GENTLEMEN:--

      Humanity, in its grand and awful amplitude--in its height and depth--in its length and breadth--in all its relations to the past, the present and the future, to things seen and unseen, to the finite and to the infinite--is the theme of themes, most recondite, mysterious and sublime; transcending far the astronomies, the geologies, the physiologies, thereunto appertaining. We have never seen any thing so wonderful, so mysterious, so awful, as man. In the elements of his constitution he is a microcosm--a world in miniature--an abbreviated system of the universe. In the truthful yet awful and sublime conception of his being, he is an embodiment of all the essences of things, animate and inanimate, in unison with an emanation of Divinity--a manifestation of which stirs within him, imparting to him a sublime and awful personality, constituting him a terrestrial representative of the Self-Existent, who fills with varied life and beauty the awful circles of time, space and eternity; himself the last, the greatest and the most wonderful volition and operation of the absolute and incomprehensible Divinity.

      Self-knowledge, of all the knowledges of earth, is par excellence, and by common consent, the most desirable, the most useful, and yet the most difficult to obtain. Few students ever become bachelors, much less masters, of this science and of this art--the greatest of all the sciences and of all the arts, whether called useful or ornamental.

      Still, it is possible to rise to very considerable eminence in this art, and to save ourselves from the labyrinths and mazes of folly into which a fond but, ofttimes, a blind parental tenderness, precipitates the dearest objects of its solicitude and affection. How many young men, and young ladies too, have mistaken both themselves and their [186] mission into this world; and though in mind and manners, as well as in birth and circumstances, fitted to have acceptably and honorably filled a conspicuous niche in the great temple of humanity, are found at last amongst the broken ware and lumber of six thousand years, and "crammed into a space we blush to name"!

      Old-bachelor mistakes of this sort are comparatively innocent and harmless, because they die childless, and entail not their follies or their misfortunes on others. But when an ambitious father or a vain mother takes a stripling by the hand, and whispers into his ear some romantic notion of his great parts and eminent capacity for this or that elevated dignity and place, they propagate errors lasting as life and reaching beyond its goal into the awful infinite of future destiny. True, in this life we sometimes reap the first-fruits of these follies in painful years of anguish and disappointment.

      How many sprightly youths, that might have figured acceptably to themselves and others behind a counter, in an artist's or mechanic's shop, or on a luxuriant farm, have been, unfortunately, thrust into some of the falsely-imagined more honorable and respectable callings of life! Here one is found culling simples, compounding panaceas or nostrums for all the maladies of human life, and thereby only "adding to the bills of mortality." Another pushes, or is pushed, into the musty lore of Roman or English pandects of laws, antique, and sometimes as arbitrary and whimsical, as any one of the five hundred and thirty-four decisions of the Justinian Code, to which the Roman emperors gave the force of law. And yet those fifty volumes of legal judgments contained but a part of their civil law.

      By such aids, an ingenious youth sometimes acquires the unprofitable art of making the worse appear the better reason; or, by subtleties of learned quibbling, hangs up in chancery to doomsday the justice or the right, which unperverted reason or unperplexed justice and common sense would have immediately awarded.

      Another, perhaps even more unfortunate, is taught to regard a "pulpit of wood," or a "sacred desk," as more honorable than the Æsculapian art, or the costliest ermine that ever decorated a supreme tribunal, and paralyzes both his head and his heart in conning over the voluminous decisions of synods and councils, or in mastering the Fabrician lore of the Augsburg or some other time-honored formula of Christian faith.

      Still, we have yet a quantum sufficit of the salt of reason and of faith, that may conserve all that is good and true, so long as we cherish the Bible and the Baconian creed. The inductive science has [187] prevailed over the Platonic and the Aristotelian, and, under its guidance and that of Heaven's own book of light and love, we are, or may be, safe from every relic of Roman hermeneutics and of Roman prescription, whether Pagan or Papal. This is of right, and ought to be, the constellation of our destiny.

      There is in the true light of true science and of true religion a stimulating efficiency that energizes and enlarges the human soul. The superiority of all the bloods and races of men on the verdant earth, as to mental energy and activity, is to be traced more to the influence of the Bible and Protestantism, than to any peculiar tincture or element in the blood or marrow of the Caucasian, or of any other race.

      This opinion is not the mere result of any learned a priori ratiocinations. It is a well-established fact, the result of a posteriori demonstration, from the fullest annals of nations now extant in every well-assorted library in the world. The Bible-reading, Protestant States of Europe and America are confidently appealed to in evidence of this affirmation. Compare the Papal and the Protestant States of the same languages and genealogies, in any and every empire in the world. From such comparison we fear nothing against our position.

      Why, in the long race of four thousand years, did the Jews, in peace and in war, excel not only all the Pagan nations, but also all the other Shemitish nations and dialects of earth, in all that aggrandizes and ennobles human nature? Why excel the Protestant States of Europe the Papal States?--the Protestant cantons of Switzerland the Papal cantons of Switzerland; Protestant Ireland Papal Ireland; Protestant America Papal America? Have the annals of nations ever more univocally answered any appeal?

      Patriarchs, Jews and Christians, with one God, one altar, one sacrifice, one faith, one Lord, one Spirit and one hope, against gods many, lords many, mediators many, altars, priests and victims innumerable, have, in every conflict, ultimately triumphed. The great and awful religious and moral truths of revelation naturally energize and invigorate the human soul, as bread and water energize and invigorate the human body. Hence the superior civilization and force of character of the Protestant Anglo-Saxon race, whether found in Asia, Europe or America. We neither reason nor decide from partial premises or from a few solitary examples. We rest upon the concurrent developments and demonstrations in the long race of three or four thousand years. Compare Hesiod or Homer with David or Solomon; Solon or Lycurgus with Moses; Pythagoras, Plato or Socrates with the Bible sages--the Jewish prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi. In one [188] focal point compare continental Europe with Great Britain; even their representatives at this hour, the drift-wood of European and American civilization in Australia and California, contending with all other nations and people for the empire of gold. Is it not a moral demonstration, more resembling, from its brilliancy and power, a mathematical demonstration than any other logical comparison ever instituted by man? We fear no mind, however enlightened, no array of historical facts and documents, however large and respectable, in any controversy on these premises.

      While yet standing in the outer court of our subject, I would further premise, that every thing very good in society originates in, and emanates from, true religion and true philosophy; and that every thing very evil originates in, and emanates from, false religion and false philosophy. There is' a true and a false philosophy of God and man, as there is of nature and society. The true philosophy is only to be acquired from the profound study of God's own library--the rich and ample volumes of Creation, Providence and Redemption.

      Your Pantheon, gentlemen, Pagan though it be, proves this assumption. Its daimoon kakon was the fons et principium, the real fountain, of all evil; while its daimoon agathon was the fons et principium, the true and real source, of all personal and social good. In all the forms of polytheism, when resolved into their constituent elements, these were the proximate or remote causes of all Grecian and Roman moral good and moral evil.

