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had been adduced on behalf of anything which falls within the limits of that extremely limited and conventional standard called probability, which is founded upon common experience, it would have been deemed superfluously replete, and altogether prima facie and conclusive. "La Place says, in his Essay on Probabilities,' that any case, however apparently incredible, if it be a recurrent case, is as much entitled, under the laws of induction, to a fair valuation, as if it had been more probable beforehand.' Now no one will deny that the case in question possesses this claim to investigation. Determined sceptics may, indeed, deny that there exists any well-authenticated instances but that, at present, can only be a mere matter of opinion; since many persons as competent to judge as themselves maintain the contrary; and in the mean time we arraign their right to make this objection till they have qualified themselves to do so by a long course of patient and honest inquiry; always remembering that every instance of error or imposition discovered and adduced has no positive value whatever in the argument but as regards the single instance; though it may enforce upon us the necessity of strong evidence and careful investigation."* We would not, however, by these remarks be supposed to deny that instinctive reserve the mind of man generally manifests towards new facts, the origin of which it cannot discover, and the bearings of which it cannot at once foresee; on the contrary, we believe that this natural conservatism of disposition subserves important uses in his connexion, since it prevents the sudden adoption of opinions which might result in the utter subversion of those principles which are the mainstay of his moral nature and influence his actions in life, and so leave him at the mercy of all those elements which bring temptation and ruin of soul; not that we see that any danger could possibly result from the full and free admission of the facts of spiritual communications, the possibility and probability of which we might reasonably expect would be conceded by a community in possession of and avowed submission to the contents of such a book as the Bible, which is itself a divine or spiritual communication, and contains the record of

Mrs. Crowe.

many such, provided care is taken to discriminate between the fact and the matter or quality of such communications, of which quality we shall have more to say subsequently. But what we more especially deprecate is the denial which some minds proceed to give to any new, or apparently new, thing which conflicts with their opinions or prejudices, and in regard to which they are wont to assume impossibility or extreme improbability, and so foreclose any investigation of the subject or evidence of the fact.

That which we conceive to be wanting in connexion with the amount and variety of the testimony on behalf of the fact of those spiritual communications for which we contend, is a rational and consistent theory accounting for them on well-understood principles, or at least principles capable of being understood by the competent mind making the necessary exertion, and consistent with itself, with the facts, and with divine revelation, which latter element, we have seen, is certainly in favour of the possibility of such facts; and we are not aware that any arguments can be adduced from it to show the improbability of their occurrence "now." We purpose, therefore, to endeavour to submit such a theory to our readers; and in order to do this it will be necessary to premise some general information as to the constitution and nature of the spiritual universe,-of its connexion with the natural universe,--and of the relation in which man stands to both worlds.

First. We have scriptural authority for the opinion that the spiritual universe is composed of three grand divisions, viz., heaven, the final abode of the blessed; hell, the final abode of the lost, and hades, or the spirit-world, the receptacle of recentlydeparted souls. As some of our readers may not be disposed, at first, to admit the definite existence of this last-named division of the spiritual universe, it may be necessary to vindicate its reality, especially as it is important to our theory, as being that part of the spiritual universe with which, we hold, communications are made. This may be done both from scripture and reason. 1. We have evident intimations throughout scripture of a spiritual abode, or state, which is neither heaven nor hell. Thus, throughout the Old Testament the Hebrew word shrol, which in the English Bible is sometimes

*

translated "the grave," and sometimes "hell," is now generally allowed by the learned to signify the state or abode of the recentlydeparted spirit, prior to its consignment to its final destination; although it is imagined, regardless of the high character of the scriptures as the word of God, that this might be an accommodation of language to the prejudices of the Jewish nation. The same signification primarily attached to the Greek word hades, which literally means the unseen world, but is always translated "hell" in the New Testament, where, without doubt, it usually signifies the ultimate destination of the wicked, although, as a common word in use at the time of the establishment of Christianity, it certainly signified the immediate receptacle of departed spirits in general, and is used in this evident sense in many contemporaneous writings, as well secular as religious. A notorious instance is furnished in the passage of the Apostles' Creed, "He descended into hell (hades)," where it is admitted on all hands that the place of punishment is not signified. But there are several direct recognitions in the New Testament of a state or abode of departed spirits which is both intermediate and transitory, as 1 Peter iii. 18, 19: Rev. vi. 9-11. Also compare Acts ii. 31, with Psa. xvi. 10; Eph. iv. 9, with Psa. lxiii. 9. 2. Reason alone might lead us to conclude to an intermediate sphere, situated, as it were, between heaven and hell, and in a certain manner related to both. The soul of man is his life-principlethe real man, which is the subject of affections and thoughts, from which result actions, the material body being merely the organ or medium whereby he exists and operates on the material world; hence nature or moral character attaches to the soul, and is he; nor does natural death destroy the identity, since it merely results in translating the soul, or man-spirit, into the spiritual world. Now, we know that no man attains to so perfect a nature as to be wholly free from errors imbibed, or evil habits contracted, during his natural life, and we have seen that these results attach to the soul or spirit as the real essential man; hence he is not fit to be immediately translated to that state of perfect society we understand by heaven. On the other hand, no man while living in the world-hence, neither at the termination of natural life, nor at his first entrance into

