good and the spirit so broad and enlightened, this Magazine has not yet opened and illustrated the grounds of spiritual manifestations; to which, in one small and extraordinary department, it bears a brave and consistent testimony. With the view of supplying the want which I have observed, I shall, with the editor's permission, endeavour to explain the rationale of all spiritual manifestations; and afterwards, please God, shall proceed to indicate the universal importance of the truth unfolded, as presenting a perpetual revelation of the Will of God respecting the spiritual condition of His creature man.

That there is an Infinite and Eternal Fountain of life and existence is clear to most minds. That the Divine Being who is the Maker and Sustainer of all things is good and wise, without a shadow of imperfection, is a proposition that commends itself to my heart and understanding. From this AllGood and All-Wise Being, who is the only Creator, nothing of evil and misery can possibly proceed. Yet in this world, to go no further, we do find an awful amount of wickedness and wretchedness; and in nature itself, which none but God can produce and preserve, there are deadly poisons, savage and disgusting animals, famines and pestilences, &c., which certainly, according to the judgment that God has given us, are evils and blemishes in His creation. Now, as there is but One Creator, a Being of spotless purity and absolute wisdom, how can evils and malformations and embodied savagery and consuming maladies and the entire family of wrongs come into existence? This is the explanation: God, in making man, endows him with free will, which is essential to manhood. By virtue of free will, man can live either according to the Will of the Creator, or he can disobey this ever-righteous Will. So far as he obeys the Creator's Will, to that extent he is orderly and happy. But so far as he opposes the Divine Will, in that same degree are confusion and misery introduced into his life and world. The soul, consisting of the will and understanding, is the primary creation, being that which is usually denominated spirit; the body, which is the soul itself developed into a bodily form, is the next proceeding creation; and the world, comprising the three kingdoms of nature, with all objects of the senses, is the ultimate ground of creation, which usually goes by the name of matter, in which the states of the soul are brought down, spread out, and revealed in a region of space and time. Thus the soul, the body, and their world are a great unit of life, which assumes form in three different degrees or planes, but is distinctly one. Thus, too, spirit and matter, or life and its embodiments, or, which is exactly the same, life and its phenomena, are the beginning and the ending of a human being; and all the evils and disfigurements in nature,

and all its blessings and beauties, are the embodiments and revealments of blessings and curses in the soul of man; good, both vital and phenomenal, flowing from harmonious co-operation with the Lord; and evil, both spiritual and natural, being produced by man's violation of the inflowing creative life of God.

Such is the universal order of creation. Every natural world in the universe is the effectuated life and outward revelation of a world of created beings. Dream-land is thus created. All poetical imagery is brought forth after this manner. The wild fancies of the drunkard, which are called delirium tremens, burst into existence in this way. The phenomena of death owe their birth to corresponding changes of mental state. The human soul-willing and thinking here on the lowest platform of life, viz., that of effects-when indrawn by the Lord into a deeper ground of affection and thought, viz., that of causes, is evolved into a corresponding body and a corresponding world, in which latter its inmost states are represented in detail, as in the body they are represented in the sum,

In this lower state we are wont to say, that man's body and world are natural or material; but we speak of an angel's body and an angel's world as spiritual. Yet both these bodies and worlds must be equally sensuous, being the embodiments in sensuous forms, one of human, and the other of angelic life. Their respective properties must be precisely similar the one to the other. Why then call the one natural and the other spiritual, when their tangible, audible, and other qualities are alike? The distinction is wholly an artificial distinction. If that which is substantial and solid, which has externeity and outline, be natural and material, then the world beyond the veil, created as all other worlds are created, may be called natural and material; and if a world be spiritual, because it is created. and preserved by the Great Spirit, then this world may be called spiritual. This artificial distinction has arisen from the different views which are ordinarily entertained of the constitution of the two worlds. The one is generally supposed to consist of dead materials, and therefore it is called material and natural; the other is thought to be differently constituted, and is called spiritual, because this word describes what to most minds is shadowy and mysterious, and yet in some sort a reality. But, nevertheless, the two worlds are equally the offspring and exposition of mental states, are equally objective and real, and are equally the continual creations of the one Almighty Creator; the first being the representative world of man in the lowest or initiatory state of his mind, and the second being the representative world of man, when brought by the Lord into an inner or higher condition of mind.

Sensuous worlds of all kinds being created and sustained by the Creator through the medium of their respective inhabitants, it is an incontrovertible inference that all phenomena are manifestations of spiritual life, and that consequently we are always surrounded by indications of such life. The phenomena of table-rapping, table-lifting, &c., are no exceptions to this rule, but are revelations of spirit-life, which may be good or evil, orderly or disorderly. The fruits, flowers, &c., said to be spontaneously produced at recent séances, are produced, if the allegation be true (which I have had no opportunity of testing), not in violation of, but in accordance with, this universal law of creation; being embodiments to the senses of thoughts and affections, stirred up in the minds of those who receive them. I have myself no doubt whatever that the conjuring tricks common in India-a well-known one being the production of a mango tree, which in the space of perhaps a quarter of an hour springs up from the mango-stone planted then and there before the eyes of the beholders, puts forth leaves and flowers, and bears fruit which those present actually eat-are precisely of the same nature. This so-called conjuring has doubtless been handed down from ancient times in which the above-given law of creation and correspondence was well understood; these lower and often perverted applications of it being ignorantly produced, by rote as it were, in accordance with formulas preserved by tradition, long after the true understanding of them was lost.

