SECTION XVI.

SPIRITUALISTIC LITERATURE.

JACK THE GIANT-KILLER, and the pictures of his mighty achievements for children may as rightly be taken as a sample of the literature and science of man as developed in a Newton or a Christopher Wren; as the stray sayings and doings of spirits. I have heard of an orator "cracking a joke" with an unruly mob so as to excite and draw that mob to the "theme," and step by step, sentence by sentence, has he spun his web of oratory round, in, and through that rabble, till he has spellbound them; so in like manner have spirits acted, and their foolishness has been wisdom; and when men have in holy thought lifted their intellects and affections Godward, there has descended divine dew, which, while for a short time it may have surrounded the medium with the mist of darkness, to this world, has ladened every blade of grass with the nectar of the skies.

One cannot but be struck with the total absence of sectarianism in the angelic teachings; as in the Bible, leading principles are given out, but isms are avoided. God in Christ and Christ in God is the ultimate of their teachings, however far at first they may appear from it. Scores of volumes have been published, an honour to the literature of the world; at present America leads.

To the scientific reader, Professor Hare on Spirit Manifestations will be a scientific treat; it is the plodding of a determined university opponent, onward and inward. To the ethereal mind, "Healing of the Nations," by the medium Linton; is a work full of wise thoughts and upward inspirations. To the investigator of facts, the nine volumes, 12mo. of The New York Spiritual Telegraph will unfold the phenomena of spiritpower in its dark and light phases.

To the chronicle seekers, there is Capron, of America, on Spirit Manifestations.

Besides these, there are scores of volumes sparkling with diamonds from the land of spirits. Harris's Lyric of the Morning Land, and his Lyric of the Golden Age, are bejewelled with living beauty; a moral and intellectual treat to any one swayed by motives above Mammom. England as yet, has almost been barren; the wings of faith are so feeble, that mediums are more afraid of what their countrymen will say, than they are of what God will say; they therefore cannot soar, they are like barn-door fowls, they can only flutter and flap in a novel, in a stray poetic fancy, or in their roost of domestic life. If a spiritualistic article be written, it is given for publication with a false signature: "DON'T SAY IT IS ME.”

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FOURTH DIVISION.

SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA.

METAL VEINS are not to be found in the low alluvial soils. You must go geologically to work, and then you will find in certain kinds of rock, certain kinds of metal; so is it with spiritualistic phenomena. You must not go to the mere money scraper, or to the mere doctrinal reasoner, for spirit action. Go to those who believe in the action of a wonderworking God; one of those mortals who will not argue, but only point to the Scripture axiom on their banner, "Trust in the Lord and do good, and verily thou shalt be fed;"-to those who are not religious, because they were born religious, or have lived religious, but who, at epochs in their lives, were suddenly surrounded with evidences of a supernatural character, which altered their mode of life, and range of thinking, and produced effects which have shaken the moral world.

Read the biographies of the representative men and women of religious sects,-Roman Catholics, Lutherans, Huguenots, Camisards, Quakers, Moravians, Methodists, Baptists, Independents, &c., and the key-note is-supernatural. Then read the incidents in the lives of their followers, and still the same key-note vibrates-supernatural; and the consciousness of the existence of the intelligent supernatural, suns their path, and nerves them to say and do superhuman things. I have scores of volumes of biographies, and the golden thread is woven through every narrative.

SECTION I.

SOUNDS.

Facts are winged arrows.

SPEECH is sound, or modified concussions, or vibrations, or raps on the air by the energy of life; but such sound does not convey any proof of the shape or intellect of the person so making the modified sounds; this is apparent from not understanding the ideas of individuals who speak in any foreign language; such sounds are "gibberish" to the uninitiated, so are spirit raps or sounds. There are the sounds which all nature yields, and which all nations comprehend, and for which all nations have the same idea. The sounds of many waters, the sound of air sweeping through the trees, the cry of pain, the shout of joy, are all kinds of rapping or concussions of air, which all nations understand; but let us not idiotize a German, because his raps are to us foolish; neither let us idiotize spirits, if they rap or speak at the family table; let us, if we wish their company, endeavour to understand their sounds. Those sounds have thrilled many a heart with joy, have turned the mental gyrations of thousands to the magnetic meridian of immortality.

Physical manifestations of spirit-power and energy have a ring which attract, interest, and awe the mere materialist; they vibrate on the spirit of the man, they harmonize his mental faculties, and make him a willing recipient of arguments which heretofore were thoughtlessly tossed into the waste-basket of memory; and an ounce of facts to such, is worth a ton of mere logic. They give evidence that SPECIAL PROVIDENCE is a verity; that God's power is as much in action now, as it is historically reported to have been one thousand eight hundred years ago.

To the Christian, physical manifestations are the buttresses to his faith. They are the verification, and explanation of that Scripture saying, "Faith is the substance of things hoped

for, the evidence of things not seen." There is the evidence of the existence of spirits not seen, by the works they do; and thus FAITH BECOMES A SUBSTANCE, a rock by which the splash and dash-wave power of ridicule gets thrown back upon itself in surges, foam, and spray.

WHAT IS THE END AND AIM OF SPIRITUALISTIC PHENOMENA ?

To prove that we are, or can be, acted upon by unseen beings called spirits, good and bad; and that those spirits, or a portion of them, are DECEASED HUMAN BEINGS. If so, it settles, proves, in a straightforward manner, the truth of our

IMMORTALITY.

So ample are the materials at my disposal, that my difficulty has been, and now is, to select. The incidents which have transpired in my presence, in the presence of my friends, and in the presence of others, have so much of the personal or the relative in them; that they cannot have that force to strangers, that fine vividness, which photographs itself on the memory as an event in time. The perfect adaptation of produced phenomena, to meet the phase of mind in the family circle at the time, has often been to me a surprise; roughness to the rough, gentleness to the gentle, but at the same time, the voluntaries, however apparently flighty, wayward, or grovelling; whether in the higher or lower octave, were bearing the mind onward on the wings of the key-note "Immortality," and each and every sitter in turn comes in for the thrill chords, which vibrate in the secret chambers of the soul; and overcome and mellow the man for the more finished eliminized melodies of the great Master musician of the universe:-JEHOVAH.

Think it not degrading to that Great Power, that he uses an orchestra of musicians to develop the beauty, the grandeur, and the sublimity of his compositions; each division of those choral throngs, have their divisional leaders; and those leaders and their divisions are better adapted for their parts than others; otherwise, they would not be there; the counter and