If thou hast hope, even now,

that man,

victorious

O'er tyranny and infamy, shall be

Himself a temple of that life all-glorious

Who smiles through earth, and gives eternity:
Or see'st the beautiful ideal, winging

Her flight below: then listen to my singing.

Art thou enamoured of this bounteous Nature,
That weaves sweet sounds and odours everywhere:
Feeding, from purest bosom, each glad creature
Of teeming earth and universal air;

Still smiling on where Death its pall is flinging,
To vile decay? then listen to my singing.

If thou art flushed with Love's immortal passion;
If thou art yearning for its bliss divine,"
Ay, if thy scattered locks with age are ashen,
And slow thy pulses in the dim decline:

Once more, inhale the fragrance that is clinging

To my white robes: and listen to my singing.-p. 7.

Well, that surely is a grand promise, and rational enough to boot. Coming down out of the Sun with such white robes, and "trailing such clouds of glory" and of fragrance, the reader's enthusiasm must be kindled and his expectation on tiptoe for a sight of this Great Republic in the Sun. He will find it alluded to in the opening canto, but let him go on and endeavour to discover it. If he do, he will be more fortunate than we have been. Let him take heed, however, lest he soon find what little light is afforded him, is

Quenched in a boggy syrtis, neither sea
Nor good dry land:

where, becoming painfully assured of the hopeless insanity of his guide, he, in his bewilderment, almost despairs of his own soundness.

We have done with the poem, let us now say a few serious words to the reader. Spiritualism is a science based solely on facts; it is neither speculative nor fanciful. On facts and facts alone, open to the whole world through an extensive and probably unlimited system of mediumship, it builds up a substantial psychology on the ground of strictest logical induction. Its cardinal truth imperishably established on the experiments and experiences of millions of sane men and women of all countries and creeds, is that of a world of spirits, and the continuity of the existence of individual spirit through the momentary eclipse of death; as it disappears on earth re-appearing in that spiritual world, and becoming an inhabitant amid the ever-augmenting population of the spiritual universe. Along with this primal truth comes the confirmation of the ancient truths of Deity, revelation from Deity to man, and the open communion of man in the body with man disembodied; with "that great multitude which no man can number, of all nations, and kindreds, and people and tongues, which stand before the throne."

That is the sum and substance of Spiritualism; it is the exponent and practical demonstrator of continuous spiritual being. Whatever truths independent of this assert themselves, must do so on the same substantial evidences, and must shew their kinship to this grand central truth by their perfect harmony and oneness with it. But modern revelation must of necessity, admit the equal claims of revelation in all ages, when it produces the same credentials of spiritual accordance and historical fact. On this ground we must admit the historical and spiritual truths of Christianity; as it bears throughout the same divine features of immortal love and is based on the most perfect historic evidence. No other system can shew the same unbroken chain of evidence from the day of man's creation to the advent of Christ and the completion of His mission.

This evidence is authenticated at every link of the chain, by the fulfilment of successive prophecies on nations that have now perished in accordance with such predictions, or bear still in their existence the inextinguishable characteristics which were foreshown. Not less are its moral proofs, which exist in the universality of its doctrines. Men have accused Christianity of the generation of Priestcraft. No mistake can be greater. Priestcraft is a subtle and diabolical parasite, invading and overgrowing every possible religious system: but Christianity indignantly ignores it. In its pre-eminent announcements, that "God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth," and that "He is no respecter of persons," it has laid the foundation of eternal justice between man and man, and of a catholicity equally inimical to spiritual domination and sectarian narrowness. Without, therefore, wishing to draw on the conscientious holders of the primal truth of Spiritualism-the demonstration of continuous spiritual being to accept the kindred truth of Christianity, where the individual mind is not yet open to this great truth, we ourselves are bound to believe in the truth of both of these grand axioms on precisely the same order of evidence.

To all who hold with us these opinions, we, therefore, desire to express the vital importance of adhering closely to them. It is not through the simple and sound body of Spiritualism as here defined, through its assertion of continuous spiritual being, or through its congenor, Christianity, that it can be effectively assailed; but through the dreams, the follies, and the paganism of its followers. When men begin to overlay the fair form of spiritual truth with fanciful trumpery; when they erect exclusive chapels in the universal temple of the All-Father; when they assume hierarchical primacy on pretensions of God's particular election; when they begin to shut out from heaven all who do

not stoop through the low and narrow door of their mysterious fold; when they set up doctrines of paganism as superior to the doctrines of Christianity, in defiance of the evidences of history and of moral essence and potentiality, it becomes us at once to make a stand. To speak the words of truth in the spirit of love but with the firmness of duty. No considerations should deter us from declaring that madness is madness and that folly is folly. Amid all the chaos of ideas, and the fantastic eccentricities of opinion and action, which surround the chaste and noble form of Spiritualism, the enemies of this truth will find the weapons of their attack, and the poison wherewith to tip their arrows. God, through the errors and enmities of man will shew what is His own and what is not; and in the ordering of Providence, the numerous foes of Spiritualism will probably find, in the historic ignorance of many of its disciples, which makes them incapable of estimating what is essentially sublime and beautiful, and of discriminating betwixt gold and pinchbeck; and in the personal follies and exaggerated claims of its followers, the means of tearing down all the disfigurements and disguisements of this immortal truth. We shall have to witness the presumed ignominy of our faith, the trampling of it under foot, and the consequent scorn and imagined triumph of the public at large. When that has been done; when Spiritualism has been thrust down into the ashes of desolation, and made to stink in the general nostrils, then will it arise in final enfranchisement, amid the violence of its enemies and the humiliation of its friends, in naked purity and solidarity, stripped, but only of its rags,-chastised, but only into the revelation of its strengthand stand ready to run its destined race of immortal conquest over the prejudices and the tyrannons assumptions of man.

