WILLIAM R. PERKINS 
 LIBRARY 
 
 DUKE UNIVERSITY 
 
Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2018 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/spiritdrawings01wilk 
 


 SPIRIT DRAWING 
 
 ii 
 
 % Jtfaonal gjferratta. 
 
 BY 
 
 W. M. WILKINSON. 
 
 SECOND EDITION. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 F. PITMAN, 20, PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 1864. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street. 
 
I3>3,^ 
 
 vouns 
 
PREFACE 
 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 This little book having been for several years out of 
 print, I have been asked by many friends to publish 
 another edition of it, and it is in deference to their 
 wishes, rather to any desire of my own, that I have 
 consented. During the last seven years, the subject 
 of which it treats has become less strange, than when 
 I first sent it out before the public. I was then, I 
 believe, the first person who had dared to print my 
 name in connexion with these phenomena in England, 
 and loud and strong was the abuse with which I was 
 assailed for simply stating what I had observed in my 
 own household. Let it be known by all those who 
 have put forward facts a little in advance of the time, 
 that I have been no worse for it, and that all the out¬ 
 cry has only ended in largely increasing 'the number 
 of observers and believers, and I was pleased to find 
 that my example, instead of deterring others from 
 
11 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 publishing books on the subject, was almost imme¬ 
 diately followed by several much more important 
 persons than I can ever hope to be. I cannot* give a 
 better proof of how little any one need care for such 
 criticisms, than by my readiness again to incur them, 
 having proved by experience that they have no con¬ 
 sequences that need be feared. The whole subject, 
 however, of spiritual laws and influences has made a 
 vast progress since that time, and therefore there are 
 many more now who are able to appreciate such facts 
 as I describe, than formerly. If, as I see every cause 
 to believe, there should during the next seven years, 
 be as great an advance as in the last, it may have 
 then even become respectable to accept the facts and 
 their teachings, and but little courage will be needed 
 to accept a commission in this new Army of Martyrs, 
 who for a little longer have to carry on the war against 
 the prejudices of the many. Another generation will 
 by that time be in full activity, and a fourteen years 
 crop of objectors will have themselves entered the 
 great Spirit World, and to their own great wonder¬ 
 ment, they will suddenly have become believers, by 
 the only means which could bring conviction to them. 
 In the meantime the young who are open to perceive 
 truth, will have begun to enlarge their minds, and to 
 act upon their fellows. Stones which former builders 
 have rejected, will then acquire a value, and their true 
 place will be found in building a new temple of the 
 Soul. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 Introduction ....... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 A Personal Narrative ...... 0 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A Chapter of Doubts . . . . .40 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 What has led to these Doubts . . . .08 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Two Worlds . 92 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The Spirit.World 
 
 125 
 
IV 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 On Gifts ....... 154 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Clairvoyance ....... 177 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Conclusions and Teachings ..... 193 
 
SPIRIT DRAWINGS. 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 “ I did not say it was possible; I only said it was true.” 
 
 In presenting a short account of what has happened 
 within my family, my only object is to give an extended 
 knowledge of the occurrence of mental phenomena 
 which until the last few years have been generally 
 considered as entirely new, though, as to their abso¬ 
 lute novelty, some remarks will further on be offered 
 for consideration. 
 
 My narrative will be confined as nearly as possible 
 to a simple statement of what occurred, and as 
 nearly as possible in the order of its occurrence; 
 and I purpose afterwards to treat of some questions 
 which, as it seemed to us, arose naturally out of the 
 facts narrated. To us who know them as facts, they 
 are pregnant with meaning, and any one who admits 
 them must necessarily be led to many conclusions, 
 which before he did not see. But here, in this first 
 place, I may as well say that what to us and to 
 
 B 
 
2 
 
 INCREDULITY. 
 
 many others is well known as a fact, will, I doubt not, 
 be received with incredulity by some most orthodox 
 and well-meaning persons ; and even those who may 
 be unable to disbelieve it, may unhesitatingly think 
 it an evil work, and pronounce their judgment of con¬ 
 demnation upon it. 
 
 For the benefit of the public, therefore, and to aid 
 them in withholding their judgment, it may be instruc¬ 
 tive and interesting to let them see how easily any 
 one of themselves might, without blame or seeking 
 on their part, have been brought under this same 
 condemnation ; and what a too ready mode incredulity 
 offers, for getting rid of any fact that may be found 
 inconvenient to deal with, otherwise than by disputing 
 its happening. 
 
 There are many ways of putting forward this “in¬ 
 credulity,” as it is termed, but if it be shown that to 
 be incredulous of what has actually a place in the re¬ 
 gion of facts, is one of the highest flights of credulity— 
 which, without evidence, asserts that that which has 
 happened has not happened—I shall hope, by adjuring 
 disbelievers to the use of their natural senses, and that 
 they will concede the possibility of similar natural 
 faculties to others, to reduce the number of those who 
 might otherwise have enlisted themselves under the 
 banner of incredulity. 
 
 Incredulity of a fact, I take it, is that widespread 
 weakness of the human mind, which is observed in men 
 who have perfected their opinions, and have no room 
 
THE TRUE MODE. 
 
 3 
 
 for learning anything more. A new fact to them, is 
 just one above the number that is convenient or ne¬ 
 cessary for them, and had they the power of creating, or 
 of preventing creation, the inconvenient fact should not 
 have existed. Indeed, if admitted into their completed 
 system, “the little stranger” would destroy it al¬ 
 together, by acting as a chemical solvent of the fabric ! 
 
 But this is not the mode of the searcher after truth ; 
 and in determining the important question, which it is 
 intended to submit for consideration, I would rather 
 forget much that I have been taught, or find it all un¬ 
 sound, than I would reject one single circumstance, 
 which I know and recognize as a truth. In all the 
 questions that can by possibility be mooted, whether 
 philosophical or otherwise, that theory is alone admis¬ 
 sible which will explain all the attendant phenomena 
 and observed facts, and which is, moreover, consistent 
 with the nature of man, and the world of matter and 
 of mind with which he is connected. 
 
 How true it is that “ there are more things in hea¬ 
 ven and earth than are dreamt of in our philosophies,” 
 and yet how seldom is this great truth remembered at 
 the right time! Although natural facts, being based, 
 as they are, upon, and the products of divine laws, never 
 change, how long it is before they are recognized, and 
 adapted into our little self-formed systems ; and with 
 what throes and agonies has their acknowledgment in¬ 
 variably been attended ? How much easier to say, 
 
 “ Impossible!” and to reject the fact, than to have to 
 
 b 2 
 
4 
 
 THE ALL-IMPORTANT QUESTION. 
 
 reconstruct a new theory which shall embrace it, and in 
 which it can find its home ! Disbelieve, therefore, after 
 inquiry, if you see cause, but do not begin with disbelief. 
 
 Let us see to it, that we turn not from the light of 
 modern revealments from whatever direction they may 
 come—from new facts and phenomena, however startling 
 at first sight, lest unhappily we gather not the harvest 
 of our own day and time, and in the winter perchance 
 be forced to “ beg and have nothing.” 
 
 Perhaps, too, the inquirer may find that the “ new 
 facts” are not really so very new after all, except in 
 their degree, and in the extent and frequency of their 
 manifestation ; that they have merely in these later 
 days been overlaid and kept down by science, and by 
 the minds of the “ learned” being resolutely turned in 
 another direction; that faith has been dead, and that 
 gifts always open to man’s reception have been wilfully 
 rejected by him; that in the history of the race, and 
 extending through all its ages, may be found lecorded 
 facts that it becomes his duty to collect and compare, 
 and which may then strengthen and wonderfully corro¬ 
 borate the manifestations of the present day, and of all 
 the future days of the world. 
 
 “ There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the 
 Almighty givetli him understanding.” The all-impor¬ 
 tant question, which I wish to present for consideration, 
 is as to the working of this spirit, and its mode of 
 existence and quality, whilst here in its enthralment, 
 and after it shall have put off the body, and whence it 
 
THE SPIRIT OF MAN. 
 
 0 
 
 obtains and bow it sustains its life ; and probably these 
 new facts about which I w rite, and which the Lord has 
 permitted to be shown to us, may give some light to 
 dii-ect us in the investigation, and acknowledgment, of 
 the eternal laws of His love and wisdom, ever flowing 
 into and re-creating the mind of man. “ Why dost 
 thou wonder oh! man, at the height of the Stars, or 
 the depth of Sea. Enter into thine own soul and 
 wonder there.” 
 
 Before proceeding to my narrative of the phenomena 
 I have observed, it may be enough to say in this place, 
 that the result of my inquiries and researches, has left 
 me no alternative but the belief, that they have re¬ 
 sulted from the working or upheaving of the great 
 spirit-world, and from an acting of spirit-power and in¬ 
 telligence, apparently exterior, upon the spirit and in¬ 
 telligence which is within. It is by virtue only of the 
 spirit in man that his body exists and has its form, and 
 by which “ he lives, and moves, and has his being.” 
 It is only by virtue of his spirit, and not of his body, 
 that man is man. True, without his body he could not 
 appear upon the earth ; but his appearance here in the 
 material body is but for a little time, and has no extent 
 with reference to the eternity, which has no future, but 
 is always the present, and for which his spirit is 
 fashioned to exist. 
 
 The connection of ideas which has led to the con¬ 
 clusion of this working of the spirit-power, shall, in 
 due course, be presented to the reader, that he too 
 
6 
 
 JUDGMENT WITH KNOWLEDGE. 
 
 may form liis judgment “ with knowledge.” All, I can 
 ask is, that he will not form his final opinion, until he has 
 fairly weighed the whole, and can give a judgment 
 founded upon reason. As to the facts themselves, they 
 will exist without reference to opinions upon them ; the 
 only problem is, how to account for their existence; 
 and if it be once admitted that in making one little 
 flower, or even a straight line, the body is made use of 
 without the direction of the reasoning faculty, then a 
 field of ideas spreads out before us, broader than 
 has yet found a place in the world, and which, when 
 tilled and cultivated, will yield fruits both for philoso¬ 
 phy and religion, such as are not to be conceived. It will 
 prove to be the one thing needful to give a proper di¬ 
 rection to the opening influences of the age, and will 
 bind in one grand whole the heavens and the earth as 
 both the work of God, acting and reacting the one upon 
 the other. 
 
 The attempt to show this from so apparently small 
 a fact, as the involuntary motion of the hand, may be a 
 bold one for any person, but for me, with my limited 
 knowledge and capacity, it is a flight which I should 
 not dream of, did I not feel impelled to open to others, 
 in the best way I am able, the knowledge of what to 
 us has been the source of consolation, and even of bright 
 joy, under circumstances which, sooner or later, must 
 happen to all, and which, when they do happen, are 
 coloured by the general belief in the darkest instead of 
 the most beautiful colours. 
 
THE RESULT. 
 
 7 
 
 If these phenomena are really what they seem, their 
 tendency and import will have no mean result, for they 
 will have the effect of placing reason and will sometimes 
 in the second place instead of in the first, where they 
 have for long ages been enthroned, to the practical 
 denial in man’s life of the source and sustainer of his 
 being, as even did Solomon, who in his old age began to 
 worship idols. Nor need we fear the result of this ac¬ 
 knowledgment of perpetual influx into our souls ; for 
 the novelty will not be in the fact of such influx, which 
 has always existed as the life-giving principle in man, 
 and the source of many of his thoughts, but only in its 
 acknowledgment. It need not deprive man of his free 
 will and his liberty, and to the extent that it is al¬ 
 lowed to do so it at once becomes a danger; but rather it 
 shows a still higher necessity for the perpetual use of 
 man’s will and reason, to enable him to sit in judgment 
 upon what is projected through his mind,—if it be 
 good, that he may hold it fast; if it be bad, that he 
 may reject it. Is this not the very process which every 
 man now, more or less unconsciously, performs in 
 every action of his life, by instinct, as it seems to him, 
 or by the operation of what he calls his conscience? 
 Can it be bad, then, for man, in place of this instinct, 
 to attribute many of his thoughts to spirit-influx, and 
 to know that he is here to judge of the nature and 
 tendency of this great influx, and to see, by the light 
 of his reason, that it shall lead him “ both to will and 
 to do that which is right.” Thus only can man be led to 
 
8 
 
 INFLUX INTO MAN. 
 
 acknowledge with his lips, and to believe in his heart, 
 and to live in his life, that in every act, thought, and love, 
 all life, and good, and truth, are from the Lord : to feel 
 that he is himself, to know he is the Lord’s, and thus 
 to acquire a self- hood of a new order out of the divine 
 wisdom. 
 
9 
 
 CHAPTER H. 
 
 A PERSONAL NARRATIVE. 
 
 “And the angel that talked with me came away again, and 
 waked me, as a man that is waked out of his sleep.” 
 
 In August 1856, a heavy and sudden affliction 
 came upon us, in the removal of a dear boy—our 
 second son — into the spiritual world. He had passed 
 about eleven years in this world of ours, and was 
 taken from us in the midst of the rudest health, to 
 commence his spirit-life under the loving care of his 
 Heavenly Father. 
 
 Some weeks afterwards his brother, then about 
 twelve years old, went on a short visit to Reading, and 
 whilst there, amused himself, as boys of his age are 
 used to do. One morning he had a piece of paper 
 before him, and a pencil in his hand, with which he 
 was about to draw some child’s picture ; when gradu¬ 
 ally he found his hand filling with some feeling before 
 unknown to him, and then it began to move involun¬ 
 tarily upon the paper, and to form letters, words, and 
 sentences. The feeling he described as of a pleasing 
 kind, entirely new to him, and as if some power was 
 
10 
 
 HOW THEY BEGAN. 
 
 within him, apart from his own mind and mating use 
 of his hand. The handwriting was different to his 
 own, and the subject-matter of the writing was un¬ 
 known to him till he read it with curiosity as it was 
 being written. 
 
 On frequent occasions, whilst on this visit, his hand 
 was similarly moved in writing ; and afterwards he 
 went to stay with some other friends in Buckingham¬ 
 shire, with whom he did not make a trial of this new 
 power; but on his return home, after some weeks’ 
 absence, we, for about two months, watched, with deep 
 emotion, the movement of his hand in writing ; for 
 sometimes, when he wished to write, his hand moved 
 in drawing small flowers, such as exist not here; and 
 sometimes, when he expected to draw a flower, the 
 hand moved into writing. The movement was, in gene¬ 
 ral, most rapid, and unlike his own mode of writing or 
 drawing ; and he had no idea of what was being pro¬ 
 duced, until it was in process of being done. Often, 
 in the middle of writing a sentence, a flower or dia¬ 
 gram would be drawn, and then suddenly the hand 
 would go off in writing again. 
 
 I have not mentioned the nature, or subject-matter 
 of the words thus written; nor is it in this place 
 necessary to do so, further than this, that they pur¬ 
 ported to be chiefly communications from his brother, 
 our dear departed child, and were all of a religious 
 character, speaking of his own happy state, and of the 
 means by which similar happiness is alone to be at- 
 
WE MAKE THEM A HOME. 
 
 11 
 
 tained, by those who remained here to fight out their 
 longer battle of life. 
 
 The effect of these writings upon us was a deep 
 thankfulness, and a happy calm as to the state of our 
 dear boy; and, whatever may be their origin, we have 
 derived the greatest comfort from them, and the as¬ 
 sistance not so much of faith, as of the certainty of 
 knowledge of his happiness in the great spirit- 
 world. 
 
 So far, then, we do not seem to have done anything 
 of ourselves to call down an adverse judgment from 
 the reader. The first manifesting of this power, or 
 faculty, whatever it may be, was not sought by us, nor 
 by our son ; and it would uot, I believe in my heart, 
 have been either wise or good to have rejected it with¬ 
 out trial, as a fact which should have no abiding place 
 in its chosen home. There is the old fable which tells 
 us to be cautious of turning strangers out of our house, 
 “ lest we should be rejecting angels unawares and 
 there are many such strangers, I trow, now wandering 
 about the world asking for admittance into our hearts 
 and best affections. They “ stand at the door, and 
 knock; ” perhaps some day, by the Lord’s mercy, we 
 may let them in. 
 
 Well, then, we made a home for this welcome stran¬ 
 ger, and, with fond affection, my wife tried for many 
 weeks, with pencil in hand, if any movement could be 
 made through her, in writing ; but no “ imagination ” 
 nor effort of the mind, produced a movement, nor made 
 
12 
 
 ANOTHER BEGINS. 
 
 her fancy that her hand moved when it did not. For 
 weeks it was resolutely fixed ; but, at last, on the 8th 
 of January, 1857, a slow and tremulous motion of the 
 pencil commenced, and ended in the initial letters of 
 our dear boy’s name—“ E. T. W.”—not in her natural 
 handwriting, nor at all resemlbing it. Then some 
 straight lines were made, and the day’s work was 
 done. The next day a somewhat similar movement of 
 the hand was made, and on the day following a 
 small and simple, but, to us, unknown, flower was 
 drawn, instead of the writing she expected; and the 
 following day another flower, very small, but pleasing ; 
 then, on half a sheet of letter-paper, a large flower 
 was drawn, with tendrils and other parts of it, to form 
 which the hand extended beyond the paper on to the 
 table, and made it necessai'y to paste an additional 
 sheet of paper at the side, and afterwards two addi¬ 
 tional sheets were found necessary, to allow room for 
 the completion of the flower. This was the first 
 flower form which was finished. It belongs to no 
 known order, though it is of a beautiful and complex 
 shape, and looks as if it might well have existence in 
 nature, and be no small addition to the floral world. 
 
 There was no “ imagination ” nor fancy in the pro¬ 
 duction of it; for, had there been, the original idea of 
 the mind would have been followed by adapting the 
 size of the paper, in the first instance, to the size of 
 the flower that was to be drawn upon it. The mind 
 was, during the whole process of drawing, in an en- 
 
IMAGINATION. 
 
 13 
 
 tirely inactive state ; and the only condition in which 
 the movement would continue, was by keeping the 
 imagination, and all ideas on the subject of the picture, 
 dormant. 
 
 The influence, whatever it may be, which moved the 
 hand, and produced these new forms in this new way, 
 was always afterwards, for several years, obtainable, 
 and obtained, under the only condition of quiescence 
 of the mind, and it produced no noticeable change, 
 either in the mind or the body, or any state of excite¬ 
 ment, but rather a calm and pleasing feeling, which 
 lasted all the time the hand was being moved, and for 
 long afterwards. 
 
 The movement, particularly in drawing the first 
 outlines, both of that and subsequent pictures, was by 
 long and rapid sweeps upon the paper, to form the 
 stems and other parts of the flowers, and these were 
 nearly always correct in the first instance, requiring 
 no alteratoin of use of the india-rubber Decided lines, 
 beautiful forms, and combinations never before thought 
 of, were thus produced in rapid succession. 
 
 A large series of these drawings has been produced 
 by devoting about an hour a day to the use and prac¬ 
 tice of this wonderful faculty. Several of these draw¬ 
 ings are of large size—two feet by eighteen inches—but 
 the majority about eighteen inches by twelve. It would 
 be impossible, without seeing them, to form an idea of 
 their nature and variety, so entirely new are they, and 
 their newness is shown in so many striking points. I 
 
14 
 
 THE DRAWINGS. 
 
 may, however, give a few instances, as well as I am 
 able without the use of engravings, to show the won¬ 
 derful fact, that although no idea existed in the mind 
 of the drawer, as to the tendency or effect of the lines 
 of the pencil, in producing the original sketch, yet in¬ 
 telligence of the deepest and most exact kind, embrac¬ 
 ing in its calculations, all the effects which could only 
 appear when the last shading of the picture should be 
 put in, is shown in nearly every drawing. 
 
 In some of them, we were quite unable to see how 
 apparent solecisms in the early sketch of the picture 
 could be reconciled ; for instance, how a small flower, 
 apparently finished and complete, could be reconciled 
 with a thick stem, and large leaves and buds, out of 
 all proportion with it. But the only difficulty was with 
 us ; though we could not see, nor even wildly guess, 
 how the flower could be enlarged, yet the next day, 
 when the pencil was applied, it moved, at once, to en¬ 
 large it rapidly, in so simple and beautiful a way that 
 now the only wonder to us and to others is, how we 
 should not have seen it as the only possible way ; al¬ 
 though, in doing this, it entirely changed the nature 
 and bearing of the first smaller flower, by making it 
 the central portion only of one of a different order and 
 significance. 
 
 The flower I have just spoken of was on a half-sheet 
 of common cartridge-paper, and having thus commenced 
 with that size, both my wife and I determined that it 
 would be better to keep to it for the sake of uniformity, 
 
THE SECOND FLOWER. 
 
 15 
 
 as we intended to have the pictures framed. The only 
 change she made in preparing for the next sketch was 
 to obtain some drawing-paper, which happened to be 
 of a much larger size than the cartridge-paper, and I 
 measured and carefully marked on it with a ruler and 
 pencil, a strong line of the same size as the former 
 picture, beyond which line she was not to go. Her 
 hand was moved immediately in sketching another 
 flower, and after a few moments travelled not only 
 beyond the lines I had drawn, but covering the whole 
 paper, and even going beyond the paper itself on to the 
 table-cloth, and coming back to the paper on the oppo¬ 
 site side, and in this way representing a flower which, 
 on two of its sides, was too large for the paper. 
 
 Imagination, or the forming of an image in the 
 mind, by no means can account for such a fact as this, 
 which in its very nature is opposed to what are known 
 as the phenomena of the imaginative faculty. 
 
 Another effect, astonishing to us, as to most who 
 have seen it, was the production of a large circle, 
 described with great accuracy by the hand, without the 
 aid of compasses, and which was next filled up with a 
 series of geometrical figures, each of the four divisions 
 of the circle being correlative with its opposite. It was 
 then a complicated and wonderful circle of geometrical 
 figures, and appeared complete in itself; for, whatever 
 it might mean, least of all was it thought that it was 
 to form part of a flower — when, lo! the hand was 
 again moved, and, by a series of rapid movements, 
 
16 
 
 ANOTHER FLOWER. 
 
 described round it the petals of a flower, and next 
 added the stem and a series of leaves. Strange! 
 tliat a lady, for the first time in lier life, should, un¬ 
 knowingly, draw a complicated geometrical series, and 
 then make it the centre of a flower,—a combination 
 surely as novel as the influence by which it was pro¬ 
 duced. 
 
 Another of these earlier pictures was commenced by 
 quite a new movement of the pencil, which was rapidly 
 carried in a large circle round the paper, and at each 
 of two sides of the circle making another smaller 
 circle, but all by one movement, and in a continu¬ 
 ous line. By these means, after many hundred 
 evolutions, a shading and narrowing of each of the 
 circles was produced, till they were gradually brought 
 to centres. The whole appeared to have no form or 
 meaning, and for a day or two none of those who saw 
 it, could see any means by which it could be proceeded 
 with, so as to give it any meaning or consistence. 
 When compelled to this state of ignorant helplessness, 
 the hand was moved in forming, in the centre of the 
 large circle, an eye of beautiful significance, round 
 which the other parts appear as an orbit; and all is 
 then seen as a setting for the eye. 
 
 A curious circumstance in connection with this 
 drawing was this. My son left home in the morning 
 partaking of the family wondering, as to how the cen¬ 
 tre would be filled up; and when he returned in the 
 evening, he told his mother that he knew what had 
 
BELL-FLOWERS. 
 
 17 
 
 been placed in the centre. His hand had written on his 
 slate, an answer to a mental question, “It is an Eye.” 
 
 Several other pictures of flowers, principally of pendent 
 bell-forms, were, like all the others, at first completely 
 sketched before the shading was commenced. Now, it 
 will be seen that the whole idea of the picture is ne¬ 
 cessarily contained in these first lines of the sketching, 
 although the meaning and necessity for each line is of 
 course not apparent till it is worked out, and the whole 
 is shaded and finished. Some of these bell-pictures 
 show a curious and exact knowledge of the law of the 
 elasticity of the spring, as acted upon by the weight of 
 the pendent bell; and in one picture this appears with 
 the additional disturbance of one bell, which is in the act 
 of forcibly pushing down another, so as to throw it out 
 of the line it would otherwise have formed ; and yet, in 
 making the sketch, she had no idea of its meaning, nor 
 how it was to be subsequently carried out in the 
 shading. 
 
 These circumstances are mentioned to prove that 
 some intelligent agent or influence was engaged in the 
 work, entirely apart and distinct from the ordinary 
 operations of the mind of the person engaged in pro¬ 
 ducing the drawing; for not only was drawing a new 
 science to her, but she was not acquainted with 
 botany, nor with the laws of art, with which however, in 
 the opinion of artists who have seen them, the pictures 
 are replete. New ideas as to form, and new and 
 striking effects of transparency, not before known 
 
 c 
 
18 
 
 A NEW INTELLIGENCE AT WORK. 
 
 in pencil-drawing, are produced ; and in several of the 
 pictures, according to the testimony of competent pro¬ 
 fessional judges, there is a beauty and a harmony of 
 arrangements, which bespeak art, and a knowledge of 
 the principles of composition. 
 
 Another drawing, which was expected, like the 
 others, to result in a flower, proved, when further ad¬ 
 vanced, to represent a house with fountains before it, 
 and over the door a cross with rays proceeding from it. 
 The same beautiful symbol is at the top of the house, 
 and under the cross the words, also written by the 
 same influence, “ Lord open to us ” At one side of 
 this house, something resembling a ladder, or stage of 
 progression, is drawn; and, still acting under the same 
 influence, the hand has, from time to time, at intervals 
 of about a fortnight, made on each of the upward bars 
 of the ladder the form of a small cross. 
 
 It was also told by this influence, that the house 
 represented the state of our dear son in the spiritual 
 world, and that the ladder related to his progress in 
 Divine knowledge and love ; and that, when the top¬ 
 most stage of it was reached, it would be a sign to us 
 that he had entered upon a higher state, which would 
 be represented by his inhabiting a more beautiful 
 house ; one of the “ many mansions ” of the progres¬ 
 sing soul. Another symbol, shown on one side of 
 this drawing, is a lamp, which is said to serve as an 
 external conscience, and in which, according to its 
 want of brightness, he sees, and is reminded of all the 
 
INVOLUNTARY WRITING. 
 