the spiritual world-is so wholly divested of good, derived from the knowledge of truth and of natural affections, as to be fit for immediate consignment to hell. Therefore we conclude to the existence of an intermediate state, or common receptacle of departed spirits, where one class-viz., those principled in good—are prepared for heaven; and the other class-viz., those principled in evil-for hell. It is in this world that the judgment is pronounced on the "servants" to whom "talents" are committed, which it is easy to see includes the whole human race. "Take from him the pound, and give it unto him who hath ten pounds for I say unto you, that unto every one which hath shall be given; and from him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away from him."

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Secondly. We come to speak of the connexion between the natural and spiritual spheres. The three postulates of the true philosophy of created existence are:-1, "Everything is derived from something prior to itself;" 2, "Existence is perpetual subsistence;" 3, "Sustentation (or preservation) is perpetual creation." To these we may add two others, namely, "Motion is derived primarily from life;" and "Creation is variety in unity." Whatever system ignores or denies any of these primary principles of derived existence, is either idolatrous, as deifying matter, or it is atheistical, as denying the only true God, "in whom we live, and move, and have our being." The grand conclusion from these postulata is, that the whole of creation is connected together, and with its divine Author, by relations analogous to those which exist between end, cause, and effect. From this, again, we derive such principles as influx, correspondence, order, and use. Influx is the inflowing of the creative and operative energy of Deity. Correspondence is the adaption, or answering to, produced by this influx, on the principle that "like begets like." But, since all emanation from the Deity must necessarily be into a sphere beneath him, the likeness begotten will be not of the same nature, but analogous thereto, and the sphere will constitute an order or degree, which, coming to be the medium or instrumental cause for a still further outward emanation of creative energy from the Deity, which results in the production of an ultimate sphere or degree, and that relation which the

former degree sustains in regard to the ulti-universal law, viz., that sensation should be mate, viz., as the medium or instrumental manifested in the ultimates of being. Thus cause is what we mean by use, which every the body is conscious of pain at its ultimate being or thing, from Deity down to the parts, although the brain, an internal part, smallest material atom, sustains, and this in is the seat of bodily sensation. If our finger threefold character or degree, viz., end, is pricked, we feel the pain in the finger, cause, and effect. Thus everything is a centre although, if the nerve which connects the of uses; being, in the first place, an effect of finger with the brain be divided, no sensation a prior cause; next, as cause in relation to a ensues. Just so it is with man, who, while posterior effect; and, lastly, the end for which in the body, is sensible only of bodily exista posterior cause and a postreme effect is ence; but when he is divested of this body, called forth;—and thus creation is a chain and his spiritual body becomes the ultimate of uses, each in three degrees, which results of his existence, he is then aware of spiritual in correspondence or analogy throughout all presence. This explains the higher phenothe orders or degrees of creation, the Deity mena of mesmerism or clairvoyance, in which himself being the grand end and cause of all state the body is, as it were, partially sepathings, his emanation producing, in the first rated from the spirit and in a state of somplace, a spiritual sphere, and through this nambulism, whence ensues a sort of imperfect the natural sphere, which thus corresponds spiritual existence for the time being. This with its proximate cause, while the ultimate duality of existence is also necessary for the or most perfect effect of creation in both formation of moral character in connexion spheres is that in which the divine ends are with man. Moral character is the peculiar accomplished. This ultimate effect is MAN, attribute and predicate of the soul; and, in in whose nature and organization all the order to its evolution, apperception of, and orders of creation are collocated, and to whose freedom of determination to, moral good and use all things in the natural and spiritual evil, is necessary. Now, these desiderata spheres respectively, for his body and soul, can only exist by the influx of spiritual light are proximately or remotely subservient, and into the "mind's eye" and the influx of life who in his integrity is "an image and like- into the soul; but the latter influx-namely, ness" of Deity. of life-must not be of a determinate character, such as would flow immediately from God, or mediately through heaven or hell, since in such a case man would be a mere machine, acting out good or evil according to the nature of the influent life. Hence the necessity for his insertion in the spiritworld, or intermediate sphere and common receptacle of both good and bad spirits, through whom he can receive influx, and where in virtue of the opposite spheres, derived mediately from heaven and hell, he is in an equilibrium, and where, in virtue of this equilibrium, he possesses free determination of volition and action.

