And those of you whose aims are all personal and selfish, whose motives are impure and unworthy, who do not cultivate charity and kindly feeling toward others, attract undeveloped, unreliable spirits to your homes; they come depleting you of vital and spiritual strength, thus leaving you unarmed for the battles of life. Sowing discord in your hearts, their presence is a curse to all. Where ill-harmony, want of sympathy and distrust abound in families, these selfish, malicious spirits delight to throng, and thither they flock, by their presence to increase the unhappiness of the home of strife, while at the same time fostering their own disposition to live a sensuous life. And so it behooves each one of earth to look well to the personal life they live, for upon its character depends not only their own happiness but also the well-being of many others. THE POWER AND EXTENT OF PERSONAL INFLUENCE. These things of which I speak I have learned through my experiences with spirits, and they have opened up a vast field of inquiry concerning the influence which we as individuals, embodied, or disembodied, exert upon one another,—a field that is yet to be explored thoroughly by the investigating spirit of man; and when its problems are solved, and its questions correctly answered, I believe we shall understand many mysteries which now puzzle humanity, and comprehend more fully the conditions pressing around and upon mankind. And in this way, and from these experiences, we will learn to so regulate our individual lives that only the best influences will emanate from them, and only the highest results flow from their midst. It has interested me to perceive the lives led by spirits in the body; for when I come in close contact with a mortal, I can behold the interior workings of the spirit within, and know whether its tendency is upward or downward; for life is continuous everywhere, and what its environments and conditions are to the mortal, so are they of the same kind as those to the spirit,—apart from the body,—only differing in degree, those of the untrammeled spirit perhaps being less limited, intolerant, and arbitrary. And so spirits begin their vital experiences in the body and work out through them into the larger freedom, the broader realities and wider expanse, of the immortal world. These truths are suggestive of thought to the studious mind, and teach the lesson that you, mortals, are God’s children now,—his spirits at the present as much as you ever will be; and it is your bounden duty to brighten, unfold, and bless your spiritual life in the body as much as it will be to do so by-and-bye, when you leave the tenement of clay for another home “not made with hands.” BEULAH, A SPIRIT MISSIONARY