against that style of thought there has nothing been adduced, but "the professional commonplaces of the members of a close guild, men holding high office in the Church, or expecting to hold high office there." Professional commonplaces! Many others besides Froude have found them such, and have thought them to be insufficient answers for the new scepticism. But now, like Baden Powell, J. A. Froude, by implication at least, distinctly acknowledges that the miracles of the Scriptures would be credible if some of the phenomena of Spiritualism should be realities. To these things his attention had been drawn; and to his knowledge, he says, they have been vouched for by persons who would be good witnesses on a criminal trial. But yet he says, "Our experience of the regularity of Nature on one side is so uniform, and our experience of the capacities of human folly on the other is so large, that, when people tell us these wonderful stories, most of us are content to smile: we do not care so much as to turn out of our way to examine them, The Bible is equally a record of miracles." The Bible! But, indeed, of what use is it to mind anything which he may say about the miracles of the Bible, when, acccording to his own showing he would not even go out of his way to see whether they might not be true? For things which to his mind-whether rightly or wrongly is no matter-things which to his mind were of a piece with the miracles of the Bible, he would not even turn out of his way to examine. But against a belief in miracles, he urges not only that they are impossible, but that "The miracles of St. Teresa and of St. Francis of Assisi are as well established as those of the New Testament." And now, even if this should be so, what then? Are we for that to forego our belief in the miracles of the Bible? No: quite otherwise. And, if there be anything to be learned from Assisi, so much the better.

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Next in order of time, with an argument upon this subject, appears Dr. Louis Buchner, with his volume on Force and Matter. Says this author, "We should only waste words in our endeavour to prove the natural impossibility of a miracle. educated, much less a scientific person, who is convinced of the immutable order of things, can now-a-days believe in miracles. We find it rather wonderful that so clear and acute a thinker as Ludwig Feuerbach should have expended so much logic in refuting the Christian miracles. What founder of any religion did not deem it necessary, in order to introduce himself to the world, to perform miracles? The miracle-seeker sees them daily and hourly. Do not the table-spirits belong to the order of miracles? All such miracles are equal in the eye of science: they are the result of a diseased fancy." These are the words

of a man very clear in his mind; though his mind is not of the same order with Plato's, certainly. "Do not the table-spirits belong to the order of miracles ?" Dr. Buchner himself would seem to think so, by the way in which he asks the question. Baden Powell too, no doubt, would have agreed with him; and so also would Froude, the historian. But Buchner has one other word for us. "Even to this day, there is no deficiency of miracles and powerful spirits among savage and ignorant tribes." Are we, then, to be frightened from believing in miracles, because, if there are any at all, there are some also among savages? Just as well might Dr. Buchner expect a Christian to be ashamed of the sun because the red Indian hunts in the light of it. "Miracles and powerful spirits among savage and ignorant tribes!" Well, the better we know about that thing, the wiser we shall be, and the better it will be for our theology; and it is not everybody who is afraid of learning.

Baden Powell, James A. Froude, Dr. Buchner, and with these might be joined one or two other leaders in the argument against the credibility of miracles, these would all apparently be ready to test the reality of the miracles of the Bible by the phenomena of Spiritualism, or perhaps more definitely by the reality of the raps, which are called spirit-rappings. In some sense, they may even be said to dare the experiment; and by many high authorities of the Catholic Church, from early down. to more modern times, it would have been deemed a simple and very cheap way of settling such a controversy,-not because the thing exactly which is called spirit-rapping had ever been known to them, but because of its being of a piece with many possibilities which the Catholic Church has always maintained, and faith in which has been a large part of that Church's vitality. The early Fathers of the Church did not think it to be derogatory to their charge as Christian chiefs even, to shew Pagans how to draw an inference from their own Pagan prodigies; and it would not have seemed a discredit to philosophy, but a sacred duty and a chance to catch at, if to Henry More and Richard Baxter the opportunity had been offered of arguing from spirit-raps to the truth of the Scriptures, as is abundantly evident from their many works respectively. It would have been an argument, to the nature of which Ralph Cudworth would have assented, and for which at once he would have found a place in the "Intellectual System of the Universe." And Jeremy Taylor, with eyes glancing from high to low, and from unearthly depths to prophetic heights, and with a power of vision for following the strange lines of similitude which permeate creation, and which make it continually in one quarter or another glitter and flash with the light of unexpected analogies; Jeremy

Taylor-but indeed, as sanctions for the purpose in view, it is superfluous to name names beyond Cudworth and More and Baxter, for probably with them would have assented nearly all the great men, who were eminent in theology, in the days when theology itself was eminent. But now, before attending to an incident of yesterday, let Kenelm H. Digby tell us of what Marsilio Ficino said to Lorenzo de Medici on the subject of the Christian religion: "I certainly think, that, to us undeserving, certain miraculous signs have been divinely given. But all things are not shown to all: many also are not written down, or, if written, are not credited, in consequence of some wicked and detestable men imitating miracles. I have heard of some miracles in our own time, and in our City of Florence, which are to be believed. Do not be surprised, my Lorenzo, that Marsilius Ficinus, studious of philosophy, should introduce miracles; for the things of which we write are true, and it is the duty of a philosopher to confirm everything by its own proper kind of argument."

