THE

SPIRITUAL MAGAZINE.

SPIRITUALISM is based on the cardinal fact of spirit communion and influx; it is the effort to discover all truth relating to man's spiritual nature, capacities, relations, duties, welfare, and destiny; and its application to a regenerate life. It recognizes a continuous Divine inspiration in man; it aims, through a careful reverent study of facts, at a knowledge of the laws and principles which govern the occult forces of the universe; of the relations of spirit to matter, and of man to God and the Spiritual world. It is thus catholic and progressive, leading to true religion as at one with the highest philosophy.

VOL. V.

NEW SERIES.

LONDON:

JAMES BURNS, 15, SOUTHAMPTON ROW,

HOLBORN, W.C.

1870.

THE

Spiritual Magazine.

JANUARY, 1870.

RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE.

THE Spiritual Magazine has now completed its first decade. For ten years we have carefully recorded in its pages the facts of Spiritualism as they have presented themselves, and have placed before our readers such reflections and arguments as these facts have naturally suggested, and which we thought might help to a better understanding of their significance and value, or which have been called forth in their defence, and in defence of those great truths which we think these facts have so conclusively established. The Spiritual Magazine thus presents a body of evidence in regard to Spiritualism such as we believe cannot elsewhere be found in any single work that has ever appeared in this country.

We have pursued our work of exposition and advocacy from conviction and a sense of duty, as well as from the attraction which ever draws the mind upward to what it feels a high and solemn and consoling truth, inspiring the soul with new vigour and with nobler aims; and have been content to leave the results of that work to a Higher Wisdom than our own, knowing that if it led to no other result we should at least have discharged our own soul of the burden laid upon it. But now, at the end of these ten years, on surveying the ground over which we have travelled, and comparing the present state of Spiritualism in this country with what it was at the commencement of our labours, we have every reason to be not only satisfied but thankful for the progress it has made among us, and for having been privileged to contribute in some small degree towards it, according to our ability and opportunities; and from this retrospect we draw encouragement to continue in the work we have so far carried

on.

N.S.-V.

A