In the worst cases of human crime, the shadowy land into which no light seems to penetrate, this consciousness may not come to the individual, but it certainly conies to all who have the faintest glimmering of moral responsibility in their natures; and the fact that murderers before mounting the gallows, before being submitted to the monstrous judicial murder sanctioned by Christian lands, oftentimes feel to understand their own condition and declare they were not aware of the peculiar passion or frenzy that caused them to do the deed. The fact that at the last moment they enter into spiritual life unflinchingly and sometimes almost triumphantly, is. in our opinion, no evidence of the depth of their moral degradation, but rather a proof that this blot which is upon their spirits does not infallibly separate them from their fellow-men; that in proportion to human knowledge is human responsibility, and you who have spoken harshly to your wife, your son, your daughter this morning, may be more morally responsible for that act than this man who, without your moral training, has committed what you call murder. For a harsh word is sometimes even worse than an angry blow, and has its source in the same passion of selfishness and forget fulness of others.

So be careful; for while the guillotine and axe fall upon the neck of the judicial victim, there is a conscience that is recording each word and act in your lives, each failing in your hearts; and that wrath which you conceal but which blossomed into murder there, isi n your nature as great a deformity, if you have had moral advantages and if you understand the amenities of life, if loving kindness has been dear to you and the treasures of existence have poured into your life. Then why should you stand in judgment against him. when, with your culture, there should be no blemish in your nature? But even that fault is not condemned by spirits and angels, and the judgment seat to which you are summoned is the bar of your individual conscience, the memory of the deed, the thought that will haunt you until you have overcome its consequences, or until you have outgrown that condition.

There are kinds of melancholy, too, that are as reprehensible as crimes. You condemn the man that commits murder, but you. think individuals are privileged to carry a melancholy lace and throw their sorrows upon all they meet, and make a shadow wherever they pass. This deserves commiseration it is true, but should you not commiserate the other? There is no moral excuse for sorrow more than for crime. One of the most selfish vices in human society is the selfishness of sorrow which gnaws at your own heart strings, which robs life of its freshness and beauty, which takes away the sunshine that it is your duty to confer upon others, and having its secret sources in selfishness presents the forms that children should never see; with this, as with all other mental and moral infirmities, the cure is to be found within. No man can be good for another; no man can expiate the offense of another, and no one can be cheerful for another, except to radiate cheerfulness upon others, and endeavor thereby, to kindle it in the heart and life of another.

It is said that you must not inflict pain upon any human being, and if you were to go about the streets with a switch or a cane, and every passer by should receive a blow from you, it would be considered a violation of the peace, and you would be arrested; but your complaining, your bitterness of spirit, your melancholy, your sorrow, you are able to wear upon your sleeves, upon your countenances, in your long dark veils and manifestations of woe, and there is no hand to stay. What right have you to make the world sad with your moanings, your bitterness, your complaining of spirit? Your sorrows are no greater than the sorrows of others; every heart has its own bitterness. It is yours to pass from your closet of prayer, of meditation, of conquest, of self-abnegation, into the light of each morning's sun with a smiling face, and if you do not do this, you are a fit subject for the moral physician.

The shaft of the murderer is visited with instantaneous punishment, but where does the slanderer dwell? Where are the laws that can hunt out the poisonous tongue, the shaft of enviousness and malice, the words spoken in the dark that fly like wild-fire, poisoning a fair name, and sending sorrow to an innocent heart? No human law is found adequate for this; no monetary value can be placed upon it; and yet, every idle word that you speak criticising another, or against the fair name of another, is a shaft of murder. See to it that the moral physician probe your heart and mind until it is exorcised, for certain it is, that in human society more lives are sacrificed by slander than by the assassin. Certain it is, that encircling each human life, more poisonous shafts go from the tongue than from the hand. And when in the court of judgment - which is your own conscience - you stand side by side with him who in one single niomeinent of anger has sent a bullet through another's brain, and you see those whom your thoughtless words or unkind remarks have injured, arrayed before you, forgiving- it may be, but still aware, you will wish there were mountains and rocks to fall upon you to hide you from the victims of your own malady.

Oh, let us find out the sources of human crime ! Let us see to it, that the fountain is kept pure at our own door-ways; let the stream that flows from the moral springs of our own beings be clear; let the tangles of weeds that grow by the wayside be uprooted and give place to flowers.

There are no worse lives in spirit life than those that are with you every day; and we know of no place in any dungeon cell or crowded city where the hand of so-called justice has placed the condemned man, into which Charity may not go with perfect impunity, her garments unstained and her life unsullied, with the word that she might speak there; for into places like this the healing power of love can penetrate, and revivify those who are infirm.

Truly there is no condition in human life, and none in spirit life, certainly, that may not be reached and which is not under control of this great moral force of the universe. You must remember that the laws fashioned by man, those that govern municipal affairs and legislative enactments, those that form the Judiciary of your own and other lands, are not the laws of heaven. You must remember, that if you would have a code that corresponds to the highest moral government in the spiritual universe, you must have it predicated on the Golden Rule; and you must remember also, that in the courts of human justice, so-called, the blind Goddess - for she is blind and deaf and well depicted here - the blind Goddess sees not man's moral condition, his spiritual state, but only judges by the dull and barren line of material events, and that which underlies the act is concealed, and while angels pity, Judges condemn.

In the great moral laws of the spirit land, the power of right rules over that of might: Justice is tempered by the mandates of love, and the physician is substituted for the guillotine and the executioner's axe. Places of healing into which the proud and great of earth are only too glad to enter; and the judge, who yesterday sentenced the unfortunate murderer to death, may to-morrow rind himself under the healing-power of the wise moral physician of spirit life. For, if believing it to be his duty to put his fellowmen to death, surely his darkness needs the illumining power of spiritual light.

Oh! when you pass from the striving, the contention, the violence, the outward struggle, the false forms that society wears here, and you stand face to face with your own spirit - that spirit that you cannot escape from by death, that consciousness that the grave will not take from you. that life that can neither be crushed by the executioner nor suspended by any falsehood - when you are face to face with the realities of things, then those who are condemned and despiesd on earth will not seem so loathsome in the light of that love that is needed by all, and that all, in some manner, would do well to apply to their lives and to the searching scrunity of their existence.

No special sphere receives either murderer, thief, lunatic or others afflicted with moral and mental infirmities. Distributed through human life, these conditions are found to be epitomized in some natures, and are treated as exaggerated cases of almost universal disease. Therefore, beware of false judgments, and when spirits approach you from the other world be not so much afraid of contamination and injury from them; even he whom you condemned yesterday may bring you a valuable moral lesson from the world of spirits, that will serve to light your own way and make your pathway more clear into that hall of love and justice where no tierce judge sits with icy coldness upon the seat of power; where no avenging angels are gathered round to punish the guilty; but where in silence, and only seen by the eyes of love, each spirit views its own condition, and asks that the healer may be there to make them whole.