the room was inhabited during the day the stronger the power. It is found that the Mahomedan can "communicate' with Mahomed, and a Catholic with every Saint in the calendar; and the Archangel Raphael and St. Michael are quite as willing to hold converse as St. Paul; and friends living with friends and relatives departed, and even with those it has turned out were not departed; and we are told by Allen Kardic, (p. 376,) that even "if a person invoke a myth or allegorical person, he will get an answer in the name of that person." In fact, the "spirits" are more given to "personation" than our most corrupt electoral constituencies. What really seems to take place is, that the "communications" represent or reflect the mind of the medium, or of others present, or of absent persons with whom they most sympathise in feeling and idea, and with whom, from certain other natural causes, they are most en rapport. As A. J. Davis tells us, they desire a particular kind of information, and the desire attracts the particular kind, and causes it to flow into the mind, from some other mind in which such ideas are prominent. Thus we get "Scripture" reflected in every varying sect and denomination, and all its facts and allusions, and then reasoning in the usual vicious circle we find Scripture brought as a proof of the truth of those "reflections," and the "reflections" as evidences of the truth of revealed religion. In this way also Spiritualism is made use of as a means for retaining and supporting all the childish superstitions of the infancy of the race. We know that the world, and all of which we are conscious, is the manifestation of One Divine Power everywhere present-" of one great central force, whose origin is in the will of the Most High." We know that our likes and antipathies, our personal and social relations, and our ideas of good and evil, are purely subjective, and have no existence out of ourselves;

THE SPIRITUALIST HEAVEN.

109

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and yet all these feelings and prejudices, which are merely human relations, and have no existence per se, are carried by the "spirits" into their upper spheres, and we hear of earth-clinging" and "earth-tending" spirits, and that matter is " gross" and spirit "pure"; and that the farther we get away from earth, the nearer we are to heaven, for that heaven is above, although, with reference to this earth and the movement on its axis, what is above one twelve hours is below the next. "Souls quite earthly," we are told by Mrs. de Morgan, wrap themselves in the nerve-spirit, and give thereby the characteristic form to their spirit. By the aid of this substance, they can make themselves seen, heard, and felt by men."("From Matter to Spirit," p. 135.)

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created a very Here the great

Professor de Morgan tells us in his admirable Preface that "the worthy Priest, Jean Meslier, (the author of a book called Good Sense,' which had a considerable circulation in its day,) to whom there was no God, knew how the universe would have been fashioned if there had been one: he looked at the First Cause from an earlier point of view."—(Ibid, p. 35.) So the Spiritualists are not satisfied with what they see of God's work here, they think that in many things he was evidently in the wrong, and they have superior world indeed, and called it heaven. sustaining and directing Power, of which the whole Universe, with its countless suns and systems, is but a manifestation, is represented as sitting upon a throne, with ministering angels, in the style of an Eastern monarch, with feelings and ideas not greatly differing. It is into this sphere, I presume, that Professor de Morgan finds it so "ponderously difficult" to enter with his wife and the "Spirits," and it is here certainly that Mrs. de Morgan, so candid and philosophical in her remarks, so correct generally in her observation, appears to lose herself, seeking a resting place for all her better feelings

and higher aspirations in company with the female mind in general. I agree with her, however, entirely in what follows:

"I have tried to show, that both by reasoning from the phenomena, and by the assertions of the unseen influences, we are led to conclude that the world of spirit is as the vitalizing and forming soul of which the outer world is the material husk. If this be so, it follows as a consequence that every object in creation outlies and typifies its animating cause in the world of spirit. And so every created thing represents some spirit power, each power being a modification of the one great central force, whose origin is in the will of the Most High." -(p. 298.)

a

But here the "animating cause" is said to be " spirit'

modification of the one great central force," not spirits, and in case of the natural birth, life and the "spirit" are always transmitted through organization; but there is no evidence of continued organization in the supposed birth into the spirit world. We find no evidence of any intelligent "object," or individuality "outlying and typifying its emanating cause," except the human body, and such perhaps as the human will may have the power of forming out of what I have called the mental, thought, or spirit atmosphere, the result of general cerebration. If also spirits existed, in the number they are supposed to do by spiritualists, in and around our atmosphere, would not the fact become evident to our men of science, by their action on light and other imponderables? It is true that we may ask the same with respect to our "cerebration" atmosphere; but the existence of such atmosphere is being made more and more evident through the "sensitives" of Baron Reichenbach and by mesmerisers generally.

It is true that the believers in the "Spirits" are greatly on the increase both in this country and America. The New

INVESTIGATORS WHO REJECT THE SPIRITS.

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England Spiritualists' Association affirms that half the members of Congress and the State Legislatures, as well as half the scientific and literary men of America, are Spiritualists.* Probably far the greater number of these, having witnessed the phenomena, and finding that they cannot all be ascribed to fraud or self-delusion, believe in spirits, because they do not know to what else the power and intelligence manifested can be ascribed.

Investigators into Spiritual Manifestations who have rejected the Notion of Spirits.

But there are many investigators who discard the notion of spirits. Thus the author of "Mary Jane; or, Spiritualism Chemically Explained." He believes the influence to be an Odylic emanation from his wife, and entirely dependent upon her for its existence. He says, "I have seen a table move, totally alone; and a chair move, totally alone; move, just as you see a leaf carried along by the wind on a turnpike-road, and I have reasonable conversations with Mary Jane whenever I please; —but I have neither seen nor heard anything to convince me, in the slightest degree, that Mary Jane is the spirit of a deceased person. It is only a hitherto unexplained phenomenon of nature, which, until chemists and scientific men analyse, will be made use of to get money from the many." (p. 301.) * * * "What, then, is this mysterious being? I will explain to you my version of it-premising that science has an immense, an enormous, and a most invaluable field for discovery in its researches into the nature of it; and that if ever it is taken up by scientific men in the manner it deserves to be, more light will be thrown on the generation and subsequent changes and progressive perfection

* Edinburgh Review, October, 1865.

of organic bodies of all sorts, and in the action of food and medicines, and very probably on the causes of the motions of the planetary bodies, than by any study that has hitherto occupied the scientific world." -(p. 325.) The writer then lays down sixteen propositions that he considers proved by the phenomena he has not only witnessed but apparently investigated. I need give only a few of these:

4. "When these vapours (which Reichenbach calls Odylic,) emanate from certain persons, who appear to have phosphorus in excess in the system, they form a positively living, thinking, acting body of material vapour, able to move a heavy table, and to carry on a conversation, &c., &c., &c.

8. "That this Odylic being thinks and feels exactly as the persons from whose bodies it emanates: that it possesses all the senses-seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, and thinking; that it makes up for the muscular organs of speech, by either an electrical power of rapping, or by guiding the medium's hand, or by direct writing with pen and pencil.

9. "That its power of sight is electrical, for it can see under a domino, or what is in the adjoining room-in short, where the human eye cannot.

14. That its conversations with different persons will be responsive to the affections, the sentiments, and the religious belief of each person it is talking with, although they are drawn from one common source-the Odylic vapour concentrated at, or with which the table is charged-and although those religious creeds are entirely at variance. And if asked for the name of the (pre-supposed) spirit, it will give the name either of the desired relative, or of some high authority (on religious matters) in the specific creed of the person making the enquiry.

15.

That, from various concurrent testimony, it appears fully proved that this Odylic vapour possesses the power of