 19 
 
 unregenerate portions of his life; thus that this lamp, 
 by its increasing brightness, shows his regeneration 
 and progression, as the steps in the ladder also show 
 the same, but in another form. 
 
 Immediately, on the last cross being thus put on 
 the topmost stage, the next drawing was that of an¬ 
 other house, and which, from its symbols, flowers, 
 trees, and fountain, shows, evidently, a higher and 
 holier state — shows that the soul has progressed in 
 Divine love, and was fitted to take its place amongst 
 creations and correspondences of higher import; and 
 thus, that its loves and consequently its surroundings, 
 should be portrayed together. 
 
 The power of involuntary writing had, by this time, 
 shown itself in my hand. 
 
 I had, for many weeks, at intervals, taken pencil in 
 hand, and held it, for several minutes at a time, with 
 no result, excepting the firmest conviction that it was 
 of no use to try again, for it was impossible for my 
 hand to move ; and my conviction was borne out by 
 repeated failures. It never moved a jot, and, though 
 I gave not up the trial, I held the pencil without 
 hope. At last, one evening at my house, in the pre¬ 
 sence of several gentlemen, I again held it, and, after 
 waiting less than five minutes, it began to move, at 
 first slowly, but presently with increasing speed, till, 
 in less than a quarter of an hour, it moved with such 
 velocity as I had never seen in a hand and arm before 
 or since. It literally ran away in spiral forms ; and I 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 EXPLAINS THE DRAWING. 
 
 can compare it to nothing else than the fly wheel of 
 an engine when it has “ run away.” This lasted until 
 a gentleman present touched my arm, when suddenly 
 it fell, like an infant’s as it goes to sleep, and the pen¬ 
 cil dropped out of my hand. I had, however, acquired 
 the power, and afterwards, the same evening, my hand 
 gently drew some geometrical and some flower forms- 
 The consequences of the violent motion of the muscles 
 of the arm were so apparent, that I could not, for seve¬ 
 ral clays, lift it without pain. 
 
 The producing of drawings soon ceased in my case, 
 and, in a day or two, my hand, after going through a 
 sei’ies of up-and-down strokes, moved into writing, 
 and words and sentences were written, which I can only 
 say were not only entirely involuntary on my part, hut 
 I did not know, in many instances, how a word, already 
 begun, would finish; and several times “ what I 
 would, that I could not ” write. No stronger proof 
 could possibly be acquired for myself, than that some 
 intelligence, other than mine, as it had ever before 
 been exercised, was at work in producing words which 
 passed not through the ordinary channels of the 
 brain. 
 
 In this way, through my hand, it was told us that 
 I should soon be able to write some explanation of the 
 drawings of my wife, she not being able to write, but 
 only to draw ; and of many of her pictures I have 
 thus written what are called descriptions of them ; but 
 unless the two are seen and read together, side by 
 
THE SECOND HOUSE. 
 
 21 
 
 side, it will be impossible to convey mucli idea to 
 the reader’s mind of bow much or bow little they fit 
 together. 
 
 It will, perhaps, relieve many good persons who 
 liave read thus far, to assure them that never has any¬ 
 thing proceeded from these drawings, nor from their 
 descriptions, but what should be to us an incentive to 
 a better and a holier life ; and though I do not expect 
 —nor, indeed, do I wish—that all should agree with 
 us in the way in which we regard these phenomena, I 
 am most anxious they should believe, that for us, at 
 least, they have not been bad, and that there are, at 
 all events, some who may see light, and have their 
 steps guided by such writings and drawings from an¬ 
 other state; as that there are some who can live on 
 what is poison to others, and that what is darkness to 
 some is light to others. I can claim nothing of the 
 writing, which may be thought good, as my own; but 
 I may take only, as my share in their performance, all 
 their imperfections and shortcomings. 
 
 This second house of our dear boy is said to be 
 “ builded not with hands,” but with his Heavenly Fa- 
 thei’’s love. I cannot help it if many good people should 
 start at the idea of spiritual beings living in what ap¬ 
 pear as houses. All I can do, in truth, is to put forward 
 such things as have been given to us. Their bearing on 
 the great problem of the future life is under no law of 
 mine, nor of any man. Man does not make laws, but 
 serves them, or ought to do so, as he can discover 
 
22 
 
 THE TEMPLE OF TEETH. 
 
 them. For me, I see no incongruity in these spirit- 
 habitations, nor why a spirit should not need, and 
 have its spiritual house, as much as when in the body 
 it needed a natural one. And are we not told that 
 “ in my Father’s kingdom are many mansions,” and of 
 “ houses not made with hands also of “ garments 
 that wax not old ?” We are told, too, of spirit-beings 
 “ clothed in shining raiment,” and of armies that are 
 “ clothed in fine linen, white and clean.” 
 
 And Milton beautifully says—- 
 
 “ What if earth 
 
 Be but the shadow of Heaven, and things therein, 
 
 Each to the other like, more than on earth is thought.” 
 
 Another drawing is of a church surrounded with 
 flower forms. On the pinnacle is the cross, with rays 
 of light proceeding from it. On the door are the 
 words, in white letters, “ Oh, Lord, open thou our 
 hearts to behold Thy wondrous works and under¬ 
 neath is written, “ Matthew iv., 6, 7.” 
 
 This is the writing which was given as to this 
 drawing :— 
 
 “ THE TEMPLE OF TEETH. 
 
 “ This is a true temple of the Lord, for He is truth, 
 and all His works are true and holy. This is the 
 temple of the soul, when it loves Him in His truths, 
 and calls upon His holy name. £ Oh, Lord, open Thou 
 our hearts to behold Thy wondrous works.’ How 
 
TWO FLOWERS ON ONE STEM. 
 
 23 
 
 shall our sight behold His wondrous works ?—how 
 shall the temple of truth be builded in us, so that each 
 stone shall praise Him, and our souls may live ? 
 
 “The Lord Himself is the temple, and He is the 
 pinnacle, and, from thence, is ever guiding and pro¬ 
 tecting us from evil. It is from here that He is ever 
 saying to the sinful false man, ‘ Thou shalt not tempt 
 the Lord thy Godand from the battlements He 
 stands with us fighting for the temple of His truth. 
 So giveth He His angels charge concerning us, and, 
 under His loving light, they bear us up till the temple 
 is builded up within us. The people which sat in 
 darkness now see great light, and their hearts are 
 opened to behold Thy wondrous works.—The glorious 
 temple of a soul which is filled with Thy love, and of 
 which each stone is Thy eternal truth.” 
 
 Another drawing is of a plant, from the stem of 
 which grow two different sorts of flowers and leaves, 
 —a phenomenon, at the time, new to us, but, at all 
 events’, as to the leaves, by no means new in nature, 
 as we have since learned. Some varieties of the aca¬ 
 cia have this property; and there are probably many 
 other examples of it, for there is no known instance of 
 a solitary example of eternal laws. In the Bevela- 
 tion we are told of the “ tree of life, which bare twelve 
 manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, 
 and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
 nations.” 
 
24 
 
 THE TWO FLOWERS. 
 
 The following description of this drawing was 
 given:— 
 
 THE TWO FLOWERS. 
 
 “ Oh, tell me what they mean! Why should flowers 
 so different in shape grow on the same tree ? It is a 
 tree of knowledges, which, you know, are various; and 
 as tliey grow in one mind in their infinite variety and 
 degrees, so you may see that trees of a high order 
 may bear more than one flower, more than one fruit 
 too. 
 
 “ How shall I tell you of the heavenly beauty of 
 this flower, which radiates its life and essence of love 
 as it throws its aura round it P Whence does it get 
 its light and beauty P From the Lord its maker, and 
 through His love, which rejoices in perfection, and in 
 the joy of living beauty. Flowers are the offspring of 
 His love, and they show the forms which divine love 
 does take, to make itself beautiful even to the least 
 instructed minds. But to those in higher states, who 
 can see the divine qualities which shadow them¬ 
 selves beneath these forms, how beautiful are not 
 the holy thoughts to which they give birth in their an¬ 
 gelic minds, for they can see, not only the outward 
 sign, but the inward life, and thus are lifted up from 
 the creature to the Creator—from the love, to the 
 Lord himself, from which it came. Why should not 
 this love be able so to animate its creatures, as that 
 two or an infinity of flowers, various and yet the same 
 
THE FLOWER OF HUMILITY. 
 
 25 
 
 in their living essence, may not grow and sport in in¬ 
 most joy, towards the Lord, the great Jehovah 
 God ?” 
 
 The following are descriptions of other flowers .— 
 
 “ THE FLOWER OF HUMILITY.” 
 
 “ Why cannot I write of its beauty ? Why does 
 not its lovely form inspire my mind with ideas of its 
 correspondences ? ’Tis for want of knowledge of what 
 it would say to me; ’tis because my state is not equal 
 to know or to describe its meaning. Perhaps further 
 on I may be able to say something of it—to see some 
 part of its beauty and loving essence. 
 
 “ Trust in the Lord, ye men, His creatures, and the 
 offspring of His love. It is from Him alone that all 
 your knowledge flows. Did He not make all 
 things by His one eternal law of love, and give us to 
 know what our hearts could receive ? It is one thing 
 to create, and that is His ; it is ours only to perceive 
 with labour and imperfection, the small part of His 
 works which can be revealed to us because of our want 
 of love. 
 
 “ Oh, may our love to Him increase! Then will our 
 sight be opened to know Him more, and love Him in 
 fulness and in truth ! 
 
 “ This is not a flower of earth—it is not a flower of 
 mortality ; nor can it be understood by us while we 
 are circled by our coil of flesh. It draws not its life 
 
26 
 
 THE FLOWER OF LOVE. 
 
 from tlie earth, nor from an earthly sphere, but from 
 the love of our Heavenly King, who gives it to exist 
 in highest states because it is the flower of high an¬ 
 gelic beings. It is seen by them in everchanging 
 beauty, and it typifies their love to the Lord. 
 
 “ Each of those beautiful stamens is a prayer of in¬ 
 most heart striving to approach the Lord in praise 
 and thanksgiving, and showing the pure emanations 
 of a humble spirit. How happy is he who can do 
 likewise, and, with open heart and eyes suffused, can 
 say— 
 
 “‘Oh come, let us worship and bow down, and 
 kneel before the Lord our Maker !’ ” 
 
 “ THE FLOWER OF LOVE. 
 
 “ It is not to be kept by you, but in remembrance ; 
 
 and if it is sent to-, it is not less yours, nor have 
 
 you less of the joy which it will shed, on all who can re¬ 
 ceive its meaning. I call it my love, but it is the Lord’s, 
 and it is such as he permits one of his happy children 
 to appear to create. All His creations spi'ing from 
 His love, which shows its power and its fulness in forms 
 more beautiful, according as the eye and heart of those 
 who see them are pure and holy towards Him. And so 
 in those who love him, a power as from themselves, 
 but, oh ! always from Him is given to embody their 
 inmost love in forms which correspond to their state. 
 
 “ My love for you, dear father and mother, and for all 
 
THE FLOWER OF LOVE. 
 
 27 
 
 of our dear friends, is not dead, but ever more living, 
 bright, and full ; and pray and live so that we may 
 all meet again to love our Lord and Saviour in never- 
 dying joy. This flower is the emblem of my love, and 
 shows the sportive joy it feels, in being the instrument, 
 by my death and by my life, to bring you all nearer to 
 the Lord of Heaven, and the Prince of Peace. 
 
 “ Do you see that happy tendril as it twines and plays 
 in highest love, ever seeking to cling to Him ? and see 
 you the flower under it, in its calm delight, feeling the 
 love, and feeding on it as it flows down from on high ? 
 
 “ That flower represents me; and see how it has 
 drawn the other flowers towards it, as I would draw 
 you all, dear ones, to me and to the love of God 
 
 “ It is when this is done in fullest faith that other 
 flowers do spring as the outburst of that love, more 
 beautiful, more intimate, and more endowed. 
 
 “ See how one good is the parent of many, and all 
 from God the giver. He is not wearied in giving, and 
 His creation but creates again. 
 
 “ The Master is come, and calleth for thee; and He 
 ever calls us to Him that He may create new hearts 
 within us. This is the great creation to which all 
 others serve. This is His inmost love, and maketh 
 flowers to spring. 
 
 “ Oh, praise the Lord, oh! my soul! While I live 
 I will praise the Lord! 
 
 “ E. T.W.” 
 
28 
 
 THE FLOWEB OF JOY. 
 
 “THE FLOWEB OF JOY ." 1 
 
 “ Joy towards whom ? And why should the soul be 
 joyful and show its joy in such a form as this ? 
 True, it is beautiful, and all beauty is hut the sub¬ 
 stantial form of happiness and joy which are produced 
 by love ; but the bells more than other forms represent 
 this outward flowing of the soul proceeding from this 
 inmost love. It is the end of which the love is the 
 beginning, but should not be pursued as an end, or it 
 would be dried up at its source, and the poor soul 
 would mourn that it had withdrawn itself from the 
 loving father, the great Jehovah. 
 
 “ You have had many bell-like forms, and they came 
 when you felt this joy, and because you felt it; because 
 you had shown your trust in our father’s love ; and do 
 they not chime, and peal, and ring sweet songs of peace 
 and joy to you ? 
 
 “ Do they not speak to you with the voice of harmony, 
 with the sweet breathings of the heavenly spheres, that 
 bring music out of all they touch ? They are born of 
 love, and show their joy in sweetest sounds. 
 
 “ Now, see our Father’s care and love for us, and 
 which is shown you here. Why is this happy bell of 
 joy surrounded with its leaves, and girt in on all its 
 sides ? It is to show us how much our joys require 
 the protecting care of Him who gave them to us. It 
 is to show us that when we feel most happy we stand 
 in need of Him only the more, to protect us from our- 
 
THE FLOWER OF FAITH. 
 
 29 
 
 selves, that we turn not from our Father when he gives 
 us joy, and invert His blessings by attributing them to 
 ourselves. Hear father and dear mother, think of this, 
 and tell it when you show this flower, and say that it 
 is from the happy boy you tended with your love, and 
 who left you only that he might be nearer to you, and 
 help you on your upward way. 
 
 “ The Lord’s light will shine upon your hearts, and 
 open them in love, if you will strive to do His will, 
 and the joy shall be yours for ever, and heavenly music 
 shall be ever ringing to cheer you on in holy life. 
 
 “ Pray that it may be so with you, and with all, that 
 so there may be one fold and one Shepherd. 
 
 “ Has not the Lord said— 
 
 “ ‘ My sheep shall never perish, neither shall any 
 man pluck them out of my hand.’ 
 
 “ Trust in Him. “ E. T. W.” 
 
 “ THE FLOWER OF FAITH AND LOVE. 
 
 “ Faith must come before love can enter into us, and 
 both must be joined in one to make each other perfect. 
 The flowers that are create upon this tree are intended 
 to be the shadowing of this faith and love, and to show 
 you how they produce their fruit, whence they come, 
 and whither they will bear you. 
 
 “ The leaves are first produced, and they typify the 
 reception of truth in the mind as it first flows in, and 
 begins to be acknowledged as from the Lord, the one 
 
30 
 
 THE FL0WEE, OF FAITH. 
 
 God, Jesus Christ, the Redeemer, the Saviour, the 
 Holy Rather, the Great Jehovah. 
 
 “ Then the flowers of faith do spring—then the 
 tendril with its spiral joy comes from the flowers and 
 sports its upward way, showing its aspirations towards 
 Him. These flowers then come more numerous and 
 free, as faith increases in us. and man begins to be 
 born again ; a new birth of spiritual life opens our 
 souls. This holy faith then fills us to the overflow, and 
 pours over in praise and love—praise which springs 
 from our o’erfull hearts, as an incense and sweet music, 
 to satisfy our ecstasy, and to seek the Lord as its only 
 home: and love flows in in fullness, where before t’was 
 running over, and our hearts were full. 
 
 “ These lyre-formed flowers are the sweet music of 
 our praise when our faith is full, and they show that 
 we acknowledge its Divine origin, as out of ourselves, 
 and that love is its great delight and offspring. 
 
 “ The love developes and shows itself in fruits, 
 which again contain seeds of other and far higher loves, 
 and the divine circle is complete. The Cross—the 
 Cross—the Cross—the beginning and the end, shows 
 itself in glory, and is pointed out by Him who speaketh 
 from the heavens, that we forget Him not as the loving 
 Rather of our joys, and the Prince of the peace that 
 will follow from such love. 
 
 “ And this is His commandment, that we should 
 believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love 
 one another. Beloved, let us love one another, for 
 
THE LAMINATED FRUIT. 
 
 31 
 
 love is of God, and every one that loveth is born of 
 God, and knoweth God. 
 
 “ And so this flower of faith and love would teach 
 us this and much more if I could tell it you. Your 
 eyes must learn to open, your heart must bathe itself 
 in love, and you must leave your body far behind, before 
 you can receive even the lowest of the Lord’s truths as 
 they are here. But be not disheartened ; lose not your 
 faith—hold fast to that, and love will come and light 
 will enter in. 
 
 “ ‘ The Spirit and the bride say, Come ; and let him 
 that heareth say, Come; and let him that is athirst 
 come ; and whosoever will, let him take of the water 
 of life freely.’ 
 
 “ E. T. W.” 
 
 After the drawing of the two flowers, nearly all those 
 following it have shown even a greater variety of diffe¬ 
 rent flowers and leaves proceeding from the same stem. 
 
 One in particular contains a beatiful emblem. It is 
 a laminated fruit, on which, when it was finished, our 
 dear boy’s initial letters were written, “ E.T.W.,” with 
 this peculiarity, that in each of the letters a cross was 
 made. 
 
 This fruit, we were told, represents his inner state ; 
 it is the fruition of his life, and corresponds to what we 
 understand by the conscience, or the book of life, in 
 which is registered the past of man. Each of these 
 laminae, or leaves, lifts up and shows, as the opening 
 
32 
 
 QUICKENING OP THE MEMORY. 
 
 of tlie conscience, his state of love, his truth, and the 
 qualities of his inmost life. 
 
 Dear friends, is not each of us now engaged in foi'ming 
 such a fruit ? How will it taste when we have to feed 
 upon it ? And what will be found under its folds 
 when we lift them up ? 
 
 The “ resuscitation of thoughts which, in some 
 shape or other, have previously occupied the mind,” 
 and which all of us have sometimes so strangely felt, 
 is, perhaps, but the natural prelude to what will be 
 our experience when we have entered upon the life of 
 spirit, the inalienable and irrepressible recollection of 
 the deeds and feelings played forth in the flesh. This 
 is shown in the “ lamp,” before described, and again 
 the same idea is reproduced in the shape of this lami¬ 
 nated fruit. Coleridge, on the same subject, suggests 
 that “ the books which are opened at the last day, are 
 men’s own perfect memories of what they have thought 
 and done during life.” In relation to this quickening 
 of the memory at death, it is known that persons 
 nearly drowned have seen, in one moment, the whole 
 of their past life pass before them in mental pano¬ 
 rama. 
 
 Soon after the drawings of the flowers above described, 
 a new development showed itself in the nature of the 
 drawings. The flower forms ceased, after a time, and 
 churches, temples, and buildings were then drawn, and 
 after being sketched, my wife was impressed to com¬ 
 mence to paint them, and which she did, even at first, 
 
FLOWER FORMS. 
 
 33 
 
 with some success, being told in writing what colours 
 to use, and feeling the brush sensibly moved through 
 her hand. It would be at once seen that, for the 
 first time of holding a paint-brush, the result is a 
 wonderful proof of the existence of some power not 
 ordinarily seen amongst beginners. 
 
 In all the drawings from the commencement to 
 this time, covering a period of seven years there is 
 markedly a progression and development, so that the 
 whole of them are wanted to tell the story they 
 would convey to us. 
 
 After a short interval the flower forms recommenced, 
 and have since been mingled with landscapes, and 
 strange symbolic drawings, and they have always since 
 that time been painted. Constantly, in painting, the 
 hand has been moved to the proper colour, and, in lay¬ 
 ing it on, the brush has been gently lifted from, or 
 pressed upon the paper, so as to make the most delicate 
 shading, without any assistance from the will, which in¬ 
 deed must be kept quite quiescent, in order to preserve 
 the power. These drawings now form, together, along 
 series, and certainly a most remarkable one, for the 
 novelty and evident symbolism which are their most 
 striking characteristics. Of the great number of per¬ 
 sons who have seen them during their progress, withiii 
 the last seven years, there have been very few who have 
 not expressed surprise and pleasure at the entire new¬ 
 ness of the forms, and the wonderful play of fancy 
 which they evince. They are distinct from other drawings 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 INVOLUNTARY MUSIC. 
 
 of an ordinary kind, and form a class of themselves. 
 Many friends wlio have, during that time, been them¬ 
 selves the possessors of this faculty, greater or less in 
 degree, have also produced series of drawings, different, 
 indeed, in many points, but all partaking of the un- 
 definable spirit or symbolic, character, and which enables 
 one, after a little experience, to I’ecognize them at once 
 as coming from the same source. Such there are now, 
 many of both, in England, and in Ireland, America, 
 France, Germany, and Australia, and still, in whatever 
 part of the world they appear, they have all the same 
 unmistakable characteristics. 
 
 What was, at first, to us so striking and, apparently, 
 so unique a phenomenon, has, during our seven years 
 apprenticeship as students, been found to be not only 
 not uncommon at this day, but we have found traces 
 of it in other ages, long past by, as well as in those 
 nearer our time. Some instances of these will be 
 shortly alluded to in a subsequent page. 
 
 Having heard that as well the hands might be moved 
 in playing music as in drawing, one evening my wife 
 sat down to the instrument, and, placing her hands 
 upon the keys, they immediately moved in improvising 
 music—a power before unknown to her, as to most of us. 
 The only condition again was to let the hands go free 
 in faith, just as in the drawing and the writing, without 
 the influence of the fear that destroys all power—the 
 fear to fail. “ Onward and upward ” must the spirit 
 fly, or “ downward and backward ” it will fall. 
 
 Ever since that evening the power comes at will, and 
 
MUSIC. 
 
 35 
 
 lias not had, like the drawings, any intervals of cessa¬ 
 tion, and though I know little of music, I am told that 
 what is given is good, aud that it is a pity that it 
 should be lost; and so it would be, if it were not 
 always there at will, in its ever melodious strains, fresh 
 from the springs of harmony in never-ceasing flow ; no 
 fatigue however long she plays, for there is no effort of 
 the mind, and its beauty is for her as well as others, 
 its newness. 
 
 One day whilst she was thus playing and I was 
 sitting listening to the music, she asked if she was 
 spiritually guided by our dear boy. I got a piece of 
 paper, and my hand moved in the words which follow. 
 I could not omit telling of these phenomena without 
 secreting what is not mine. If they are strange, the 
 strangeness is not mine, but must be accounted for, as 
 all strange or new facts—by calm inquiry, or, better 
 still, by heartfelt love and childlike reception. 
 
 “music. 
 
 “ I am giving mamma the music she is playing. It 
 is a hymn of praise to God for His mercy and His 
 enduring, never ceasing love and care. Joy comes from 
 Him and from his praise, and shows itself in sweetest 
 music. 
 
 “ All His works are musical in their divinest harmony 
 and join in the universal concert which is the condition 
 of their creation and the expression of their love, re¬ 
 turning in its circle from whence it came. 
 
 d 2 
 
36 
 
 THE GUARDIAN ANGEL. 
 
 “ I love to hear this music—more grand, more sweet, 
 and more penetrating as I learn moi’e to know his 
 works, and to see the infinite qualities they contain, 
 but all in rhythm and divine perfection. 
 
 “ Why is not all musical on earth ? It is that man 
 is discord, and throws His sweetest works out of their 
 created harmonies ? Love and peace shall put them all 
 in tune, and make Him all in all, and that is music. 
 
 “ E. T. W.” 
 
 It has been frequently also written in this way, that 
 our dear boy is instructed in Divine truths by his 
 guardian angel, and that he, in his turn, was employed 
 in instructing, or to himself appeared to instruct, other 
 little ones not so far advanced as himself — that this 
 was indeed his use for his own progression ; for he was 
 himself obliged, though willingly, to learn of his 
 guardian angel, in order that he might teach, and 
 thus that his teaching was in like manner guided for 
 the instruction of his pupils. Here, he was always fond 
 of flowers; and all the series of flowers and fruits 
 which have been drawn, it was told us, were from his 
 perceptions of flower-forms about him in his new and 
 happy home. 
 
 I asked mentally if his guardian angel was still with 
 him. At once my hand wrote :— 
 
 “ Yes, I am always with him ; and he is improving 
 much in knowledge and in happiness. He is as happy 
 as it is possible for him to be, and he loves the Holy 
 Word, and spends his thoughts upon it, and on learn- 
 
DIVINE BOTANY. 
 
 37 
 
 ing and comparing its divine correspondences. He is 
 most fond of these in flowers, and says it is Divine 
 botany, and that all flowers now arrange themselves for 
 him according to their heavenly qualities. He teaches 
 this to his dear little pupils, and learns himself through 
 his teaching; and we are all so happy, but in different 
 modes. His little ones are happy in their opening 
 minds, and that they are taught with so much care and 
 love. He is happy in their teaching, and to see the 
 progress of their knowledge of heavenly things—that 
 he is allowed to influence them for good, through the 
 Lord, and that he himself learns so much whilst he is 
 teaching them. And I am happy in my use to them, 
 as to any of our Father’s children, as the only and the 
 highest use I can perform. It is in this way that the 
 Lord suffers little children to come to Him, and that 
 He entreats they may not be forbidden. They are not 
 forbidden here; but on earth they want a Father’s 
 care, and often find it not. Prepare your children to 
 be the loved ones of their Pleavenly Father, that they 
 may come without stain or spot. I love you all and 
 all mankind.” 
 
 I have now said enough to give some idea of the 
 tendency of what has been drawn, and of what has 
 been written, and what means the music that is played. 
 There is much more that might be told, but perhaps 
 there is already more than will be believed or received 
 in a kindly heart. I will close, by stating that the 
 same power, both of drawing and of writing, was shown 
 
38 
 
 INTERMITTENT POWER. 
 
 some months afterwards in two others of our children, 
 one of nine, and the other of seven years old, and that 
 they have both drawn curious and beautiful forms, 
 suited to their years, of a holy symbolic hind. It had 
 not the least apparent physical or psychical effect upon 
 them. After lasting for a year or two it gradually 
 ceased. 
 