      In Christendom there are, it is true, many modifications of Christianity, but they are all resolvable into two, and only two, essentially distinct forms. In their essence, matter and form, they are either Papistical or Protestant. They are politically and ecclesiastically contemplated under the popular designations of absolutism and republicanism. The Papacy is sheer, bald absolutism. Protestantism is the negation of this idea or assumption, and the affirmation of freedom of thought, of conscience, of speech and of action, in harmony with the law of God, as every one understands it. Protestantism is essentially republican, and elective in all its tendencies. False religion may, indeed, in its licentiousness, fitfully become a fierce and bloody democracy, a heartless oligarchy, or an absolute despotism. But in the last it finally reposes, as its legitimate goal. Every rudimental idea or element in our political, literary and moral institutions is of the essence and spirit of Protestantism.

      There is, in my opinion, no more perfect and complete antagonism on earth than that between Papalism and Protestantism. They never [189] can amalgamate. One or the other must ultimately triumph in every community. No oaths, no tests, no forms, no covenants of naturalization can ever assimilate, unite or identify them. Oil and water, light and darkness, good and evil, are not more discordant and heterogeneous than Protestantism and Romanism. While Protestantism has the majority, we will inevitably continue republican. And should Romanism obtain the majority--which may the Lord forbid!--we should, as certainly, come under an absolute despotism. He is a simpleton, or unread in Romanism and in the history of Christendom, that can otherwise think.

      Tell us not of the European Republic of Venice, with its aristocratic government. It has long since waned, and is now a portion of the kingdom of Italy. There is no real republic in Europe, and certainly none in the bosom of the holy mother Church. We have no ancient dynasties, no standing armies, no chartered aristocracies, no state religions. European States, the freest and the best, have these, and, therefore, are not free.

      But it is in this new world, and in this new world only, that Protestantism fully develops itself. It is in the United States of America alone, that the free discussion of every question involving freedom of thought, freedom of speech and freedom of action, in all the relations of life--political, moral or religious--is guaranteed and fully enjoyed by every citizen. And hence the American Union is becoming, is perhaps even now, the cradle of new ideas of all sorts, home-bred and foreign. Here they are nurtured, cherished and perfected, with equal generosity, magnanimity and benevolence. Let any one desirous to know or comprehend the prolific genius of full-bred, Americanized, Protestant Angle-Saxons, make a special visit to Washington City, and spend one leap-year in the Patent-Office and its correlate museums, and if his head is not pregnant with more new notions than he could nurse and develop in a century, I will concede that I am no philosopher, and still less a phrenologist. There is every thing in this large world of inventions, from the cranium of an Indian trapper down to the trap of a spiritual-rapper of the Rochester school. It is in these rare galleries, and with Gall, Spurzheim, George Combe, the Messrs. Fowler, Elias W. Capron, and Henry D. Barren, for your guides, that you can, with the aid of correlate spiritual spectacles, get a genuine, unsophisticated peep into the cabinet of true and unsophisticated spiritualism, with all the knocks, bumps and echoes essential to a comprehension of the spiritual spheres of the upper and [190] nether worlds of our present hemisphere. On retiring from your first lessons, you'll say--

But you must hold fast to the idea of matter, as well as spirit, else you may--

And here we will premise one of our favorite aphorisms, which is as sage as it is brief:--

      You must also, at your commencement, cautiously and carefully survey the true metaphysical sphere. It is a most mysterious and sublime sphere. According to my telescope, it is bounded on the north by matter, on the south by spirit, on the east by eternity, and on the west by infinity. It is canopied by imagination, and founded upon abstraction. I have taken its position and bearings from my spiritual observatory, under very favorable circumstances, and presume it to be philosophically correct, according to the true Baconian faith and the oracles of Plato.

      From these introductory and initiatory speculations, we may proceed to descant somewhat freely upon the tendencies of phrenology, mesmerism, clairvoyance, and the spiritual rappings--all of which come fairly within the purview of the new philosophies, theoretic and experimental, of the nineteenth century. I cannot now enter upon these themes either learnedly or at length. I am not profoundly read in any one of them. But I have ciphered just so far as to see all the bumps, without seeing through them. Consequently, in ascending these stairs, I place my left hand on the baluster of common sense, and my right hand on the baluster of faith, with my eyes directed to my feet. At the top of the first flight I pause, and ponder on George Combe's Phrenology. The bumps and the brains are all right, according to Dr. Spurzheim and Dr. Bell. But he builds his theory upon one fatal assumption. He affirms the proposition, that "the constitution of this world appears to be arranged, in all its departments, on the principle of slow and progressive improvements." He and Moses, unfortunately, are in direct antithesis on this great point, and [191] wholly irreconcilable. Man never fell, but rather grows better, according to the philosophy of George Combe. Against this capital error, if I mistake not, his own brother, Andrew Combe, strongly remonstrated, as well as the distinguished W. Scott, Esq., once President of the Phrenological Society of the great city of Edinburgh. Phrenology is, therefore, not chargeable with the aberrations of George Combe. Against his assumptions, we have collected and collated four, as we think, unanswerable arguments:--

      I. That universal history furnishes not a single fact in proof that any barbarous tribe or nation, by any innate elements in its constitution, or by its own unassisted efforts, ever made one step in the career of intellectual and moral improvement.

      II. That from all monumental evidence, and from universal history, it is demonstrable that the most ancient nations were farther advanced, in moral and intellectual attainments, than their successors.

      III. That the analogies drawn from geological facts, on which Combe and others too fondly rely, so far from favoring his assumption, directly prove the contrary.

      IV. That the present civilization of Great Britain, like that of the more civilized nations of the Old World, is the product, not of unassisted barbarism, but of successive conquests and intermixtures with other nations; and especially of the early introduction of Christian principles and a Christian people. And this applies to our own country as much as to any other. The proofs and documents confirmatory of these facts are voluminous and unanswerable.

      Indeed, his own geological statistics demonstrate a fact which subverts all his reasonings, viz. That, so far from the gradual evolutions of time improving man, animal or plant, it required various successive exertions of creative power "before the jarring elements were reduced to order;" that no less than five successive races of plants and four successive races of animals appear to have been created and swept away by the physical revolutions of the globe before the system became so permanent as to be fit for man.

      To enter formally into the details of facts, evidences and arguments, illustrative and confirmatory of these statements, would be more tedious than necessary or profitable on such an occasion as the present. This has been well and ably done by more skilful hands. It is fully shown by the researches of geologists, that no race of animals was ever derived from an antecedent or contemporary species, or was gradually perfected. And certainly the history of three thousand years furnishes not a single fact corroborative of such an assumption. [192]

      As to the history of man, it appears from all the records of earth that he has accomplished mightier and more astonishing works, in ages the most remote, than he has achieved since the ages of authentic history began. Of the four great empires of time, the Babylonian excelled the Medo-Persian, the Medo-Persian the Grecian, the Grecian the Roman, in the great achievements of earth that give character to the human mind. The great elementary principles that terminate in a higher civilization originated amongst the primitive nations, and, in an unbroken chain, have been handed down to us. We may, in all safety, commit the question to the more enlightened portions of our own or of any other civilized community, whether Moses and his people have not contributed more to the civilization of the world than all the kings and heroes from the days of the Pharaohs down to Napoleon the Great!

