belief in a heaven into which attending spirits are ready to introduce him while occupying the tabernacle of the flesh. To illustrate and enforce our remarks, and especially to satisfy all persons of the Methodist persuasion that one of their own Bishops does hold to a faith which they would be afraid of under the name of Spiritualism, we proceed to subjoin a few extracts, as follows:

"Man rises on the triumphs of art just in proportion as he approaches toward the invisible. The studies of men lead in the same direction. We commence with the simple elements around s-the visible. We take hold, in philosophy and chemistry, on what might be termed the alphabets, the elements, the grosser forms of matter. As we rise in our speculations, we go still higher, and light, and heat, and electricity, and magnetism, in all their impalpable forms, pass before us in review; and to-day a large part of chemical and philosophic science is employed in reference to this impalpable and imponderable element, and science rises to its highest glory as it lays hold of the invisible. Now, if we find that man rises in civilization just as his thoughts are directed toward the invisible, shall it not be so that the Christian, in grappling with the highest possible thoughts, shall find himself passing over toward the unseen? So far from this habit of mind being unreasonable, then, we find it to be in harmony with the laws of God.

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If we can know that we shall be the sons of God and heirs of a glorious inheritance, with this assurance, we can look out into the invisible with calmness. There is none of us that does not have a feeling that the invisible is near us. It gathers about us-its very shadows seem sometimes to fall upon us. We know not by nature what that invisible is, but that there is an invisible the very instincts of our hearts tell us. Who has not trembled at thoughts of the invisible? Who has not been anxious to lift the veil that shrouds it from our view? Who has not thought of friends who have just passed over the boundary-line? Who has not trembled by the side of the death-bed and the grave, when the eternal seemed to come so near and the invisible to move in view? And why that feeling? We have a relation to the invisible. The heathen are in dread because of it. They have peopled the air with genii, and fairies, and ghosts, and demons, and they dread the invisible because darkness hangs upon it.

But to the Christian, the invisible flames with light-Christ hath brought life and immortality to light by the Gospel-and we know that while there is the invisible, there are beauty and joy beyond. The very grave itself is a passage into the

beautiful and the glorious. We have laid our friends in the grave but they are around us. The little children that sat upon our knee, into whose eyes we looked with love, whose little hands clasped our neck, on whose cheeks we imprinted the kiss-we can almost feel the throbbing of their hearts to-day. They have passed from us; but where are they? Just beyond the line of the invisible. And the fathers and mothers that educated us, that directed and comforted us-where are they but just beyond the line of the invisible? The associates of our life, that walked along life's pathway, those with whom we took sweet counsel, and who dropped from our side-where are they but just beyond us?-not far away-it may be very near us, in the heaven of light and of love. Is there anything to alarm us in the thought of the invisible? No. It seems to me that sometimes, when our heads are on the pillow, there come whispers as of joy from the spirit-land; which have dropped into our hearts thoughts of the sublime and beautiful and glorious, as though some angel's wing passed over our brow, and some dear one sat by our pillow and communed with our hearts, to raise our affection towards the other and better world.

The invisible is not dark; it is glorious. Sometimes the veil becomes so thin, it seems to me that I can almost see the bright forms through it, and my bending ear can almost hear the voices of those who are singing their melodious strain before the throne of God. Oh, there is music all around us, though the ear of man hear it not; there are glorious forms all about us, though in the busy scenes of life we recognize them not. The veil of the future will soon be lifted, and the invisible shall appear. And when you and I shall just step beyond the veil, oh how glorious! We shall look back to life and wonder why it was that it did not flame with light, even while we were treading the pathway here below. Oh, that look into eternity! We see the invisible, and it gives us joy. Our friends are there, our loved ones are there, and they are not far from us. Whether though connected with the coming of winter, whether my mind has been inclined to look more into the grave of late and beyond it, I cannot just say; but as I grow older, it seems to me that the invisible has greater and greater attractions for me from year to year. Never did I ponder so much on those beautiful passages where the life of the future is brought to light, and where immortality seems to glow all around me, as I have done in recent times. I have seen such a fulness in that passage where Jesus is represented as bringing light and immortality to light in the Gospel, that my soul has sometimes seemed to be almost filled; and as friend after friend passed over, I hold

sweeter and sweeter communion in my thoughts with the spirit world."

After demonstrating from Scripture history that the dead, when they come back to earth, do recognize old scenes and friends, and are fully alive to old interests and occupations, the Bishop breaks forth in the following strain of triumph, which is but breaking through the old barriers of ecclesiastical dogma, and planting himself on the solid ground of spiritual faith and religion. These are his words :

Oh, they do care about earth! they do come back to earth! The glorified saints love our earth still; our kindred in heaven love us still. The mother who counselled me, and who bore me when an infant, who talked to me in my riper years, and whom I laid in the grave a few months ago, she is my mother still. Beyond the dark curtain which hides immortality from view, oh, she is the same still. She loves me still; she waits to welcome me. If I but give my heart to God and discharge my duty, she waits to welcome me in the spirit-world. Oh, our kindred and mothers and fathers wait for us; wives and husbands wait for us; the little children-sainted cherubs-are waiting for us! The song of joy is going up just on the other side; and methinks white hands are beckoning to some of us. They are sailing onward and upward. A little longer bear earth's jarrings and toils, and then go up higher. The invisible is flaming in light; and as I look out, it becomes a source of joy to my heart."-Banner of Light.