 What is very remarkable in this power, has been its 
 intermittenee. For two or three years it was con¬ 
 tinuous, and then suddenly, and without any apparent 
 reason, it entirely ceased for perhaps a month or two. 
 During this interval, notwithstanding frequent trials 
 and strong expectation, the hand refused to move, and 
 nothing could be done. Then it as suddenly was re¬ 
 newed, and went off at once in full strength as before. 
 The hand would then trace out the drawing rapidly and 
 boldly without a mistake or misgiving, and so on for 
 several months, or perhaps a year, when it again ceased. 
 On two or three occasions it has in this way ceased for 
 several months at a time. Once, after being suspended 
 for nine months, my wife said that she did not think 
 she should ever be able again to do any drawings. The 
 very next morning, on putting her hand to the paper, 
 it moved in the usual vigorous way, and a beautiful 
 drawing was produced. 
 
 I have not for several years felt inclined to use 
 any power of writing. 
 
 These intervals of the absence of the faculty have 
 been so striking, as clearly to demonstrate the existence 
 
PHENOMENA UNIVERSAL. 
 
 39 
 
 of a power entirely out of herself, and they shew the 
 insufficiency of the common idea that the drawings 
 are the result of imagination. In fact, such a notion 
 could not be entertained by any one acquainted with 
 the facts, which clearly point to some interior influx, 
 which, under certain conditions unknown to us, has the 
 power of manifesting itself in this external way. 
 
 To show that the power or faculty is not confined to 
 a particular family, to a particular belief, or to a higher 
 or lower state of the mind, but that, like all laws, it is 
 general in its application, it is useful to tell that many 
 persons we know have here developed this faculty, both 
 of drawing and writing—their hands have been moved, 
 generally at first in spiral forms; and of the first 
 seventeen who sat down with a pencil, the hands of 
 fifteen were moved in less than five minutes. These 
 consisted of old, and young, and middle-aged ; of male 
 and female, married and unmarried, of physicians, 
 barristers, students, Englishmen, and foreigners—a 
 mixture of classes and conditions quite sufficient to 
 give an average of those who can be so quickly 
 acted upon. But I think it more probable that the 
 faculty of mediumship, in some form or other, is 
 universal. 
 
 Several have in a few minutes become able to im¬ 
 provise in music ; others I know who write involun¬ 
 tarily in verse, and some who have the power of speaking 
 by impression, in the same way as others write, and 
 with an enlightenment not less wonderful than ab¬ 
 sorbing for its beauty. 
 
40 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 A CHAPTER OF DOUETS. 
 
 “ And there arose a great cry ; and the Scribes that were of the 
 Pharisees’ part arose, and strove, saying, ‘ We find no evil in this 
 man ; hut if a spirit or an angel hath spoken to him, let us not 
 fight against God.’ ” 
 
 Having heard of some similar remarkable phenomena 
 which had occurred in families within the last few 
 years, and which were alleged to be the operations of 
 a spirit-power, we were prepared to consider the origin 
 of those which had come to us as from the same 
 source, and they did not on that account present a 
 difficulty to our minds; but had there been the great¬ 
 est doubt, their appearance was so sudden, and touched 
 so tender a chord, that we were melted in wonder as 
 each successive development appeared, and it never oc¬ 
 curred to us to doubt. It was, to us, too beautiful a 
 thought not to be a true one. Although, when it was 
 thus once received by us, and welcomed as “ an angel 
 in the house,” we had still everything to learn, yet to 
 many of our friends it was too new and solitary a phe¬ 
 nomenon to be received at all, and it created only 
 
PERPLEXED IN THE EXTREME. 
 
 41 
 
 doubt and perplexity in their minds. It was thus with 
 many, easier to reject it altogether, than long to be in 
 doubt and “ perplexed in the extreme; ” but how to 
 reject what was so solemnly asserted to be true, by one 
 whom they bad been accustomed to believe on other 
 subjects ? It could not well be that it was wilfully 
 untrue; and so the ever-ready human heart—we are 
 told it is deceitful above all things, even to the de¬ 
 ceiving of itself—invented a middle term for getting 
 out of the difficulty. It was the assumption that the 
 phenomena were nothing but the produce of the 
 imaginative faculty — that we believed them to be true, 
 and to be produced involuntarily, but that nevertheless 
 they were simply the creation of the imagination. 
 
 But this theory does not cohere with the apparent 
 frequency of the faculty of involuntary movement of the 
 hand, for surely so large a proportion of persons could 
 not be suddenly deceived on such a point; and it 
 is necessary to make use first of the ordinary means 
 and senses that are given to us, and to ask the person 
 through whom the drawing, or writing, or speaking, or 
 music, is produced, if the subject of it were in the mind 
 or not, or were imagined or not imagined, at the time 
 of the effect being produced; and if the answer be in 
 the negative, there would appear to be an end of the 
 theory. The ordinary modes by which the imagination 
 eliminates itself through the bodily organs, are surely 
 by this time pretty well known to every one of us. 
 Poets, artists, and those who draw most highly on the 
 
42 
 
 IMAGINATION AGAIN. 
 
 imagination or ideal faculty, can tell ns of tlie labour 
 bestowed in tlie process, and of the knowledge so 
 laboriously acquired, the correspondences and combina¬ 
 tion of the objects of which, as to their spirit-life, are 
 what we call poetry—“That divine habitude of the 
 soul which lifts the veil from before the hidden beauty 
 of the world.” 
 
 But find me a poet whose ordinary mode of writing 
 his appreciations of the divine, was not only not with 
 labour and with difficulty, nor with a mind pregnant 
 with the images to which he was giving birth, but 
 without ever having a perceived idea in his mind of 
 what he was writing about. 
 
 Where is the artist who sits down to his paper with¬ 
 out an idea or an image of the picture he is to draw, 
 who measures and plans not with his mind and with his 
 eye the combinations of his forms, and their fitness to 
 the general design ? Finally, who sits down thinking 
 he will draw a flower, and whose hand flows off in 
 writing ? 
 
 Where is the imagination here ? If it be imagina¬ 
 tion, where has it been recognized before ? What are 
 the instances of it ? Does not imagination busy itself 
 with presenting what it sees to man’s intellect, that he 
 may judge of it by knowledge or by his rational 
 faculty, and that thus he may portray new combina¬ 
 tions or effects in landscapes or forms, with which the 
 eye has been familiar ? The results, therefore, of the 
 ordinary mode are all the products of the spirit-image 
 
THE CEREBRUM AT REST. 
 
 43 
 
 and the judgment upon that image,—of both the cere¬ 
 bellum, which is the seat of the will or the affections of 
 man, and of the cerebrum, where dwells his intellect, 
 his judging power. But here are effects produced, 
 direct, as it were, from the cerebellum, or will, or at all 
 events not knowingly to him through the cerebrum, 
 or conscious power. 
 
 Is this state so entirely new to us ? Oh, no. One- 
 third of the life of each of us is passed in this wonder¬ 
 ful state of detachment from the judging power. In 
 sleep, the mind, as to impressions, is awake ; it is only 
 the body which sleeps, but judgment has gone to sleep 
 with it. The spirit walks about, and has a new power 
 of vision, other and superior; for it is not subject to 
 the laws of matter, it sees straight through them. It 
 can even fly by mere volition, and without surprise con¬ 
 verse with the dear ones in the spirit-land. Angels 
 guard it, now that it has lost for the time the judg¬ 
 ment of the intellect; and its dreams, as we call them, 
 have often more of inner truth than we can find in 
 waking hours. 
 
 But here are seen new systems of flowers, not only 
 unknown here, but obviously with some prophetic mean¬ 
 ing or import beyond the natural. Not even the most 
 imaginative person has ever done anything so new, so 
 “ imaginative.” But in whose complex mind was the 
 imagination ? It is not, after all, so difficult a pro¬ 
 blem for persons engaged in writing, drawing, speaking, 
 or playing, to say whether or not they are drawing 
 
44 
 
 A PLAIN FACT. 
 
 upon tlieir imagination for their results, and whether the 
 movement of the hand is impelled, in the ordinary way, 
 by the double action of the mind. In fact, we may say 
 that a person who is so utterly imbecile, after fifty 
 years’ experience, as not to know whether he moves his 
 own hand himself, or whether it is moved by another 
 power, apart from his ordinary operations, it has not 
 been our fortune to meet with. Not to know, whether 
 or not he was aware in his intellect or knowing power, 
 previously to his hand moving, of the direction it 
 would take, would bespeak an entire absence of 
 reason, and of the natural senses and faculties. Yet 
 such is the utter imbecility imputed to us by those 
 who try to explain by “ imagination ” a fact which they 
 cannot otherwise dispose of. So sudden an accession of 
 imbecility in the persons who exercise this faculty as to 
 a plain physical fact, would be indeed a more strange 
 phenomenon, than even the strange fact, which could be 
 only thus accounted for. Of course these imaginers be¬ 
 lieve that they could not have been similarly deceived 
 had the case been theirs, in so simple and ordinary a use 
 of their senses ; and this is not an uncomfortable view' 
 to go home with. It is no mark, however, of a man’s 
 intelligence to be able to confirm or reject whatever 
 he pleases, but rather to be able to discern that to be 
 true which is true, and that to be false which is false, 
 is the mark and character of intelligence. And what 
 is this imagination that furnishes so ready a solution 
 for an otherwise troublesome phenomenon ? “ Barely 
 
A NEW POWEE. 
 
 45 
 
 to assign a phenomenon to the imagination, is to get 
 no nearer its cause ; it is to evade the question rather 
 than to resolve it. The imagination, as referred to 
 in this way, is just one of those useful entrenchments 
 behind which perplexity is apt to shelter itself, and 
 nothing more.” But here is a newly observed power. 
 To produce the wor-ks of imagination without imagina¬ 
 tion of one’s own ; that is our puzzle ; and we have to 
 find out, by a better method of reasoning, what is its 
 genesis, and, if proved, what is its sequence 
 
 In this dealing with the word “ imagination,” how¬ 
 ever, I am purposely treating of it according to the 
 common materialistic meaning which is given to it; but 
 viewed in its higher, and therefore its truer meaning, 
 it belongs less to the material than to the spiritual 
 world, and is indeed the acknowledged working of the 
 spirit-influx in our souls. Its consideration, in this 
 sense we will hereafter more fully speak of. 
 
 Upwards of two thousand persons have been at¬ 
 tracted to see these drawings, and they have, of course, 
 each of them according to their ideas, expressed their 
 opinions upon them, and upon their origin ; and this 
 number embraces the clergy of different persuasions, 
 artists, authors, medical men, lawyers, the “ learned,” 
 and the ladies — in fact, the essential educated middle 
 class, now carrying on the world’s work. Thus, we have 
 had the advantage of hearing from all of them their 
 opinions, and of observing the effect produced upon a 
 number of minds; and in this way we have already 
 
46 
 
 OUR VISITORS. 
 
 become acquainted with the mode in which such 
 phenomena and their sequences present themselves to 
 the mind of what may be fairly taken as a fair average 
 of the world of to-day. 
 
 It would be bewildering to go through all I have 
 heard; but we have observed that our visitors have of 
 themselves politely arranged themselves under a few 
 banners—and some of these banners have been some¬ 
 what riddled, but I hope not unkindly, in the warfare 
 which has ensued. In almost all of them there has 
 been apparent one beautiful sign—namely, an inward 
 yearning after more spirit-knowledge and spirit-life ; 
 and an expression has generally been given, of the 
 pleasure which they have derived, from the tendency 
 of these spirit-teachings. Not a few have said that 
 all they saw and heard was beautiful, and they only 
 wished they could believe it to be true; thus not 
 recognizing the great spiritual truth, that all which 
 is really beautiful must of necessity be true ; for the 
 beautiful can only find its home in the Diviue har¬ 
 monies of the Creator’s love. From what we have 
 thus heard from our visiting objectors, we have 
 certainly not been led to conclude against this spirit- 
 power, but the rather to see the necessity for some 
 more full expression and acknowledgment of it, which 
 should be able of itself to fill our souls, and to bind 
 all hearts in one—for some pervading spirit-power, 
 which should act in and form a part of daily life, and 
 give a new force and direction to the soul. So much 
 
SCIENCE AND ITS “ NATURAL” LAWS. 
 
 47 
 
 has now been done for scientific life, and its develop¬ 
 ments have of late been so striking, so absorbing of 
 our minds—its power has shown itself so vast for the 
 material and social improvement of the world—that 
 a species of idolatry of science has been the result. 
 Natural laws, which are but the working of the 
 Divine, and the symbols of spirit-life, have received 
 the worship of the votaries of “ Science,” and the 
 world has thus come to worship the image in the place 
 of its Maker. The spirit has been quenched, and most 
 so, of necessity, in those who have become enamoured 
 and idolatrous in their pursuit of these natural laws. 
 Natural laws may lead, by continuous degrees, to the 
 high points which we see them now attaining ; but 
 there are degrees which are not “ continuous,” but 
 “ discrete,” and different in their essence. Thus, 
 natural developments, in continuous degrees, can never 
 lead to spiritual developments, which require and 
 have a new starting-point, and differ in their very 
 essence from natural laws. Where the natural ends, 
 and must, from its very nature, end, the spiritual 
 begins, and is the soul or the life which animates the 
 other, as its body; and where the spiritual ends, the 
 celestial begins. The difference between continuous 
 and discrete degrees is shown beautifully in Ezekiel. 
 Thus, the gradual increasing of the waters shows the 
 continuous degrees; but “ the river that could not be 
 passed over ” marks the discrete degree:— 
 
 “ And when the man that had the line in his hand 
 
48 
 
 SPIRIT ACTING.' 
 
 tc 
 
 33 
 
 went forth eastward, he measured a thousand cubits, 
 and he brought me through the waters ; the waters 
 were to the ankles. Again he measured a thousand, and 
 brought me through the waters ; the waters were to the 
 knees. Again he measured a thousand, and brought 
 me through ; the waters were to the loins. Afterwards 
 he measured a thousand, and it was a river that I 
 could not pass over, for the waters were risen; waters 
 to swim in ; a river that could not be passed over/’ 
 This “ river that could not be passed over ” is the 
 discrete degree of spirit-life, which can never be 
 reached from the mere natural degree of continuous 
 increase. 
 
 In this view I have thought, when arguing with 
 those who could not accept a “ spirit acting ” in these 
 drawings, although it is, for the reasons given, 
 abundantly evident to ourselves, and their very diffi¬ 
 culty of belief in what is so beautiful a theory—nay, 
 let me call it so beautiful a fact—was in itself a proof 
 of the necessity which exists for such manifestations. 
 For surely, eighteen hundred and sixty-four years 
 after the Christian era, it is not too soon to prepare 
 for the general recognition of spirit-laws, as supporting 
 the natural—-not in the sense of destroying the 
 natural, but of recognising their harmony, and their 
 life-deriving origin and essence. How was the case 
 with the learned, and with the Jews in our Lord’s 
 time? The contests of each kind of mind, and of 
 the different forms of scepticism, are clearly set 
 
THE BLIND MAN RESTORED. 
 
 49 
 
 forth in the narrative of the blind man restored to 
 sight. The blind man saw more and truer than they 
 all; for he simply announced a fact which he knew to 
 be true; and it was his reception of this, as a truth, 
 which enabled him so quickly to perceive that other 
 truth of greater import. “ Dost thou believe on the 
 Son of God? And he said, Lord, I believe, and he 
 worshipped Him.” 
 
 The divine narrative is here for our instruction as 
 to the danger of denying facts because they are new 
 to us:— 
 
 “ The neighbours, therefore, and they which before 
 had seen him, that he was blind, said : Is not this he 
 that sat and begged ? Some said this is he, others 
 said he is like him, but he said, I am lie. Therefore 
 said they unto him : How were thine eyes opened ? 
 He answered and said, A man that is called Jesus 
 made clay, and anointed my eyes, and said unto me, 
 Go to the pool of Siloam, and wash. And I went and 
 washed, and I received my sight. They brought to the 
 Pharisees him that aforetime was blind. Then again 
 the Pharisees also asked him how he had received his 
 sight ? He said unto them, He put clay upon my 
 eyes, and I washed and do see. Therefore said some 
 of the Pharisees, This man is not of God, because he 
 keepeth not the Sabbath day. Others said, How can 
 a man that is a sinner do such miracles ? and there 
 was a division among them. They said unto the 
 blind man again, What sayest thou of him that he 
 
 E 
 
50 
 
 WHAT THE “ LEAENED” SAID. 
 
 lias opened tliy eyes ? He said, he is a prophet. But 
 the Jews did not believe concerning him that he had 
 been blind, and received his sight, until they called 
 the parents; and they ashed them, saying: Is this 
 your son who ye say was born blind ? How, then, 
 doth he now see ? His parents answered them, and 
 said, We know that this is our son, and that he was 
 born blind. Then again called they the man that was 
 blind, and said unto him, Give God the praise. We 
 know that this man is a sinner. He answered and 
 said, Whether he be a sinner, I know not. One thing 
 I know: that whereas I was blind, now I see. Then 
 said they to him again, What did he to thee ? How 
 opened he thine eyes ? He answered them, I have 
 told you already, and ye did not hear. Wherefore 
 would ye hear it again ? Will ye also be his 
 disciples ?” 
 
 To proceed with our experience of our many friends’ 
 opinions. Several, after satisfying themselves of the 
 truth of what has been narrated, as to the mode in 
 which these drawings were externally produced—and 
 these were amongst the most “ learned ” of our visitors 
 —have admitted the external fact, and then attribute it 
 to our having discovered a new natural faculty or power 
 of the mind—in a material view of it, a sort of sixth 
 sense ; thus, as fancy, or imagination, or any other 
 known quality of the mind must be considered as old, and 
 to have been used and known since the creation of the 
 race, so this unconscious drawing, writing, and speak- 
 
THE TRUE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE. 
 
 51 
 
 ing, shew a new faculty or power of the mind, and, 
 say they, it is not what you believe it to be. It 
 is not spiritual, and has no germ in it of what may be 
 called an outgrowth of the spiritual in man. It is only 
 the reflex action of the mind. That is their argument. 
 
 But, then, whence come, and how to account for 
 the wonderful, untliought-of new forms themselves ? 
 Where does the mind get the forms from, if they are 
 its own work ? The eyes have never seen such, the 
 mind has never conceived of such before. Whence, 
 then, are they supplied to it ? And what is the pre¬ 
 cise meaning of this reflex action of the mind ? 
 
 “ Quench not the spirit.” Why should we carry on 
 this war against our members, and be ever consigning 
 them back to their lowest naturalism ? Why put 
 down so pertinaciously all that is of the divine in man, 
 the workings of the spirit that is within him, and 
 which, if its birth were watched and nursed with that 
 mother-love and smiling joy which we all have once 
 had for our portion, when we too first came as 
 strangers here, would in its growth repay each smile of 
 welcome with a smiling truth ? We all have heard 
 of the alchemists who for long ages were wearing out 
 their hearts in searching for the philosopher’s stone, 
 that with it they might turn dirt into gold—that is 
 the true alchemy; but here are philosophers who 
 have found a stone which has the inverse property—of 
 turning gold into dirt. Touch the gold of the spirit 
 with the natural mind, and how it will shrink and 
 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 SPIRIT-POWER. 
 
 vanish from the sight, and make the “ philosopher ” 
 believe himself a conjuror; and so he is, but one the 
 world could do well without. And is it, then, less 
 wonderful, a priori, that in this age of the world a 
 new mental material faculty should be discovered, 
 readily attainable in less than five minutes by a very 
 considerable average of persons, than that this new 
 faculty should be only a new proof of the never dying 
 spirit working within us; of the old, nay the eternal 
 laws of spirit-power, instances of which have never 
 been wanting in any age of the world, but have been 
 ever, and the most so when most wanted, jjeering, not 
 dimly, above the horizon of our natural sight ? Have 
 w T e never heard before of prophets, of seers of visions, 
 and of dreamers of dreams ; of the oracles of Greece, 
 of divining, of trance, of ecstasy, of spiritual appear¬ 
 ances, of ghosts, of spirits and of angels F Is not all 
 the revelation of God given, and has it not always been 
 so, according to spirit-laws, supported by what at the 
 time were called miracles, and spoken of as mysteries, 
 more properly translated “ secrets ” to those who 
 could not yet receive them ? “I have many things to 
 tell you, but ye cannot bear them now.” And who 
 are the stewards of these secrets ? Even those who 
 will receive them, not as learned men, but as the 
 little children whose “ angels do always behold the 
 face of my Father which is in heaven.” Not the 
 learned, the Gnostics, or knowers; not the Scribes, nor 
 the Pharisees, nor the Sadducees, “ who deny that there 
 
THE APOSTLE PAUL. 
 
 53 
 
 is any resurrection of the dead,” but the poor fisher¬ 
 men, who have “ toiled all night, and caught nothing,” 
 and yet, with true spirit of faith, large at least “ as a 
 grain of mustard seed,” can say, “ Nevertheless, at 
 thy word I will let down the net.” “ The natural man 
 receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they 
 are foolishness unto him, neither can he know them, 
 because they are spiritually discerned.” 
 
 It is a curious question, and one well worthy of an 
 answer from every one of us, what would be our 
 reception of the Lord and of his Apostles, if they were 
 now again to appear personally amongst us ? Paul, 
 it is thought, has trod this English soil. What if 
 another Paul should come and tell us that a light from 
 heaven had shone about him, and he had heard a 
 voice saying, “ Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me ?” 
 how would the divine truths of the Apostles and 
 disciples of our Lord strike upon our hearts ? Should 
 we believe in their miracles; in their gifts of healing, 
 casting out of devils, gifts of tongues, and in all those 
 other divine gifts of the Spirit, which were at once the 
 evidence and the fruit of faith. How would “ miracle” 
 and “ vision,” and “take no thought for the morrow,” 
 and “ blessed are the peacemakers,” and “ if ye have 
 faith as a grain of mustard-seed,” be received in our 
 streets to-day ? Why was a sign not given to the 
 Pharisees when they asked one ? Because, from their 
 want of faith, they could not have received it. Again, 
 “ I have many things to say unto you, but you cannot 
 bear them now.” 
 
54 
 
 THE LEARNED MAN. 
 
 Oh, take heed that we ask not in our hearts the 
 unbeliever’s question, “ Is not this the carpenter, the 
 son of Mary, the brother of James and Joses, and of 
 Judah and Simon ?” 
 
 I hope then that the attributing of these new facts to 
 the discovery of a new faculty, may be put away from 
 us as being more unlikely than the supposition that 
 they have a spirit-origin. 
 
 Our objector was of a new class—in fact, he was a unit 
 and not a class; but, to do him full justice, he was so 
 sure he was right in his opinion, that he would not 
 even come to see the drawings, and, therefore, his 
 being aide to form an opinion at all, is a surprising 
 evidence of spirit-power on his part. By what else, 
 indeed, could he form a conclusion, and particularly a 
 medical one, without getting up his facts, and seeing 
 his patient ? He is a most learned man, and to him 
 mesmerism is mainly indebted for the now all but 
 universal acknowledgment of it as a truth ; but, on 
 being told of these drawings, and of their wonderful 
 forms, he at once pronounced them to be the work of 
 a mad person, and alleged that he could see plenty of 
 such productions at Bedlam. I thought it was quite 
 possible that this might have some truth in it, and so 
 I was at the pains to inquire at the Colney Hatch 
 Asylum, where there are always over one thousand 
 patients, and I found that such, or any drawings but 
 of ordinary natural forms, were entirely unknown there ; 
 and so I wrote to my friend that as a fact I found 
 
THE LEARNED MAN. 
 
 55 
 
 he could not see such drawings in a madhouse, and 
 that, as an eminent psychologist, he would find it curious 
 to see such forms produced by a person who was out of 
 a madhouse, and with no immediate likelihood of having 
 to go into one. The answer was another refusal, and 
 a second and modified opinion that although there 
 might not be absolute madness, as yet, no one than he 
 knew better the effects of “ intense cerebral excitement.” 
 This lower form of disease fortunately, however, was no 
 more a fact than the “ madnessand so I told him 
 in another letter, and that, so far from there being any 
 cerebral excitement, as a condition or accompaniment 
 in producing the drawings, the hand would not move 
 at all unless the mind was apparently entirely dormant. 
 Again I said, “ Come and seebut he would not; and in 
 the third letter he lowered his medical opinion of the 
 “ case ” to one of a “ highly-wrought imagination.” 
 Equally opposed to the simple truth, as the other two 
 opinions. I am happy to say, however, that after seven 
 years this learned man was induced to entirely change 
 his opinions, and that, having last autumn had the 
 opportunity of observing the facts, he is now a be¬ 
 liever in what he for so long thought impossible. 
 
 But even were these phenomena the productions of 
 madness, they would equally demand inquiry, and that 
 a meaning should be assigned to them — for whence 
 does madness draw its inspiration and its spirit-life? 
 — whence does it get its wondrous forms and images, 
 and how and where are its concoctions brewed ? 
 
56 
 
 THE SECOND REGIMENT. 
 
 Wordsworth applies to idiots the bible words “ their life 
 is hid with Christ in Godand the ancients regarded 
 the insane with a kind of divine awe, and considered 
 them as under the peculiar protection of the Gods. 
 
 Next I wrote a short letter to the “ Morning Post,” 
 describing the mode in which the hand was moved, 
 and, in general terms, some of the forms produced. In 
 another morning paper, which copied the letter, we 
 were next day assailed in violent terms; and as we had 
 last been charged with madness, so now we were 
 charged with badness, fraud, imposition, and witch¬ 
 craft ; and Sir J. Palcington and Lord John Russell 
 were piously invoked, to invent some new mode of 
 educating the middle classes, to preserve them from 
 such horrors. 
 
 I afterwards found that the article was written by a 
 Roman Catholic, who, I thought, might have been a 
 little more charitable in favour of the wonders of 
 the spirit of which his church has made so much use 
 in obtaining power over its votaries. 
 