      Still, these objections, subtracted from all the arguments and evidences, do not essentially impair the superstructure. The materialism of the system, as dispensed by the Messrs. Fowler, is a still greater objection. Yet despite the erroneous reasonings and fallacious assumptions of some of its advocates and defenders, there is sufficient evidence that the mind of man incarnate, commonly, but not always, acts, and is acted upon, by the nervous machinery of the brain; and that the brain and its developments in the cranium, with the physiology of the human body, afford an index to the mind within.

      Dr. George Combe, the great apostle of phrenology in Scotland, is more transparently infidel than most of his American brotherhood. Still, as a class, they are not entirely above suspicion. There is, indeed, more to fear than to hope, from the tendencies and developments of both the American and European schools of phrenology, mesmerism, clairvoyance and spiritual rappings, especially amongst an uneducated population. Christianity, however, fears nothing from any true science of body or soul, matter or spirit. But there is now, as well as in former ages, much that is called science, which is "science falsely so called."

      One of the worst symptoms of certain European and American Phrenological schools, is a prevailing and pervading disposition to test the claims of the Bible by an appeal to phrenology, rather than to test the claims of phrenology by an appeal to the Bible. This, indeed, has created a prejudice against phrenology which is more benevolent than rational. Weak, indeed, is the faith of any man in the Bible, who fears any thing for it from any quarter whatever. If any man has true faith in his own personal identity, and true faith in the Bible, he could [193] not be persuaded that it is a lie, though one rose from the dead and so affirmed. Paul spoke as a true philosopher when, on a certain occasion, he said, "Though we or an angel from heaven preach any other gospel to you than that which we have preached, let him be accursed." No man that truly (that is, rationally) believes the gospel, fears any thing in the name of science, learning or wisdom, whether called phrenology, pneumatology, psychology or physico-theology.

      When any proposition is proved to be true, the universe could not prove it false. If twelve veracious men, compos mentis, sound in mind and body, should, on the scaffold, swear, at the jeopardy of their lives, that they saw a man murdered, cut to pieces, buried, laid in the grave, and on the third day after rise again whole and sound, walk about, eat, drink and converse with them during forty days, could any speculations, a priori reasonings, or theorizings upon body or spirit, stultify, falsify or annihilate the united testimony to a plain matter of tact, reported by them, and for which deposition they laid down their heads and suffered them to be cut off? Credat Judæus Apella, non ego!

      None but a skeptic at heart could fear any thing from any alleged science, true or false, against the Bible facts, precepts and promises. Times without number it has been assailed, by all sorts of men and by all sorts of arguments. It has been laughed at, ridiculed, caricatured, anathematized, banished, inhibited, imprisoned, burned, dragged through the streets of Paris by a common Hangman, as though it were an execrable felon; and yet it not only lives, but reigns and triumphs in the hearts and lives of the greatest, the wisest and the best of mankind. It is being translated into all the dialects of earth. It is borne on the wings of every wind to every point of the compass. It is penetrating Australia, New Zealand, the isles of the Pacific, and the coasts of both continents, despite the Vatican and all its thunderings and voices and trumpets. It is reinvading Italy, and is secretly sold or bestowed in the very metropolis of Popery, within sight of St. Peter's. It has almost invaded the palace of Pio Nono himself, and terrified the pretended vicar of Christ.

      Dr. Combe, in Edinburgh, and other phrenologists in New York and elsewhere, may doubt whether death be a punishment consequent upon the sin of Adam, or whether it entered our world in pursuance of any moral aberration, or merely as the inevitable result of the wear and tear of the physical forces upon all organic life. They may even honestly assume and teach that the pains of parturition are no more connected with Eve's transgression than are those of the fowl and the [194] brute. They may propose the improvement of the physical constitution of man, as the only means of his moral and spiritual health, and pity those who endeavor to improve the physical by the moral. They may write and preach hygeia and the laws of health and life, and make the present eating, drinking and sleeping of man his paradise and his heaven. They may regard prayers and thanksgivings for special providences and special deliverances, like the doctrine of the fall and the contamination of sin, as one and all but the innocent speculations of poets or the fables of philosophers, for the benefit of the uneducated, but entirely below the respect of phrenologists of the higher schools, being merely the remains of ancient traditions--the hoary fables of a remote and unwritten age.

      They speak eloquently and reverently of the "dear, blessed Bible, the family Bible, that lay on the stand," gilded with gold and covered with dust. They sincerely regret that it is of so little account, because so "obscure," so "corrupted" in the text, "having so many doubtful readings," and requiring so "many learned and consecrated interpreters." Still it is a good book, and worthy of one or two careful readings during life. But, as Dr. Combe deeply regrets, its requirements are so high, and its oracles and precepts so sublime, that to command obedience to them is like commanding a horse to fly to heaven, without even the wings of a bat. The doctrine of the fall, he must think, is "a fundamental error of the divines," which, "because of their entire ignorance of the laws of nature, and of a true system of mental philosophy, they were obliged to adopt." He would, therefore, benevolently advise the Christian ministry to turn their churches into lecture-rooms, and to preach the laws of eating and drinking, of sleeping and working, more philosophically; and of studying the physical economy of life as the true doctrine of salvation, and the only scientific path to good health, a good stomach and a good, plump, fat, round old age.

      Thus, walking on stilts with rapid strides, phrenology has almost made the tour of Christendom within the memory of one generation. It has selected for its special companions a cohort of craniologists, with their craniometers, examining craniums. These philosophers, deliver lectures in four sciences, which sprang from one egg. They are, scientifically, denominated craniology, craniognomy, craniometry and cranioscopy. There is a good deal of bone, as well as of marrow, in these sciences of the solid contents of human craniums, which, by the aid of the scalpel and the scalping-iron, furnish ample materials for [195] very profound disquisitions on this pre-eminently metaphysic-physical subject.

      In older times, our revered fathers taught that man's thinking-power was in his head, and his feeling-power in his heart. Hence, wise men in former years died of "nervous headaches," and all disappointed lovers died of "broken hearts." What simpletons they were!

      In good old Scotland, I formerly heard disquisitions upon the philosophy of man, both in college and from the pulpits of the orthodox. These learned men could show the exact difference between the south and the south and the southwest side of a hair. But in speaking of man, they always reduced him to three heads, as they called them: we would rather say three points. They gave him a body, a soul and a spirit. This was his entire outfit for the pilgrimage of earth. They were very learned doctors, and gave us Hebrew, Greek and Latin for every thing, sacred and divine.

