and all stimulants. Long will live his name in memories and libraries after he has gone, as one of the most persistent workers for humanity that the world has ever known. I consider that my association with him as student, friend, and business associate has done more to bring out whatever there is of talent in me than all other influences combined, and with many others of the young, I owe him more than I can ever repay. I would that the world had more such men. They are lights along the journey of life. May the Doctor live to more than see his prophecy fulfilled, of living a century, and dying gracefully. WALTER T. BOBO, M. D.

"Battle Creek, Mich."

During the last generation Dr. Peebles,, theologically liberal and cosmopolitan, has occasionally occupied Unitarian pulpits. Knowing that the late Prof. William Denton, the noted scholar, author, and scientist, who died while on an exploring expedition to New Guinea, and Dr. Peebles were the closest of friends during several decades, the Rev. Wm. Brunton, of Fairhaven, Mass., a very scholarly Unitarian minister, indited and published in The Banner of Light the following lines:

Come from the past, dear friend of days gone by,

Our Denton, stalwart, true as steel and strong,
Whose face was ever set against the wrong,
Who asked of earth and heaven, its reason why?
Who for the Truth would even dare to die,

Thy speech was welcome as the poet's song;
Move once again in power our midst among,
And give to us thy inspirations high!
And Peebles, yet with all the sunset glow,

With whitened hair but sunshine in his soul,
A friend to us and all the human race:
These two the pride of our religion show,
And are examples of thy noble whole,
And in their goodness, good of all we trace!
-William Brunton...

XLVI

THE TWENTIETH CENTURY'S INITIAL YEAR

Good-by, O century! thou

Closing circle year of

The tyrant's rule and age of iron

The age of fraud and war and death!

Thy feet have trodden down the weak;

Thy mouth hath spoken lies;

Thy breasts have corrupted the race of man;

Thy arm hath wielded the battle-ax and spear;

Thy greed hath filled the earth with woe and strife,

Welcome! O Urn of Aquarius! and

Pour from thy crystal fount the nectar-healing stream;
The starry luster prepared by gods for man;
And welcome the advent of the Shepherd-Sign,

And sure precursors of the golden age restored.

Eighteen months have slipped away since we laid down the pen. Now we must take it up again to write the closing chapters ere this record of our hero is put into the printer's hands. Those eighteen months have been crowded with public events of vast import to the nations and peoples of the world. The Hague Conference in the closing year of the old century has proved to have no perceptible effect in checking the gigantic preparations for war; while smaller states, like the Transvaal, that are maintaining an unequal struggle with a great power, can not get their case even considered by The Hague Court. The implements of war multiply; national quarrels become daily more acute. The slaughter continues, and has assumed such shameless and wanton features, that we seriously ask if Christian civilization is not indeed rapidly reverting to barbarism! The beginning of the new century is here, with its restless and discontented peoples, while the signs of the times

point ominously to the closing of an old dispensation and the opening a new era in the affairs of mankind.

Although a little past eighty, dating from conception, Dr. Peebles was never more actively identified than at present with the great public questions that are agitating the world. In earlier chapters we have attempted to set forth his labors as an advocate of peace and arbitration as opposed to all war, his defense of the American Indian, his labors in behalf of woman's suffrage, and his uncompromising hostility to the persistent attempts of the medical fraternity to secure compulsory legislation in the interest of their craft. But in the line of religious teaching, he feels that his work is somewhat changing, and although invited to a half a dozen or more Spiritualist camp-meetings the present summer, he will attend but very few of them, for he is invited to another class and kind of work which is more affirmatively religious, and represents a phase of Spiritualism which is fraternal towards the multiform affirmations of the religious sentiment in the past. At Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin, they have a fine Metaphysical Summer School under the supervision of Dr. Alice Stockham. The Doctor is invited there to lecture. He is also invited to attend the "Congress of Indian Educators," at the PanAmerican Exposition, and the "Universal Peace Union," which meets in Buffalo from the 14th to the 17th of July in the Congregational church. He will deliver one regular address, and take part in the conferences. He is invited to the State Temperance Association of Illinois, to last three days, and to attend the annual "Peace Conference," the last week in August, in Mystic, Conn. In a letter under date of May 28, 1901, he writes:

"I find that this constant research, delving, thinking, writing for the Temple of Health, writing for newspapers and magazines, writing on books, etc., is undermining my nervous system, for even when I sleep, I dream of some controversy, or some pamphlet, or some book review, . . . and then, I am writing, as you well know, once a month, an essay in defense of religious Spiritualism for H. L. Green's Free Thought

Magazine, of Chicago, which, with my extensive correspondence, diagnosing, and pathologically and psychically examining the more complex cases of invalids, keeps my mind strung up to a high tension."

Again, under date of June 10, 1901, he writes:

"I shall probably leave in November for Australia, largely for a rest. The rough and rolling ocean is to me always restful. I am invited there to marry a couple and to give courses of lectures in Australia and New Zealand. Mr. A. H. Green, my private secretary and stenographer, will accompany me. I sit here in my office and library and think, and dictate, and consult authorities, until I become almost a mental mummy. My library, you know, is my garden. I shall spend the winter either in San Diego or Australia. .. I finished this morning the preface of about four pages for J. Clegg Wright's forthcoming book. Mr. Wright's controlling intelligence, Rushton, is a most brilliant spirit, and speaks beautifully of the Nazarene, and the savants of old. Next week I am to write a full chapter for a volume to be published this fall by the Rev. Dr. B. F. Austin, of Toronto, Canada. There is no end to this literary work."

-

The Doctor's pen was never busier than during this initial year of the new century. He works incessantly. The essays he is now contributing to the Free-Thought Magazine he intends to bring out in pamphlet form this coming autumn. In the last month of the century just closed, his notable volume of 326 pages—“Vaccination a Curse and a Menace to Personal Liberty" was issued from the press. Immediately preceding this was "Death Defeated, or the Psychic Secret of How to Keep Young"-212 pages, both of which have been widely reviewed and extensively circulated. Only a few weeks since the Doctor was selected by the Michigan Woman's League to address them at one of their meetings in Battle Creek, upon "the distinguished persons he had met." Besides this prodigious amount of literary work and lecturing, the Doctor finds time to edit his Temple of Health, write for half a dozen periodicals, and conduct an extensive personal

correspondence. Of what stuff are this man's nerves made? Certainly nothing short of a temperate and well-ordered life would permit such a continued mental strain at eighty.

In the June number of his Temple of Health, 1901, Dr. Peebles has a five-column editorial on "Wars and Rumors of Wars." The following paragraphs will sufficiently indicate his attitude on this stirring theme:

"In the South African war, both the English and the Boers have their chaplains, each of which pray to the God of battle for victory on their side. The allied armies in China, armies gathered from Christian nations, have their chaplains, and are mowing down thousands to introduce civilization and Christianity into China. During our Spanish war the proceeds of Sunday bull fights in Christian Spain, were used to pay Spanish war expenses.

"There were 88,500 lives sacrificed upon the war-altar during the Franco-German war. And the Emperor William, informing Augusta of the latest victory, devoutly thanked God, and the people catching the inspiration marched through the streets of Berlin, singing:

"Ten thousand Frenchmen sent below,

Praise God from whom all blessings flow."

"But,' says one, 'how shall we do away with war?' Teach in our schools, preach in our pulpits, and inspire the masses with the moral grandeur of that great word "arbitration."

"How to do away with war! Become true, conscientious, and honorable men, practice that peace principles of Jesus Christ,― arbitrate in the spirit of confidence and charity, teach your children to overcome evil with good,— tell them that dogs fight because they are dogs and brutes, oppose military schools and standing armies, refuse to go into battle-fields to fight, as did the Shakers in our Civil war, and cease to praise and glorify officers and military chieftains, who strut in the streets with epaulets and the insignia of war upon their bodies.

"There is a great crisis upon us. Dark days are before us,