 The editor of the paper afterwards saw the draw¬ 
 ings, and I heard from him afterwards that he ranged 
 himself under the colours of the second regiment, 
 who deny the spiritual origin, but invent in its place 
 a new faculty for the mind. 
 
 Another class believed what they saw and heard, 
 but could not think it right to “ dive into these 
 secrets,” or mysteries of the Divine. What they saw 
 was beautiful, but too wonderful for them ; and they 
 
CREEDS IN 1864 . 
 
 57 
 
 liked better to pursue the older and the beaten path 
 —that path underneath which the spirit has been 
 trodden out of life, and life has left religion, and 
 which blindly ignores the Divine command, “ Seek 
 and ye shall find ; knock, and it shall be opened to 
 you.” The old and beaten way, perchance, has lasted 
 long enough, and may have had its day; for there 
 are signs in the times now of the yearning for some¬ 
 thing that will bring us nearer and nearer still to 
 the great Father of us all. One of the many per¬ 
 tinent questions discussed at the “ Great Evangelical 
 Conference,” held at Berlin, has some bearing on 
 this:—“ To what is the observer impelled on per¬ 
 ceiving that, in spite of the return of theology to the 
 standard of Church profession, so little spiritual life 
 evidences itself in the population?” Has the old 
 way, in fact, showed its power of binding all our 
 hearts in one, and of combining the physical laws 
 and the moral laws into one religion for mankind ? 
 Have creeds, in particular, been found to answer well; 
 and are all persons, now at last in 1864, agreed that 
 thirty-nine is the exact arithmetical quantity of belief 
 necessary to regenerate the world ? But here is a new 
 power God-given to man, from which may be deduced 
 a creed with but one article — “ Love to the Lord, and 
 to the neighbour.” 
 
 This highest love for Him will come, when we see 
 more fully how He has loved us, and see Him in 
 each and all His works — not only in His Divine re- 
 
58 
 
 NATURAL LAWS. 
 
 demption of mankind, and in all His moral laws, but 
 in all tlie operations of wbat man lias, by philosophy 
 and learning, taught himself to appropriate as his 
 own—the developments of science and of physics in 
 the mind. Science and physics have, unfortunately, 
 become man-born, and fill up the business of natural 
 life, leaving little time or inclination for what is 
 called the purely moral. Voltaire, in the last century, 
 thought and taught that the world could have done 
 as well without as with the moral laws, and that the 
 developments of science were the grand moving power 
 for man. Voltaireism, in this its crude repulsive form, 
 has had its day, and literature has so far recovered 
 from its influence, that we hoped not again to see it 
 rear its head, and neither again dare it to show itself 
 without some more decent covering. But the idea, 
 it seems, may not so soon die out. It is one to which 
 poor human nature is too prone; for, by the infinite 
 providence of God, man is allowed such entire free-will 
 in the choice he makes of what shall be himself, that 
 he thereby appears to act entirely of and from himself, 
 and forgets the Origin and Sustainer of his life, and 
 comes at last to think that when once created he is 
 himself a demi-god; and thus he is led to worship his 
 own mind and not its Maker. Thus man, when in 
 this low form of self-idolatry, thinks it his highest use 
 to dive into the secrets and mysteries of natural laws 
 as he calls them—for so and by such a name he shuts 
 off these laws from the divine, moral, and spiritual laws 
 
THE BEATEN PATH. 
 
 59 
 
 —and creates a barrier, which the world must see to it 
 that they now break down. Natural laws are supported 
 only by God’s spirit-laws, and are meant for us to de¬ 
 cipher, as their types and correspondences. Have we 
 yet arrived at the secrets of the Word—the Divine Word 
 —the Word which was made flesh—the Word by which 
 all things were made ? Do we yet know what it would 
 say to us in its creative spirit, and in its divine creative 
 power; and are we to give up seeking into its secrets be¬ 
 fore our souls are full ? Is there to be no such thing as 
 progression in the knowledge of the divine, and are we to 
 expect to know all at once ? Nay, do we know all already ? 
 Perhaps the spirit which flows into man, by the Lord’s 
 mercy, may, if we quench it not, better help us in this 
 progression, than the “ old beaten path.” 
 
 Journeyers on this “ beaten path” bring out their 
 books such as “ the History of Civilization in En¬ 
 gland,” and the development theories said by the 
 booksellers to be the books of the season ; but if I 
 read them aright, I hope they be not the best bibles 
 out this year. It is Yoltaireism in the best fashion 
 of to-day, and their object, too, is to prove to us 
 that soul-destroying faith, that morals have done no¬ 
 thing for us in 2,000 years, but that material develop¬ 
 ments are the great humanizers of mankind; that 
 no new moral truth has been vouchsafed to the world 
 through all these long ages, and that now at last 
 we are no better for being wiser. In other words, 
 that as God cannot launch humanity, so now man 
 
60 
 
 NEW OPINIONS. 
 
 must try his hand, and malce man a social being, since 
 he may not be related to the divine. 
 
 Is it not time to look to it, when such as these are 
 the books of the season, and such as this the philo¬ 
 sophy of our day, and to pray for the quick coming 
 of the ever-blooming spring ? 
 
 But after all, these opinions are not very new. 
 They were brought out many seasons ago, and as they 
 dispense with Christianity, they are fitly found to 
 have existed before the New Testament was written 
 or its divine drama had begun; though, mark ! even 
 in the heathen days, there were minds at work to 
 preserve man from the idolatrous degradation of this 
 our “ modern civilization.” Aristotle tells us with re¬ 
 proach that before his day the Spartans and others had 
 what he calls a certain political habit, by which they 
 thought virtue was to be valued and practised on account 
 of the natural advantages which attend it: “ For which 
 reason,” he adds, “ they are indeed good men, but 
 have not the supreme, consummate virtue of loving all 
 things worthy, decent, and laudable, purely as such, 
 and for their own sake, nor of practising virtue from 
 no other motive but the sole love of her own innate 
 beauty.” 
 
 When our most learned men are thus “ quenching 
 the spirit” and the life, and making man his own 
 saviour, well may it be said there is no progress in 
 morals, and that religion must abdicate in favour of 
 science. Not only could there be nothing new in 
 
A NEW BIBLE 
 
 61 
 
 morals, but, by the universal law, it must be either 
 “ upward and onward, or backward and downward 
 and so we see our learned men are labouring to take 
 from us even that which we had. True light is not 
 from man’s intellect, but from the ever-working power 
 of the Lord in his affections, which thus first perceive 
 what is spiritually true, and afterwards carry it to 
 the intellect, that it in its turn may sit in judgment 
 upon it, and pronounce if it be good. 
 
 How unjust a judge does the intellect become, if, 
 whilst professing to judge, it appropriates, nay steals, 
 and unblushingly blazons on its shield as its own, 
 the truth it had no power of itself to see! 
 
 What! take all, and give back nothing, to the 
 divine in man! Be not surprised, then, if the divine 
 no longer feeds it with its spirit-light, and keeps from 
 it the pinions which would make it soar on high. 
 
 Others again of our visitors could not think that 
 spirit could show itself in such meagre forms ; flowers 
 are not high enough for their ideas of spirit-life. Who 
 ever thought of flowers or houses in the spirit-world ? 
 A new Bible at the least should be written off to begin 
 with. In these descriptive writings too, the language 
 is poor, and they are not, therefore, worthy of their 
 alleged origin; and much better might be written 
 without the aid of the spirit, and their subject-matter 
 contradicts the preconceived and orthodox ideas of 
 the spirit-land All is “ spirit” there, is the idea of 
 these ; and spirit means breath, breath means air, air 
 
62 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 is ether, ether is essence, and it can have no form ; 
 to which I add, that what has no form cannot be even 
 conceived of as having life, and, therefore, this would 
 prove that spirit lives not, whereas the divine in ns is 
 ever breathing the words that it lives for ever, and that 
 on the contrary it is the body only which is resolved 
 again into its earthy elements, because its living prin¬ 
 ciple leaves it to its own devices and belongings 
 
 Perhaps the commonest mistake is made on this 
 point, that because information, or inspiration, or 
 influx comes from a spiritual source, it must always 
 be true and of the highest truth. So we have often 
 heard it said: Is that all ? Is it worthy of the 
 spiritual world to tell us so little? But the very 
 principle of the spiritual world is that like this, it 
 contains beings of all kinds and degrees of good and 
 bad, and inspiration from one is as easy as from 
 another, according to our state and degree. This 
 cannot but be observed even in the Bible, which 
 contains the highest inspiration, but frequently mixed 
 up with what in the outer letter is of far inferior 
 quality and application. In fact, of the old testament, 
 much that was of the extremes! value at the time, is 
 now not only obsolete, but is expressly abrogated by 
 the higher law of love inaugurated by Christ, who 
 “ came not to destroy, but to fulfil.” In the highest 
 sense, it is a fulfilling of that law of truth and pro¬ 
 gress, which gives to each what is best for it at the 
 time, and, indeed, what is the only possible. If, 
 
DREAMS. 
 
 63 
 
 therefore, our inspiration is low, it is because we are 
 low and imperfect mediums for what is better. This 
 great question of inspiration is one which needs 
 almost more than any other to be now examined and 
 understood. For want of it, such controversies as 
 that well raised by Bishop Colenso, according to his 
 knowledge, are constantly likely to shock the religious 
 susceptibilities of the orthodox, as they are called, 
 whereas, it is their easy and ignorant belief which 
 drives such as the Bishop into the inquiry which 
 shocks them. The Bible, however, when rightly under¬ 
 stood, will withstand many such assaults as his, and 
 be only the better for a truer appreciation of them 
 according to real laws of prophecy or inspiration. 
 
 Everything must have a beginning and a pro¬ 
 gression, but there are truths in it in all its stages. 
 The beautiful hymn, singing of the spirit-world, 
 “ There is a land of pure delight,” tells us, in true 
 poet’s language:— 
 
 “ There everlasting springs abide, 
 
 And never withering flowers.” 
 
 Are not dreams ofttimes “ meagre,” too ? and yet 
 they exist, and we spend a third of our life amongst 
 them. Breams rank amongst the true phenomena 
 of spiritual life, and sometimes they contain revela¬ 
 tions of import to us—perhaps in ancient days more 
 often so than now, but not than they may again do, 
 when man surrenders his intellect willingly to his 
 
64 
 
 A COMFORTED SOUL. 
 
 Maker, and accepts His breathings as bis most 
 cherished life. Then, it may not be necessary that 
 the body should always sleep that the soul may 
 “ dream that “ our old men may see visions, and our 
 young men may dream dreams.” “ For God speaketh 
 once, yea twice, yet man perceiveth it not; in a dream, 
 in a vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth upon 
 men, in slumberings upon the bed, then he openeth 
 the ears of man and sealeth their instruction, that 
 he may withdraw man from his purpose, and hide 
 pride from man.” 
 
 Bishop Newton says of dreams, “ It is very evident 
 that the soul is in a great measure independent of 
 the body, even while she is within the body—since 
 the deepest sleep which possessetli the one cannot 
 affect the other ; whilst the avenues of the body are 
 closed, the soul is still endued with sense and percep¬ 
 tion. They must necessarily be two distinct and 
 different substances, whose nature and properties 
 are so very different, that, while the one shall sink 
 under the burden and fatigue of the day, the other 
 shall still be fresh and active as the flame ; while the 
 one shall be dead to the worlds the other shall be 
 ranging the universe.” 
 
 “ There the child is on its mother’s breast, 
 
 That long in the grave hath lain; 
 
 Tor in dreamland all the loved and lost, 
 
 Are given us again.” 
 
 Ofttimes too is given us in dreams what we have 
 
A COMFORTED SOUL. 
 
 65 
 
 not lost, nor sought for, but what comes of the Lord’s 
 great mercy as his gift to man — that inward light 
 which shines on our path and is a light to our feet. 
 This has recently been beautifully shown to me in 
 the radiant smiles of a dear, dying woman, when I 
 sat by her bed, and asked her if she had any sweet 
 dreams as she slept away her few hours of freedom 
 from the agony of her body. I had scarcely touched 
 the chord, when her face lighted up, and her eyes 
 filled with tears at the full thought. “ Oh yes, when 
 I first began to be ill, long months ago, I began to 
 have the sweetest dreams. Angel forms held scrolls 
 before my eyes, on which were sentences which seemed 
 to burn with inner light. I had no need to read it, 
 for I saw the whole at once, and my mind has ever 
 since been repeating to itself these images, and I have 
 known it always since, as I was slumbering here.” 
 
 So all dreams even, we see are not meagre, but if 
 we do not receive the lower part of them, how shall 
 we attain to or believe in their higher spiritual phe¬ 
 nomena ? Ought I to have told this poor comforted, 
 and now-departed soul, that what she had seen was 
 all a delusion ? Oh no ; and if I had, would she have 
 believed me ? And what better had I to give her in 
 their place, for they were the shadows of the very 
 things she was so soon to see. 
 
 For my part I do not know, and therefore Lcannot 
 say, what is meagre or poor in any of the laws of God ; 
 for in every, even the smallest, is the vital force by the 
 
 F 
 
66 
 
 THE COLD GRAVE. 
 
 consistence of which, and by Divine geometric laws 
 of increase and addition, the very spheres them¬ 
 selves are made. I am, therefoi’e, content to wait 
 for higher and greater excellences, and to be ever 
 thankful for these small beginnings—trusting to that 
 never-failing law of love which gives us always what 
 we are able to bear. If these early developments are 
 low in their degree to what we may hope for, are not 
 we low too P Nay, shall there be found one in ten 
 who will read thus far, for whom they are not more 
 than he can bear ?—not on account of their lowness, 
 but because their light shines from a land that he 
 wots not of. Beginnings always seem low; but they 
 contain the future tree, as the “ low ” acorn contains 
 the oak. The growth of a thousand years is in that 
 little seed. 
 
 I have now, as faithfully as I could, produced the 
 arguments of objectors ; but there wei’e some—and, 
 thanks to God, not a few—who raised no objections, 
 but saw at once a power which was not from man ; who 
 were content to shape their creed by facts, and to 
 accept at once what they felt was true. These fresh 
 truths have rewarded their love, and by the light of 
 the new, the old is seen in a brightness which it once 
 had not. Not only does it open out a bright present, 
 and an ardently desired future for spirit-life, in place 
 of the cold grave in which what they loved was lying, 
 but to all the beautiful creations of the Lord a new 
 beauty has been added—the never-failing, ever-increas- 
 
SEARCH AND YE SHALL FIND. 
 
 67 
 
 ing beauty of tbeir relation to Him, the creator and 
 sustainer of all His works. These no longer look on 
 flowers, or any natural object, with the dull cold eye 
 of naturalism, but they see in them some part of the 
 inner meaning of their forms ; not in the forbidden 
 way of the clay saying to the potter, “ Why hast thou 
 made me thus ?” but by the enjoined method of divine 
 philosophy—“ Search and ye shall find : knock, and it 
 shall be opened to you.” 
 
 This finally answers another question that has been 
 asked—“ What is the good to be found in what you 
 call the spirit-power ?” There is good in everything 
 that God has made. “ By their fruits ye shall know 
 them.” If it be smally apparent at first, the more 
 room for faith in the Lord, and the more occasion to 
 keep our own “ wisdom ” in the background, that this 
 better, deeper wisdom may have space and freedom. 
 “ Because I said unto thee I saw thee under the fig- 
 tree, believest thou ? Thou slialt see greater things 
 than these. Verily, verily, I say unto you, hereafter 
 ye shall see heaven opened, and the angels of God 
 ascending and descending upon the Son of Man.” 
 
 F 
 
 O 
 
68 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 WHAT HAS LED TO THESE DOUBTS. 
 
 “ Then saitli he to Thomas, ‘Reach hither thy finger, and behold 
 my hands ; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into my side, 
 and be not faithless, but believing.’ And Thomas answered and 
 said unto him, ‘ My Lord and my God.’ ” 
 
 It is not a pleasant thing for the mind earnest after 
 light, to he constantly in doubt every time a new fact 
 shows itself above the great horizon, and to find its 
 self-formed system always getting too small for it; but 
 so it has always been with philosophies, which in all 
 ages have deemed themselves complete in their little¬ 
 ness ; and the philosophers, generally, from their 
 favourite methods of denying the spirit, and question¬ 
 ing even the impressions of the senses, have, in so far 
 as they believed their own philosophies, had less 
 knowledge than the vulgar, who, by virtue of their 
 ignorance, have been able to keep ever nearest to the 
 truth. 
 
 It would not be so with a true philosophy, which 
 should have more insight into the divine, and should 
 be able to release the mind from the weight of seep- 
 
69 
 
 THE “ TSMS.” 
 
 ticism and of the materialistic forms of thought. The 
 “ isms” are all of them earthborn, and belong not to 
 the broad philosophy which shall yet one day make 
 God known in all His works. 
 
 Among the great masters of philosophy in the olden 
 days there were some who were nearer to the true than 
 many who have come after them, but of late years the 
 learned world has been decidedly going backwards, 
 and has eliminated a grand system for itself, which 
 consists simply in denying the existence of anything 
 but matter. The names it is known by, scepticism or 
 materialism, are the truest thing about it, and best 
 shows its degrading origin and tendency. A hundred 
 years ago “ scepticism” had not attained that pre¬ 
 dominance which it has since exercised on modern 
 philosophy, nor had the German transcendentalism, 
 under the pretext of answering scepticism, admitted 
 its conclusions by only changing their form from the 
 sceptical to the dogmatic ; but this has since occurred, 
 and the breath of the movement has not been unfelt 
 even in England. 
 
 I quote from the work of a modern writer :—“ It 
 has been argued by , Bishop Berkeley in his ingenious 
 dialogues that what we term ‘ the world’ is, after all, 
 hut our own ‘ sensations and that, given the totality 
 of these sensations, we have no need of an outward 
 universe. His logic was accepted as irresistible by 
 * thinkers’ in all countries, and at all events, no 
 counter-statement, having the neatness, portability, 
 
70 
 
 BERKELEY AND HUME. 
 
 and plausible character of the bishop’s scheme was 
 made at the time, nor has been made up to this hour. 
 If the principle of the ‘ dialogues’ were true, the Irish 
 metaphysician had demolished the validity of the 
 external universe, and in so doing had achieved a 
 triumph for scepticism, which implied clearly enough 
 those other victories that it was afterwards to gain in 
 the hands of David Hume and his successors. 
 
 “ The Scotch metaphysician took up the matter where 
 the bishop left it, and, as it is supposed by learned 
 philosophers, proved that the law of cause and effect 
 was but a prejudice, useful enough in common life, 
 but not valid in philosophical argument. It was, 
 therefore, the glory of this ‘ thinker’ that he had 
 repealed, or rather disproved, all real cohesion in man 
 and nature, and made of the universe an incoherent 
 nulliverse, a whirl of fleeting sequences, and a delirious 
 ‘ chase of Pan.’ 
 
 “ At this stage our own countrymen, Reid and 
 others, very properly rejected his whole theory, centre, 
 antecedents, consequents, and all, as a useless and fruit¬ 
 less thing—one of the entities over the number requisite 
 for mankind ; and they betook themselves to common 
 sense, as an asylum from monstrous ratiocinations, 
 and a heavy check to absurd principles and conclusions. 
 But not so the continental philosophers. On the con¬ 
 trary, Germany produced a mind, in the person of 
 Immanuel Kant, that thought it worth while to accept 
 this progeny of scepticism, thus self-condemned by its 
 
TRANSCENDENTALISM. 
 
 n 
 
 fruits, and to give it grave consideration, a positive 
 form, and a life-long education and development. It 
 grew up into 1 transcendentalism,’ a system worthy of 
 its seed, and directly perpetuating the powers and 
 qualities of its parent ‘ scepticism.’ 
 
 “ The point of transcendentalism was this, that 
 whereas the arguments against the possibility of 
 seeing the external world are unanswerable, let our 
 world be freely conceded to consist of our own sensa¬ 
 tions, valid for us, though not for itself; time and 
 space being ‘ forms of sense ’ true of man though not 
 of objects; cause and effect are ‘ forms of thought.’ 
 In a word, the upshot of transcendentalism was to 
 regard all sensation, knowledge, and thought, as sub¬ 
 jective only, and to make the individual believe all the 
 manifestations of God, nature, and humanity, which 
 are made to his mind, as so many presentations of 
 his own being, a very idolatry of man. 
 
 “ It will be seen that, on those principles, transcen¬ 
 dentalism ignores all those reasonings which are based 
 on the truths of outward nature, and that it shows a 
 long list of subjects, of which the investigation is 
 declared ‘ impossible,’ and thus to limit the human 
 faculties was its glory, to accumulate impossibilities 
 its science. 
 
 “ These three forms of philosophy—the idealism of 
 Berkeley, the scepticism of Hume, and the transcen¬ 
 dentalism of Kant — have so corrupted thought, even 
 in England, that scarcely any subject or problem can 
 
72 
 
 LORD PORTMAN’s ANECDOTE. 
 
 appeal to learned and thinking- men with its direct, 
 natural, and inherent force; and the consequence is, 
 that all scientific vision of the deeper parts of nature 
 is set down either as a dream, or denied as a delusion. 
 
 “ To one who is deeply committed to this unhappy 
 metaphysic, it is in vain to cite experience. To what¬ 
 ever sphere this experience professes to belong, it is 
 said to be the mere child of the mental faculties. If 
 God manifests himself, He is hut ‘ an idea of the pure 
 reason if the spiritual world is represented, it is but 
 ‘ the conception of the understanding if nature lies 
 outspread before the eye, both it and the eye itself 
 are but ‘ sensations.’ Thus, man is made out to be 
 not finite, but infinite ; he is a life in himself, and 
 not a recipient of life.” 
 
 This phase of modern philosophy was not inaptly 
 described in an anecdote told by Lord Portman in 
 moving the address to her Majesty, in answer to her 
 royal speech at the opening of a former ante- 
 Christmas session :—“ People,” he said, “ are too apt 
 to do that which a wise man once did, when he saw 
 another sharpening his axe upon a grindstone. He 
 desired to know how the axe was sharpened, and for 
 that purpose wished to break the grindstone, that he 
 might see what was inside. Upon that the man who 
 was sharpening the axe said, ‘ The causes are on the 
 surface ; pray don’t break the grindstone.’ The fact 
 was, we were in the habit of looking too deeply for 
 causes, and in most instances would succeed much 
 better if we examined more the surface of things.” 
 
THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION. 
 
 73 
 
 Well does the author of “ The History of Civilization 
 in England,”* say of metaphysics, that he dismisses 
 them altogether from his consideration as a moving 
 power towards civilization, and that he can trace no 
 operation whatever of a beneficial kind which they have 
 had in the history of the world. Always and under 
 all circumstances dead, they have led to no truth and 
 no development; and have, as much as it were pos¬ 
 sible, from their gross absurdity, that they could be 
 received at all into the mind, covered with thick clouds 
 of darkness even the subjects of sense which they 
 profess to explain and account for. They were too 
 deep in their foolishness for any but the “ learned,” 
 whom, however, they made into blind leaders of the 
 blind; and the great world of sense, which is the 
 highway on which the spirit has to travel, through 
 its series and degrees, towards the divine, has been by 
 
 * It is very interesting to know that just before Mr. Buckle and 
 a clerical friend went on his last journey, which ended at Damascus, 
 by his there entering the spirit state, he was astounded by witnessing 
 those spiritual phenomena of which he had till then consistently 
 denied the possibility, and against which possibility the whole of his 
 two great volumes are a running protest. So completely was he taken 
 aback by this great discovery, the full force of which he recognized 
 at once, as destroying the scope and bearing of the philosophy of 
 his life, that he lay awake for the two following nights pondering 
 the consequences. He and three friends determined on his return 
 to England to investigate the subject fully, and this wise resolve 
 was only prevented by liis lamented departure into that world him¬ 
 self, where he will have had full reason and opportunity for making 
 his iuv estigation. 
 
74 
 
 THE MIND. 
 
 these philosophers, as they are called, shut out from 
 the soul. 
 
 The mind is not like other substances, of any 
 certain size, so that its knowledges can be circumscribed 
 by space. It has a power and a force of development 
 within it, by reason of its origin, large enough to 
 grasp all the objects of creation within its ken. It is 
 the only vessel amongst God’s creation, of which it 
 can be said, that the more it receives the more room 
 it has, for it can never be filled, and this it is in 
 which it partakes of the divine essence of the Creator. 
 The more love, the more truth, it receives, the more 
 it longs and yearns, and has place for more; and were 
 it not so, it would be finited down to the level of the 
 beasts that perish. In this it is that consists its 
 development and progression for eternity, and thus it 
 is possible that in even its highest celestial state it 
 may have before it an eternity of progression without 
 ever reaching beyond its own continuous sphere. 
 
 A new meaning has gradually been coined by 
 “ philosophy ” for the word “ matter,” and which, as 
 the antithesis of spirit, it was never meant to bear. 
 Matter, which is so “ material ” for philosophers, has 
 come tc be considered as the only “ real ” thing, and 
 spirit, antithetically, as the only “ unreal ” thing. 
 Matter in itself, and in all its continuous series and 
 degrees, is a reality, and there it must be content to 
 end, because it cannot by any process of attenuation be 
 converted into spirit. “ Immateriality,” or immatter, 
 
WHY IS IT YE ARE SO FEARFUL? 
 
 75 
 
 however, may not be nothing. It may be spirit, and 
 spirit, too, may have its world, its series and degrees, 
 no less than those we willingly concede to matter— 
 and perhaps much more. If dead matter begins in the 
 lowest forms, and ends in magnetic and electric 
 forces; if living matter begins in the lowest forms of 
 vegetable life, and ends in man’s body made in the 
 image of his God, may not the spirit also retain its 
 form, and have its world of objects and uses, and more 
 bright, and real, and substantial, too, than the things 
 of “ matter ?” From what we know of matter, does it 
 after all seem so “ real,” so lasting, so abiding in its 
 forms ? Is it eternal, like the spirit ? Does this body 
 last for ever ? And is it so impossible, then, to 
 conceive of a spirit-body, which shall have more 
 beauty, and the more enduring elements of a never- 
 ending youth ? May not a state exist of which it may 
 be truly said, “ the more angels the more room,” as 
 one of the conditions of its being ? Is this impossible 
 because it could not be predicted as one of the 
 qualities of matter ? Spirit, indeed, I affirm is the 
 only real substance. 
 