      They discriminated between the soul and the spirit, and affirmed that Hebrews, Greeks and Romans had an appropriate name for each. The Hebrews, for example, had ruach for the spirit, and nepesh for the soul; the Greeks, pneuma for the spirit, and psuchee for the soul; while the good old Romans had animus and spiritus for the mind or spirit, and anima for the soul. Paul himself, it was alleged, spoke and wrote in this philosophic style. With him, there was a species of trinity in man. One of his prayers was quoted: "Autos de o qeoV thV eirhnhV agiasai umaV oloieleiV kai oloklhron umwn to pneuma, kai h juch, kai to swma." (See 1 Thess. v. 23.) In English: May God sanctify you wholly,--1st, the pneuma, or spirit; 2d, the psuchee, or soul; 3d, the sooma, or body. These constitute the positive, comparative and superlative of man--three natures in one personality.

      The whole divine philosophy of man, according to Paul, is thus condensed or concentrated into a nutshell. It is this: Man's spirit by his soul, and his soul by its organ of many nerves, (the brain,) operates upon a world within him; and his spirit by his soul, and his soul by its organ, (the brain,) and the brain by its organ, (the body,) operates upon a world without him. The formulas of this faith are very brief. Acti agimus. Acted upon, we act. Actus, me invito factus, non est meus actus. An act done against my will is not my act. Actus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea. The act does not make a man guilty unless the mind be also guilty. This was and is the short metre of the soundest religious and moral orthodoxy! Who of us, the sons of such philosophic sires, would not endorse it? [196]

      Having paid a passing tribute of respect to phrenology, we are, in common courtesy, constrained to compliment, not her cousin-german, but her German cousin, mesmerism.

      Frederic Anthony Mesmer, of the past and present century, a German physician, having been some time psychologically sojourning among the planets, till electrified by their serene influence, so long ago as 1766 gave to the world a thesis on planetary influence, endeavoring to show that these heavenly bodies diffused through this nether universe a subtle fluid, acting upon and impregnating the nervous system of all animate terraqueous beings. He founded the new philosophy of Animal Magnetism about the beginning of the present century. He lived and died on this side of the science of psychomancy. He did not consult the souls of the dead, but only the souls of the living.

      The science and art of mesmerism is simply the science and art of communicating a peculiar species of sleep, either by the eye or the hand, so affecting the human body as to leave the mind active and intelligent--wide awake and watching; even more intuitive and penetrating under the conquest of the animal energies than when encumbered with the working of its own machinery and with the sights and sounds of earthly realities.

      This new art and mystery--science it cannot be called--is in rapid progress of cultivation at the present time. Its metes and boundaries are, however, nearly, if not altogether, ascertained. Its vocabulary is strange and mysterious. With its votaries, the word see indicates a new and strange idea. We, in common parlance, see by the means of light, and by an organ we call the eye. But they profess to see without light, and with closed eyes, or without eyes. We see while awake, but they only see mesmerically when asleep. How, then, can men, who only see with eyes open, and by means of light, understand their visions, and sights, and revelations? Neither prophets nor apostles, in ancient times, saw earthly things, read letters, or saw their antipodes through ocean spectacles encased and underlaid with earth and granite. We are thus fairly lost and bewildered in the premises, by terms and phrases which no dictionary of earth expounds. They can, in their vernacular, equally see a mountain, and, through a mountain, a spirit on the other side, without the aid of sun, or lamp, or eyes. Their doctors dispense medicines, and examine pulses, by looking through a man's skin, and flesh, and bones, into and through the marrow in his bones, and count, compare and analyze the nerves of every tissue from the centre of the brain to the centre of the heart. These are clairvoyants with a vengeance, whom any man of mere [197] common sense and common faculties would fear to encounter! They claim to possess a new species of omnipresence and omniscience, or what is equal to both.

      A mesmerized lady takes the hand of a person, and travels with him in mind from Philadelphia to Paris in less than four seconds, and with him walks through the Louvre, and with him contemplates the portraits and pictures, one by one, and, in less than the twinkling of an eye, returns to Philadelphia and reveals the vision. And yet the mesmerizer disbelieves in spirits, and only believes in fluids. Who can reason with, or against such pretensions? It is neither a subject of reason nor of revelation, and, therefore, we at once surrender, or deny in toto the whole pretence, as a demoniacal pretension, or a new art or device of jugglery.

      Some of its special pleaders deny the pretence of looking through solid rocks or solid substances, and yet they pretend to travel to Paris or London, in a straight line, through the earth, or so much of it as, in a rectilinear direction, lies to the right or left of a traveller from a room m New York to a room in London or in Paris. The somnambulist may not always, in such excursions, succeed; but if he only once, in any given number of times, succeeds, it is sufficient. The miracle, in that, case, is wrought.

      Many of the mesmerizers deny both spirits and miracles, as positive entities. Fluids and effluvia are their spirits and wonder-working agents. Fluids and effluvia, with them, become oral prophets and prophetesses; divine fortunes and narrate them; pry into the future and launch into eternity. Every somnambulist is positively inspired, if not by a spirit, certainly by an effluvium, or some subtle, inappreciable material agency, more refined than any gaseous body known to science or to fame.

      But the mysteries of mesmerism transcend all other mysteries; for, while it denies spiritual inspiration, it claims an inspiration and a power above and beyond all the inspiration of prophets and apostles. Its most ingenious advocates even deny the theory of working upon the imagination, and assert that wild bulls, mad dogs, and animals in the agonies of death, have felt its awful power and have been healed. And, strange to tell, while faith in men is essential to its development, brutes, without either faith or reason, are wholly under its power. Nay, even doors and floors are mesmerized by the waving of the hand; and human feet and hands are, nolens volens, bound in adamantine chains by its enchanting power.

      And, stranger still, connected with phrenology, greater miracles. [198] than even these are wrought by its sublime magicians. Even characters are convertible by its mystic power. A gentle wave of a mesmerist's hand over this or that organ gives, for the time-being, a new character. Its subject becomes a churl or a prodigal, a thief or an honest man, a combatant or a coward, veracious or a liar, not as the touch, but as the shadow, of the mesmerist's hand or finger passes near the localities of certain organs of the brain or bumps of the cranium. Young ladies, and even the coyest old maids, are courted and subdued by its mystic charms. Truly it is a terrific and an appalling power in the hands of certain priests and priestesses of either Cupid, the son of Venus and Jupiter, or the son of Erebus and Nox.

      But, in certain cases, it is questionable--a matter yet sub judice--whether the power of the mesmerist is more in his hand or in his eye. Perhaps it is in both. When doctors differ, pupils may disagree. But it is said that a glove from the hand of a lover may be transmitted, by post, any distance, to his mistress, and become a medium of the most felicitous communication, by what is technically called "rapport"--a term for whose meaning, young gentlemen, I must refer you to your best French dictionaries.

      This is an improvement in harmony with the telegraphic despatch of the age. Thus, by the aid of mesmerism, a young gentleman at Washington may not only communicate, but hold court, with the mistress of his heart at the distance of a few thousand miles. In this way, the language of his affection, while yet warm from his heart, may reach her eye, and be as efficient of love as the most felicitous tête-à-tête demonstration. We are, indeed, very much in doubt--if this alleged science should prove to be any thing but a lusus naturæ, an ignis fatuus--whether it would not be infinitely more pregnant of evil than of good to human kind.