Whoever would wish to shorten this day of crude theories and pitiable aberrations; whoever would desire to hasten that of the full enfranchisement of Spiritualism from speculative and fanatic thraldom, let him keep close to its fundamental truths, based on these plain facts, which prove their interior genuineness by their unity of character through the universal world of experimental believers. It is in the region of fact alone that we can preserve ourselves from the vaporous fogs of the visionary, the spider-like filaments of the aspiring heresiarch, and the distempered fictions of the madman. "Wo Thatsachen sind," says an acute German author, "kann von Aberglauben nicht the Rede seyn."

PASSING EVENTS. THE SPREAD OF
SPIRITUALISM.

By BENJAMIN COLEMAN.

QUESTIONS are asked me by various correspondents as to my belief on some special points of Spiritualism, and I take this means of making a general reply to these enquiries.

I believe in the constant presence of spirits, who surround us in our pilgrimage through this earth-life; that these invisible attendants have great influence over our individual actions for good and evil; that all human beings are mediums in some way, though the great majority are not consciously so, and but a comparatively few can be used to give palpable evidence of spirit presence and power. Mediumship, and especially that character of mediumship through which powerful physical manifestations are obtained, does not necessarily imply the possession of intellectual culture, superior wisdom, or high moral worth. I know that spirit messages-I mean veritable messages from unseen intelligent beings-are at best unreliable, and, as I have more than once said, I do not allow them to influence my actions at the expense of my own reason! I would prefer at all times to be guided by the sound judgment of one I know in the flesh, rather than by the casual acquaintance of any disembodied spirit of whom I know nothing. In a word, I would not accept advice, nor be guided by the majority of my invisible accquaintance, because they are in what is assumed to be "the superior condition," any more than I would be controlled by the majority of men whilst in this world, whom these spirits represent with but little change in their conditions morally or intellectually after their translation to the spirit-world.

I believe that a man who throws off this "mortal coil" to-day, is not necessarily better or worse than he was yesterday; our constant experience proves it; we who see how some spirits can and do act, are satisfied that our early notions of the conditions and nature of spirit-life were erroneous, and being convinced of this we ought not to be afraid of proclaiming it.

Let it not however be supposed by these remarks that I am less a Spiritualist than I have ever been. I know that Spiritualism is a grand and elevating truth; that properly understood it is the great light of the present age. I see that it is under God's providence the means of destroying the wide-spread infidelity which surrounds us; in great measure that it breaks the materialistic fetters by which so many are enslaved, and opens up to the convert a life full of hope and consolation.

The following most interesting history is an illustration of what Spiritualism has done for some, and I commend it to the consideration of those who proclaim the teachings of Spiritualism to be the work of Satan.

THE CUI BONO OF SPIRITUALISM ANSWERED.

I recently received from a new correspondent, a lady, an interesting letter in which she told me that she was living in a country district where she found no sympathy, but much ridicule and persecution, in consequence of her conviction of the truth of Spiritualism. But she thanked God for that conviction, as by the teaching and consolation of spirit-friends and guardians she had been strengthened and enabled to pass through many trials which without that help must have overpowered her.

She asked me if I had seen that the subject of the "Displacement of Coffins" was mentioned in "Notes and Queries," and said that there was a case of that nature in her neighbourhood.*

My reply to this letter induced the lady to open her mind to me very frankly, and I feel sure that my readers will be interested in the following extracts from her letter:

I am glad indeed to be brought into communication with those who hold "our cherished faith," a faith incomprehensible to many, but how elevating and enlightening those only know to whom it has been given by our God.

You ask whether I am alone. It is my heavy trial that I am utterly and entirely so on earth. I was an only child, my aged mother passed onward during the just closed year; I have kind friends, but of family ties, none. My attention was first attracted to Spiritualism by the Cornhill paper, (but for the note by the editor I should have thrown it aside as a cunningly devised fable) I was then from worldly trials of various kinds very weary of life, but with a thorough dread of the hereafter. Orthodox church teaching had utterly failed to satisfy either my intellect or my feelings, shall I confess that my ardent wish was to be certain of annihilation.

I should think it would be impossible to find any one who more thoroughly

*See Vol. I., p. 549, Spiritual Magazine, Mrs. De Morgan's account of the Singular Displacement of Coffins in Barbadoes.

In Notes and Queries, November 9th, 1867, p. 371, Mr. F. A. Paley, of Cambridge, writes to say that about 20 years ago at the village of Stamford, where his father was rector, "twice or thrice the coffins in a vault were found on re-opening it to have been disarranged." The coffins were of lead, enclosed in wood, and Mr. Paley, with great naiveté, says, "If a leaden coffin will float, it seems a natural, indeed the only explanation of the phenomenon to suppose that the vault has somehow become filled with water. Mr. Paley is corroborated in this idea by a lady, who recollects the fact of the displacement and says, "We had no doubt, from the situation and nature of the soil, that it had been full of water during some flood which floated the coffins."

Mr. Owen, in his Footfalls, p. 186, relates an extraordinary case of this ature, which occurred at Ahrensburg, when noises were heard in the vault, the coffins were found several times to have been taken from the shelves and placed in confusion. Ashes were strewed over the floor and steps to detect intruders without success; no solution but one was attempted, and that one every Spiritualist can accept.