This leads us, in the third place, to remark on the relations in which man stands to both spheres. Being composed of two naturesspiritual and natural, soul and body-he must necessarily, and in accordance with those laws of created existence we have already indicated, be a denizen of both spheres, and this simultaneously; for material elements cannot sustain a spiritual nature, and "existence is perpetual subsistence;" hence he must derive his spiritual sustenance from the spiritual world, which can only be by his being a denizen of that world. Nor is there anything to create astonishment in this dual existence, since we have seen that the spiritual world is related to the natural as a cause to its effect. Now, the effect is in the cause, though out of it; just so the spiritual world is in the natural, though out of it; and man's thoughts and affections, which are in his body and affect it, occupy no space therein, and yet they are his spiritual part, and the most real facts of his consciousness. Not to be conscious of this dual existence is quite in accordance with a

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by parity of reasoning we may conclude that the mind or spiritual body, as the parent and director of the natural body, cannot be that simple entity, that abstract nothingness, so generally represented by metaphysical writers; but rather that the controller of the human organism must be itself organized, according to the laws of its own peculiar nature, and capable of manifesting those laws, under certain circumstances, through those organs of the body, that is, of the brain and nervous system, which are united to it by the law of correspondent activity and connexion. St. Paul, therefore, spoke the language of the profoundest philosophy when he declared that there were spiritual bodies and natural bodies, and that the natural body was the first in its development, and afterwards the spiritual body; and when, on another occasion, he defined the human organism, as existing here, to be compound of spirit, soul, and body;' in this respect giving his apostolic sanction to the doctrine of the ancient sages of Greece. The two first terms used by the apostle to describe the spiritual part of man are, in the original Greek, Pneuma and Psyche; and the latter term, which in our version of the scriptures is, in the passage alluded to, translated soul, is by the Latin writers called 'animus;' and this term is always used to signify the animal soul as distinguished from the pneuma, or more interior human spirit.

rock, because more unchanging and more enduring.

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Now, viewing the spiritual organism of man as consisting of two distinct degrees, called by the apostle the pneuma and psyche, or as possessing both a spiritual internal and external together, forming, while in this mortal life, the common internal of the natural organism, the PSYCHE or ANIMUS Will be the connecting medium between the pure human spirit and the nervous system of the natural body. By its connexions, through correspondence and natural affinity, with the body, it is placed in relations with outward nature; while as a spiritual entity, and by its indissoluble union with the higher spiritual principle, it has at the same time immediate connexion with the spirit-world; and because it is a subject of the lower, and possesses the properties of that world, which have nothing in common with time, space, or common matter, it displays those powers which can be explained by no merely natural or physiological knowledge, but which receive easy, rational, and satisfactory solution when man is really seen to be that which revelation, philosophy, and the statements of true clairvoyants, declare him to be, namely, a compound of spiritual and natural organisms, intimately related by the exactest correspondence or analogy; and that although the lower or natural organism cannot act without the continued influence of the higher or spiritual organism; nor can the spiritual organism be developed without the medium of the natural one; yet when developed the

"And here it will be well to remark, that no truth is more evident to sound, natural inquiry, than that the Creator has given to every part of his 'handiwork specific cha-higher organism can act, not only by and racter; and that, from the Creator to the lowest inert matter, there exists a chain of DEGREES; and that each object of creation can only be well and truly studied by viewing it in its own degree, and comparing it with objects in another degree.

through the lower organism, but even independently, and when disconnected with it.”*