      But, as yet advised, we are slow to believe its boasted claims and marvellous pretensions. There is one fact of colossal magnitude, strongly asserted by those who, from a large field of observation and innumerable trials made, have a right and an authority to speak which I have not, from any attention which I have paid to the subject. It is this: No one has ever yet been magnetized in good health, when free from any suspicion, or apprehension of the operation to which he or she was subjected. The mind or the imagination must be excited or morbidly affected, from representations made, in order to superinduce a state of feeling in harmony with the mind and intentions of the operator. Now, as conceded on all hands, "physical agents act of themselves, independent of the will of the subject." This is essential to all [199] our conceptions of physical agency in all cases. But not so in moral agencies. In these, the will of the agent and of the subject--the operator and the operated upon--must, in every act, simultaneously sympathize or harmonize. We have, indeed, mental as well as physical invalids in the great family of man. These are rather passive instruments, and, in the hand of every tempter, of every ingenious or enthusiastic operator, an easy prey. The extent of this subtle influence, whether in the hand or in the eye of the charmer and of his prey, has never yet been ascertained either in man or in the brutal tribes of earth.

      The true philosophy of mesmerism is to be found in the infirmities of human nature--its morbid sensibility, its credulity, its insatiate curiosity, its love of the marvellous, and the necessary absence of self-government. These render their subjects the easy prey of imagination, and of the faith or of the self-confidence of bold experimentalists, themselves too often as much deceived as deceivers.

      A clear and comprehensive conception of the laws of sympathy and of animal influence upon animal bodies, with the different states of the parties, will go a sufficient length to free every one from being a proper subject for the manifestations of the too credulous or too cunning hand of well-practised manipulators. The sinful curiosity to acquire, and the presumption to impart, may, indeed, conspire to yield results as astounding as they may be judicial, on the part of divine government, to furnish those who presume to open the sealed volumes of forbidden knowledge.

      As in the cases of those who formerly consulted demons, who had recourse to familiar spirits and to wizards, seeking to unseal the volumes of human destiny and to pry into secrets which God has as kindly hidden as he has benevolently revealed that which man ought to know of himself and of his destiny in order to his true and lasting glory, honor and felicity, God has now given au undiscerning mind, so that a deceived heart has turned multitudes aside; insomuch that none of them can deliver his own soul from the infatuation, and, therefore, can neither see nor say, "Is there not a lie, an error, in my right hand?"

      That all bodies--the human body as well as every other body, mineral, animal, or vegetable--are the subjects and residences of an electric spirit, no one, tolerably initiated into the secrets of nature, either can or will deny. And what is this electric spirit, permeating, in certain degrees and dispensations, every thing terraqueous, organic and inorganic? Are its mysteries all revealed? Is any one of them all [200] revealed? No: not one. Science--true science--cheerfully puts its finger upon its lip, and nods assent. Ether, atmosphere, water, earth, are its grand and august treasure-houses. These are all distinct bodies, each one severally possessing its own treasures of this mysterious spirit. And yet it is not pure spirit. It is only relatively so-called. Not one of its phenomena is perfectly comprehended by any living man. In one class of bodies it is made manifest only by friction; in another class, by sensible communication. Some bodies absolutely refuse to receive electricity by communication; one class becoming electrical by friction only, another only by communication. This, indeed, is not an absolute law. By force of human genius they can be made convertible into each other. Pools of water have been so electrified as, on presentation of the human hand, to yield enough to produce pain. But we must ascend towards heaven to find its proper habitation. Its home is the ether that lies beyond the realms of atmospheric air. Hence, its solemn and sublime chambers never can be entered by the foot of mortal man.

      We may talk of the quantities of electricity under the denominations of positive and negative; of its residences, transmigrations, transformations or metamorphoses; but its secret chambers and its domestic laws no son of earth can penetrate till he has shuffled off this mortal coil.

      We may call the electricities positive and negative, vitreous or resinous, without increasing our knowledge of either. We may ascertain its immutable laws--such as that the rubbing and the rubbed body always require opposite electricities, and that the intensity of the electric force resembles the law of gravitation, being inversely as the square of its distance. But of its essence and its primordial modus operandi the philosopher is yet as ignorant as an Indian from the cliffs of the Andes or a Bedoueen from the deserts of Arabia.

      Shall we, then, assume as a fact that a human hand, applied friction-wise to a human body, may abstract from it a substance sensibly affecting the brain, and at the same time dogmatically affirm that, with the fluid abstracted or communicated--the one positive, the other negative--the mind of the subject is perfectly identified with that of the agent? Such an inference would be at open war with every principle and law of sound reason and of human experience. But, that some physical effect might and would accrue to one or both; might, on some of the laws of animated nature, be lawfully presumed. If, indeed, the mind of man were a mere fluid--even the most recondite and abstract--the inference would not be so perfectly incongruous, illogical [201] and revolting. But to identify the human understanding, spirit, reason, conscience or affections with matter solid, liquid or gaseous, is alike at war with reason and revelation, as well as with all the canons of a sound and safe philosophy. But all that we have assumed or said is with reference to the spiritual rappings or knockings--the legitimate result of mesmerism and clairvoyance, as developed in the recent conversations with the dead. The links of this chain, however curious, should we attempt now to trace them, would trench alike upon our time, and your patience. We prefer, on such premises, to be suggestive rather than dogmatic.

      To save time, I will then assume that with a good "medium," and a quantum sufficit of animal magnetism, the spiritual knockings, first heard in modern times in the house of Rev. John Wesley, believed in by Dr. Adam Clarke, and reported and commented on by Dr. Priestley, are true and veritable facts; that old Jeffrey's ghost did torment the family of the distinguished Wesleys, more or less during three-and-thirty years; and that the fearful knocks first heard in Hydesville, in the town of Arcadia, New York, in 1847, afterwards tenanted by Mr. and Mrs. Fox, staunch members of the Methodist Episcopal Church; testified to by so many true and veritable citizens in New York; more fully developed in Rochester, Auburn, Skaneateles, and recently in many towns in this Union, according; to the prophecy that went before concerning them, through the distinguished Baron Swedenborg, in his prophecies concerning the year 1852, which was to decide the fate of his Church and doctrines, are all true and veritable facts and documents, of unquestionable truth and verity. I do hereby, therefore, engross and accept, as veritable and substantially true, with a reasonable discount for the false and hypocritical pretences of some ring-streaked, speckled and spotted goats, that have insinuated themselves, horns off, amongst these true and honest believers, the facts as stated. Having, then, thus cordially admitted the whole premises and facts claimed, I proceed to offer a few reasons and considerations why they ought to be promptly repudiated by all rational and well-informed Christians and citizens, in these United States and elsewhere.

