uniform of the chief huntsman. When all was over the boy was questioned on the subject, and asked, "how he knew it was the Sultan," he replied, "his dress was magnificent, his attendants stood with their arms crossed over their breast; they served him in his tent, he took the post of honour on the divan, his pipes and coffee-cup stands were brilliant with jewels." "But how," he was asked, "did you know that the Sultan sent for the Duke." The boy's expression was, "I saw the lips move to the words, and heard them in my ear." Thus the magician seemed to extend his power to the hearing as well as to the sight.

M. Leon de Laborde having learned the forms, tried an expe-riment upon a boy, at Alexandria. "I once," he says, "made appear among others, a friend of mine who was at Cairo; and the child in the description of his costume, which he followed with great exactitude, exclaimed, "Hold, this is very drollhe has a sabre of silver!" The gentleman alluded to was perhaps the only one in Egypt, who wore a sabre with a scabbard of that metal. At another time M. de la Laborde conjured the figure of a thief who was in the house of M. Massarai the interpreter to the French consulate, and by that means detected him.

Some four years ago I prepared a magic mirror, partly from a formula I had read, and partly from my own ideas of what would make it a more effective instrument. I suspended it in the room as I would an ordinary looking-glass, placed a "sensitive" before it, without stating my reason for wishing her so to sit shortly appeared in the mirror, figures of fearfullyshaped and visaged beings, which so terrified her, that I was compelled to hastily close the sitting. As the same result followed the next time I attempted to use it, I deemed it prudent to desist; I therefore broke the mirror in pieces. Since then I have obtained two mirrors of a different descrip-tion, and the scenes perceived by the seers have been of a most interesting character-gorgeous in tableaux and elevating in moral tone-not one scene, not one action, not one word of a

debasing character; but, on the contrary, calculated to uplift man and let his spirit bathe in the ethers of beauty and wisdom. If opportunity opens I may give an example or two under the section "Visions." Well would it be if future travellers who have no practical belief in the existence of unseen intelligent beings around us, would carefully investigate this division of human nature, and publish the results as they would any other branch of a nation's or tribe's peculiarity. From the gathered clusters of knowledge so acquired, would data be given for understanding the mental peculiarities of nations; and the characters of those unseen beings, who appear to be attracted to certain persons, under certain conditions. Simon Magus was, in the days of the Apostles, powerful as a magician, and at Rome his powers as a wizard made his name famous throughout the Roman empire; and after death, it is said, he became one of the many Roman deities. It is no evidence of common sense or belief in Christianity for Christians to ignore the truth of spiritual beings being in communion with men. The Apostles believed it. We are told that one who by the "spirit of divination" brought her master much gain by soothsaying-wished the power to be increased, to equal that of the Apostles'. Her power was

not denied, not ignored; but only its quality and quantity. Magic need not any longer engage our attention; gazed at in its true proportions, and stripped of forms and ceremonies, the deduction we have to arrive at is—

That Magic is a phase and proof of supernatural, unseen, intelligent and energetic action.

Christians cannot ignore the truth of spiritual beings producing results through Magic. The most noted proof is, that through the system of divination pursued by the eastern nations was disclosed the forthcoming of the LEADER of the NATIONS, Jesus Christ; and the time of his birth was known, and the place pointed out by means of a light or star going before the Magi "to where the young child lay." If it be said God in that particular instance allowed it; the answer is, such a de

duction is illogical, because those magicians must have been previously engaged in occult knowledge, or they would not have understood the reason of the star appearing; and if God once used such a class of men, and for so important an event, the use is lawful; and also it is evident that all the effects produced by or upon magicians, were not from, of, or by the Devil. On the horns of this dilemma we leave the objectors as to the truthfulness or the righteousness of magic lore. If I were to give my thoughts, I should say that divination was true; and by that method, the magicians were informed of a perturbation among spirits as to the advent of a BEING whose life and actions would have an unexampled effect on the northern division of the equator;—that the natural curiosity of men led them to ascertain the date, and by spirit clairvoyance they saw "His star" in the east, and came to worship him. Humanly speaking, God had nothing to do with their divination any more than he has with an astronomer when he discovers a star in the heavens hitherto unnoticed. Their coming was an act of homage to a new spiritual era-was the outburst of a feeling, such as is displayed by the voluntary action of Indian and other potentates to our Queen, by presents sent in the custody of nobles, as tokens of homage and admiration to her, as the embodiment of the grandeur of the British empire; an empire raised and avowedly sustained by the spiritual power of that Jesus, the Christ, whose spiritual star was seen by MAGIC

POWER.

SECTION III.

SPIRITUALISM OR THE SUPERNATURAL.

Ir we take classic literature on the one hand, and scripture literature on the other; we perceive a oneness in the acknowledgment of the principle of manifestations of power by unseen intelligences. On the one hand we have the "Gods" assisting the Hero by guidance and influence; on the other, we have God, the Lord, the Spirit of or from the Lord acting upon warriors statesmen, priests, priestesses, seers and others in like manner, and producing like results.

If we take the historians Herodotus, Tacitus, Xenophon, and Plutarch, as the standard-bearers of classical; Moses and Josephus of Jewish; and St. Luke, Chrysostom, St. Cyprian, and others as those of Christian literature; we have, independent of the poets Homer and David, plain, unvarnished statements, which, if rejected, at once places every. other fact in those histories in the regions of fable, and at

one fell swoop denies the existence of kings, warriors, statesmen, philosophers; and the personal, relative, and political events which must necessarily have transpired during their earth life.

On tracing the annals of the European and Asiatic races, say from Anno Domini 1 to 1860, we find a continuous stream of supernatural narrative, and interference on behalf of persons and peoples; illustrated not only by success, but by signs and wonders; and, however great the difficulty of verifying the facts which transpired in the earlier and middle ages prior to the invention of printing, yet national history is in national records; and historians having access to those documents, and having also their own character for accuracy to maintain, there is every legitimate reason for accepting their statements as correct.

SPIRITUALISM is the belief in the existence of SPIRIT AS A PERSON, endowed with mental perceptions and powers of force;

by which he can, though invisible, act according to his invisible physical powers, as man can with his visible physical energies.

As a spirit must be supposed to understand the laws of his ethereal existence as well as man understands the laws of his corporeal existence; phenomena must of necessity be brought into play by the exercise of his mental power, as the play of substances under the hand of the human chemist unfolds new and hitherto unperceived powers in combination.

As ethereal substances, such as air compressed, and as the gases; hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, are invisible, though existent, unless placed in contact with other substances, and yet are more powerful than solid bodies; so spirits, as the intelligent beings in the ethereals, are more powerful than man in the semi-solid body he occupies.

Who those spirits are, is a separate question. We shall have to consider the primary question,-Do spirits exist, and where are the proofs? If proofs be tendered, and accepted; the second question arises in the mind, What are the powers and duties of spirits? and almost instinctively arises the interesting question, Who are those spirits ?

As we have now to consider subjects of a higher range of life than our own, we must of necessity be liable to err in our conclusions; the facts may be plain, but our understanding of the philosophy enveloped in those facts, may be in reality as feeble and as erring as the sensations and deductions of the human embryo as to the laws and existences by which he is surrounded, but which are as yet invisible, and will so continue till his death in his mother, ushers him into a new life; where, as intellect is developed and opportunity arises, he will increase in knowledge as to that world, till his second death in his second mother-Earth, ushers him again into a new life; where, again intellect and opportunity will enable him to increase in knowledge as to that higher life, and where, possibly, the same process will be repeated; each successive range of new life being as superior to its predecessor, as the previous changes have been. Whether