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Miscellaneous.

surprise) that it includes over forty personages well known to fame, and all of the highest moral status, talent, learning, and commanding respectability."

SPIRITUALISM.-The Christian World the London spiritualistic newspapers, has opened its columns to a discussion from which you will see (perhaps with of the modern phenomenon of spiritualism. There has been no lack of contributors, mostly on the affirmative side. The fact of the possibility of holding intercourse with the spirits of the departed will not be doubted by any sincere believer in the written Word of God. The danger of solicited intercourse with spirits may be concluded from the authoritative teaching of the Word (Deut. xviii. 10-12). This danger, the ground of which is pointed out by Swedenborg from his experience in the spiritual world and accurate knowledge thence obtained of the action of spirits, is abundantly confirmed by the contentions and the discords of the spiritualists. The following, from one of the writers opposed to the movement, gives as fact what Swedenborg led us to anticipate, and almost in the words he employed: "We seem shut up to the conclusion that any real and solicited intercourse with the spirit-world will be with evil, unholy, lying, crafty spirits, this being confirmed by the acknowledgment of spiritualists themselves, that often the spirits that communicate with them personate others-in other words, are not the spirits of those who have been evoked."

One remarkable feature of this movement is the rapidity with which it has seized upon certain classes of minds, and the extent of its influence. An "Author and Journalist" makes the following statement probably exaggerated, yet to many wholly unexpected: "This ever-perplexing question of 'spiritualism' has attracted the attention, and won the allegiance, already, of over 6,000,000 people in various parts of the world. It is represented by nearly sixty weekly, monthly, and quarterly newspapers, periodicals, magazines, and reviews. It has a literature of thousands of volumes, and in its best forms of development its adherents include clergymen (of nearly all faiths), scientists, editors, and the very crême de la crême of the aristocratic and professional classes of modern society. I enclose a list of the leading literary contributors of one of

Among these foremost literati is unquestionably Mr. William Howitt, whose present opinion of modern spiritualism is thus given: "Of the reality of the phenomena there can be no questionthe evidences on that point are overwhelming; but the tendency of the dispensation, as now fully seen, is a very different thing. During its earlier years, its advocates, men of serious character and of elevated Christian convictions, entertained the most cheering hopes of its becoming the means of corroborating the miraculous relations of the Bible, and thus invigorating the Christian faith. Such men as Judge Edmonds and Dr. Hare, the Faraday of America, professed to have been converted from unbelief to Christianity by it; and Judge Edmonds declared that no fewer than 20,000 people had been convinced of the truth of Christianity through its means. But a totally opposite result has now taken place-everywhere Spiritualism has announced itself as the sworn enemy of the Gospel of Christ. It boasts of its turning its votaries back to every species of heathenism. We are taught, especially by a faction calling themselves Theosophists and Occultists, that the days of Christianity are numbered, that it is a superstition fit only to be trodden under foot, and that we must seek our salvation amongst the Brahmans and Buddhists of India.

"In the Spiritualist, Я weekly journal, the organ of the National Association of Spiritualists, this antichristian leaven is sufficiently obvious, and, moreover, the editor gives such latitude to his correspondents, that sometimes you might imagine that you had got hold of some Colney Hatch Gazette rather than a paper dedicated to the sole exposition of the truths of Spiritualism. Not content with advo cating paganism as preferable to Christianity, many of these writers, otherwise men of talent and education, maintain

forces. In a word, that the disembodied-spirit theory is just-moonshine! What a humiliating finale!"

We must regard it as somewhat singu lar that a student and literary man like Mr. Howitt should manifest such total ignorance of Swedenborg's disclosures respecting the soul. On this subject Swedenborg has certainly removed the cloud of uncertainty in which it has long been involved. To readers of his writings there can be no longer doubt respecting the soul. It is the man himself, clothed in this world with the thick mantle of the flesh, presented in the world to come in the spiritual body, which is fashioned to its likeness and forms our house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.

a perpetual wrangling on topics which not really spirits, but mere natural neither they nor any one in this state of existence can possibly comprehend; such as the real essence and constitution of the soul-a subject on which all who have attempted it, from Thales and Plato downwards, have soon plunged beyond their depth, and failed to throw any light. All that we know of the constitution of our souls is that they exist. We can contemplate with admiration the operations of their instincts, faculties, and affections; but their modus vivendi God has placed, like His own existence, too deep for the eyes of any mortal. Physicists have sometimes persuaded themselves that they were on the point of laying bare the springs of life, and metaphysicians have written libraries on the laws of our intellectual system; but the real arcana of our existence are as far beyond us as ever. Yet, instead of carefully collecting facts corroborative of phenomenal psychology, the most important task of Spiritualists, the new sect of Theosophists, are every day dogmatizing on the nature of our souls, as though they were oracular masters of the subject.'