      Necromancy is just as true as history, and as much to be believed. It is a universally conceded doctrine of revelation, accredited by all learned Protestants, from Luther down to the present day. It is both a science and an art, true as the Bible. As a science, it develops a portion of the unseen world, as clearly as Newton developed a portion of the seen world. There is a spirit world as well as a material world. There is a world of darkness and death as well as a world of light and life. [202]

      Necromancy was taught in Egypt before the birth of Moses. The art of conferring with the dead was well understood in Egypt, whence it travelled all over the earth. Hence, laws concerning it were a part and parcel of the Jewish code. God never enacted laws against absolute non-entities. The fact of his enacting laws against wizards, witches and necromancy as much substantiates and authenticates their reality as that of his enacting laws against sodomy and Sodomites, and against the image-worship of Pagandom, demonstrates their actual existence. Balaam, the enchanter and soothsayer, was as real a character and prophet as Moses. The witch of Endor and her necromancy were as much facts as were King Saul and the prophet Samuel. And that she had power over the dead, is just as veritable as that Samuel had power over the living. Down to the Christian era, witches, familiar spirits and witchcraft obtained all over Asia. Paul was beset by a Pythonic spirit, as truly as Jesus was tempted by Satan in person. These are Bible facts as palpable and as demonstrable as the dispossession of demons or the resurrection of Lazarus. No man, who believes the Bible testimony, can deny it. God commanded Moses to punish with death the witches that troubled Israel. And Paul places witchcraft amongst the execrable sins of his day, and warns Christians against it. Some semi-infidels amongst modern Christians have endeavored to ridicule this belief. Knaves and fools alike have made a mockery of these awful realities, as much as Universalians make a mock of hell. But I never knew a well-educated man, or a man of a vigorous or enlightened mind, who denied or doubted these awful realities.

      God has been pleased to restrain, and again to let Satan loose a little season, and now his coming is heralded from Boston to California, and Oregon. These indications, as usual, are ridiculed by materialists and atheists of every school. Christians believe, and fear for coming events. These shadows indicate an approaching crisis. Let us, then, be prepared for it. The wise shall understand, while the foolish virgins are asleep and have no oil in their lamps.

      Never were actors more true and faithful to their calling than these pretended spirit-rappers. They are always communing with the spirits of the dead. They are asking and obtaining messages from them, but only from the wicked dead. They are lying spirits, pretending to speak from heaven above, but they speak from the earth and below the earth. They are true to their prophetic character; and alas for them that consult these too familiar spirits, whether real or pretended, which peep, and rap, and mutter! They are all genuine Universalians. They [203] take away from sinners the fear of death and hell. Not one of them, so far as I have heard, gives a single intimation of hell. All their communications allure to the belief that the friends of all inquirers are now in Abraham's bosom.

      There have always been a few such real or false pretenders, and again they are let loose from prison, and are everywhere busied in deluding those who have not the true faith in their hearts. Since the true gospel has been promulged, and is being promulged, they are exceedingly fierce against it, and take occasion to oppose it by transforming themselves into angels of light. They now say that Christ is in the desert, or, rather, most of them delight to say he is in the secret chambers. How fearfully does this comport with those secret tables, the mediums, and the queries and responses echoing from Rochester to the centre and circumference of this much-favored land of Bibles!

      But in all that I have conceded, I have not yet conceded their reality. These are such poor demons, and appear in forms so questionable and mean, that I cannot fully credit their reality. If demons they be, they are the meanest demons, and the most bereft of talent and capacity to speak, I presume to say, in the whole annals of demonology. We have read of demons of respectable character and standing, in former ages; but these New York demons are the eeriest lilliputian demons I have ever read of. They can speak neither a dead nor a living tongue. They peep, and mutter, and rap, and thump, as the most clownish, ill-bred demons in universal history. They are too exceedingly fond of the ladies, and associate quite too familiarly with them. They even impinge upon their wardrobes, their secret chambers, and have the rudeness to chatter about it at a distance. They come in shapes so questionable, that I have almost concluded they are only hypocritical demons. I have rummaged over one of their most erudite volumes of conversations and communications, and had intended to embellish my address with a few of their flowers of rhetoric, but I am positively so electrified by shame, that I can scarcely bring myself to make a single quotation from their low, vulgar, or clownish responses.

      Mr. Wesley's ghost Jeffrey, of Epworth, Lincolnshire, England, was a ghost of some respectability of language and address. And Mrs. Seeress Harper, formerly Miss Emily Wesley, was a lady, every inch of her, and although the ghost Jeffrey haunted her for four-and-thirty years, he was, upon the whole, rather genteel; and she, in all their intercourse, never lost her happy equilibrium.

      It is due to my present audience and to those absent spirits, rappers, mediums, and all that wait upon them for illumination, that we cite, [204] from their annals, a few of the new revelations and communications with which they have been favored. We will, therefore, propound a few questions, and give their answers:--

      1. When a spirit leaves the human form, how does it look?

      DAVIS.--"Spirits retain the same bodily form in the spiritual sphere, and at first they feel as if they were only transformed to a country they know not. It is, however, not long after the transition before the interior senses are opened: then they behold and appreciate the change and the beauties with which they are surrounded."

      2. Do embodied and disembodied spirits intercommunicate?

      DAVIS, CLAIRVOYANT.--"It is a truth that spirits commune with one another while one is in the body and the other in the higher spheres, even, too, when the person in the body is unconscious of the influence, and hence cannot be convinced of the fact. This truth will, ere long, present itself in the form of a living demonstration."¹

      3. How will the world receive this new light?

      DAVIS.--"The world will hail with delight the ushering in of that era, when the interiors of men will be opened, and the spiritual communion shall be established, such as is now being enjoyed by the inhabitants of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, because of their superior refinement."²

      4. Pray, Mr. Davis, as you illustrate by the spiritual communion now enjoyed by the inhabitants of Mars, Jupiter and Saturn, of course you have been there; but we, never having been there, cannot understand you: would you please enlighten us in that point, that we may understand you in this?

      DAVIS.--"I cannot communicate with you on that subject."

      [Enter Reverend A. H. Jarvis, of the Methodist Church.]

      MR. JARVIS.--"There are many facts which have come under my observation equally convincing of the intelligence and utility of the communications from these unseen agents, who I now believe are continually about us, and more perfectly acquainted with all our ways, and even our thoughts, than we are with each other. But the fact in reference to my friend Pickard is what you desire. He was at my house on Friday afternoon, April 6th, 1849. None of the Fox family was present. While at the table, we had frequent communications on different subjects. Pickard was requested to ask questions. He desired to know who it was that would answer questions. The answer was, 'I am your mother, Mary Pickard.' Her name, or the fact. of her death, was not known to any of us. The next Monday evening he [205] (Pickard) was at Mr. G.'s, and tarried there over night. He there received a communication, purporting to be from his mother, saving, 'Your child is dead.' He came immediately to my place, and said he should take the stage for home, (Lockport, sixty miles distant.) He left in the stage at eight or nine A. M. At twelve M. I returned to my house, my wife meeting me with a telegraph-envelop. I broke the seal and read mentally first:--

"ROCHESTER, April 10, 1849.      

