serious and well-endowed mind-such minds as Whately, Fichte, Wallace, Chambers, Elizabeth Browning, and Franz Hoffman-to accept certain phenomena as giving evidence of spiritual power, is an unwarrantable accusation, which we need not auswer.

When Weiss would narrow down our anticipations of immortality to “the vital necessity" of our own soul— to what he calls a 66 craving," he leaves out of view the important fact that there are many excellent persons who do not feel that "vital necessity," or that "craving." William Humboldt, David F. Strauss, Harriet Martineau, and many other skeptics, did not feel it

The Spiritualist does not have to draw on those doubtful arguments for immortality which depend on the fact that the majority of men deduce it from the "emotions," or crave it as “a vital necessity." Such, as we have elsewhere shown, is not the true genesis of the wide-spread belief. The inherited "cravings" of the race may change. Those who agree with Strauss and Humboldt may become the majority. What, then, becomes of one of the great arguments for a future life, which are used by such reasoners as Weiss?

I do not regard such an event as possible "thanks to the human heart by which we live!" Referring to materialistic atheism, Professor Tyndall says: "I have noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of clearness and vigor that this doctrine commends itself to my mind; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought it ever dissolves and disappears, as offering no solution of the mystery, in which we dwell, and of which we form a part." And Thomas Shorter, one of the clearest expounders of Spiritualism, tells us that J. L. Holyoake, the English founder of Secularism, which, like Positivism, denies or ignores God and a future life, in a passage of great tenderness and pathos, describing the death of his

child, avows that even to him a pure and rational faith in immortality would be more congenial than the cold negations and dreary platitudes to which his life has been mainly devoted. Referring to his daughter, Holyoake says: 'Yes, a future life, bringing with it the admission to such companionship, would be a noble joy to contemplate.”

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Thackeray, who was more than half a Spiritualist, and who caused an outcry against himself because he admitted into his magazine an article asserting the phenomena, says, writing about death: "I know one small philosopher" meaning himself" who is quite ready to give up these pleasures; quite content (after a pang or two of separation from dear friends here) to put his hand into that of the summoning angel, and say, 'Lead on, O Messenger of God our Father, to the next place whither the divine goodness calls us!' We must be blindfolded before we can pass, I know; but I have no fear about what is to come any more than my children need fear that the love of their father should fail them."

When Weiss says that immortality may be explained away as soon as the phenomena are explained away, he supposes a case which we do not admit as any more possible than that the soul's own faculties should be explained away. A fact like clairvoyance cannot be explained away; it can be explained only by the theory of the action of a spiritual faculty; and we may say the same of the fact of pneumatography. We know that in the nature of things they can never be proved to be tricks, any more than the genius of a Shakspeare or of a Mozart can be proved to be a trick. It is not true that facts like these are not as real as any external fact can be; or that they are not built "out of reasonable judgments; 66 or that we are at the

mercy of what may prove a delusion,"

that human life itself is a delusion.

unless we assume

The climax of Weiss's course of reasoning is, that “ We

cannot derive a faith in personal immortality from occurrences which take place in darkened rooms and cabinets." Here he shows the limitation of his acquaintance with the real facts. His supreme argument is made null and void by the simple truth. Had he bravely, and without being hampered by his preconceived notions, entered into an investigation of the actual phenomena, he would soon have learned that the most important of them may occur in broad daylight under conditions where fraud is actually impossible, and where the knowledge got can never be surrendered. Try to argue out of his convictions the true man, who, by many and long-continued experiments, has once satisfied himself as to the phenomena of clairvoyance and direct writing: - Can your ignorance, however subtle your arguments, be a match for his knowledge?

Until you can show him that you can read what is written on a tightly-folded, untouched pellet, and teach him how to do it himself, by a trick impenetrable to the vigilance of the most experienced juggler, you can make no impression. And this you cannot do, since it is impossible for you to read without eyes, unless helped by some supersensual faculty, as we suppose the medium to be.

"For as he thinketh in his heart so is he." Solomon's wisdom is also the wisdom of Spiritualism. Thought is the supreme factor in the universe. Thoughts are not mere evanescent nothings. They have an almost objective force. They build up and shape the fabric of our minds, as snowflakes make the avalanche. Even the thoughts of delirium, though we may not be responsible for them, leave their impress. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. "If a man speaks or acts with an evil thought," says Buddha, "pain follows him as the wheel follows the foot of him who draws it. If a man speaks or acts with a pure thought, happiness follows him like a shadow that never leaves him." To drive out bad thoughts by good,

error by truth, and to give our best, most unbiased thinking to the cause of truth, is the road to the gate of Heaven. This is the great admonition which we get from Spiritualism. Let us say, in the words of Zoroaster, "Come to me, ye high realities! Grant me your immortality, your duration of possession forever!"

The Spiritualist who has not in his own reason an umpire higher than that which any medium can bring, is badly provided, and for him Spiritualism may indeed be “a delusion and a snare." The late Pocasset horror, where a father slaughtered his helpless child in the fanatical notion of emulating the faith of Abraham, shows the dangers of bibliolatry; but the dangers of demonolatry are quite as great; and the incautious Spiritualist, accepting as infallible the message of a spirit, may be led into blunders hardly less tragical than that of poor Freeman.

Rightly studied, Spiritualism is the strongest possible safeguard against all such superstitions. But if we are to accept as gospel the impositions of any spiritual tramp who, under the name of St. Paul, Bacon, or Swedenborg, may wish to fool us, we had better go back at once to the old theology and rest in its bosom. Spiritualism, in this its inchoate state, is for clear heads and patient hearts and tranquil temperaments. To those who have surmounted the perplexities, abuses, misconstructions, and frauds, the ennui and the disaffections which beset one's way to it, and which are all accounted for by eternal laws operative both in the sensual and supersensual spheres, it is the summit of all earthly content. I may say of it, in the words of Sir Archibald Alison: "It is like the black mountain of Bender, in India; the higher you advance, the steeper is the ascent, the darker and more desolate the objects with which you are surrounded; but when you are at the summit, the heaven is above your head, and at your feet the kingdom of Cashmere."

CHAPTER VI.

PHENOMENAL PROOFS.-FORM-MANIFESTATIONS.

ERRORS.

CARTESIAN THE PAULINE DOCTRINE OF A SPIRITUAL BODY.

INTUITIONAL TESTIMONY.

ALL that is meant by the phrase spirit-materialization is, that a spirit has such a power over the elements of matter, that he can make animate and palpable the whole or a part of a body resembling that which he had at any period of his earth-life. Ever since 1848 these partial or full-form manifestations have been common. In all ages of the world they have been known, though the testimony in regard to them has been rejected often by the inexperienced. At the manifestations of the celebrated Davenport Brothers as far back as 1850, a full spirit-form would not unfrequently appear. Their father, Dr. Ira Davenport, whom I have questioned on the subject, and of whose good faith no one who knows him can doubt, assured me (1879) that the phenomenon was proved repeatedly in his own house, and through the medial attraction of his own sons, under conditions where fraud or delusion was impossible. There have been charges of fraud (by no means conclusive) against the brothers," but that genuine manifestations were given by them cannot now be disputed.

The late Dr. H. F. Gardner, of Boston, informed me that on one occasion, in broad daylight, D. D. Home being the medium, he had grasped a detached human hand, which melted away as if into impalpable, invisible vapor, and disappeared in his grasp.

Dr. John Garth Wilkinson, of London, describes a sim