We have already said that we consider the higher phenomena of mesmerism as in some sort the converse of communication of spirits with the natural world. The state of a By no process can matter be sublimed into clairvoyant may be aptly compared to partial spirit; and spirit having, according to apos-death, whereby there is a closing of the tolic authority and the general law of an dogy observable in all things, its distinctions and degrees, the properties of a lower degree may not apply to a higher one. True philosophy also teaches, that if spirit in no degree is material—that is, does not possess those properties which we apply to ponderable matter-still it is no less on that account a truly real and substantial existence; more truly substantial than the granite

natural external body, and a consequent transfer of the sensational perception from the ultimate of the body to the ultimate of the spirit, and thence and simply from the transfer of ultimates (according to what we have advanced as to the ultimates of being, the seat of sensation, though not its source)

Magnetism; considered Physiologically and Phi* "Somnolism and Psycheism, otherwise Vital losophically." By Josh. W. Haddock.

arises an awakening of the conscious sensa- | tional perception of the inner man, or spirit. In other words, the man is then partially in the spiritual world, and conscious of its phenomena; "but the connexion of the mind and body is yet sufficient to enable the soul's sight and feeling to be manifested to our physical senses, by and through the natural organism of a clairvoyant." Now, a disembodied spirit has, by its separation, no sensation or apperceptional knowledge of the natural sphere, since it has no organs for this result; but all that is required in its case is a subject, which, as a "medium," may conjoin him for the time to the natural sphere, whereby he can become cognizant of space, time, locality, and objects, in this lower world. The unition of a spirit with its "medium" we apprehend to be of a similar character to that of a mesmerizer and his patient in some of the higher stages of mesmerism, when the consciousness of the one becomes blended with the consciousness of the other; and thus a spirit comes into the use of the memory of his "medium," and so has facilities for understanding the language of the circle among whom he is acting; and hence, too, the facility for communication by "rapping" out the letters of the alphabet. As regards the modus operandi of the "rappings," we have seen no more plausible or satisfactory explanation than that purported to be a "communication" of a spirit itself in explanation of its presence:-"The sounds are, to a certain extent, produced by the control which invisible spiritual beings have over the electrical mediums of the nervous system."

We apprehend it will be unnecessary for us to enter into any detail as to the facts of "spirit rapping," since the numerous cases, the extensive spread, and the sameness of character of the "rappings," render it extremely probable that all our readers are cognizant of instances in point. We would, however, direct their special attention to a series of papers in "Chambers' Edinburgh Journal;" they occur in Nos. 482, p. 193;490, p. 321; 493, p. 383. The evidence there detailed as to the "rappings" is valuable, since, although the facts are given with all the fulness, candour, and freedom from colouring, which we could wish or expect, there is still an evident disinclination from first to last to admit the spirituality of the

agency. Yet, in accepting the recital of the facts there given as true, which, from the high character of the publication alone, we should have no hesitation in doing, it appears to us, as it appeared to a Rev. Mr. Hammond, whose testimony is given (p. 194), that it would "require a greater stretch of credulity" to opine collusion, "than it would to believe that it was the work of spirits."

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We conclude this somewhat lengthy article with a few words as to the quality of the "communications" we firmly believe are made by spirits. We have seen that these spirits are the denizens of a world which is the common receptacle of departed souls; as such they may be either good or evil, and their "communications" true or false. This consideration alone is sufficient to put us on our guard; but we suspect that these same spirits, who display an evident complacency in their communicating functions, and require no very potent incantation to summons them to the presence of their interrogators, are by no means the highest of their class. Their tendency being worldward, it is probable that their affections are thitherward also; and this, we take it, is no very recommendatory trait in a spirit's character. In short, while we think their "communications" might be of service to science, in that department of it which has been named the "metaphysics of science," we should strongly deprecate any attempt either to form or confirm any system of doctrine from their authority. Principles are things of the soul; and, once adopted and acted out in life, they are inherent, and must accompany the soul as its qualifying characteristics after natural death has freed it from this lower sphere. Especially is this the case with religious principles, which affect the inmost nature of the soul; and consequently religious persuasions must be, of all others, most permanent. What, then, shall we look for in the perorations of the "communicating" spirits but the doctrines of their own persuasions, enforced, it may be, with a more subtle mode of argumentation and an assumption of authoritative judgment? Indeed, most of the sects have already had their creeds and principles confirmed from this source. This speaks for itself, and lands us on the apostolic injunction, "Prove all things, and hold fast that which is good;"' "Try the spirits, whether they be of God."

BENJAMIN.

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