      "'By telegraph from Lockport, to Rev. A. H. Jarvis, No. 4 West Street. Tell Mr. Pickard, if you can find him, his child died this morning. Answer.

R. MALLORY.'      

      "I then read it to my wife, and said, 'This is one of the best and most convincing evidences of the intelligence of those invisible agents;' and then I added, 'God's telegraph has outdone Morse's altogether.'"

      Was not this a glorious message from the spirit land?

      We will take another specimen, from the New York Tribune, of December 28, 1849:--

      "After this report and some discussion on the subject, the audience selected another committee, composed of the following persons:--Dr. H. H. Langworthy, Hon. Frederick Whittlesey, D. C. McCallum, William Fisher, of Rochester, and Hon. A. P. Hascall, of Le Roy. At the next lecture this committee reported that they went into the investigation at the office of Chancellor Whittlesey, and they heard the sound on the floor, on the wall, and door; that the ladies were placed in different positions, and, like the other committee, they were wholly unable to tell from what the sound proceeded or how it was made; that Dr. Langworthy made observations with a stethoscope, to ascertain whether there was any movement with the lungs, and found not the least difference when the sounds were made; and there was no kind of probability or possibility of their being made by ventriloquism, as some had supposed--and they could not have been made by machinery.

      "This, committee was composed of Dr. E. P. Langworthy, Dr. J. Gates, Wm. Fitzhugh, Esq., W. L. Burtis, and L. Kenyon. This committee met at the rooms of Dr. Gates, at the Rochester House, and appointed a committee of ladies, who took the young women into a room, disrobed them, and examined their persons and clothing, to be sure there were no fixtures about them that could produce the sounds. When satisfied on this point, the committee of ladies tried some other experiments, and gave the young ladies the following certificate:--

      "'When they were standing on pillows, with a handkerchief tied around the bottom of their dresses, tight to the ankles, we all heard the rapping on the wall and floor distinctly.

(Signed) 'MRS. STONE, 'MRS. J. GATES, 'MISS M. P. LAWRENCE.' [206]

      "In the evening the committee, through their chairman, Dr. Langworthy, made a very full report of their examinations during the day. They reported they excluded all friends of the two ladies from the committee-room, and had the examination only in presence of the committee of gentlemen, and ladies chosen by them. Notwithstanding all this precaution, these sounds were heard when the ladies stood on large feather pillows, without shoes, and in other various positions, both on the floor and on the wall; that a number of questions were asked, which, when answered, were generally correct. Each member of the committee reported separately, agreeing with, and corroborating, the first statements."

      We will adduce only another specimen of these revelations:--

      "Thousands of questions have been asked on these points, and have been answered by spirits who purported to be Emanuel Swedenborg, the 'Seeress of Prevorst,' George Fox, Galen, William E. Changing, Nathaniel P. Rogers, John Wesley, Samuel Wesley, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Prof. David P. Page, and many others.

      Question.--What is your mission to the world?

      Answer.--To do good. The time will come when we will communicate universally.

      Question.--Of what benefit will it be to mankind?

      Answer.--We can reveal truths to the world, and men will become more harmonious and better prepared for the higher spheres.

      Question.--Some persons imagine that the spirits are evil, and that Satan is transformed into an angel of light to deceive us. What shall we say to them?

      Answer.--Tell them some of their bigotry will have to be dispensed with before they can believe we are good spirits. Ask them why they refuse to investigate. They are not as wise as they suppose themselves to be.

      Question.--Can ignorant spirits rap?

      Answer.--Yes. (An ignorant spirit rapped, and the difference was very plain between that and the other.)

      Question.--Are these sounds made by rapping?

      Answer.--No. They are made by the will of the spirits causing a concussion of the atmosphere and making, the sounds appear in whatever place they please.

      Question.--Can they make the sounds to all persons?

      Answer.--No. The time will come when they can.

      Question.--Is there some peculiar state of the body that makes it easier to communicate with some persons than others?

      Answer.--Yes."

      Such, gentlemen, are the quasi-Divine revelations now being made to the world by the spirits in prison, or somewhere else, through these elect gentlemen and ladies. If you desire to have their own [207] explanation of these mysteries, I can give it to you from their own pens. It is all compressed into one period. Here it is:--

      "They (clairvoyants) have the full power of sympathy with the spirits, through the medium of the nervous fluid or electricity, which is the only medium of communication between spirits in and out of the body."

      On these premises you can philosophize without my aid, and readily appreciate the amount of credulity which the Christian philosopher has now to encounter. From such revolting spectacles and silly pretensions, I am ashamed and mortified to say that we must fix, at no very elevated point, the standard of Christian intelligence and good sense of a great mass of our community who are led away by this solemn mockery.

      But, before we close, it may be expedient to suggest a few criteria by which all such pretensions may be tried, however plausible and with whatever show of evidence they may claim the attention of an enlightened community.

      1. We either have, or have not, a Divine Revelation, perfectly adapted to the genius and condition of human nature. The educated mind of Christendom, during a period of more than eighteen centuries, has concurred in the belief and assertion of this transcendent fact. The philosophers, poets, orators, legislators, and all the highly gifted and cultivated leaders of public opinion, in the civilized world, have conceded, that, of earth's literature, science and religion, the Bible itself is, par excellence, the Book of Books, worthy of the Supreme Intelligence to be its Author, and of man to be its instrument, subject and object. It has passed through every ordeal--through the burning fiery furnace of the most scathing criticism; and, like the pure gold of Ophir, it has come out of that furnace not merely unscathed, but shining with a lustre, a beauty, a glory, that surpasses all the literature, science and religion of all ages, races and generations of men. The arm of flesh will sooner quell the waves of the sea, arrest the winds of heaven, or pluck the sun from the centre of its system, than human wisdom, genius or learning fasten upon any page of this Divine Volume a single characteristic of weakness or folly--of fraud or fiction.

      Truth and error have their appropriate characteristics. Nature and art--I mean nature and human art, (for all nature is but art unknown to man)--are distinguishable to every educated age. No honey-bee ever sought honey from an artificial flower in all its bloom of beauty. [208] No one of perspicacity, who has read with attention the oracles of any Divine prophet or apostle, will for a moment listen to the prosing nonsense and folly of a mesmerized clairvoyant. To listen to such stuff as is printed from the lips of such sages, as a communication from heaven, is to give proof positive that the party in attendance has never seen the Sun of Righteousness in his full-orbed glory, and knows nothing of his meridian splendor.