On this theory of creation it will appear that whatever may be the truth in respect to specific cases of alleged spirit-manifestation, (I may observe by the way, that the existence of impostures and counterfeits affords a strong presumption that there is some reality to be counterfeited,) there is at any rate no à priori impossibility that these alleged manifestations may be genuine. They are not, as has been shown, contraventions of natural law, but merely new developments of it, tending to throw fresh light upon it from above, which may assist in leading towards some truer comprehension, in place of the misconceptions of it which have hitherto prevailed. Have we not constantly before us, on every hand, examples of the strange and melancholy blindness of men of learning and science, who talk of laws of nature as if these were causes superseding the necessity for acknowledging a Great First Cause or Creator; actually overlooking the self-evident fact that, in the first place, a law implies a law-giver, and that it is, in the second place, simply a formulized statement of the observed effects of which it is then postulated as the cause! From this blind materialistic philosophy the world urgently needs deliverance. Let none who themselves believe, and desire to see others believe, in something

better than materialism,-in an All-Good, All-Wise, Divine Providence, viz., creating, sustaining, and ruling over all worlds mental and phenomenal,-turn away with a scoff or a frown from this strange phenomenon of so-called Spiritualism; but rather pause to investigate seriously its reality and significance, lest in neglecting this they should be refusing the services of a willing and most powerful ally in the very cause they have deeply at heart. Could men but believe that no truth, no fact, whether scientific, spiritistic, or speculative, can possibly be at variance with or tend to upset religious truth, but must inevitably confirm and strengthen it, because the God of our worship is the God of all truth, how gladly might they hail, and how candidly investigate all new developments of faith and science, instead of being scared by their fears of everything new into vituperating, persecuting, or ignoring to the uttermost every new idea or phenomenon, lest the unknown should prove a foe! Not less than perfect love does true and enlightened faith cast out fear. WM. HUME-ROTHERY.

3, Richmond. Terrace,

Middleton, Manchester,
January 10th, 1868.

OCCASIONAL NOTES.

SUSPENSION OF THE SPIRITISTE JOURNAL LA VERITE OF LYONS.

OUR readers will regret to learn that the very valuable weekly spiritual journal La Verité has ceased to exist. In fact, on the 10th of March last year, it changed its name from La Verité to La Tribune Universelle, and its editorship wholly, or in part, from M. Edoux to M. Andrew Pezzani. M. Edoux, a very able and excellent man, had not found the support which we should have hoped for in a city said to contain 30,000 Spiritualists and was, therefore, compelled to make this transfer. We could not anticipate a very long survival in the hands of M. Pezzani, a man of endless and very wild theories, and of a torrent of writing which would drown any half dozen of much larger journals. In fact, from the moment that it passed into his hands, it was occupied, almost solely, with his theories, and ceased to have the slightest interest for the general reader. Instead of the valuable variety of information in spiritualistic facts and movements, we had only M. Pezzani's Revision des Philosophies et des Théologies, and his expositions

of the Philosophie Methodique of Strada. We were, therefore, not surprised to learn from a circular a month or two ago, that La Tribune Universelle was, for the present, suspended.

GROWTH OF SPIRITUALISM.

Amongst the proofs of the steady growth of Spiritualism, and of the unobtrusive manner in which it is making its way in different parts of the kingdom, we may cite the example of Wolverhampton. We are informed that for eight years a single individual stood alone there in his belief, and could not get another person in the town to listen to him on the subject, but that now there is a society of spiritualists which numbers more than 70 members, and that there are others in the place, who, though not openly joining the society, are firm believers. Facts like this are very encouraging, and the making of them known to the public through this Magazine, would be to render a real service to the

cause.

ELONGATION OF THE PERSON UNDER SPIRITUAL INFLUENCE.

In the 94th volume of the Gentleman's Magazine, it is stated that a woman named Elizabeth Styles, in 1658, who was condemned as a witch, was declared by a number of respectable witnesses, to be so strong in her fits, that, though held down in her chair by four or five persons, by the arms, legs, and shoulders, she would be raised out of the chair four or five feet high, spite of all efforts to keep her down; and have her body stretched out and elongated far beyond her natural length. Some persons deposed that, when so stretched out, she appeared to have holes or rents in her body, as if she were being torn asunder, but that afterwards her body immediately resumed its normal condition.

PROFESSOR PEPPER ON SPIRITUALISM.

The following is this gentleman's advertisement of what he and Thomas Tobin have jointly invented and "registered at Stationers' Hall" for whatever that may be worth. If the registration of the invention should be effectual in preventing others from perpetrating the same folly, it will be very useful in limiting the number of silly exhibitors to two.

Entirely New Scientific Entertainment and Lecture, by Professor J. H. Pepper, F.C.S., A. Inst. C.E., embracing the NEW PRETENDED MANIFESTATIONS FROM THE SPIRIT WORLD! which are considered fully in Professor Pepper's New Lecture, entitled-" FARADAY'S DISCOVERIES AND THEIR RESULTS:" being real Science as contrasted with unreal Science, called Spiritual Manifestations. Professor Pepper and Thomas Tobin are the joint inventors, and the whole is registered at Stationers' Hall,