My story is the most wonderful in the world: so wonderful that the men of the present age cannot comprehend or believe me. I am spiritually alone. None before me have penetrated consciously into the invisible world: examined its structure and its people: and returned to his fellow-men, enriched and burdened with its awful secrets. This have I done. I am Lazarus of Bethany, whom Christ raised from the dead. I have lived and died, and live again; and I await a second time the bitterness of death. “Lazarus,” said they, “is asleep or dead. That is all.” Ah! how little did they know! When I returned from the spiritual world, I had more wisdom than all the ancients, than all the magi, than all the prophets. I could have enriched the Church of God with spiritual treasures. I could have given light to every mind and joy to every heart. I could have satisfied the hidden hunger and thirst of the human soul. I was not permitted to do it. They would have rejected my gold and my frankincense and my myrrh. They would have turned from my offerings of spiritual truth as a wild beast turns from a man when he offers it bread. I have lived many ages too soon. I will write what I have seen and heard. The world of mind will grow with the coming centuries into the capacity of comprehending what I alone now comprehend. These premature utterances will then be understood. I was born in the little village of Bethany, which sits upon the eastern slope of Mount Olivet, embowered all summer in leaves and fruit. There were four children in the family; and our mother died in giving birth to Mary, the youngest and most beautiful. Our father was a man of great wealth and high social position, and we were reared in the lap of luxury. My earliest recollection is that of playing in a large, terraced garden with my brother and two little sisters. The garden was full of olive, pomegranate, orange and date trees, and adorned with a great many shrubs and flowers. It was cool, fragrant and shady, and we sported about the tomb of our mother, which was cut in the solid rock, as merry and innocent as the birds and butterflies which shared with us the peace and beauty of the summer day. I was ten years of age when Samuel, my younger brother, was taken from us. It was the first real grief of my life. Although five years old when my mother died, I was too young to remember the incidents. The angels are so near us in our infancy, that the troubles of the world, which are afterward engraved in marble, are then only written in water. Little Samuel died calling my name. Oh that I could have obeyed his call, and followed him into that bright and peaceful sphere in which I saw him long afterward, and in which I shall soon see him again!