PREFACE

Many a reader of the following work may welcome a brief account of its source and history. The origin, object and influence of the Banner of Light were set forth at a public stance, September 4, 1871, by Spirit Theodore Parker, in the following address:

I have been requested to make a statement concerning the result of our labors as ministering spirits through the Banner of Light. In preface I would say, that we are entering upon the fifteenth year of our ministerial labor through that journal; but it is nearly nineteen years since a baud of far-seeing, energetic spirits resolved that they would be heard on earth through the press; and as all the journals then extant were conservative, creed-bound, and, what is worse, money-bound, it became necessary for these spirits, if their theory or project was to be put in operation, to start a journal of their own.

This being determined upon in convention, agents were sent out to see who among the children of earth could be selected and adapted to the work. After months of searching they
were found; but they were in the rough. It then became necessary to employ artists to chisel them, and hammer and polish them. …