"April 3. In your solar system you only claim eight planets, exclusive of the Asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, but the truth is there are thirteen in number; five of them have long since passed into their spiritual orbits, and consequently are not objective to your telescopes, and this state is to be the ultimate of all planets. Every planet, including the earth, is continually undergoing change, that is to say, gradually passing from the gross to the more refined, and by a continually advancing series of geologic and progressive changes from the lower to the higher, from the crude to the more refined, from the material toward the spiritual, all will ultimately in time pass into spiritual conditions or orbits. But as this theme is scientific, and not directly in the line of or pertinent to my narrative, I will abandon it, at least for the present.

" In my last I told you that each planet was favored with representatives from, every other planet in our system, and it is from this system, spiritually originating, that you have derived your system of international representation. I do not mean that any spirit communicated this to the nations, but that in the early formation of nationalities and the commercial intercourse between nations, susceptible public men, by reason of their exceeding impressibility, got the inspiration from surrounding spiritual influences, and to a certain degree and extent carried it into execution in the establishment of ambassadorial relations between friendly governmental powers. But there is a marked difference between your nations and the spiritual worlds in the objects and purposes of such system. In the spiritual worlds representatives are deputed one to the other for an entirely different purpose from yours in sending ministers to England, France, Russia, etc. Your accredited agents of government abroad are simply spies to watch other countries, lest some trivial advantage may be gained against you in some minor and unimportant matter. Selfishness is the law by which they are to be governed. They are expected to be, and generally are, lorded and feasted, dined and wined, all in the high-sounding names of civilization and national urbanity. Ours are sent on an entirely different mission—to gather kuowledge for the benefit of all. Our public and representative men are not engaged in learning the rules and laws of the stock market, how to manipulate it and how to create corners in the bountiful productions vouchsafed by the Infinite, nor how to secure safe investments with large and profitable margins, but to learn the laws of the planets, to the end that they may be utilized in the development and progress of their varied and numerous peoples. Through whatever other planets, farther advanced than ours—have passed, we, too, must pass, and hence by our representative spirits learning of their varied progressive experiences, they are enabled to prepare for and assist in the changes that must inevitably ensue.

" I can not carry my thought further than to say in addition that our solar system, as a system in its entirety, has representatives to thousands of other solar systems revolving in space, circling around their respective central suns. You perceive that our grandeur of creative glory is looming up before us in majestic proportions, far beyond our power to comprehend and portray. We look forward with great pleasure to each succeeding meeting, when we hope to continue our narrative if conditions continue to favor us.

" April 6. After feasting in the examination of the library of the Society of the Literati I felt an intense desire to learn something in regard to the religious teachings on the planet in its past, as applied to the embodied Marsians, in the curious desire to find out whether their theological and religious history bore any resemblance to ours, and if dissimilar, wherein by contrast the dissimilarity consisted. Of course, in the very nature of things, this opened up a wide field of investigation, and I can only give you points condensed and with the utmost brevity, and without any attempt at elaboration. As 1 have already informed you, the denizens of Mars do not use our language or mode of speech, and therefore I am compelled to transfer their thoughts into our language, and you must consider that much will be lost in the transmission.

" The planet Mars, in point of time, is much older than the earth, and consequently has passed through many more changes; these successive changes or epochs have had their respective theologies, and I was utterly surprised to learn that in some respects they resembled ours—that is to say, their earlier theology —the later and truer has no resemblance whatever to ours or any that we have had in the past. The people of Mars in the dim and distant ages of the bygone have had many gods and many bibles. Their older books or bibles are now treasured as simple curiosities belonging to the infancy of the race, and the wonder now is how it was possible at any period of their history that a people could be found seemingly so hopelessly ignorant as to believe them. The same fate, my friend, awaits your Bibles, Korans, Zend-A vestas, etc But in all their speculations in religion they were never taught to believe that their remote ancestors had fallen from an imaginary state of perfection, nor that somebody else's sufferings and death were imperatively necessary to extricate them from the peril, and to reinstate them into the loving esteem and saving grace of their creator. While they had many follies in their early history, they had none like unto our own. They never believed God to be angry and revengeful nor that he would ever destroy their own or any other world by water, fire or otherwise, nor that men were made out of dust and women from ribs, nor that fish swallowed men, preserved them in good condition in their stomachs, and delivered them subsequently and in safety upon the dry land. These silly recitals of your bible will be ridiculed and laughed at some of these coming happy days."