The royal road to knowledge which is given to seers. prophets and inspired mediums, is not a road unaccompanied by growth or spiritual unfoldment; nor is it unaccompanied by anything that the world calls sacrifice. There must be a willingness to receive, there must be a consciousness of the higher power that comes. He who denies the giver but accepts the gift is the most arrant coward of all.

Spiritual employments, therefore, come to you according to your need. If there are those ready on the earth to receive an added invention, a new application of steam or electricity, it must come to them in some such a way as that we have mentioned, but it does not come in demand to a popular clamor, not through something that you call practical. Is it not better that the man of toil shall be taught that he is an immortal soul, and that we will aid his hand to do the daily task, than to take the spade from his hands and do the labor for him? Is it not better if infused into the life of humanity shall come the central idea of spiritual employment, which is neither selfish or toiling for itself, but forever pours out its light and love and labor upon others? Is not this better than that which would give you the knowledge to usurp the right of your neighbor? - to give an especial knowledge or power, without the light and spirit to know the sources from whence it came? Ah! the eye that is blind to the sunshine, the ear that is deaf to music, is certainly a pitiable thing; but more pitiable is a life that is barren of that spiritual perception to know that if blessings come, they come, neither blindly nor from the earth, but from intelligent, conscious, active, loving, useful lives, that are above you.

I pray you remember the loving hands that were accustomed to labor for you on earth; the mother whose labors were never ended; the sister who hovers around you as she did in earthly life, making smooth all the ways and pleasant all the places where you tread; and then think if in spirit life there is aught that they can do in any way to assist you, could they refrain from that doing? But they cannot do it, save in the way that we have mentioned. The mother will still labor, but instead of weary hands and weary feet, unacknowledged by you, she must come in response to your love; she must brood around you, and assist you in the perilous paths of life by your own aspirations and prayers. You shut out the loving labor of spirits to aid you when you shut up your lives from their conscious presence, and your aspirations and your memories from thinking of them.

Oh, your spirit mother toils! But if you are not in a condition to receive her ministration, if there is darkness and rebellion in your soul, she still shines upon you all the same; her hands are still moving around you, and in some hour, perchance of outward unconsciousness, she is able to reach you.

Talk of there not being employment in spirit life ! Why, you consider that you are busy here; but if every thought that you can think, every aspiration that you can have, every hope that you can desire, and every lofty purpose that you have ever dreamed, were utilized and rendered practical the instant they were thought, would not your days be more busy? Would there not be crowded into one life, what now a thousand lives contain? Such is occupation in spirit life that absence of thought, absence of love, constitutes idleness; and he who seeks for idleness here, must begin with the labor of helping those whom he has robbed of their rest and their needed recreation on earth. The millionaire who toils to be great in his sphere, yet whose labor is concentrated on self alone, soon discovers that he is but weaving ropes of sand in spirit life. Let no one here, be he merchant, be he speculator, be he financier, imagine that he can have valuable assistance from Vanderbilts and Peabodys, or others who represented the moneyed influence of their time. Bopes of sand that pass into and out of their hands are the measure of their material power in spiritual states; and however much they may come in psychological influence with those who are still engaged in similar pursuits on earth, spiritually they are valueless to aid them.

But they can aid the thousands of poor mechanics and artisans, whom their greed and the influence of their monopolies have impoverished. They can aid some poor man whose family is starving from the result of their speculation and the hardships endured thereby. They can aid those who are inmates of the almshouse and the insane asylum as the result of intrigue and dishonesty practiced in boards of trade and stock exchanges. They can aid those who, perchance, are doomed to eight, ten, twelve or sixteen hours of physical labor a day, because of the small pittance that was stolen from them under the name of speculation. If you wish to see them now in their spiritual occupations, you will neither find them where railroad magnates meet, nor where financiers in this country seek to still doubly bind the burdens upon the poor, nor in the haunts where those assemble who would strive to hold within their iron grasp the lives and earnings of the toiler; but having found that what they had was valueless, you will find them confounding and scattering and disturbing all these financial elements, and seeking to undo by individual effort on behalf of those whom they have wronged while on earth. You will find them building up the railways of spiritual life by lines of sympathy and love; you will find them concentrating the sublime power of spiritual existence by confounding the financial power on earth; you will find them now, (because such men are endowed with perception and intelligence,) active in proportion as they labored here with the whole strength of their intellect, yet unconsciously inflicting wrongs.

So, when placed face to face with the problems of life, you will find them, not for, but against those who injure and oppress humanity; unless indeed the selfishness be so deep and so inground that there is no power to aid a single soul. Then they appeal to you, and not you to them. Should you receive an answer from such a spirit to your financial claims, have pity on them; for he has not so much gold dust as would make the smallest wing of a butterfly; he has not so much power as the little child that can coin kisses out of the sunshine and weave them into your lives.

Pity those who, having no employment in spirit life, have none because they are too selfish, for such is the most sorrowful condition. Upon these the fires of Gehenna would almost seem to be a relief for that consuming shadow, unsatisfied longing, that finds nothing to do when ushered into the great kingdom of activities which the spirit enters through death. Those activities are so much greater than those of earth, that one moment of earthly time often witnesses in spiritual life the accomplishment of real labor that is equal to a century of earth; and into the various days or periods of spiritual states are concentrated thoughts, powers, feelings and activities that stretch far and far into eternity - busy forever with the great tide of life, and thought, and love that moves, and sways, and surges around them.

Yours is a laggard world; yours is the unemployed state. Your sheaves of golden grain, that you wait for the sun to ripen, are more typical of the activities of spirit life than all the labors, oftentimes, of your hands, and vet you must labor in your own way. And as little children would fain help mamma keep house; as boys would help the father at the plow or the anvil - hindering all the time - so in the employments of earthly life you may not hinder the Divine Parent, but you may frequently blot out the higher employment of the spirit by your insistance upon making that which is beyond like the employment of earth.

Thank heaven for all your disappointments; thank heaven for that which does not come in answer to your desire, for it is the more sure to come in answer to your need; and in the great employment of the spirit you gain in the wealth of the soul what you are glad to lose in the wealth of earth.