 “ Why is it ye are so fearful ? How is it ye have 
 no faith ?” 
 
 Our Lord’s whole ministry and life was to show the 
 power of the spirit over the things of this world, and 
 His divine words shine here with a beacon light to 
 warn us against the teachings of this narrow, dried- 
 up, philosophy of ours. After His few miraculous 
 
MATTER. 
 
 76 
 
 words which “ dried up the barren fig-tree,” so that 
 no man should eat fruit of it thereafter for ever,” 
 he accounted for His power over it, and showed to his 
 disciples the way in which they, and all His children 
 might acquire a similar power over “ matter.” His 
 divine words, “ ringing with the music of the spheres,” 
 were these :—“ Have faith in God. For verily I say 
 unto you, that whosoever shall say unto this mountain, 
 Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea, and 
 shall not doubt in his heart, but shall believe that those 
 things which he saith shall come to pass, he shall have 
 whatsoever he saith.” 
 
 Matter, therefore, He here, in express words, de¬ 
 clares to be obedient to the superior law of the spirit, 
 and the same great law may be traced throughout 
 the sacred writings. It is the law by which the 
 miracles were shown and rendered possible; and being 
 under an everlasting law, the miracles were no dis¬ 
 turbance of the divine laws, but only their proof and 
 their development. Matter is ever fluid when touched 
 by the hand of its great master-spirit, in the way 
 enjoined by the divine command. 
 
 Why, then, should we limit the creative power of 
 God’s love to man, and in spite of all the evidences 
 of a spirit-world, and of His holy word, be driven to 
 the poor conclusion that this world’s things are the 
 only “ real” and enduring ? 
 
 But here this poor naked form of philosophy is not 
 alone. Our theological teachers, imbued necessarily 
 
THE POOR INDIAN. 
 
 77 
 
 with the metaphysical learning of the schools, take it 
 by the hand, and clothe it with garments of the 
 darkest hue, instead of dispelling it at once by the 
 blessed light of revelation. But how indeed should 
 the theology of the day be more advanced than its 
 philosophy ? Inhabiting necessarily the same minds, 
 they will ever be found twin-sisters of the age ; and as 
 life is absent or present with the one, so of necessity 
 with the other too. 
 
 Theology, therefore, has in some main beliefs, and 
 more in these later days, degraded the Christian even 
 below the savage tribes, and made the consolations of 
 that Gospel which brought life and immortality to 
 man, incomparably inferior in reality and distinctness 
 to the poor Indian’s belief in “ the Great Spirit and the 
 happy-liunting-fields.” 
 
 Amongst these beliefs, or rather, when they are 
 tested, these unbeliefs, there is none which has had a 
 worse effect than the Church teaching, as to death and 
 the resurrection of the body. Here it is certainly true 
 that two thousand years and the intervention of the 
 Christian dispensation have not increased our know¬ 
 ledge at this day, but contrariwise. Let us go back to 
 the time of Socrates, that great good man—the child¬ 
 like searcher for truth, which he felt to be divine—who, 
 be it remembered, without the light of the word and 
 revelation, rayed out bright truths, as a sun amongst 
 the Gentiles, and who knew more of the workings of 
 the soul, and of Him who made it, than is now taught 
 in many churches. 
 
78 
 
 SOCUATES. 
 
 Speaking of the soul in that wonderful pi'ison- 
 discourse which he left as his last-day’s legacy to 
 divine philosophy, he says :— 
 
 “ There is much ground for hope, that he who shall 
 arrive at that place where I am going, will there, if 
 anywhere, obtain possession of that on account of which 
 we have chiefly studied and laboured during the time 
 of our past life. Therefore, this journey now appointed 
 to me, may be undertaken with good hope, by any 
 other man who thinks that his mind is prepared by the 
 needful purification. Purification is the separating to 
 the utmost the soul from the body, and accustoming it 
 on all hands to be collected and condensed within itself, 
 and to abide, as far as possible, both in this present 
 and in the next state of existence, alone and by itself, 
 set free from the body as from bonds. 
 
 And again:—“ Would there not be much unreason¬ 
 ableness in this, that they should not willingly go 
 thither, where there was good hope of obtaining on 
 their arrival that which during life they desired— 
 wisdom ? When the objects of human affection, wives 
 and children, had died, many have been found willing 
 freely to descend to the shades, led by this very hope 
 of there seeing and enjoying the society of those whom 
 they loved. And shall any one who in reality loves 
 wisdom, and who strongly entertains this very hope, be 
 grieved by the approach of death ?” 
 
 Again:—“ Consider whether temperance, and justice, 
 and fortitude, and wisdom itself, be not a certain puri- 
 
SOCRATES ON THE SOUL. 
 
 79 
 
 fication. And, therefore, those men who instituted the 
 mysteries for us seem to be by no means of slight 
 authority, but, in fact, of old, to intimate that whoever 
 descends to Hades uninitiated and unpurified shall lie 
 in the mire ; but that he who arrives there purified and 
 initiated shall dwell with the gods.” 
 
 “ The soul is most like that which is divine and 
 immortal, indissoluble, and ever continuing in the 
 same state, consistently with itself; the body all the 
 contrary. The soul, then, the invisible, that which de¬ 
 parts to another place of such kind, excellent and pure, 
 and invisible—to Hades, in truth—to the good and 
 wise Deity, whither, if the Deity wills it, my own soul 
 must presently go. Can that soul, being such, and 
 endowed with such native qualities, be, immediately on 
 its departure from the body, dissipated and perish, as 
 many persons assert ? Far from it, my dear Cebes 
 and Simmias; nay, it is much rather thus, if it depart 
 in a state of purity, drawing after it nothing of the 
 body — that it departs to that which is like itself, the 
 invisible, the divine, the immortal, the wise, at which 
 arriving it becomes blest, being redeemed from error, 
 and folly, and fears, and fierce passions, and all other 
 human ills.” 
 
 Of the “ uninitiated ” soul he says: — “ But, my 
 friend, we must consider this to be gross, and heavy, 
 and earthly, and visible, weighed down and drawn back 
 into the visible region, through a dread of the invisible, 
 and of Hades, wandering, as it is said, around monu- 
 
80 
 
 THE SOUL. 
 
 ments and sepulchres, around which have been seen 
 certain darksome apparitions of souls, which still re¬ 
 tain a portion of the visible nature, and on account of 
 which they are seen.” 
 
 Again, he says, “ Each soul wears out many bodies.” 
 “The soul is a species of harmony;” at the time of 
 death “ it sings like the dying swan—is prophetical, 
 and foreknows the good which awaits it in Hades.” 
 And, what is perhaps more wonderful than all, we find 
 that the necessity of a divine revelation is frequently 
 alluded to by him. He tells his disciples that they 
 may relinquish the hope for the future of reforming 
 men’s morals, unless the Deity should be pleased to 
 send some superior instructor. 
 
 This greatest of the true philosophers, notwithstand¬ 
 ing that he was a “ Gentile,” afterwards gives us in 
 some sort the key of his mind—how he hindered God 
 the least in giving him light; and how he arrived at 
 these greatest and heaven-born truths. He tells us 
 that he used only the argument of “ the better,” and 
 was prepared, with his great child’s soul, to follow 
 wherever “the better,” or the truer, should lead him. 
 He says of this argument of “ the better,” “ And if he 
 should be able to render this apparent to me, (that it 
 was better), I was prepared no longer to require any 
 other species of cause.” Thus, he saw in his soul, that 
 in our understanding of God’s works, what was better 
 was truer, and what was best was truest. Herein, and not 
 elsewhere, is divine philosophy. Herein is progression, 
 
THE CHURCH IN THE GRAVE. 
 
 81 
 
 and the seed of that true knowledge which alone can 
 give light to the world. 
 
 Let us cast our eyes back over these shining words 
 of his, and say, if they do not give us a higher, a 
 better, and so a truer light as to the existence of the 
 soul, its workings, and its destiny of love, than we now 
 hear amongst the teachings of the Churches. When¬ 
 ever the soul is mentioned, and its lot in “ Hades,” 
 the Church can tell you nothing that so nearly touches 
 you as these divine breathiugs of the great Gentile 
 philosopher. Some words spoken in an undertone 
 about the grave, the day of judgment, and the resur¬ 
 rection of the body, are all that you can hear ; and if 
 you press the question, to see if this can really be all 
 that churches can tell you, you are told it is a mystery 
 —that you must not pry into this great spirit-world, 
 into which, nevertheless, we are all hastening, and for 
 which we know that all our thoughts and deeds here 
 are but the preparation. 
 
 “ That a people claiming to be enlightened Christ¬ 
 ians should not hold a single fixed and positive opinion 
 on the nature of the soul, to say nothing of an estab • 
 lished doctrine, is truly astonishing, and no little 
 reproachful. One would think that though no one else 
 cared to do it, those, at least, whose entire solicitude 
 is presumed to have reference to the soul, would never 
 rest till they had enabled themselves to propound 
 something intelligible, intelligent, and satisfactory. So 
 far from it, the pulpit is mute, and its companion 
 
 G 
 
82 
 
 THE PULPIT IS MUTE. 
 
 philosophy is barren.” The starting-point for this will 
 be the acknowledgment that man’s soul is his spiritual 
 body ; and the tendency of the true doctrine must be to 
 raise it from the grave into “ realms where it can 
 live.” 
 
 The consequence of the want of this has been that, 
 between the dearths of religion and philosophy, man 
 has fallen away from the great teachings of Socrates, 
 and has not l alien up those of the Christian dispensa¬ 
 tion. And thus, in losing the future of the soul, he 
 has lost its present too. 
 
 Now, were it not that “ there is a spirit in man, and 
 that the Lord givetli it understanding,” and that the 
 workings of this spirit is above the narrowings of 
 philosophies and authorities, it would go hard with 
 us but that the soul should be condemned again to 
 inhabit this poor, frail, worn-out bo ly, in obedience to 
 the teachings of the day. But in the mercy of the 
 Lord, He has done better things for us than this ; 
 He has made us to feel, in our inmost hearts, and 
 in despite of philosophy, that in consigning to the 
 grave the dear loved form— alas! that already it has 
 shown its earthly origin—we deal not with that which 
 gave the form its life. The spirit that beamed through 
 those windows of the soul, his radiant eyes, we feel, we 
 know, is not a tenant of the grave, and wants no more 
 communion, and can hold no fellowship, with the poor 
 cast-off garment it has left. Like the soul which has 
 been thus emancipated from the body, and its spirit- 
 
NO TENANT FOR THE GRAVE. 
 
 83 
 
 sight opened to behold essential forms, and to know 
 essential spirit-truths of love and light, our better part, 
 in contemplation and in thought, is drawn upwards 
 too, and we strive to reach that heavenly state so 
 beautifully described as “ the communion of saints.” 
 Do we not all, on those occasions, “ as it were,” and 
 indeed, in truth, by inspiration known, that our darling 
 lies not in the grave ? How should the bright spirit 
 be led by its happy angels to such a place as that ? 
 Does the chrysalis, when it makes its spirit-change, see 
 the grave ? What but the shell does it leave behind 
 it for decay, whilst it has risen into winged life ? 
 
 “ How shall we bury you ?” said Crito to Socrates. 
 “ Just as you please,” said Socrates, “ if you can catch 
 me.” Socrates knew better than that he should die — 
 he saw through death. The man cannot be buried. 
 The man is only where his conscious being is, and as 
 that cannot be put in the grave, the man is not there. 
 We should teach our children from the earliest that 
 there are no men and women really in the grave, and 
 truly they better receive and understand this great 
 truth than many of their elders. How impossible to 
 make a child believe that its mother, or father, or 
 brother, is in the grave ! And how foolish the efforts 
 sometimes made to force it to believe the degrading 
 falsehood! Leave it to its heaven-born thoughts—to 
 its ministering angels, and let its angel behold the face 
 of its Father which is in heaven. The embryo passes 
 without fear into a larger world, which is meant to bo 
 
 g 2 
 
84 
 
 THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 kinder to it than the mother’s womb. And so the man 
 is to be born again, with as little pain of sense and 
 thought, into the next expansion of the spirit. 
 
 To believe that the departed is “ in heaven,” is 
 necessarily to believe in the spiritual body, also in its 
 immediate resurrection, and, in what is of no less 
 importance, in its immediate judgment. We do not 
 find our instincts falsified—the voice of nature does 
 not utter false prophecies to us ; its voice is the call, 
 the invitation of the Creator addressed to His crea¬ 
 tures. These, then, are the instincts of the soul, 
 superior to false teachings and philosophies, for they 
 belong to “ the better.” 
 
 But are these instincts not enough for us ? Then 
 call to witness again the dreamland, the visions, the 
 ghosts, the strange sounds and voices, second-sight, 
 and the reappearances here of those who have entered 
 into the teeming spirit-life. The knowledge of these, 
 and the belief in these, have never in any age been 
 absent from the world. “We find evidence of this in 
 the most ancient records extant of the history, tradi¬ 
 tions, and institutions of the primitive races of man¬ 
 kind. We see it in the inspired Hebrew writings, and 
 it is illustrated in the Hindoo sacred books—books 
 confessedly of high antiquity, and believed by some 
 scholars to be the most ancient known records of the 
 human race. The whole contents of the Yedas are 
 regarded as direct revelations of inspired seers. The 
 relics or traces of the Babylonish captivity of the Jews 
 
THE SPIRIT OF MAN. 
 
 85 
 
 which have been recently discovered by Mr. Layard' 
 in his examination of the ruins of Babylon consist 
 almost entirely of Hebrew inscriptions relating the 
 intercourse between the natural and the spiritual world, 
 and amongst them are the names of many of the 
 spirits; injunctions to them to depart, and various 
 modes of protection against bad influences ; and direc¬ 
 tions how many of the evils flowing from the associa¬ 
 tion of bad spirits with man may be averted.” “ The 
 ghost” of a man is only his soul or spiritual body, 
 and in order that it may be seen, it only requires that 
 it should be looked at with adequate organs of sight, 
 namely, the eyes of a spiritual body like itself. We 
 have such eyes, every one of us ; but for the most part, 
 by our deep drinking of naturalism, they are buried 
 too deep in flesh and blood ; and thus it is only when 
 specially opened by the Almighty for purposes of his 
 providence that it is possible for a ghost or spiritual 
 body to be seen, and yet the sight is not very seldom. 
 Much as our material eyes enable us to see, they 
 prevent our seeing inconceivably more. Throughout 
 the Holy Word, throughout the poetry and the histories 
 of the world, are instances of the opening of this 
 spiritual vision. And yet, though all men in their 
 hearts at this day believe in what they call the super¬ 
 natural, yet with their mouths they deny it; and they 
 fear it more than they love it. 
 
 “ Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth 
 Unseen, both when we wake and when we sleep.” 
 
86 
 
 THE COLD STREAM. 
 
 “We were discussing the reality of ghosts and ap¬ 
 paritions, and my friend argued with honest stoutness 
 that they were flimsy illusions, and had no claim on 
 the attention of strong-minded people; hut being as 
 candid as he was strong, he presently added, ‘I don’t 
 know how it is, hut when I talk of such things I feel 
 a cold stream down my back.’ ” 
 
 And so our friend’s back knew more than his head, 
 how much of life and truth there was in his ghost! 
 There are to be seen “ flies in amber,” fossil truths 
 imbedded in the primitive rocks of language, on this 
 and all other subjects, which show the life that once 
 was in words—the spirit that made the words to 
 breathe, and caused them to be formed. Look at the 
 Hebrew, the G-reek, and the Latin, and you will find 
 that the “ soul,” “ spirit,” and “ ghost,” are but one 
 word—in the literal meaning “ air,” or “ breath.” In 
 the same languages an animal is a “ breatherbreath 
 is life, and so the soul, the spirit, and the ghost are 
 one, and they live and breathe not less, but much 
 more than the body. “ God breathed into man’s nostrils 
 the breath of life, and he became a living soul.” Well 
 may the back feel the “ cold stream,” when the heart 
 of philosophy refuses its warm stream to the beauty 
 of the breathing life of the spirit-body. 
 
 Amongst all the new things that these wonderful 
 drawings and writings have brought to us, not the 
 least strange, nor the least striking, has been the 
 circumstance, that of the great number of persons who 
 
WE don’t believe 
 
 87 
 
 have come to see them, and who have fought against 
 all spirit developments as the mere imaginations of a 
 diseased mind there is hardly one who has not finished 
 by narrating to us some private family experiences even 
 more wonderful in degree than those we have to show. 
 These have been told in under-tones, and with the 
 gravest face, and have generally ended by the speech, 
 “ Of course we don’t believe in them.” Alas ! poor 
 human nature, that you thus should strive to halt 
 between two opinions, and not manfully avow your 
 soul’s belief! You dare not, and you do not, disbelieve. 
 Do away, then, once and for all, with your struggles 
 by admitting intellectually what you feel to be true, 
 and cease to consider the superordinary as being 
 either the suspension or contradiction of natural ex¬ 
 ternal laws, but rather as the manifestation, accord¬ 
 ing to law, of spiritual eternal laws. Realities are of 
 different kinds, and this is a truth which the sceptics 
 do not dream of. This world with all its objects is 
 real; and tell us not that the spirit-world with all its 
 objects is not real too. Spiritual things are real to the 
 spiritual sight, and generally these manifestings of the 
 spirit-world have come when there were circumstances 
 that made our spirits responsive to them. They are 
 the speaking of spirit to spirit—the uttering of speech 
 to speech—the direct influx of the spirit-world ; and 
 let us thank God for them. 
 
 In an article some years ago, in “ Tait’s Maga¬ 
 zine,” there is mention made of this subject under the 
 
88 
 
 THE SIXTH SENSE. 
 
 title of “ The Lost Faculty, or sixth sense,” which the 
 writer says existed in the early ages of the world, and 
 consisted in the power of perceiving by the “ mind’s 
 eye” spiritual beings with the same ordinary faculty 
 with which the corporeal eye perceives material sub¬ 
 stances. “ This mental vision we believe to have been 
 an ordinary endowment of humanity in its original 
 state of innocence, and that, had man continued in that 
 condition, it would still have been enjoyed; but that by 
 the fall, and the consequent corruption of our nature, 
 it was lost, or held in abeyance as a common attribute of 
 our nature, being, however, occasionally and temporarily 
 restored, or imparted to individuals for special purposes. 
 Numerous instances of this are recorded in the Holy 
 Scriptures, and we believe that in every such instance, 
 as well as in those in which apparitions have been seen 
 in Modern times, it has been through the medium of 
 this sixth or mental faculty. Adam and Eve, before 
 the fall, held personal and familiar intercourse fearlessly 
 with their maher ; but no sooner were they become 
 transgressors than they £ hid themselves from his 
 presence among the trees.’ How different an aspect 
 w r ould this world have presented, had man continued 
 in a state of innocence ! Permitted to hold intercourse 
 with his Maher, and those exalted beings who inhabit 
 the realms of light, but who are allowed to range this 
 world ; beholding and adoring the infinite perfections 
 of the Deity, and comprehending the vastness and 
 grandeur of His works, earth would have presented a 
 
THE MENTAL VISION. 
 
 89 
 
 prototype of heaven; time would have been but the 
 vestibule of eternity; and his translation from one to 
 the other would have been but a change in the degree, 
 not in the perfection of his bliss.” 
 
 The article proceeds to give a wonderful collection 
 of instances of spirit-appearances, dreams, visions, and 
 second-sight; and which last faculty, he says, is beyond 
 a doubt the result of mental vision, and the position 
 of it by certain persons so well authenticated that it 
 cannot be denied ; and he asks, “ Who will have the 
 temerity to affirm, in the face of all the positive and 
 negative evidence to the contrary, that it is either 
 impossible or improbable that the spiritual beings of 
 of another world can return to this earth, and be per¬ 
 mitted on special occasions to become visible to the 
 mental perceptions of the still living ?” 
 
 Nevertheless I observe that in a subsequent number 
 the editor complains of the mass of letters he had 
 received, most of them exhibiting the very temerity 
 the writer thus thought impossible ; and one long letter 
 is inserted, apparently from a medical man, in which 
 he attributes all the “ appearances” to “ indigestion,” 
 the wonderful creations of “ an overloaded stomach,” 
 and no doubt to be cured by a dose of medicine. 
 
 If the writer of the article were surprised or hurt at 
 this reception of his very well-digested lucubrations, I 
 am sorry for him; but for my part when I first put all 
 this forth it was with a full foreknowledge of the re¬ 
 ception it would meet. I knew that not one out of ten 
 
90 
 
 NATURAL CAUSATION. 
 
 who read it, but would think it was the result of either 
 madness or badness more dire than is the lot of most 
 to be the victim of, and that I should have to suffer 
 petty martyrdom at the hands of my friends. Nor was 
 I left long in doubt as to my fate. I was violently 
 attacked by the leading reviews and papers, and held 
 up to public scorn as little better than a madman and 
 a fool, whilst some charged the whole as imposture and 
 deceit. I have not found however from my seven years, 
 during which these wonderful phenomena have been 
 calmly proceeding under my careful obseiwation, that 
 I have had to withdraw or to modify the opinions I 
 expressed. Neither have I found that the adverse 
 opinions have done me any injury, or made me less 
 anxious to proclaim what I know to be a truth and it 
 does not deprive me of the duty I feel of opening a way 
 for the few, through the Lord’s good providence, to 
 view spiritual things as a more objective reality than 
 they have yet done, and to show them how they may 
 gather of the heavenly manna, of which it was said, 
 and in words that burn, what could be said of none 
 other thing, except it be of the spiritual life itself—- 
 “ He that gathered little had no lack, and he that 
 gathered much had none over.” 
 
 The writer in the magazine in his concluding obser¬ 
 vations, states his difficulties in accounting for the 
 mode, not the fact, of these appearances. He says :— 
 The instrumentality, indeed, by which spirit is rendered 
 visible, is involved in mystery. Hitherto no data of 
 
THE SOCEATIC MODE. 
 
 91 
 
 sufficient authenticity have been obtained to render 
 certain the agency and the medium by which the inter¬ 
 course between the material and the spiritual is 
 rendered personal and definite. Yet there must be 
 such agency and such media, in dependant of miraculous 
 interposition, as we have before observed—in other 
 words, these phenomena may be referable to natural 
 causes of which, at present, we are in ignorance.” 
 
 I propose to try, with the aid of better heads than 
 mine, to furnish these data, and to show the nature 
 and mode of this intercourse between the two worlds, 
 through the medium of the soul and the body. All 
 I would again ask is, that the result may be judged 
 according to the Socratic mode—according to the 
 argument of “ the better.” If a “ better” can be 
 found, then this will be supplanted by it; but this 
 may live for its longer or shorter day ; and as I be¬ 
 lieve it to be true, and to be the only explanation 
 of the mode in which the drawings of spirit-forms, 
 and the other manifestations of spirit-power known 
 to me, can have been produced, I wish it God 
 speed. 
 
92 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 THE TWO WORLDS. 
 
 “ The Spirit breatlietli where it willetli, and thou hearest the 
 sound thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it 
 goeth : so is every one who is born of the Spirit.” 
 
 The way in which the two worlds run together may 
 be explained and illustrated by looking for ourselves, 
 without the aid of anything but common sense, into 
 the organism of that highest form which God has given 
 to man, and which is the ultimated perfection to which 
 all nature ministers, both in its composition and for 
 its nurture and sustenance. 
 
 The outward perfect form of man we are familiar 
 with. It, at least, is not supernatural nor superor¬ 
 dinary ; indeed it is so very ordinary to us, that we do 
 not, as we oiight, accustom ourselves to think of its 
 wondrous beauty, its harmonies, and divine perfection. 
 “ God created man in his own image. In the image 
 of God created He him, male and female created He 
 them.” But this body contains many images within 
 it of “ the human form divine.” A beautiful descrip¬ 
 tion of this is given in a recent work ; from which I 
 
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL MAN. 
 
 93 
 
 make use of much of the following :—If the osseous or 
 bony structure of the human frame be separated from 
 the other parts of the body, and held out to view by 
 itself alone, it will present to the eye the rude image 
 of a man. It is in the human form, not indeed com¬ 
 plete and full, but correct as far as it goes. It forms 
 a skeleton which is distinctly human, and no single 
 bone of it is exactly such as could enter into the struc¬ 
 ture of any other created being. The first and obvious 
 idea which the sight of it suggests to the mind is that 
 of a MAN. 
 
 The bones, too, have inner skeletons within them, 
 for they are composed of animal matter and earthy 
 matter, either of which may be resolved by chemical 
 appliances, leaving the other standing, and yet the 
 form of the bones remain entire, and thus shows, in the 
 last resort, “ the earthy” in our inmost bone. 
 
 Again, if we take the system of tissues which is next 
 above that—namely, the muscular system, which im¬ 
 mediately clothes the bony framework — and if we 
 separate that in like manner from the rest of the body 
 holding it up to view, we shall see a form yet more 
 fully human than the other, and one which more 
 nearly resembles the perfect body of a man. Still it 
 will be exceedingly defective, and wholly wanting in 
 that rounded fulness which characterizes the living 
 human form. 
 
 If, again, we take either of the two parts of the 
 great vascular system of the body, — that is, arterial 
 
94 
 
 SERIES OF SYSTEMS. 
 
 or the venous system,—and treat it in a similar man¬ 
 ner, a similar result will follow, and a human form will 
 be exhibited, which, though still defective, will approach 
 nearer to completeness. 
 
 But if instead of any of the others, we select the 
 brain and nervous system, as the subject of our ex¬ 
 periment, a form will be presented far more pex-fect 
 than either of the others ; and if every ramification, 
 and reticulation, and fibre of the nerves, be faithfully 
 preserved, the human image will be complete. The 
 eye, on beholding it, would be deceived ; and so perfect 
 would be the representation of all the parts, that until 
 further examination were made, we should suppose 
 that an entire man was standing before us. 
 