Mr. Howitt gives the following illustration of the teaching of this "muddy effervescence" respecting the human soul :

"We are told that our souls consist of three portions; that we may lose one or the other of these-entities you scarcely can call them—and fall into the dilapidated condition of Astral men, or elementary beings, still more abject and material, and may eventually die out altogether, like a will-o'-the-wisp! It is needless to say that all this is mere rubbish-a mere refaciamento and plagiarism from Eastern extravagances of fancy, without the smallest possible basis of proof or fact. Yet on these crack-brained windinesses do English Spiritualists cavil with each other, no two agreeing on any one point. Just lately, too, a number of them have contended that they are not bond-fide disembodied spirits, but merely their own selves who produce the manifestations at the séances! This is performing the celebrated feat of the country fellow who cut off the bough of the tree on which he sat! This is what Mr. Serjeant Cox and Dr. Carpenter have long been telling them-namely, that the real agents of the phenomena are

THE SOUL AND THE FUTURE LIFE.The Nineteenth Century some time since published some papers on this subject by Mr. Frederic Harrison. They were written, with marked ability, in illustration and defence of the Positivist faith respecting the soul and the future of man. These papers were followed by a "Symposium,' or discussion of the questions raised, by several eminent writers, in succeeding numbers. The current number of the British Quarterly contains "A Woman's Reply to Frederic Harrison, which, as looking at the subject from the female point of view, is worthy of attention. Women have a special interest in the question, "Those," says the writer, "who are described by an eminent Positivist as the human young, are committed to our charge for the early years during which impressions are most readily made upon the multiform functions of the living organism.' Boys, after a time, escape us, and move into a world of their own; but the man returns, and is at no subsequent period of his life free from our influence. Girls belong to us; and the women of the past, the present, and the future form one long, unbroken chain. From infancy to old age we are banded together by hopes and fears and duties, and move in a sphere that is our own.

Woman is the first teacher of the child. What is the lesson she teaches? Well indeed would it be for humanity if all taught the lesson thus described by this writer: "We say to the child, 'You are a spirit clothed upon with a

body. This body is yours, like a gar- value of this principle in the support ment. Some day, like a garment, you of Churches is now generally admitted. will lay it aside. It is not you.' The It is in manifest agreement with the child may be weakly, diseased, de- instructions of the Lord to His disformed; a future of great suffering may ciples; and tends to keep alive an be inevitable ; but the woman still interest in the building up of the urges: You are a spirit. Will and Church and the extension of its uses in conscience and affection are not the the world. There is no better test of slaves of your body. You may be good our interest in any object than the and great although your body is feeble amount of self-denial we are prepared and misshapen.' There is no other to practise in its behalf. It is true thing she can say in sickness but this that what passes for the voluntary same: You are a spirit. Although the principle is sometimes of constraint hody may do you grievous wrong, it rather than freedom. The voluntary cannot destroy you. You may be more principle, however, like everything else than conqueror even yet. You may which relates to human character and be patient and tender and thoughtful conduct, is a matter of education; and for others, although every fibre is with the progress of education these racked with pain.' abuses will decrease in number, and in The

"What other consolation," continues the end, we trust, disappear. this writer, 66 can a woman offer to her different results reached by a comown heart, when old age draws its dark paratively uninstructed people, and and heavy veil around those she loves, a people taught and accustomed to but only this: It is a spirit, that sits voluntary effort, could not be better here shaping wings to fly. The body seen than in the following, which we that served that spirit so well, that extract from the Christian World seemed to us in our ignorance identified of April 5th: "Our excellent conwith it, must fail and fade. The bonds temporary, the Echo, has called the which united them must be dissolved or attention of the public to some imburst suddenly asunder. We cannot portant statistics illustrative of the understand, we can but submit. We see those so noble and so dear brought low, and infinite pity mingles with our love. We say humbly and with selfabasement, because our all of service and of devotion is so poor and weak, that those whom the Father of spirits has given us we have loved to the end.

We part from them with tears and a sorrow that would be endless if we could not say, I also am a spirit; I shall rejoin those I love."

A

state of religious life in Germany. The pastors of the State Church in Prussia are very poor, and a collection is annually made from Königsberg to Saarbrück for the relief of the most urgent distress in the Church.' The ecclesiastical authorities have published the results on the last occasion. total sum of £15,868 was collected. The population appealed to cannot be under 17,000,000, and the collectors went from door to door, not omitting It is a sign of progress in the popular the house of any Protestant. Prussian faith when the soul is spoken of in lan- Protestants residing abroad were also guage of this kind. Of the future life applied to, and their contribution is this writer says: "We do not know, included in the above total. The we cannot tell, what the future life may whole does not amount to one farthing be, but we stretch a hand out into the a-piece from the nominally_Protestant darkness and say, 'Guide me, O Father: population of Prussia. The Protestants though I walk through the valley of of Scotland raise for religious purposes the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: a million and a half sterling, nearly for Thou art with me."" The know- seven shillings per head of the populaledge here shown respecting the soul tion. Of course by far the larger should prepare the way for the glad portion of this is contributed by the reception of correct knowledge respect- non-established churches of Scotland, ing the future, and the writings of our illuminated author would supply the means of attaining this knowledge.

THE VOLUNTARY PRINCIPLE. The

the Free Church taking the lead with upwards of half a million. The causes of the state of things thus proved to exist in Prussia are manifold, but may probably all be included under the

paralyzing influences of Establishment, at that Society, which was attributed and the inveterate hostility of the Ger- to the general flatness in affairs; but man universities to the religion of Christ."