SPIRITUALISM IN FRANCE.

M. PIERART has completed the volume of the Revue Spiritualiste for the past year, and has closed it in a very superior manner. We hear nothing further of the History of a Spiritualist, by Leon Favre, probably because he has told us the most wonderful part of his narrative. We have some extraordinary prophecies of the career of Napoleon I. from the Memoirs of Bourrienne and the History and Secret Memoirs of the Empress Josephine, by Mademoiselle Le Normand, which we gave some time ago in this journal. Further translations are made from the remarkable recent manifestations of Mr. Home. There is a curious article on the Soul of Plants by M. Arnold Boscowitz, but perhaps the most striking paper is one on Spiritualism in Paris, called "Paris Somnambule," by Eugene Bonnemère. This article is quoted at length from the Siècle, a paper which M. Piérart says has always been especially

hostile to Spiritualism. If this be the case the Siècle is much more liberal than most of our English newspapers, which vainly hope, by allowing any amount of attacks on Spiritualism and refusing the least defence of it, to extinguish it. Our English papers, particularly such as the Star, the Pall Mall Gazette, &c., confess by their conduct that they are utterly beaten by their spiritual enemy. When journals do not condescend to notice a subject in any way we may be told that it is from sheer contempt of it; but when they allow continual and vehement attacks upon it, and refuse it all opportunity of defence, it is an unmistakable confession that they are beaten by it-that it is their lord and master. The Siècle can afford to be more courageous and just.

The article sets out by the remark that, although Somnambulism has been a hundred times annihilated by the Academy of Medicine, it is more alive than ever in Paris: in the midst of all the lights of the age it continues, right or wrong, to excite the multitude. Protean in its forms, infinite in its manifestations, if you put it out of the door, it knocks at the window; if that be not opened it knocks on the ceiling, on the walls; it raps on the table at which you innocently seat yourselves to dine or for a game of whist. If you close your ears to its sounds, it grows excited, strikes the table, whirls it about in a giddy maze, lifts up its feet and proceeds to talk through mediumship as the dumb talk with their fingers.

You have all known the rage for table-turning At one time, we ceased to ask after each other's health, but asked how your table was. "Thank you, mine turns beautifully; and how goes yours on?" Everything turned; hats and the heads in them. One was led almost to believe that a circle of passengers being formed round the mainmast of a ship of great tonnage, and a magnetic chain thus established, they might make the vessel spin round till it disappeared in the depth of the ocean, as a gimlet disappears in a deal board. The Church interfered; it caused its thunders to roar, declaring that it was Satan himself who thus raised the devil in the tables, and having formerly forbade the world to turn, it now forbade the faithful to turn tables, hats, brains, or ships of huge size. But Satan held his own. The sovereign of the nether world passed into the new one, and that is the reason that America sends us mediums: beginning so gloriously with the famous Home, and ending with the brothers Davenport. One remembers with what a frenzy every one precipitated himself in pursuit of mediums. Every one wished to have one of his own; and when you introduced a young man into society, you did not say, "He is a good waltzer;" but "He is a medium." Official science has killed and buried this Somnambulism a score of times; but it must have done it very badly,

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for there it is as alive as ever, only christened afresh with a variety of names.

After a good deal of pleasant badinage of this sort, M. Bonnemère goes earnestly into a long and comprehensive article, in which he shews himself perfectly familiar with all the mysteries of Spiritualism; reveals himself as a sound believer in it; and ably demonstrates the great and cheering light which it has thrown on the world of spirit present and future, visible and invisible, on the true native destinies of man. When will the Times, the Star, the Pall Mall Gazette, or Saturday Review have the courage or the philosophy to allow of the insertion in their columns of an article as bold and useful?

NOTES AND

AND GLEANING S.

SPIRIT PHOTOGRAPHS.

MR. W. H. MUMLER, of Boston, U. S. A., some of whose spirit photographs we re-published several years ago, respecting which we had at the time many paragraphs in the Magazine, has now removed to 630, Broadway, New York. We have received his prospectus, containing many testimonies, a few of which only are recent. The dates of the most of them are as far back as 1862, and it certainly seems a strange fact, to be accounted for, that if the photographs were genuine, there should have been a cessation of them for so many years, and that they should now re-appear at "10 dollars in greenbacks or post-office order." However as we do not profess to settle any question a priori, and prefer to let everything new and old rest on its own basis of fact, we shall be happy to receive any well accredited and scientific testimonies in favour of the spirit photographs.

VICTORIEN SARDOU.

The career of Victorien Sardou, which has been one of unexampled success, is known to be entirely under the control of the spirits. As a youth he had not exhibited the smallest dramatic talent. He was bidden by the spirit of Balzac to write a comedy-under the dictation of the great philosopher and novelist. Victorien obeyed without the smallest faith, and having written the piece, presented it to the director of the Gymnase, simply because he was bidden to do so by the spirits. The piece was played, and had taken the town by surprise before Sardou was even aware that it had been accepted. He was at Havre when the account reached him in the papers. The success which