 Thus, we find that our bodily system consists of a 
 series of human forms, woven together and interlaced 
 through each other, and one form supporting and 
 assisting another. If we contemplate the combination 
 of these different forms in another aspect, we discover 
 that there is a certain successive order in the mode of 
 their arrangement, and in the degree in which they are 
 capable of manifesting the human form. 
 
 The most gross, solid, or earthy parts, are capable 
 of manifesting it least; whilst, as we ascend into the 
 more refined, the softer and the fleshy parts, we per¬ 
 ceive that they gradually approach it more nearly ; 
 and when we come to the most complex, the most 
 highly organized, and the most thoroughly vitalized of 
 all the parts, we find that they are the most complete 
 of all in the human form. 
 
THE SOUL IN THE HUMAN FORM. 
 
 95 
 
 The soul or spirit of mau acts the most directly, or 
 immediately, upon the brain and its appendages, that, 
 is upon the nervous system ; through this it acts upon 
 the vascular and muscular systems, and through these 
 again upon the osseous system, or bony skeleton. Thus 
 the order of influx, by which the soul operates upon 
 and moves the body, is far above downwards ; from 
 things more pure to things less pure ; from tissues 
 which are more highly organized, to those which are 
 less highly organized; from parts which are less gross 
 to those which are more gross ; from structures which 
 are less solid, to those which are more solid; and from 
 systems which are more perfectly in the human form, 
 continuously downward, into systems that are less 
 perfectly so. 
 
 In examining the body, therefore, the further we re¬ 
 cede from the soul, the further do we recede from the 
 human form ; while the higher we ascend towards the 
 soul, the more nearly do we approach to a perfect 
 human form. The cause or reason of this must, we 
 hope, be sufficiently obvious to the reflective mind. It 
 is because the soul itself, or inmost spirit-life of man, 
 is in the human form. 
 
 Nor can this ascending analogy stop with the merely 
 outward constitution. The body of the spirit, which is 
 next above the brain and nervous system, is still more 
 perfectly human in all its forms and functions, than 
 the whole material body itself can be, with all its com¬ 
 binations and with all its parts. As the nervous sys- 
 
96 
 
 THE INDWELLING SPIRIT-BODY. 
 
 tem itself, with all the grosser parts of the body taheii 
 out from it, still presents the same human form entire, so 
 the spirit, with all the gross things of the material body 
 tahen out from it, still presents the same divine form en¬ 
 tire. “ Though it fill the whole body, yet it taketh up no 
 room in the body ; and if the body decrease, if any mem¬ 
 ber be cut off or wither, the soul is not diminished, but 
 only ceaseth to be in that member it was before, and that 
 without any hurt or blemish to itself.” It is this indwel¬ 
 ling spiritual body which accretes upon itself the mate¬ 
 rial form, and gives consistency to the external one, and 
 as each successive system of parts in the natural body re¬ 
 quires one next below it, nearest to itself in organization 
 and form, into which it may flow and operate, so the more 
 exquisite spiritual body requii’es something next to it, 
 but in a new ascending series, most nearly resembling 
 itself. It is because this indwelling spirit-body is so 
 perfectly in the human form, that it requires so per¬ 
 fectly organized a nervous system, as its first receptacle 
 in the natural body, for it to flow into, to act upon, and 
 to operate through. 
 
 Thus the soul is not a simple substance, a mere ab¬ 
 stract thinking principle, but a complicated organiza¬ 
 tion, and it too, by never-failing analogy, is doubtless, 
 like the body in the natural world, ouly the outward 
 expression in its own spirit world, of many more in¬ 
 terior human forms, by the more essential of which it 
 is supported, and acts as a true spirit-man. Like the 
 body, too, it has its multitude of parts, its variety of 
 
THE HUMAN FACE. 
 
 97 
 
 organs; every mental affection is tlie indication of a 
 change taking place in the substances which compose 
 it; every thought we think, every act of the will, and 
 each secret intent of the heart, is instantly recorded 
 upon its immortal tissues, and, till their effect is 
 obliterated by succeeding impressions, forms an in¬ 
 tegral part of its being. Thus each man is every 
 moment pronouncing in spirit-life his own judgment, 
 by forming his spirit for good or evil; and were it 
 possible for us to see his spirit, a glance would tell us 
 its nature and its quality. No specious words would 
 serve us then, or will serve us when our spirits shall 
 be seen. 
 
 In this world, and where man has the free gift of 
 liberty to choose his course, to adopt the inspirations 
 of the Lord through his ministering and guardian 
 angels, or to attract, by his more innate love for evil, 
 the spirits who minister unto sin, a wonderful provision 
 is in mercy made, that man’s interior state should not 
 so easily be discovered. For, here a man may not be 
 always evil or always good; he has the power by gi'ace 
 to resist temptations, and to overcome and change his 
 evil nature, and it would not be well that his form or 
 his face should picture forth to the world the struggles 
 of his heart. And therefore it is that the only muscles 
 in his body which do not show their direct motions, 
 are those of the face, which gives expression to the 
 mind. These facial muscles are each covered by another 
 layer of muscles, which work in a cross direction, and 
 
 H 
 
98 
 
 ANGELS AND MEN. 
 
 prevent the motions of the l’eal acting muscles from 
 being seen. It is not for man’s happiness if he take 
 advantage of this bountiful, beautiful provision, to 
 make his face an acting lie, or if he make his gift of 
 speech “ only a means of concealing his thoughts ” in 
 his communings with his fellow-men. 
 
 The spirit then is in a human form, as we have seen 
 by the analogy between it and the body; but to prove 
 this to us, as no new idea, we find it among the 
 ancients, and it is found in revelations also of the most 
 direct kind in Holy Writ. Both the Old and the New 
 Word are pregnant with the great fact. Plato believed 
 the spirit to be an “ essential airy vapour,” but still in 
 a human form, in order to maintain itself in which he 
 invented a skin or covering for it, of a more material 
 kind—a wind-bag, truly, though still of the form divine, 
 flatulent, but not full. Yery different are the appear¬ 
 ances of the angels mentioned in the Bible, for there it 
 is told us that they were seen and known as men, and 
 had the human voice and other human attributes ; and 
 it must be at once conceded, that if they have one 
 human attribute, they must have all. Thus Samuel 
 appeared to Saul, at the bidding of the witch of Endor, 
 as “ a man.” Job, Abraham, Lot, Jacob, Elisha, 
 Ezekiel, the women at the sepulchre of our Lord, the 
 disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration, and at the 
 time of the Lord’s ascension, saw, heard, and conversed 
 with angels and the spirits of departed men in the 
 human form. So angels appeared to the shepherds in 
 
ANGELS AND MESSENGERS. 
 
 99 
 
 the plain as men, and announced to them the birth of 
 our Saviour. Manoah spoke of the angel who ap¬ 
 peared to him and to his wife, announcing prophetical¬ 
 ly the birth of Samson, as “a man.” And the angel 
 who showed all the wonders of the holy revelation to 
 John was “ a man —“ And I John saw these things 
 and heard them, and when I had heard and seen, I fell 
 down to worship before the feet of the angel, which 
 showed me these things; then said he unto me, ‘ See 
 thou do it not; for I am thy fellow-servant, and of thy 
 brethren the prophets, and of them which keep the 
 sayings of this book: worship God.’ ” 
 
 Again, “ and the measure of the holy city was ac¬ 
 cording to the measure of a man, that is of the angel.” 
 In fact, in almost every case, when the appearance of 
 angels is recorded in Scripture, they are called men. 
 Thus the three angels who appeared to Abraham are 
 called three men. So likewise the angels who appear¬ 
 ed to Lot, and to Manoah and his wife, are all called 
 men. The angel Gabriel is called by Daniel “ the man 
 Gabriel.” And the “ two angels in white,” seen in the 
 sepulchre after the Lord’s resurrection, are called also> 
 “ two men in shining garments.” The meaning of the 
 word translated “ angel,” is simply that of a messenger 
 or agent, and is thus a name or title of office, and not 
 of nature ; for in the Scriptures it is used indifferently 
 to signify not only angels, so understood, but also both 
 good and bad men, and even it is applied to the atmo¬ 
 spheric elements, when employed to accomplish the Di- 
 
100 
 
 SPIRITS ONCE WERE MEN. 
 
 vine purpose. The Hebrew word “ Malak,” which liter¬ 
 ally means “ messenger/’ was, by the first translators of 
 the Bible into Greek, rendered by the word “ Angelos,” 
 which has the same signification in Greek that “ Malak” 
 has in Hebrew. The subsequent Latin translators 
 adopted the Greek word into their own language, and 
 from the Latin the word “ angel ” has been introduced 
 into the English and other modern languages. Wherever 
 the word “ Malak ” or “ Angelos ” appeared from the 
 context, or was supposed, to designate an inhabitant of 
 the spiritual world, the translators of our English 
 Bible have used the word “ angel;” but when the 
 “ messenger ” was evidently human, they have then 
 really translated the word, and plainly called him “ a 
 messenger.” Thus, in the original of the prophet 
 Malachi, the phrase occurs, “ Behold I will send my 
 Malak,—angel—and he shall prepare the way before 
 me.” But as this is referred in the New Testament to 
 John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus, our 
 translators have used the words “ my messenger.” 
 Had the words everywhere been so translated, much 
 obscurity would have been avoided, and much miscon¬ 
 ception have been prevented. 
 
 Thus is proved, not only that spirits are in the 
 human form, but that they once were men upon the 
 earth, who, having passed out of their material bodies, 
 have risen up in their spiritual bodies, and are now 
 living in the spirit-world; also that the proper scrip¬ 
 tural name for them when they appear to man, is 
 
MAN RECEIVES LIFE. 
 
 101 
 
 rather that of “ messengers ” than “ angels.” But if 
 there were any difficulty in believing that spirits and 
 angels are in the human form, there will be no one 
 who -will doubt as to the divine origin of their life, nor 
 that it is from God alone, the Creator, the Preserver, 
 the Redeemer, of our souls ; nay, even more, although 
 the great truth is sometimes forgotten by philosophy, 
 that God, every moment of our lives, is the perpetual 
 creator of all life, renewing it from instant to instant, 
 and again perpetually renewing it to eternity. Truly 
 it is “ He that hath made us, and not we ourselves 
 and we were not “ made ” complete in our mother’s 
 womb, with only the elements of growth and life with¬ 
 in us, but it is necessary that the life must be renewed 
 and sustained by the constant influx of His creative 
 love, for the soul is not life in itself, but is only a re¬ 
 cipient of life from God. The great evil of the current 
 philosophy has been to overlook and ignore this divine 
 origin of our life, and to treat of the influx of life as 
 from the man’s soul into the rational faculties, forget¬ 
 ting to inquire how the life enters into and vivifies 
 the soul, and how it is momentarily sustained within 
 us. 
 
 Our minds also are recipients of light, varying in 
 degree according to the nature of our hearts; and 
 whether we will receive light and love from God or 
 not depends upon our free-will, and upon the inner 
 love of the heart and the judgment of the head. Some 
 love “ darkness rather than light,” and of such it is 
 
102 
 
 LIGHT AND LOVE. 
 
 said, “ how great is that darkness !” The light once 
 given to us remains to eternity, though it requires to 
 be created again in us every instant, and it is for us to 
 use our light, and show forth our love, that this life 
 may have its heavenward direction. Light and love 
 from the Lord are one and always the same, radiating 
 in brightness, and in heavenly warmth—unspeakable, 
 unapproachable. None of His creatures here may 
 hope to receive of them but in a small degree, because 
 of the imperfection of our natural bodies ; and, in order 
 that we may be able to receive them in the degree that 
 is possible to each of us, they come to us, not in their 
 effulgence, but mediately through the spiritual world— 
 that is, they are adapted to our power of receiving them 
 by being presented to us through our ministering- 
 spirits and guardian-angels, or messengers, appointed 
 to this holy office. By them, or rather through them, 
 we are fed with the heavenly manna, according to what 
 we can receive of it, and according as we are willing or 
 not to eat of this “ our daily bread but all is from 
 the Lord, and to Him only be the prayer and the 
 praise. And yet I must not be misunderstood as say¬ 
 ing that man is able to do good, or to cling to good, of 
 himself, or from any tendencies to good in his own 
 nature, for the Lord says, “ without me ye can do 
 nothing.” Man, therefore, constantly derives from the 
 Lord the power, if he will take it, to abstain from evil 
 and do good. “ Behold I stand at the door and knock: 
 if any man hear my voice and open the door, I will 
 
THE OPENING OF THE DOOR. 
 
 103 
 
 come in to him, and will sup with him and he with 
 me plainly intimating His proximity to man, and the 
 constant gift of His saving grace, and at the same time 
 as plainly man’s free-will to admit or reject the Lord; 
 and thus the blessed consequence of “ opening the 
 door,” and of such admission of heavenly influence, and 
 of man’s conjunction with the source of all good, is 
 represented by the Lord’s supping with him. 
 
 This opening of the door is an act of faith and love, 
 which, when they dwell in man, are shown in his 
 life, and admit of no disputation as to the separation 
 of faith from works. “ Show me thy faith without thy 
 works, and I will show thee my faith by my works.” 
 
 In this, then, consists our free-will, and our judg¬ 
 ment—the power of rejecting these holy offices, or of 
 receiving them. If we receive them in a willing, 
 loving heart, and have a house for them swept and 
 gai'nished, they come in and dwell with us, and are 
 ever ready at our summons to influence and strengthen 
 us in good; nay, with the house in disorder, the Lord, 
 through his angels, does ever stand at the door and 
 knock, seeking to come in, and to expel the dark spirits 
 that an evil love has called to dwell there. Even in 
 this world it is true of every man that he may be 
 known by the company he keeps, and this because he 
 has all the world to choose from, and of his own strong 
 love links himself in close companionship only with 
 minds similar to his own. Shall it not, therefore, be 
 so with his spirit-life—that intimate and more highly 
 
104 
 
 ANGELS AS REMEMBRANCERS. 
 
 endowed life in which his spirit exists, and draws its 
 inspiration from the spirit-world ? We have tried to 
 show how the spirit is the real man himself, and how 
 it only acts representatively through the body in order 
 to operate upon the things of this world; but whilst 
 the spirit thus shows itself in act here, it is also living 
 at the same time in its own spirit-world, and deriving 
 by influx and companionship there the ideas with 
 which it furnishes the body. Thus man is the per¬ 
 petual link between the two worlds—as to his body, he 
 is in the natural-world; as to his spirit, he is in the 
 spirit-world ; and he sits between the two upon the 
 throne of free-will and liberty to make his deter¬ 
 minate choice whether he will be allied with angels or 
 with devils. 
 
 On this subject the Rev. H. Melville, in one of his 
 recently published sermons on “ Angels as Remem¬ 
 brancers,” says:—“ When we speak of spiritual in¬ 
 fluence we are far from wishing to confine the 
 expression to the influence of the Holy Ghost, as 
 though no other spiritual agency were brought to bear 
 upon man: we desire to extend it to created though 
 invisible beings—to angels, whether evil or good—be¬ 
 lieving, on the authority of Scripture, that there are 
 such beings, and that they continually act on us by a 
 secret but most efficient power.” There is a petition 
 in the Lord’s Prayer—“ Thy will be done on earth as 
 it is in heaven and it must be specially by angels 
 that God’s will is done in heaven; and if we are 
 
THE GODS OF GREECE. 
 
 105 
 
 directed to take the manner or degree in which angels 
 do God’s will as measuring that by which we should 
 desire its being done by men, surely it can be neither 
 beyond our power to know anything of angels, nor un¬ 
 important that we should study to be wise up to what 
 is written regarding them in the Bible. 
 
 It is, perhaps, new to most to see such a theorem 
 proposed in print in homely words, and it will be 
 viewed in many ways by many minds; but it is not so 
 entirely new in its leading features as may at first be 
 thought, and there are here again points in language, 
 in poetry, in painting, and in sculpture, and in every¬ 
 day conversation too, which show such an idea to exist, 
 though dimly, in the mind. See the “ Hades,” the 
 “ Elysium,” and the “ Shades,” of the ancients, and the 
 beautiful ideas of Socrates which I have quoted. The 
 ancient mythology too is full of the idea. The several 
 deities who presided over the affairs of men, each 
 attending to his own peculiar province, and being thus 
 the types each of a class of objects in the mind, and 
 who were separately invoked on every occasion, are 
 adapted instances of this same idea. 
 
 It has been said that the gods of Greece occupy the 
 same place in the Greek mythology as the Romish 
 saints in the system of Romanism, and there is more 
 truth in the assertion than may at first appear, for 
 there is reason to believe that its gods, in great part 
 at least, were but the apotheosised spirits of great and 
 brave men, founders of states and cities, heroes and 
 
106 
 
 ANGELS AND MINISTERS. 
 
 men who had lived in the golden age. Herodotus tells 
 us that this was the belief of the Greeks themselves. 
 Cicero contends, “ that even the superior order of 
 gods, or gods of the greater nations, were originally 
 natives of this lower world, as could be proved from 
 the writers of Greece, and that their sepulchres were 
 shown openly in that country, and the traditions 
 concerning them were preserved in the mysteries.” 
 Homer describes his heroes as “ inspired by valour,” 
 and he makes Penelope say that her ingenious scheme 
 was “ breathed into her by a god.” In another passage, 
 he says, that “ To one, God gives dancing, to another 
 music, to another a prudent mind, to another valour.” 
 Seneca says, “ Without God there is no great man. 
 It is he that inspires us with great ideas, and exalted 
 designs. A God inhabits every virtuous man, and 
 without God there is no virtue.” This inspiration or 
 breathing into us of good gifts is spoken of by Goethe, 
 who says, “ No remarkable discovery, no great thought, 
 which bears fruit and has results, is in the power of 
 any one ; such things are elevated above all earthly 
 control. Man must consider them as unexpected 
 gifts from above, as pure children of God.” Newton 
 said, “ That to his patience he owed everything, more 
 than to any extraordinary sagacity. I keep the sub¬ 
 ject constantly before me, and wait till the first dawn- 
 ings open slowly by little and little into a full and 
 clear light.” An exact description of the mode of 
 influx into a soul willing to receive it. “ An apple 
 
A FAMILY GUIDE. 
 
 107 
 
 plucked from the tree was the death and ruin of our 
 race. An apple falling from the tree told the story of 
 the stars.” Shabspeare has, “ Angels and ministers 
 of grace, defend us,” and other and very numerous 
 instances of the same grand truth. Dickens says, “ It 
 would almost seem as if our better thoughts and 
 sympathies were charms in virtue of which the soul 
 is enabled to hold some mysterious intercourse with 
 the spirits of those whom we dearly loved in this life. 
 Alas ! how often and how long may those patient angels 
 hover over us, watching for the spell which is so 
 seldom uttered and so soon forgotten !” 
 
 Of the present Emperor of the French it was lately 
 said in the Times, “ He has a deep and mysterious 
 impression of his family genius and guide ; availing 
 himself of the impulse it gives him, but checking its 
 impetus and extravagance.” Have we not too “ float¬ 
 ing notions which course through the brain “ an idea 
 flashes into the mind“ a light comes into the 
 mind “ poets are born not made and all the great 
 works which are attributed as the gifts of “ genius?” 
 
 These are all but the involuntary homage paid by 
 the mind to the great fact of spirit-intercourse, and 
 the only variety in the above instances is that some 
 of them refer immediately to God as the giver, and 
 others to angels and spirits as the media of the inter¬ 
 course, but still as from Him, the only Giver. They 
 are but the ministers, to give us just so much as we 
 can receive, so that those “ who have little may have 
 no lack, and those who have much, have none over.” 
 
108 
 
 THE DEVIL. 
 
 Evil spirits, too, are not unknown to us. There is 
 frequent mention in the New Testament of their being 
 ‘ cast out ” in a miraculous manner; but Luke gives 
 us remarkable words, which show how unwillingly 
 they leave a mind by which they have "been once at¬ 
 tracted and allowed to enter in, and the battles and 
 temptations to be resisted, but too often unsuccessfully, 
 to prevent their re-entry. 
 
 “ When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he 
 walketh through dry places seeking rest; and finding 
 none, he saitli, ‘ I will return to my house whence I 
 came out/ and when he cometh, he findeth it swept 
 and garnished. Then goeth he and taketh to him 
 seven other spirits, more wicked than himself, and 
 they enter in and dwell there.” 
 
 Our law, in framing indictments for felonies, speaks 
 of the culprit as “ not having the fear of God before 
 his eyes, but being moved by the instigation of the 
 devil.” In conversation we say a person is “ seduced ” 
 into evil ways; and there is even the human creation 
 of a personal devil, who is the seducer or tempter, as 
 if the collective evil of men and depraved spirits were 
 not sufficiently a devil of itself. I remember many 
 years ago being sent to see an educated person, who 
 had two or three days before attempted suicide by 
 cutting his throat, and in which he had very nearly 
 succeeded. On my asking him what could have 
 induced him to do it, he told me that he was impelled 
 by a voice which he heard distinctly saying, “ cut your 
 
THE CHOICE OP HERCULES. 
 
 109 
 
 throat,” and that he could not resist; that after cutting 
 it with a penknife, and fainting with loss of blood, he 
 came a little to himself, and again he heard the voice, 
 saying, “ Cut it again that he obeyed, and knew 
 nothing more till he found himself attended by the 
 officers of the prison. The man was to all appearance 
 perfectly sane, and never afterwards showed any 
 signs of insanity. 
 
 In monumental sculpture, which is meant to embody 
 our holiest, truest feelings, how often do we not see 
 the form of the departed, with uplifted arms, rising 
 to meet the angels, descending in their love to welcome 
 a new inhabitant and companion of the spirit-land ! 
 Painting, both old and new, is also beautifully full of 
 the same great truth, and with pictured seraphic 
 forms it consoles us for the absence of the departed one, 
 absent from the body, present with the Lord, and 
 received by blessed angels to be conducted home. 
 One of Thackeray’s works was monthly illustrated 
 on the cover by a drawing of a man between two spirit 
 female forms, one alluring him by blandishments on 
 one side, and to whom he is too fondly leaning, whilst 
 the other, observing the attraction, is standing some¬ 
 what mournfully, endeavouring to win him to her 
 better love. 
 
 This is a reproduction of the same idea known to 
 the ancients as the “ choice of Hercules,”—the strong 
 man subjected to temptation in the form of a woman 
 and supported under it by the messenger from above. 
 
110 
 
 THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS. 
 
 Nothing in this world is produced, or presented to 
 view, or experienced, but by means of spiritual agency 
 in the hands of the Almighty. “ This is merely a 
 world of effects, the causes of which are in the spiritual 
 world ; so that no event takes place here below—no 
 production, whether animate or inanimate, has birth— 
 no happiness or misery is felt—no wisdom guides, 
 governs, and blesses, and no folly deceives, oppresses, 
 and destroys, but what has its origin in another and 
 unseen world of energies and activities.” “ The Son 
 of Man shall send forth his angels, and they shall 
 gather out of his kingdom all things that offend, and 
 them which do iniquity.” “ For the Son of Man shall 
 come in the glory of his Father with his holy angels.” 
 “ When the Son of Man shall come in his glory, and 
 all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon 
 the throne of his glory.” 
 
 The “ communion of saints ” of the Apostles’ creed 
 is the evidence of the belief in the spirit-world of the 
 church ; for communion, according to Dr. Johnson, is 
 but another word for intercourse. The Apostle Paul says 
 to the Hebrews, “ But ye are come unto Mount Sion, 
 and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly 
 Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of angels: 
 to the general assembly and to the church of the 
 first-born, which are written in heaven, and to God the 
 judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made 
 perfect.” 
 
 This passage establishes the doctrine of the com- 
 
THE SPIRITS OF THE JUST. 
 
 Ill 
 
 munion of saints, and with whom the church is said 
 even now to hold communion. “ For one commentator, 
 Estius, observes that nearly all understood by ‘ the 
 spirit of just men made perfect,’ the souls of pious men 
 who have depai’ted from the body, and who live with 
 God; another, Slade, that the expression signifies their 
 ‘ separate souls,’ and that ‘ the passage may be regarded 
 as a very considerable confirmation of an intermediate 
 state;’ Bloomfield that it means * the disembodied 
 spirits of the righteous;’ Scott that it means ‘ the 
 company of ancient believers, and those who had died 
 since the coming of Christ; Cornelius a Lapide that it 
 means ‘ the souls of all the patriarchs, prophets, 
 apostles, and martyrs who have departed this life 
 before us, and before the coming of Christ ’ Indeed 
 there is scarcely a single commentator who does not 
 regard these ‘ spirits of the just’ as spirits in an inter¬ 
 mediate state, and not as shut in Hades, so as to be 
 excluded from all intercourse with men on earth, but as 
 being as much in a state of intercourse with men on 
 earth as other angelic beings.” 
 
 The Church, too, teaches its followers to pray that 
 God would grant that “ as his holy angels always do 
 him service in heaven, so by his appointment they 
 may succour and defend us upon earth.” 
 
 The only persons who in their minds really actively 
 oppose this beautiful fact of intercourse, however little 
 many or most of us admit it, are the philosophers 
 again, who, with the old faculty they possess of turn- 
 
112 
 
 THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 ing gold into dirt, have invented a name for it which 
 brings it at once into the Gehenna of metaphysics. 
 What, think you, do they call the communion of 
 saints ? It is nothing but the reflex action of the 
 mind. These are the learned men who would make 
 things clear to us by giving them their right names. 
 Spirit-communion, then, is the reflex action of the 
 mind—the self-ci’eated, deified mind of man, obtain¬ 
 ing its own self-reflected light, its own created 
 images. Has philosophy no “ little children” on whom 
 it might test its teachings ? This would be a fine 
 first lesson for a philosopher’s child. 
 
 This mention of the “ intermediate state” leads to 
 another point which it is necessary to consider, and 
 the more so as there is a curious and not purposeless 
 mistranslation of words in the Bible, which has led to 
 the burial of the truth as to this intermediate state. 
 
