was the green-house world, protected by a perfect canopy of vapors, through which the sunlight was shorn of its death dealing actinism. His Eden was taken from him by a thinning of those vapors and a transmittance of more solar light-by a fuller glow of the cherub flame. Man's longevity in the antediluvian period, then, proves the existence of a canopy or veil before the sun. All Nature unites in one persistent acclaim that if man ever reached the age of 800 or 900 years, the maturing power of the solar beam was held in check. I say, then, that under a perfect annular canopy man was naturally immortal. My Bible tells me man was immortal in Eden, and I am thus forced to claim a perfect sun-sifting canopy as the physical cause. I wish now to direct the reader's attention to one more Bible fact before we enter upon the mythologic record. It is the inherent evidence traced all through this ancient legend that there was a change in man's environment. There is a hint of this change in almost every scene; and sometimes it is too plain to be misinterpreted. It is seen in the opening act of creation, when the earth was waste and dark ness covered the "deep," through which light broke forth at the command of Deity; and is seen as the clear, unveiled sun, when the last remnant of the " great deep was cast down to the earth and the rainbow arched the firmament as man's eternal sign of safety. Nothing can be plainer than the fact that the Deity now made a "covenant with the whole earth" that it should be exempt as it never was before. Now subject this act of exemption to the test of law, and where do we land? We are simply impelled to the conclusion that the earth was again lifted to a higher condition, as it had been again and again, by the self-same potent cause. That a deluge, vast beyond conception, did come under the former condition, but could not afterwards. That man did live to an extreme longevity before the covenant was made, but could not afterwards. These and numberless other conditions that underwent a complete and permanent change, all point to the "breaking up" of the "waters above the firmament." I mention these evidences of change that the reader may be able to carry them as parallel testimony through our new field of thought. THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND-READING. Our attention has been drawn lately to the subject of thought transferrence from the mind of one person to another, and we have seen several experiments performed in which we took an active part, and have heard from many of our acquaintances of numerous other mindreading seances in which remarkable feats were performed by persons who of themselves knew nothing of what they were doing, but were simply the passive instruments of a second person who, by concentrating his thoughts on a certain object, transferred or communicated these thoughts sensibly from his own mind to another, by the mediumship of the clasping of hands tightly. This subject of mind-reading has been prominently before the public for a number of years through the apparently wonderful performances of Bishop, Johnstone and Brown, who claim to be able when blindfolded, to find an object wherever it may be hidden, by taking the hand of some mentally sensitive person who knows the location of the object. It is The father and progenitor of the gods among claimed by these men that pins and pennies the ancient Greeks and the still more ancient have been placed miles away in places unPelasgians, was Uranus, whose very name (Ov-known to them, and that they have been found pavoc=the sky, or heaven) means the all sur- by taking the hand of some person who knows rounding heaven, and is identical with the their location. They also claim to have opened Vedic Varuna, the vault or sky. But there is safes having very difficult combination locks nothing more emphatic in ancient Grecian which have never before been seen, or heard thought, than the claim that after Uranus had of by them in this same way. The philosophreigned and was worshipped as a god for un-ical basis of all their claims being that known time, he was banished from on high. thought is transferred from mind to mind That the ancient empire of this parent of dei- through the arms and hands of the operators. ties was usurped by Chronos, the god of time. The same is well known of Varuna, the heavens of the ancient Hindoo, and I find it as an ancient world thought everywhere, that the first genius or spirit of the heavens was dethroned or banished, or put to death. It is a record of that stupendous change so graphically figured in Genesis. Uranus dethroned! The ancient heavens banished!! It is not necessary, it would seem, for me to tell the most ordinary thinker, that the only heavens that could be banished, was a revolving or annular canopy. The only celestial genius that could be dethroned, was the presiding spirit of the hovering waters. The person that can not see, on the very threshold of ancient mythology, the collapse of supra-ærial vapors, is blind indeed. Uranus was then, the annular canopy, and I here produce the KEY to all ancient mythology. With it we will open the door to this magnificent new world, and we challenge the thinkers of earth to close it again. Elsinore, Cal., September 10, 1891. Dr. Hall's “Problem of Human Life," and Dr. Swander's "Invisible World" are the two most important books that have been issued from the American press during the century now nearing its close. The "Problem" has been in print fourteen years, during which time nearly 90,000 copies have been sold without one dollar's advertising, and with a demand even now on the increase: while the "Invisible World," though just published, bids fair to have a tremendous run the way orders are coming in. No man or woman who cares for a knowledge of true science or true philosophy, or who wishes to obtain light concerning a future state of existence from God's book of nature, should neglect placing these two volumes in his or her library. The "Problem" is now sold at $2 and the "Invisible World" at $1.50 by mail. Address this office. ASSOCIATE EDITOR. Many inquiries having come to us from our subscribers for explanations of these seemingly wonderful things, on the basis of the Substantial Philosophy, we decided to take the matter into consideration. Immediately we saw that if the doctrine of mind-reading was at all true in the sense intimated by the numerous class of experiments just noted, that the only possible explanation would be in making mindforce a substantial entity which could be conducted by means of vital force through the bodies of men, and transmitted to the brain, and there interpreted. But though this explanation would beautifully solve the mysterious problem, we had yet to learn that a totally different kind of explanation was necessary. Having become acquainted with a very able and scholarly gentleman in whose ability we have great confidence and whose whole life has been devoted to scientific work, and who believed thoroughly in mind-reading and claimed ability in that direction for himself, we determined if possible to test the matter and learn positively the truth or falsity of the claims. Accordingly in our editorial offices Dr. Hall, the before described gentleman and the writer met one evening and the seance began by Dr. Hall offering a $10 gold piece if the gentleman would find a pin where he should place it, the only condition being that the gentleman would submit to being blindfolded in another room while the pin was being hidden. This being agreeable Dr. Hall and the writer placed the pin in a very difficult location and the writer then joined the scientific gentleman, whom we will describe as Mr. B, in the inner office where Mr. B was blindfolded. We then came inside, Mr. B holding the writer's hand, the writer having his mind ardently concentrated on the location of the pin. To the |