      2. But, in the second place, these assumed revelations are private revelations, and from private impulse, and are, consequently, of private interpretation. Of course, then, they are not of any public importance. This is not a seal, but a brand from heaven, of their imposture. No oracle of God is of any private impulse or private interpretation, for the holy men of olden times spake as they were moved, not by angel or spirit, but by the Holy Spirit. This is, itself, an explicit refutation of them. No divinely-inspired man ever was a fortune-teller, or a communicator of private intelligence for the good or behoof of any individual. Angels have been sent on special errands to special persons, for public interest; but the Divine Spirit never condescended to answer any man's petition concerning his own personal property, domicil, goods or chattels. These spiritual rappers and their spirits, in all their speculations, have stamped upon themselves the brand of their own fraud and imposition, and yet have not sense to read or see it.

      3. When God interposes, it is on an occasion worthy of himself. There was always a Moses or a Joshua in the field--a Lawgiver or a Redeemer on the stage--when God "rapped." His voice then shook, not a door, but the earth and the heavens. He needed no lamp nor sensible light, for his own glory veiled the sun and hid the star from mortal vision.

      In what contrast with these scenes stand the domiciles of Mr. Fox, of Lyman Granger, and of Johnny Grott, of Rochester, Auburn, or Skaneateles, with their young groups of ghostly faces peeping, peering, muttering around a drowsy medium, half Mercury, half man, waiting for the news from the spirits in some infernal purgatory beyond some Stygean pool.

      It is canon of Protestantism, worthy of a golden tablet, that to the Bible's last amen nothing is to be added by any new revelation or commandment of demon, angel or man. Between the last voice of the Apocalypse and the final trumpet of man's drama, no new oracle, dream or vision is promised by God or expected by any intelligent man.

      Indeed, as soon as the drama of redemption was completed, and the keys of the kingdom of heaven given in charge to the Apostle Peter, all subsequent preachers, teachers and inquirers were, by visions or precepts from heaven, sent to hear words from Peter, which all that learn, believe and obey will need no angel, ghost, medium or missionary from another sphere, to teach them any thing which they ought to know, to fill up their mission and destiny of life, or to consummate their own glory, honor and blessedness.

      Young gentlemen, we live in an age of wonders, and we Anglo-Saxons are, in fact, a wonderful people. We have, too, as a people, a wonderful destiny in this world, beyond our individual personal destiny in an eternal universe, on the mere confines of which we yet stand. You have peculiar privileges, and, consequently, will have peculiar duties, and a peculiar destiny, in this world. The truly educated portions of our country, in the broad and large import of the word education, are not one in a thousand of our aggregate population. The credulity of many infidels and skeptics has afforded a somewhat perplexing theme to certain moral philosophers. We allude to it no further, at present, than to express our wonder at the facile belief of some schools of infidelity in new revelations. They reject Moses and the prophets, Jesus and the apostles, and believe in the day-dreams and visions of every new pretender to some new form of supernaturalism. Hence the ready ear and voluntary belief which they yield to every pretence of some hew light from the spirit world.

      Within a few years there has been a very general excitement amongst [210] this class on the subject of new communications from the dead. We regard this fact as at least a very striking proof of an all-pervading latent interest in the state of the dead, and of the unsatisfyingness of all the mere philosophies of earth upon the unseen and the eternal world. Human nature, in its more rational forms, without a positive and explicit revelation of a future life, has never been, and never can be, at rest. It demands a God, a future judgment, and a future life. It has hopes and fears, however latent, that occasionally develop their positive existence, and cannot, by any possibility, be either eradicated or annihilated. But the misfortune is that men seek to conceal or to secrete this innate dread of the great unseen and the great unknown, rather than to institute an earnest search or inquiry after the great secret of his being, character and will. Alan needs a revelation of God as much as he needs the breath of life. The future of himself is always infinitely more interesting to him than all his experiences of the past. Hence the facile ear of even a stern unbeliever in the Christian revelation to every new, and strange, and mysterious indication of a spiritual sphere and of a future life. There are at this very hour, I am constrained to think, myriads of persons more laborious and indefatigable in their inquiries after mesmerism, clairvoyance and spiritual rappings, than they have ever been to investigate the claims of Moses or of the Messiah. This, in my opinion, is a proof that the requirements of Moses and of Christ are inwardly, or at heart, more resisted than the simple fact of their real personality or of their Divine mission. Human nature, fallen and degraded as it is, has more of an innate revulsionary feeling to the doctrine of the Bible, and especially to the self-denial which Christianity enjoins, than it has to the stern realities of a God, a Saviour and a future life. Had Moses and the prophets, Jesus and the apostles, granted impunity to, or delivered oracles in harmony with, the demands of the unbridled lusts and passions of men in the flesh, the whole world would have loved, honored and adored them, and have gladly acquiesced in their mission.

      Men in the flesh desire a heaven, a pathway to it, and a safe and sure guide, provided that this heaven and its highway suit their taste, and that its guide grant impunity to their inordinate affections. Hence the growing popularity of Universalianism in many parts of our country. It is in good keeping with the tastes and the affinities of a secular population, and the pulsations of a purely animal and worldly spirit.

      But without an entire regeneration of body, soul and spirit, what sort [211] of a paradise would heaven be! Mohammed and his elysium lying beyond the seventh heaven, with its snow-white rivers, its crystal fountains, its groves and gardens, more odoriferous than the purest musk, studded with goblets bright and numerous as the stars of heaven, spread over a saffron earth, covered with pearls; women formed of cognate musk, beautiful as angels, lolling in pavilions of hollow pearls, feasting on nectar and ambrosia, tuning their golden lyres to the odes of Venus and Bacchus--the chief divinities of earth--would be the proper heaven, the delightful hope, of the great majority of the most polished circles of London, Paris and Washington City, together with a thousand other towns and cities of inferior fame.

      But such is not the hope or the heaven of the Bible and its Author. It is a much more beautiful and glorious heaven. There grows the tree of life. There flows the river of life. There are seen the cherubim and the six-winged seraphim. There are sweeter melodies than mortal ear has ever heard; more heart-ravishing sights than mortal eye hath ever seen. The jasper, the sapphire and the emerald, the beryl, the amethyst and the topaz, and all the diamond brilliancies of earth, are but the image of its beauties and the shadow of its glories. Yet it is, in certain circles, a very unfashionable place. It is even in bad taste, on some splendid occasions, to allude to it. And I am not sure that even here it is in good keeping with the occasion to dwell too long upon it. Pardon me, then, you cynic critics, for trespassing on your forbidden ground. Turn we, then, to the constellation of the Lesser Bear,--

And here we shall only add, that, in the midst of all the knocking, rapping spirits of earth, there is a Spirit standing at the door of every heart, knocking for admission, promising to all who open to its call a banquet richer far than earth has ever seen or mortals ever known.

      But that Spirit speaks in a style of lofty argument, of moral dignity and Divine grandeur, worthy of a Christian's heaven; of such a being as God, and of such a being as man, viewed in all the sublime and awful outlines of his moral nature, his lofty port and heavenward aspirations, and not in the grimace and silly buffoonery of those spirits that peep and mutter tales unworthy of man, and still more unworthy of woman. From such demons, such silly demons, whether of imagination, fraud or fiction, let every man and woman of self-respect, of good sense and of sound discretion, turn away with scorn and contempt. [212]

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