 Besides the terms used in the Scriptures to designate 
 heaven, there are also in the Greek two other words to 
 denote the places of departed spirits. One of them, 
 Gehenna, unquestionably means hell, and is through¬ 
 out so translated ; but the other term, Hades, properly 
 means the world of departed spirits, and is so used to 
 designate the world of spirits, or intermediate state, 
 in the Hew Testament. The word in Hebrew answer¬ 
 ing to the Greek Hades is Sheol, and this distinction 
 between the world of spirits and hell appears every¬ 
 where in the original language of the Bible; and the 
 
HADES AND GEHENNA. 
 
 113 
 
 discrimination is strictly kept up throughout the Old 
 and New Testaments. 
 
 But Martin Luther, in order to get rid of the 
 Romish doctrine of purgatory, and to remove as far 
 as possible all Scripture warrant for it, when he came 
 to translate the Bible into German, rendered both 
 words, Hades and Gehenna, as meaning the same 
 place—-that is, the place of eternal misery. All the 
 Protestant editions since have followed his example, 
 and hence in our common English Bible, we have only 
 the word hell, as a translation of both the other 
 words indiscriminately, wherever they occur. Every 
 reader of the classical Greek is well aware that Hades 
 in their mythology did not mean the infernal religions, 
 but simply the place of shades, the under world, or 
 the abode to which the dead first went after they left 
 the body, and where the good and the evil were 
 mingled together; in other words, the world of 
 spirits. 
 
 Amongst the instincts of the day, there is none more 
 craving than for a new and true translation of the 
 Bible, which shall preserve the heart-stirring melody 
 of the mother English, in which the present transla¬ 
 tion is so happy, but at the same time give the true 
 meaning of the words. The instances of mistransla¬ 
 tion are both abounding and glaring, and offend alike 
 the scholar and the Christian. It was not in the 
 mistranslation of verbal passages alone that the great 
 and sturdy Reformer favoured his doctrines, and en- 
 
 i 
 
114 
 
 FAITH AND WORKS. 
 
 deavoured to make broader and higher his wall of 
 separation from the Romish Church. He tried very 
 hard to keep out altogether the Epistle of James, 
 because it too prominently mentioned works in con¬ 
 nection with faith, and for the same reason he had 
 grave doubts of the Book of Revelation—of that book 
 of which it is said, “ If any man shall take away from 
 the words of the hook of this prophecy, God shall take 
 away his part out of the book of life, and out of the 
 holy city, and from the things which are written in 
 this book.” This was not the first assault upon this 
 holy book, for at the Council of Nice it only escaped 
 rejection by a narrow majority, and even to this day 
 it has not furnished the church with that spiritual 
 light which no doubt is contained under the shadow 
 of its sacred words. Rather it has formed the debat¬ 
 ing ground for mere naturalism, trying to adapt its 
 prophetic symbols to the outward development of 
 rival churches. And yet this divine “ revelation ” is 
 all for man’s enlightenment, and to he received in his 
 inmost soul; for of it is said, “ I, Jesus, have sent my 
 angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. 
 I am the root and the offspring of David, and the 
 bright and morning star,” and it is given to us 
 through “ the disciple whom Jesus loved, which also 
 leaned on his breast at supper.” 
 
 There is, then, another state revealed to us in the 
 holy word, which is neither heaven nor hell, but in¬ 
 termediate—the place of shades and the Hades of the 
 
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE. 
 
 115 
 
 ancients, and into which all pass immediately on 
 putting off their mortal coil; for there is no reason to 
 suppose, either on scriptural or philosophical grounds, 
 that the vital activity of the soul is ever for one instant 
 suspended. The notion that the soul falls into a kind 
 of sleep or lethargy on the death of the body, though 
 a very common one, is at variance both with the 
 deductions of true philosophy and the intimations of 
 Holy Writ; as in the parable of Lazarus and the rich 
 man, and in the address of our Saviour to the crucified 
 thief, “ This day shalt thou be with me in paradise,” 
 a prophecy impossible on any other understanding 
 than that of a spiritual body then existing in the 
 natural body. The rich man wished that Lazarus, 
 who was then actually risen from the dead, and living 
 in the spiritual world, might be sent to warn his 
 relations of their impending danger, saying if one 
 went unto them from the dead they would repent; to 
 which Abraham answered, “ If they hear not Moses 
 and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded 
 though one rose from the dead.” And when Samuel 
 appeared to Saul, he said to him, “ The Lord will 
 deliver Israel with thee into the hands of the Philistines, 
 and to-morrow shalt thou and thy son he with me.” 
 
 Of the origin of the notion of the soul’s sinking 
 into a state of torpor after death there can be no doubt. 
 Like most other falsities in psychology, and like many 
 in theology, it comes of false physiology, and is 
 directly traceable to the sceptical materialist’s inven- 
 
 i 2 
 
116 
 
 FALSE PHYSIOLOGY. 
 
 tion, that “ life is a function, of organization,” the 
 corollary of which is, that as there is no visible or¬ 
 ganization but that of matter, therefore matter is 
 essential to man’s existence, and that when thus 
 denuded of it at death, his soul collapses into an 
 insensate, motionless, incompetent nothing, so to re¬ 
 main till reclothed with material flesh and blood. 
 
 The Apostle Paul observes to the Corinthian con¬ 
 vert, that, “ If the dead rise not, then is our preaching 
 vain, and your faith is also vain.” But the soul or 
 spirit, now freed from its connection with the body, 
 finds itself in a world adapted to its own organization 
 as a spiritual body, surrounded by everything of a like 
 spiritual and immaterial though substantial nature with 
 itself, but it is not the less real on that account, any more 
 than G-od is less a real being, because not a material be¬ 
 ing. In this spiritual state of existence man possesses 
 faculties analogous to what he possessed here; he is the 
 subject of pleasure or pain ; has a conscious perception 
 of all that passes around him; can enjoy the friendship of 
 society, and exercise in greater perfection those rational 
 powers with which he was endowed here. This is a 
 brief outline of what the Scriptures reveal concerning 
 man’s true nature and destiny. Paul says that “ There 
 is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.” He 
 does not say there is now a natural body, and there 
 will be a spiritual body at the resurrection ; he speaks 
 of them both in the present tense, of both as then 
 existing together. Again he says, “ There are bodies 
 
THE NEW BIRTH. 
 
 117 
 
 celestial and terrestial, but the glory of tbe celestial is 
 one and the glory of the terrestial is another.” Again 
 he says, “ That was not first which is spiritual, but 
 that which is natural, and afterward that which is 
 spiritualand he further declares, “ We know that if 
 our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we 
 have a building of God, a house not made with hands, 
 eternal in the heavens and he was desirous of put¬ 
 ting off his earthly house, or body, that he might be 
 clothed with his spiritual house, or body. And from 
 the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, it is evident 
 that man carries with him into the other life all the 
 forms, feelings, and perceptions which constitute his 
 peculiar nature, and is thus capable of perceiving and 
 enjoying the fullest measure of bliss, or of experiencing 
 the most acute suffering or misery. Also, when the 
 Lord was transfigured, Peter, James, and John beheld 
 Moses and Elias, as two men, existing in organized 
 spiritual bodies, and preserving both the human form 
 and faculties, as was evidently the case from their being 
 expressly called two men, from their talking with Jesus, 
 and from the disciples wishing to build tabernacles for 
 them. Their being seen in human form was to the 
 disciples an ocular proof of the truth of the Apostle’s 
 assertion above quoted, that “ there is a spiritual body.” 
 The disciples were enabled to see the spiritual bodies 
 of Moses and Elias, as also the divinely-glorious body 
 of the Lord, by having “their eyes opened,” like 
 Balaam when he saw the angel; that is, they were, on 
 
118 
 
 THE LAST DAY. 
 
 this as well as on other occasions, for a special purpose, 
 permitted to enjoy the exercise of their spiritual senses, 
 by which they were enabled to hold reciprocal commu¬ 
 nication with spiritual beings, notwithstanding they 
 were themselves still inhabitants of the natural world. 
 And we have in their case the true key to the pheno¬ 
 mena of all intercourse with the spiritual and other¬ 
 wise invisible woi’ld; and were our spiritual eyes thus 
 “ opened,” we should behold spiritual objects as vividly 
 as we now do natural ones. 
 
 It is generally asserted that by the resurrection we 
 are to understand the revivification of the natural 
 body, at a far-distant “last day,” notwithstanding that 
 a man may have had the substances of which his body 
 is composed, changed several times in the course of a 
 long life ; and the last body may have been for ages 
 reduced to its primary elements, or, what is very 
 probable, have formed parts of other bodies, both of 
 men and the lower order of animals. Such a notion 
 involves physical impossibilities; and it must be re¬ 
 membered that Avhat is physically impossible is so 
 because it is contrary to the order which Divine 
 Omnipotence has stamped on creation. In fact, such 
 resurrection is completely opposed not more to reason 
 and science than to Scripture, which nowheke says 
 that the body will rise again, but expressly states 
 “ that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of 
 God, neither doth corruption inherit incorrruption.” 
 Strictly speaking, there is no word in the original Greek 
 
THE RESURRECTION. 
 
 119 
 
 of the New Testament exactly answering to our word 
 “ resurrection,” which is derived from the Latin ; and 
 it is fully proved by an eminent theologian, that the 
 Apostle Paul’s argument in the celebrated 15th chap¬ 
 ter of Corinthians is not for the resurrection of the 
 body, but for a future state, in opposition to those who 
 denied the reality of a life after death. Consequently, the 
 Apostle uses throughout this chapter the verb “ Egeiro,” 
 to rise, and not to re-rise, or rise again; and he em¬ 
 ploys the term “ Anastasis,” wrongly translated resur¬ 
 rection, to signify the state into which the risen beings 
 had entered. Such also is the meaning of the word in 
 our Lord’s discourse with the Sadducees : “ Whose wife 
 shall she be in the (Anastasis) resurrection ?” and “ in 
 the resurrection they neither marry,” &c., plainly signi¬ 
 fying in the future state ; besides, the Lord affirms 
 that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had experienced the 
 “ resurrection of the dead,” notwithstanding their 
 mortal bodies had never been revivified. Similar is 
 the language employed in the parable of the rich man 
 and Lazarus—“ If they hear not Moses and the 
 prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one ” 
 — Anaste ek nekron—“ rose from the dead.” 
 
 In each of these cases, and in all the well-proved 
 instances of the appearance of ghosts, it is evident 
 that the bodies were still lying in the grave, and that 
 they were not needed for the real men who had once 
 inhabited them to appear as men. The only instance 
 excepting those of Enoch and Elijah, to the contrary of 
 
120 
 
 DOCTRINE OF RESURRECTION. 
 
 this is the rising of our Lord with the body he had 
 glorified, and which it was not fitting should remain in 
 the grave, and “ see corruption.” 
 
 Of the texts which have been supposed to teach the 
 doctrine of the resurrection of the body, it will be found, 
 upon due examination, that all such passages of Scrip¬ 
 time relate either to the restoration of nations or 
 individuals from a degraded state to one of happiness 
 and prosperity ; or to the resurrection of man, either 
 individually or collectively, from the “ death of sin unto 
 the life of righteousness/’ Thus, in the well-known 
 passage in Job, “ I know that my Redeemer liveth,” 
 our translators have, by the arbitrary introduction 
 of the words “ day,” “ worms,” and “ body,” for which 
 there is no authority in the original, greatly obscured 
 the sense, and have thus led many persons to understand 
 it in such a way as to destroy the just relation it bears 
 to both the preceding and following parts of the book. 
 
 The vision of dry bones related by the prophet 
 Ezekiel is expressly stated to signify the restoration of 
 the Jews from their captive state. 
 
 Again, in the New Testament, the texts, “Verily? 
 verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is, 
 when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, 
 and they that hear shall live.” “ Marvel not at this ; 
 for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the 
 graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth; they 
 that have done good unto the resurrection of life, and 
 they that have done evil unto the resurrection of 
 
THE HARDNESS OF THE HEART. 
 
 121 
 
 damnation,” relate to the spiritual resurrection or re¬ 
 generation of man, and his final destination. 
 
 It must always be kept in mind, in reading the 
 Sacred Word, what was the nature of the people to 
 whom it was addressed, what was the state of their 
 minds, and how they could most easily be impressed, 
 so that they might receive as much as was possible of 
 the divine for the governance of their souls, and even 
 of their bodies, if their souls lay too deep in flesh to be 
 influenced by it. Accordingly we find this all-pervading 
 law, of giving only what could be received, is fulfilled 
 in the Old Word, which was addressed to the Jews in 
 their most degraded state, and when the highest object 
 that could be secured was to prevent their bowing be¬ 
 fore idols of wood and stone ; and social and political 
 life were at such a low ebb, that the people were 
 governed by the literal ordinances of the Word, even 
 in all the daily affairs of their lives. Having lost en¬ 
 tirely the spirit of religious truth, they were divinely 
 ordered, and taught to preserve at all events the out¬ 
 ward symbols of the inner truths of the Word, and thus 
 burnt offerings and sacrifices were compelled. These, 
 however, were too high for them to persevere in, and 
 thus even externals were cast out from among 
 them ; until at last, having gone into the lowest forms 
 of idolatry, they were forbidden to practise the rites of 
 religion, which were then reserved for the priesthood 
 alone, as is seen to some extent in the Roman church 
 of this day. This was in divine mercy to them, lest 
 
122 
 
 THE PROPHETIC LANGUAGE. 
 
 they should profane entirely and utterly all that was 
 divine in them, and render impossible their redemption, 
 and it was permitted to them along with many other 
 things not allowed by the new dispensation, “on 
 account of the hardness of their hearts.” Thus it is 
 said that “ Jesus Christ brought life and immortality 
 to light in the Gospel.” The eternal life of the soul, 
 the nature or even the existence of a spirit-world, were 
 not even dimly dreamed of by them; and where was 
 regeneration from such a state to be looked for, but in 
 the long-promised coming of the Son of Man ? The 
 miracles wrought by our Saviour and his Apostles, the 
 divine truths he uttered, and their illustrations by 
 familiar parables, only drove such a people to madness, 
 and made the devils rage within them. They crucified 
 the Saviour and killed the prophets, till it became a 
 saying that “ It cannot be that a prophet perish out of 
 Jerusalem.” This, then, was not the people, and this 
 was not the time, to state plainly revelations as to a 
 future life of the soul, which were so far beyond their 
 power to receive ; and, therefore, the inner truths are 
 hidden from the natural material eye in what is known 
 as “the prophetic language”—a language different 
 from that of daily use, and to be interpreted or un¬ 
 folded in a spiritual sense, not to the destruction, but 
 the opening of the letter. 
 
 The Apostles and first converts to Christianity, in 
 common with their contemporaries, considered the 
 earth as the largest body in the universe,—the sun, 
 
THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 
 
 123 
 
 moon, and stars were all subordinate to it,—and that 
 the azure vault of heaven was a solid crystalline sphere, 
 in which the heavenly bodies were placed. Hence they 
 thought it literally possible for a star, to them a body 
 of no great magnitude, to fall upon the earth, besides 
 many other things which the light of science has now 
 demonstrated to be fallacious. Nor must it be sup¬ 
 posed that such ignorance of the truths of physical 
 science derogated from the true dignity of the Apostolic 
 character, or impeded their usefulness. It was not 
 within their commission to anticipate the discoveries of 
 science, but to preach to Jew and Gentile the fulfil¬ 
 ment of ancient prophecy, and the abrogation of the 
 Jewish dispensation, by the Incarnation, Death, Resur¬ 
 rection, and Ascension of their Lord; the necessity of 
 faith in Him as the Saviour and Redeemer, and of a 
 life of obedience to His divine precepts. And this they 
 were enabled to do fully as efficiently as if they had been 
 gifted with the greatest scientific prophetic foresight; 
 and considering the simple minds of the early Christians, 
 and the persecutions they were called to endure, we 
 may very reasonably conclude that the Divine Provi¬ 
 dence consulted their good in permitting them to form 
 such literal views of the meaning of the language of 
 prophecy. Por they were thus supported under their 
 heavy trials, by anticipating the accomplishment of the 
 divine predictions in a manner suited to their limited 
 capacities, and in accordance with the philosophical 
 ideas then prevailing. Divine truth has been commu- 
 
124 
 
 THE HATS FOE FAITH. 
 
 nicated to man in all ages only according to Iris means 
 of understanding it, and the true and full meaning of 
 prophecy has never been, and cannot be, fully under¬ 
 stood until after it has been accomplished. 
 
 These considerations will reconcile at once many 
 difficulties and apparent discrepancies in the Word, 
 and they are a hey to a still greater truth; namely, 
 that the new dispensation was to the Jews essentially 
 a dispensation of faith, in its lower sense, but that for 
 us it should be a dispensation of absolute knowledge 
 and perception, which are beyond the region of faith. 
 The days for faith are for a people walking in the 
 darkness of naturalism, but now should be the glimmer¬ 
 ing of a day when man should walk by light, and his 
 faith should show itself in fruits of spirit-life. 
 
125 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 THE SPIKI T-W OELD, 
 
 “ The invisible things of God are clearly shown by the things that 
 are made.” 
 
 One of the first things to learn before we can have a 
 true understanding of man, is to return to the old and 
 true belief that he is composed of a body, a soul, and 
 a spirit. Professor Bush has collected together some 
 of the opinions on this subject, and tells us, “ This 
 distinction was clearly recognized in the ancient philo¬ 
 sophies. The three-parted hypostases of body, spirit, 
 and soul, was familiar even among the fathers of the 
 Christian Church, of whom no one is more explicit than 
 Irenseus: ‘ There are three, of which the perfect man 
 consists, flesh, soul, spirit; the one, the spirit, giving 
 figure ; the other, flesh, being formed. That, indeed, 
 which is between these two is the soul, which some, 
 times following the spirit is raised by it; and some¬ 
 times consenting to the flesh, falls into earthly 
 lusts. 
 
 “ Origen speaks with equal distinctness to the same 
 effect:— 
 
126 
 
 THE PARTITIONS OP MAN. 
 
 “ ‘ There is a three-fold pai’tition of man, the body 
 or flesh, the lowest part of our nature, on which the 
 old serpent by original sin inscribed the law of sin, 
 and by which we are tempted to vile things, and as oft 
 as we are overcome by temptation are joined fast to 
 the devil. The spirit, by which we express the likeness 
 of the divine nature, in which the Creator, from the 
 archetype of His own mind, engraved the eternal law 
 of the honest by his own fingers, and by which we are 
 firmly conjoined to Him, and made one with Him ; 
 and then the soul, intermediate between these two, and 
 which, as in a factious commonwealth, cannot but join 
 with one or other of the former parties, being solicited 
 this way and that, and having liberty as to which it 
 will adhere. If it renounce the flesh and join with the 
 spirit, it will itself become spiritual; but if it cast 
 itself down to the desires of the flesh, it will itself de¬ 
 generate into the body.’ 
 
 “.... In the Alexandrian philosophy in particular, 
 which favoured the Pythagorean and Platonic, the 
 distinction above mentioned is very plainly recognized, 
 as they denominated the as the rational soul 
 
 (yoZg, to Xoyncon mind, and the sensitive soul, rh 
 
 ertiOvfArirrAbv, that which desires or lusts). Josephus 
 also gives us intimations to the same effect. Thus, in 
 his account of the creation he says (lib. i. c. i.), ‘ God 
 took the dust from the ground and formed man, and 
 inserted in him a spirit and a soul.’ Thus, too in the 
 apocryphal book of Wisdom (chap. xv. 11), ‘ Poras- 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 127 
 
 mucli as he knew not his Maker, and Him that in¬ 
 spired into him an active soul, and that breathed into 
 him a living spirit.’ ” 
 
 “ In the book of Enoch, likewise apocryphal, we 
 find mention made of ra mev/iura, tSjv tuv 
 
 uvo6a,v6vruv dvOgunwv, the spirits of the souls of dead 
 men; and again, ra Tvevf^ar a rd exTrogeuo/AS va afro ryjg 
 a uruv ug ex Trig ffdgxog, spirits going forth 
 from their soul as from the flesh. For ourselves 
 (says Dr. Bush), we read in these extracts intimations 
 of a great psychological fact, viz. that the vnZftu is 
 to the 4 'u^ri the spirit to the soul, what the soul is to 
 the body. The soul is a kind of involucrum to the 
 spirit, what Plato calls the e’/duXov, image, of the 
 spirit. The is the spiritual body or body of the 
 
 spirit, so called, however, not as denoting its true 
 ontological nature, which is psychical (?), but rather 
 its uses as constituting the form through which the 
 
 affections of the spirit manifest themselves.As 
 
 it is through the gross material body that the soul 
 manifests itself in the present world, so we are warrant¬ 
 ed in believing that it is through the soul that the spirit 
 manifests itself in the other world; in other words, it 
 performs for the spirit the office of a body, and is con¬ 
 sequently so termed.” 
 
 I have now tried to give shortly the process of 
 reasoning on which may be based the following de¬ 
 ductions—that man has a spiritual body, which is the 
 life of his natural body ; that this spiritual body is the 
 
128 
 
 THE BIRTH OF THE SPIRIT. 
 
 man himself, and is in a human form; that imme¬ 
 diately after the death of the body the spiritual body 
 enters into the spiritual world, or intermediate state, 
 or Hades, and that there it associates with the other 
 inhabitants of that world ; that instances have been 
 known of spirits and angels having been seen by man 
 on earth, when his spiritual perception has been 
 opened ; that it is through the medium of the spiritual 
 world that the natural world exists, and that it is 
 through the media of spirits that impressions are con¬ 
 veyed to the mind of man. 
 
 Let us then proceed to consider, by the light both 
 of analogy and revelation, whither these deductions 
 will lead us. 
 
 The Apostle Paul likens the birth of the spirit into 
 the spirit-world to the germinating of a seed; and 
 here we have a true analogy, and one with which we 
 are all acquainted, for our guide. The shell or cover¬ 
 ing of the seed is the body, containing within it an 
 interior principle of life ; and when the seed is put in 
 the ground, the body of it perishes, in the process of 
 giving birth to the living principle within it, which 
 now expands itself, bursts its solid shell, breaks forth 
 into a new existence, and in a body proper and peculiar 
 to itself, envolved from the old one, rises above the 
 earth into new light and life. It knows no more of 
 the body of the seed, and enters no more into it. 
 
 Virgil is a better exponent of the truth contained in 
 this revelation than many of the moderns. In the 
 
THE SPIRITUAL BODY. 
 
 129 
 
 iEneid lie describes Camilla extricating herself from 
 the body after being killed out of this world by the 
 spear of Aruns :— 
 
 “ Then of vital heat bereft, she disengages herself 
 from the whole body by degrees, and reclines her 
 drooping neck and head, captivated by death.” 
 
 Locke says, “ The time that man is in this wo rid, 
 affixed to this earth, is his being sown, and not when, 
 being dead, he is put in the grave ; as is evident from 
 St. Paul’s own words : ‘ For dead things are not sown; 
 seeds are sown, being alive, and die not till after they 
 are sown.’ ” 
 
 If the spiritual body be in the human form, it 
 follows as a consequence that when it arrives in its own 
 world it must possess all the organs and parts which 
 the natural body possesses, and that it performs 
 functions corresponding to those which the natural body 
 performs. Our outward bodies are fitted to act in and 
 to be acted upon, by the substances of the natural 
 world; and our interior bodies are correspondingly 
 fitted to act in and to be acted upon by the substances 
 of the spiritual world. Even here, as we have seen, 
 it is the spiritual body which really performs every 
 function; for behind the material eye there is a 
 spiritual eye, which does all the seeing; and behind 
 the ear there is a spiritual ear, which does all the 
 hearing; and the same is true of all the other human 
 senses and functions. So long as they are covered 
 with the material organs, they are capable of perceiv- 
 
 K 
 
130 
 
 ANALOGY AND REVELATION. 
 
 ing material things, of acting upon them, and of being 
 acted upon by them; but when the material organs 
 are removed, these interior senses become capable of 
 perceiving and acting upon things which are uncovered 
 like themselves—upon spiritual things, which are the 
 objective existence of the spirit-world. 
 
 It will not, then, if this be a fact by analogy and 
 revelation, strike the mind as an improbability, that 
 there are, but rather as a necessity that there must be, 
 in the great spirit-world, an infinite variety of outward 
 objects for the eye to rest upon, and for the gratifica¬ 
 tion, education, and use of the other senses of the 
 spiritual body ; and there must be, therefore, such 
 objects as flowers, trees, gardens, houses, and temples, 
 uses and employments similar, in many respects, in 
 their appearance, to the objects of the senses here. 
 
 Let each one settle first, firmly in his own mind, 
 before he comes to a conclusion on the subject of these 
 existences, whether or not he does surely believe that 
 the spirit of man exists at all after it leaves the body. 
 If he come to the conclusion, inborn within himself, 
 that it does exist, let him next decide for himself 
 whether the immortal spirit is to be so infinitely below 
 even the body it has left, as to come into the state of 
 its everlasting existence, deaf, dumb, blind, and in¬ 
 sensible to touch, without sensational feeling ; and if 
 it be possible that that should be the kind of immor¬ 
 tality to which we are hastening—an eternity of im¬ 
 prisonment within the single bounds of our conscious- 
 
NO VAST BLANK EMPTINESS. 
 
 131 
 
 ness, for ever dark and lone, shut up from all outward 
 objects, and from all intercourse and communion with 
 our fellow-men—Who would care to live or seek for 
 such an immortality as that ? 
 
 But if such view be not the true one, then the 
 spirit in that great happy world of causes must be 
 able to see, hear, and speak, to feel, touch, and handle. 
 What is the eye for but to see the ineffable things of 
 the Lord’s love ? What is the ear for but to hear the 
 sweet music of the heavenly spheres, where all is rhythm 
 and divinest harmony ? What is speech for but to 
 utter prayers and thanksgivings to the Divine Creator 
 and Sustainer of our lives, and give us the joys of holy 
 intercourse with Him and with His angelic beings ? 
 