A short time since in London, one evening, a gentleman enumerated jocularly what he thought were Yankee notions, and he named spirit-rappings. The speaker was a distinguished man of science, and religiously a man after the manner of Baden Powell, with a truly Christian heart, but on the subject of miracles having perhaps the eyes of his understanding somewhat "dazed with excess of light" from the sun of science. Suddenly he was accosted by a stranger present, who said, "I am a denizen of that New World; and it is said that in some places there, with walking briskly over the floor at certain times, a man emits sparks from his fingers, with which even gas can be lighted. What would you say to that?" It was replied, "Nonsense! it is impossible." Then said the American, "It was because I expected that answer, that I asked you the question. In a scientific circle, I once knew twenty-eight persons out of thirty assent to that same opinion which you have now expressed; but there is not one of them to-day that would. In New York certainly, and in Boston, and perhaps all over America on a frosty night, in a house warmed by such means as they have there in the better class of houses, a person can hardly walk briskly over the carpet and approach his finger at the knuckles quickly to any metallic object, but it will give off a blue detonating spark. And now, by experience as common almost as that of those electric sparks, I tell you that what are called spirit-rappings are true; or, rather, that those rappings are real which are called spiritual. And now I will ask you in all honesty and fair dealing to answer me as you would in your place in the Royal Society. Supposing that you

heard on a table raps, the origin of which you could not possibly connect with cheating, nor yet with science, as it is understood to-day; and supposing, too, that these raps evinced as much intelligence as a boy of five years old,-what now would you think?" Said the man of science, thoughtfully, and after a long pause, “I should say, that, to my present belief, it was the greatest thing which had happened since the creation of the world." To this the American rejoined, "Those raps are of far less peculiarity as to significance than you think. But, like many other persons in pursuit of a special business, you have got lodged in a mere corner of the broad field of knowledge, and where you are capable of being astonished by what would be no absolute novelty to the Esquimaux or to the Maoris of New Zealand."

What is called "rappings" is the most common of all the Spiritualistic manifestations, and for the purpose for which the thing is referred to in the preceding anecdote, it would no doubt have been agreed to by Baden Powell and his fellowphilosophers, as being a sufficient test. But also for that thing precisely which he mentions of the rising of the table from the floor, there is abundant evidence, and some of which is of the very best kind. Buchner says, that because of the laws of nature"there exist no supersensual and supernatural things and capacities, and they never can exist;" and so he denies at once table-spirits and all other spirits and also the possibility of Revelation but luckily he does also, with other things, deny that any one can read an opaque sealed letter, or guess the thoughts of another. For besides being mesmeric experiences, these things are spiritual phenomena connected with the rappings, of the certainty of which whole armies of witnesses could testify.

That these rappings do really exist, and that they are as real as gravitation, or as thunder and lightning, may now be fairly and properly assumed; since about them it is no longer a question of the value of testimony. For persons open to evidence on the subject, one hundredth part of the testimony which now exists would be enough; and, for those who cannot believe the present evidence on the matter, a thousand times more evidence ought to be insufficient, and probably would be. Whatever it may be, whether good or bad, the thing is real. Multitudes may have had no opportunity of personally knowing about it; and many persons may think, very properly, that they would themselves be none the wiser for meddling with it: but still it may now reasonably be assumed as a fact. As a matter of evidence, the thing is not as it was 20 years ago, when it was first known of by rumours from Rochester; nor as

it was 10 years ago; nor even as it was five years since. And science and people who believe by its permission, may as well accept the fact to-day, as wait 50 years. For if those rappings should stop to-morrow, as suddenly as they began, which not improbably some day they will; yet certainly in the next century, they would be believed in as having been real, because of the testimony and literature and wide belief existing to-day on the subject.

But perhaps it may be said that mere unaccountable rappings, even though somewhat intelligent, are no great matter. And they are not any great thing for a child learning the alphabet, it is true; but they become of infinite importance, when, by dominant science, they are pronounced to be impossible. A scientific impossibility proved to be true, is a wonderful thing; and so wonderful that under no magnifying glass can it be made to seem too wonderful. But still more; it is a wonderful thing with all manner of wonders behind it, possibly.

And it may be asked whether it is good or devilish. For our argument, that does not matter. And besides, that question implies what has not been at all assumed, that the rappings are connected with the spiritual world. But, with a view to the next question, let it be allowed that they are so connected. And now perhaps it is asked whether they are Christian or Mohammedan; and the answer is, that they are both, just as talking is. They are a way of conversing with spirits, who may be good or bad, wise or silly, and in connection with which, a man may have some such experience as though in his native town, after a long absence, he should go into a crowded hall, and from a gallery, in the dark, talk with voices down below.

But an argument on Spiritualism started from "the rappings" would be about the same as though, because of having learned the first letter of the alphabet, a man should think to read Hebrew, and want to argue the value of the Mazoretic points, or the nature of prophecy, or the comparative antiquity respectively of the various parts of the Book of Genesis. Spiritualism, as it is called, is a field as broad nearly as the presence of the human race, and as long almost as the ages themselves have been. It illustrates the pneumatology of the Scripture; it is a key to the innermost rooms of the temples of Greece; and it avails for the better understanding of Plato. It solves enigmas as to Mahomet, and it accounts for the career of Joan d'Arc. It is the light, by which in these days to read intelligently the history of Salem witchcraft, the Journal of George Fox, and the account of Edward Irving and the Unknown