 It is impossible, therefore, to conceive that a world 
 in which God’s creatures are to remain in their final 
 state, should be one vast blank emptiness; and here 
 again we think not for ourselves, nor need we be wise 
 in our own conceit, for every reference that is made 
 in the sacred writings of the Word to heaven and 
 the spiritual world, speaks of them, and shows them, 
 as being a state of existence which is filled with ex¬ 
 ternal objects ; and some of the revelations in regard to 
 the spirit-life describe scenes the most magnificent 
 and grand. There the multitude of the things spoken 
 of are described in the books of the ancient prophets, 
 not less than in the revelations of the Gospels and 
 the other books of the new dispensation:—“Prove 
 me now herewith, if I will not open you the windows 
 
 k 2 
 
132 
 
 THE APOCALYPSE. 
 
 of heaven and pour you out a blessing that there 
 be not room to receive it.” 
 
 St. John, in the Apocalypse, says, “After this I 
 looked, and behold a door was opened in heaven.” 
 And he tells us of the things which he heard and 
 saw there in language the most high and holy:— 
 
 “ And the first voice which I heard, was as it were 
 of a trumpet talking with me ; which said, Come up 
 hither, and I will show thee things which must be 
 hereafter: and immediately I was in the spirit, and 
 behold a throne was set in heaven, and one sat on 
 the throne; and he that sat, was to look upon like 
 a jasper and a sardine stone, and there was a rain¬ 
 bow round about the throne, in sight like unto an 
 emerald ; and round about the throne were four-and- 
 twenty seats, and upon the seats I saw four-and- 
 twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and 
 they had on their heads crowns of gold ; and out of 
 the throne proceeded lightnings, and thunderings, and 
 voices ; and there were seven lamps of fire burning be¬ 
 fore the throne, which are the seven spirits of God; 
 and before the throne there was a sea of glass, like 
 unto crystal, and in the midst of the throne, and round 
 about the throne, there were four beasts, full of eyes, 
 before and behind.” 
 
 And again, “ And when he had taken the book, the 
 four beasts and four-and-twenty elders fell down before 
 the Lamb, having every one of them harps and golden 
 vials, full of odours, which are the prayers of the 
 
FURTHER INSTANCES. 
 
 133 
 
 saints.” “And I beheld, and I heard the voice of 
 many angels round about the throne, and the beasts 
 and the elders, and the number of them was ten 
 thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of 
 thousands.” 
 
 “ And one of the elders answered, saying unto 
 me, What are these which are arrayed in white 
 robes ? and whence came they ? And I said unto him, 
 Sir, thou knowest; and he said to me, These are they 
 which came out of great tribulation, and have washed 
 their robes, and made them white in the blood of the 
 Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of G-od, 
 and serve Him day and night in His temple, and He 
 that sitteth on the throne shall dwell among them.” 
 
 Again, “ Blessed is he that watchetli and keepeth 
 his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his 
 shame.” “ And he carried me away in the spirit, to 
 a great and high mountain, and showed me that 
 great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of 
 heaven from God.” And there were walls round the 
 city, “ great and high,” and “ twelve gates,” and 
 “ names written thereon “ and the city lieth four¬ 
 square “ and the building of the wall was of jasper, 
 and the city was pure gold, like unto clear glass, and 
 the foundations of the wall were garnished with all 
 manner of precious stones.” “ On either side of the 
 river was there the tree of life, which bare twelve 
 manner of fruits, and yielded her fruit every month, 
 and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
 nations.” 
 
134 
 
 ARE THESE THINGS TRUE ? 
 
 Now, dare any man, in reading these and many 
 similar passages “ take away from the words of the 
 book of this prophecy” ? “I Jesus have sent mine 
 angel, to testify unto you these things in the Churches.” 
 Dare we to reject this testimony, and place ourselves 
 under the teachings of some cold philosophy, which 
 will say to us that these visions are not to be believed, 
 because they are not to be accounted for by its obser¬ 
 vation of natural laws ; and because natural laws, by no 
 continuous process, can be sublimated so as to reach 
 and contain the things seen by John P Dare any one 
 say deliberately to himself, that John did not see and 
 hear everything exactly as he describes it in this holy 
 book, and that the words which he has used are not 
 the only words which could possibly have been used in 
 describing them ?—for not only the things he saw, but 
 the words he uses, are of God, and the language, in 
 every letter, was given to him by the fullest, and most 
 entirely divine, inspiration. 
 
 The whole vision, then, is the record, faithful and 
 true, of the things actually heard and seen by the 
 Apostle, and similar are the accounts given of what 
 they saw by the prophets of the Old Testament. 
 Whenever their eyes and ears were opened, they saw 
 and heard things which were as positively real as— 
 and more so than—the things of this world ; and these 
 are spoken of in the Word as “ visions ” in the true 
 sense of that word, not in the sense which modern 
 sceptical philosophy has given to it 3 whereby that word 
 
ROOM FOR SPIRIT-LIFE. 
 
 135 
 
 has become a correlative for delusions, and whereby 
 any person who claims to be able to see a little below 
 the surface of things is called “ a visionary.” 
 
 There are some who think to get out of the difficulty 
 by saying that these visions are only “ metaphorical 
 but there is no getting away from the necessity of say¬ 
 ing, point-blank, whether or not they are the very 
 truest descriptions of things actually seen and heard. 
 If yea, then admit them ; if nay, say plainly, if you 
 dare, that you do not believe them. Has it not occur¬ 
 red to you to think that these holy visions are actually 
 true, in the only words in which they can be conveyed, 
 in natural language, as a body for them; that what is 
 spiritual clothes itself in what is natural, as with a 
 garment; and that they have a spirit which animates 
 their body, and is contained within it, which is what 
 you dimly point at when you speak of their being 
 “ metaphorical ” ? These holy words are, therefore, 
 the translation, into language, of spirit-life, and no 
 wonder that they should not be re-translatable by 
 scepticism. 
 
 But here, with these holy visions, there is room for 
 spirit-life. Here are spread out the plains of heaven, 
 to be arrived at by “ little children,” when they will be 
 guided by the Spirit. Here are divine meanings to be 
 sought out and found. Here is a revelation that shall 
 be yet revealed. Here is a spirit-world full of objects 
 of refulgent beauty, each having its holy meaning and 
 its divine consistence, and forming a rhythm amongst 
 
136 
 
 IMMORTALITT. 
 
 the things of God. Is it not Letter, is it not higher, 
 is it not holier to have such a hope and trust as this, and 
 such a belief in His Holy Word, than to think, with 
 sceptics, of the existence of a shapeless world and a gas¬ 
 eous spirit without form, without sensations, and being 
 nothing but alive ? 
 
 I wish to quote here a few sentences from “ The 
 Foregleams of Immortality,” one of the best books on 
 this subject. They put in the clearest light and the 
 most beautiful language, what so many of us have 
 felt, but lacked the words to express. 
 
 “ Immortality under the new dispensation is not 
 merely announced, but ‘ brought to light.’ It is not 
 merely taught, but exhibited to the eye. We have 
 sometimes been told that the resurrection of Christ, 
 understood merely as the resumption of His crucified 
 body, proves a future life, and that this was its 
 principal object. ‘ We have a right to infer’ (this is 
 the argument) ‘ that a man may live again after death, 
 since God may interpose and raise him up. He did so 
 in the case of Christ, which shows that he may do so 
 in the case of all his followers, though not on the third 
 day, yet at the end of time, since with him one day is 
 as a thousand years.’ But how much deeper and 
 broader is the significance of this great fact! Im¬ 
 mortality is not made presumptive, as a conclusion 
 hanging on the last link of a syllogism, but its giant 
 glories are disclosed. These men stood up and looked 
 upon them, not undazzled by the disclosure. Their 
 
FALLACIES. 
 
 137 
 
 inner sight was touched and opened, and they 
 saw the risen Christ, not on the natural side only, 
 but the spiritual side also, and they walked in hallowed 
 light and breathed in hallowed air. True, the same 
 thing had been vouchsafed from the beginning of the 
 world, and under all dispensations. But never, till the 
 excarnation of Christ had prepared the way, was a 
 supersensual world revealed in such clear shining to 
 the inward perceptions of men. He was more 
 present with his infant Church after His death and 
 ascension than before, and they were ‘ witnesses/ not 
 merely of the resuscitation of a dead body, but of 
 eternal things unveiled. And the vision closed, and 
 the glories waned, because too much for mortals, in 
 their normal condition, to bear; and they turned from 
 them only as Herschel tells us he took his eye from the 
 telescope, when Sirius came on like the dawn of the 
 morning, and he was obliged to turn away from the 
 beautiful sight. 
 
 “ The bat-like fallacies of our godless metaphysics 
 vanish before the unfolding of our present theme. 
 Everything above the place of material existence, we 
 have been taught to believe, is phantasmic and shadowy, 
 and man at death ceases to be a man, and becomes a 
 ‘ monad,’ or at best only a ghost. How was it with 
 the great Examplar of immortalized human nature ? 
 He took His three favourite disciples behind the walls 
 of sense, and caught them up a moment within the 
 sphere where he lived with the prophets of old; and 
 
138 
 
 THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 
 
 they said, ‘ Let us pitch our tents and dwell here.’ 
 Was that shadowy ? After the natural body had been 
 excluded, He broke upon Saul in a light out of the 
 heavenly state, and smote him blind to the earth 
 beneath the blaze. Was that shadowy ? The prophet 
 of Patmos, by introversion among the eternal verities, 
 crossed the line which separates the objective scenery 
 of matter and spirit, and saw ‘ Him that was dead and 
 is alive again,’ and fell as beneath the stroke of sun¬ 
 beams. Was that shadowy ? All the revealings of 
 Christ’s resurrection, before and after, show that the 
 inward man is the real one, while the outward is the 
 symbol; that is the substance, while this is the 
 shadow. 
 
 “ The analogy between the resurrection of Christ 
 and that of his people is exact and complete. With 
 him there was no * intermediate state’ of disembodied 
 and ghostly existence, but a continuous putting off the 
 natural body and putting on the Divine, and each was 
 coincident with each other. This, and not the reani¬ 
 mation of the corpse in the tomb, was the resurrection 
 of the Lord Jesus, which is made the great fact of the 
 Gospel; corresponding precisely with that excarnation 
 of man which abolishes his relations to material things, 
 and makes him eternally the denizen of a spiritual 
 world. Buried in the likeness of His death, we rise in 
 the likeness of his emergence out of it, and breathe 
 our farewells over the grave. Death is not the mere 
 expiration of the last breath, but the waning and final 
 
ALLEGORICAL ALLUSIONS. 
 
 139 
 
 extinction of the natural functions ; sometimes sudden 
 and violent, but always progressive if orderly ; and 
 resurrection is the ascension out of them of the sub¬ 
 stantial and immortal man. So it was with the Divine 
 Examplar, and his is the spendid type of what all 
 resurrection is.” 
 
 “ No wonder the Bible is a hard book to those who 
 refuse to receive it literally as well as spiritually—to 
 those who have heard so much of the peculiarities of 
 ‘ eastern phraseology,’ of ‘ allegorical allusions,’ of 
 ‘ optical delusions,’ and who are so in the habit of 
 bringing everything down to the test of logic, and the 
 crucible of their own individual understanding, that 
 they lose at last even the memory of childhood’s faith, 
 and its clear though infantile comprehension of the 
 Omnipotent Spirit working by His legions of angels. 
 Many such persons would be distressed to have it said 
 that they disbelieved revealed religion, and yet they do 
 systematically shut out from recognition those very 
 revelations of God to man which make hope most 
 earnest, and faith most strong, and the glory of a 
 blessed hereafter most absolutely apparent. 
 
 “ Is it humble thus to attempt to measure the infi¬ 
 nite mind by the guage of the human understanding, 
 and to resist those instincts of the supernatural, those 
 spiritual promptings which are the heritage even of 
 the rudest savages, but which cold, polished material¬ 
 ism takes upon itself to stifle?” 
 
 Let us see what has been taught us of God himself, 
 
140 
 
 VISIONS. 
 
 through his prophets and apostles, as to visions, and 
 seers, and gifts of prophecy. 
 
 There is the vision or absolute sight of the trans¬ 
 figuration of our blessed Lord on the Mount to His 
 apostles, Peter, Janies, and John, and the vision of 
 Peter and Cornelius, by which the great opening of the 
 Gospel to the Gentile world was made known to be 
 God’s will—“ He saw in a vision, evidently about the 
 ninth hour of the day, an angel of God coming to 
 him and saying unto him, ‘ Cornelius—and the 
 rapture of Paul into the third heaven, where he re¬ 
 ceived such a knowledge of spiritual things as were 
 beyond his power even to reveal —“ I knew a man 
 in Christ, whether in the body or out of the body I 
 cannot tell: God knowetli: such an one caught up to 
 the third heaven ; I knew such a man, how that he 
 was caught up into Paradise, and heard unspeakable 
 words which it is not lawful for a man to utter.” 
 
 The vision of the angels who appeared to the shep¬ 
 herds on the eve of the Nativity. 
 
 The vision of Paul of the great light and the hearing 
 of the voice. 
 
 The vision of Stephen the martyr, who beheld 
 “ the heavens open, and the Saviour standing on the 
 right hand of God.” 
 
 The angel who appeared to Peter in prison when 
 he was sleeping, bound between two soldiers, and the 
 keepers were at their posts before the door, watch¬ 
 ing the prisoners, yet relieved Peter from his chains, and 
 
THE DIVINE AFFLATUS. 
 
 141 
 
 lie rose and passed through the several doors of the 
 prison, and followed his spiritual conductor “ through 
 one street.” 
 
 In the Old Testament we see recorded the two dis¬ 
 tinct ways in which God made himself known to 
 man : the one by a moving impulse, or divine affla¬ 
 tus, or breathing from within, and by which means 
 the books of the prophets were written in their moments 
 of inspiration; the other, by opening the interior 
 of the mind, and thus presenting a vision of revela¬ 
 tion from without. Thus, it is said, “ Balaam the 
 son of Beor hath said, and the man whose eyes are 
 open hath said; he hath said, which heard the words 
 of God, which saw the vision of the Almighty, falling 
 into a trance but having his eyes open.” Again: 
 “ Now a thing was secretly brought to me, and mine 
 ear received a little thereof. In thoughts from the 
 visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth on man ; 
 then a spirit passed before my face, and the hair of 
 my flesh stood up. It stood still, but I could not 
 discern the form thereof. An image was before mine 
 eyes. There was silence, and I heard a voice.” 
 Again: “ Beforetime in Israel, when a man went to 
 inquire of God, thus he spake, Come and let us go 
 to the seer; for he that is now called a prophet was 
 beforetime called a seer.” 
 
 We are told that “ the word of the Lord came unto 
 Abram in a vision.” 
 
 The young man, the servant of the prophet Elisha, 
 
142 
 
 THE WORD OF THE LORD. 
 
 wlio, having expressed his fears on account of the mul¬ 
 titude of the Assyrian army which had invested the 
 city in which the prophet resided, had his eyes opened, 
 as Elisha prayed—“ Lord, I pray thee open his eyes, 
 that he may see. And the Lord opened the young 
 man’s eyes, and he saw, and behold the mountain was 
 full of horses and chariots of fire round about Elisha.” 
 
 “ And I Daniel alone saw the vision ; for the men 
 that were with me saw not the vision, but a great 
 quaking fell upon them, so that they ran to hide 
 themselves.” 
 
 Samuel heard a voice saying, “ Samuel, Samuel,” 
 but he saw no man. 
 
 It is said also that “ where no vision is the people 
 perish and we find that from the call of Abraham, 
 down through Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph, after that 
 through Moses, Aaron, and Joshua, and lastly through 
 Samuel, Elijah, Elisha, and all the subsequent prophets, 
 there was kept up a succession of seers or I’evelators, 
 who possessed the gift of open vision into the spirit- 
 world, and who therefore could receive communications 
 from the inhabitants of that world, and make them 
 known to those of this world. The line of succession 
 was indeed interrupted, and sometimes for a consider¬ 
 able period ; but the interruption was regarded as a 
 source of regret, and as a circumstance to be deplored. 
 In the days of the Judges, there seems to have been a 
 time of its suspension, for it is said, “ The word of the 
 Lord was precious in those days—there was no open 
 vision.” 
 
EZEKIEL. 
 
 143 
 
 Thus vision is fully proved to us to be seeing, and 
 not what we at this day call visionary. 
 
 The prophets tell us what things they saw. And 
 Ezekiel, the prophet and seer, says, “ I beheld, and lo, 
 a likeness as the appearance of fire, from the appear¬ 
 ance of his loins, even downward, fire, and from 
 his loins even upward as the appearance of bright¬ 
 ness, as the colour of amber. And he put forth the 
 form of a hand, and took me by a lock of mine head ; 
 and the Spirit lifted me up between the earth and the 
 heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusa¬ 
 lem, to the door of the inner gate that looketh towards 
 the north.” “ And he brought me to the door of the 
 court: and when I looked, behold a hole in the wall.” 
 And “ behold a door.” “ So I went in and saw, and 
 behold every form of creeping things.” 
 
 Again : “ In the visions of God brought he me into 
 the land of Israel, and set me upon a very high 
 mountain, by which was as the frame of a city in the 
 south; and he brought me thither, and behold there 
 was a man whose appearance was like the appearance 
 of brass, with a line of flax in his hand, and a 
 measuring reed, and he stood in the gate.” Again: 
 “ And there were narrow windows to the little 
 chambers, and to their posts within the gate round 
 about.” “ And upon each post were palm-trees.” Again: 
 “ And by the river, upon the bank thereof, on this side 
 and on that side, shall grow all trees for meat, whose 
 leaf shall not fade, neither shall the leaf thereof be 
 
144 
 
 DANIEL. 
 
 consumed—it shall bring forth new fruit according to 
 his months, because their waters they issued out of the 
 sanctuary, and the fruit thereof shall be for meat, and 
 the leaf thereof for medicine.” 
 
 Daniel, the prophet and seer, tells us, “ I beheld 
 till the thrones were cast down, and the Ancient of 
 Days did sit, whose garment was white as snow, and 
 the hair of his head like the pure wool. His throne 
 was like the fiery flame, and his wheels as burning 
 fire; a fiery stream issued and came forth from before 
 him. Thousand thousands ministered unto him, and 
 ten thousand times ten thousand stood before him. 
 The judgment was set, and the books were opened.” 
 “ I saw in the night visions, aud behold one like the 
 Son of Man came with the clouds of heaven, and came 
 to the Ancient of Days, and they brought him near 
 before Him. And there was given him dominion and 
 glory, and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and 
 languages should serve him. His dominion is an ever¬ 
 lasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his 
 kingdom that which shall not be destroyed.” 
 
 These holiest visions, which of Christ’s children does 
 not fully acknowledge ? 
 
 And not less wonderful are the prophecies. See the 
 prophecy of Isaiah, in which he prophesies the destruc¬ 
 tion of Babylon by Cyrus, and of which Josephus tells 
 us, that the prophet Daniel showed to Cyrus the words 
 of the prophecy in which he is mentioned by name, and 
 his victorious occupation of Babylon predicted a 
 
ZECHARIAH. 
 
 145 
 
 hundred years before he was born. “ Thus saith the 
 Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I 
 have holden to subdue nations before him ; and will 
 loose the loins of kings to open before him the two¬ 
 leaved gates. For Jacob my servant’s sake, and Israel 
 mine elect, I have even called thee by thy name. I 
 have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known 
 me.” 
 
 The prophet and seer, Zechariah, says, “ I turned 
 and lifted up mine eyes, and looked, and behold there 
 came four chariots out from between two mountains, 
 and the mountains were mountains of brass. In the 
 first chariot were red horses, and in the second chariot 
 black horses, and in the third chariot white horses, 
 and in the fourth chariot grisled and bay horses.” 
 
 Now, if it be true that the seers and prophets did 
 speak truly to us of their visions, they must have seen 
 in the spirit-world the things which they describe, not 
 only in metaphor, but to them in very fact. Whatever was 
 the divine reason and meaning and spirit of the things, 
 the things were there, and they were seen ; and if this 
 be acknowledged as to even but one of the things which 
 were seen — if it be acknowledged that there is anything 
 in the spirit-world, — then there must of necessity be 
 everything. If it be possible for one thing to be formed 
 there, the elements which go to the formation of it must 
 be all-sufficient for the formation of an infinity of 
 things; and in this world we may see that wherever 
 life is possible it exists, either in animal, vegetable, or 
 
 L 
 
146 
 
 THE EID03 AND THE EIDOLON. 
 
 lower forms. Therefore, whether the one object or 
 thing be the parts which when united are the human 
 form, or raiment, a throne, an altar, a temple, a house, 
 a mansion, a flower, a tree, a golden candlestick, or 
 the harp of a seraph, there must be the creative power 
 and love which should form also every other thing. 
 
 But, moreover, we are told that “the invisible things 
 of God are clearly seen by the things which are made,” 
 signifying to us that the splendours of the spirit-world, 
 though in their fulness unimaginable, are, nevertheless, 
 clearly pictured in those of the earth. Thus the spirit- 
 world is the permanent eidos of creation ; earth is its 
 dim eidolon. The spirit-world is the universe of the 
 essences of things in their most real state ; the material 
 world is but the theatre of their presentation to the 
 extent and in the variety that it is desirable or neces¬ 
 sary for man to know them, for doubtless there are 
 infinities of spiritual things which are never ultimated 
 into material effigies in this lower world of ours. And 
 yet whatever we do see that is excellent and lovely, 
 we may be sure, is a counterpart of something in every 
 sense celestial. 
 
 “ The flowers of the spring yearly delight us by their 
 return, because of their prototypes in the spirit-world 
 which are immortal, although their beautiful emblems 
 here, like ourselves, come but to flee away, and, tried 
 by the sensational standard of the real, seem to be 
 gone and lost for ever; but the real rose can never 
 perish; it abides always where it always was, and 
 there it will subsist for ever; and when we cast off our 
 
EMERSON. 
 
 147 
 
 own earthliness we shall find it there in all its death¬ 
 less beauty, along with the other loved and vanished. 
 All that is beautiful and precious is reserved for us, if 
 only we will go and take possession. There, too, we 
 shall behold the spiritual sea and islands, and rivers, 
 and sun, and stars, and trees, just as John, the disciple 
 whom Jesus loved, beheld them when God opened his 
 eyes that he might tell us of them. “ For the glory of 
 God doth lighten it, and the Lamb is the light 
 thereof.” 
 
 Emerson beautifully says on this all-absorbing sub¬ 
 ject :—“ The earth had fed its mankind through five or 
 six millenniums, and they had sciences, religions, 
 philosophies, and yet had failed to see the corres¬ 
 pondences of meaning between every part and every 
 other part. And down to this hour, literature has no 
 book in which the symbolism of things is scientifically 
 opened. One would say that as soon as men had the 
 first hint that every sensible object, animal—rock, river, 
 air, nay space and time—subsists not for itself, nor 
 finally to a material end, but as a picture-language, to 
 tell another story of beings and duties, other science 
 would be put by, and a science of such great presage 
 would absorb all faculties; that each man would 
 ask of all objects what they mean. Why does the 
 horizon hold me fast with my joy and grief in 
 this centre ? Why hear I the same sense from 
 countless differing voices, and read one never-quite- 
 expressed fact in endless picture-language? Yet 
 
 l 2 
 
148 
 
 THE TEEMTNG SPIEIT-WOKLH. 
 
 ■whether it be that these things will not be intellectually 
 learned, or that many centuries must elaborate and 
 compose so rare and opulent a soul, there is no comet, 
 rock stratum, fossil, fish, quadruped, spider, or fungus, 
 that for itself does not interest more scholars and 
 classifiers, than the meaning and great upshot of the 
 frame of things.” 
 
 By this knowledge only can be seen the centrality of 
 man, and the connection that subsists throughout all 
 things, that the human body is strictly universal, or 
 an instrument through which the soul feeds and is fed 
 by all the things that God has made; and so only may 
 it be that “ the wiser a man is, the more will he be a 
 worshipper of the Deity.” 
 
 The existence being once admitted of the teeming 
 spirit-world about us, so full of the most highly or¬ 
 ganized objects of the spiritual senses—the real, most 
 real basis of the things of this world—so full of spirit- 
 beings, too, of the highest perceptions to enable them 
 to act upon these objects, and to be acted on by them, 
 where is the wonder that it should in all times have 
 been granted that the spiritual sight of some should be 
 opened to discern some portion of them ? Nay, would 
 not the wonder be that such a spirit-world should not 
 have been sometimes brought within the visible ken of 
 man ? and is it not now the wonder that so few should 
 attempt to realize the command and the intention of 
 the new dispensation, which shows us the way by 
 which this spiritual sight may be opened, and the 
 divine gifts of God to man be received ? 
 
ETERNITY ROUND US. 
 
 149 
 
 If all our thoughts are but “ communion,” or the 
 influx by means of spirits and angels from this very 
 spirit-world, where is the wonder that there should be 
 a way by which this working upon our spirit-body 
 should be brought as a fact before us, if it were only 
 to bring us out of the bottomless pit of scepticism 
 and practical infidelity, to rescue us from the philoso¬ 
 phy of the day, and to give a new starting-point for 
 human knowledges ? 
 
 “ Immensity is before us,—eternity round us ; but 
 philosophy can measure neither. And she should be 
 satisfied, for she has reached that bound beyond which 
 by herself she cannot pass. She is standing on the 
 limits of her knowledge. Overwhelmed by the tremen¬ 
 dous grandeur of the infinite, she should gladly turn 
 from the majestic voices of the universe, which every¬ 
 where proclaim a Great First Cause, to the simple 
 story of Revelation, which will tell her of a loving 
 father. But she will then change her name. She will 
 no longer be mere knowledge, nor deal with the dry 
 bones of human science. God will breathe into the 
 rigid outlines of infinite truth the living essence 
 of infinite love, and philosophy will then be called 
 religion!” 
 
 But there is still another view of the great spirit- 
 world, and on which we have hitherto hardly touched. 
 We know that our abiding here is not for long, whilst 
 our souls tell us that we are made for immortality, 
 and to be the citizens of a perpetual city. We should 
 
150 
 
 HOME. 
 
 feel, then, that we are but strangers here, for a little 
 time, and that our loves and affections are drawing us 
 ever to fill up our place in the better land, to renew 
 our communion with those who have gone before. 
 This is the true home view of this great question, and 
 it is treated of in the “ Foregleams of Immortality ” in 
 such strain as I cannot help bringing before us. 
 
 “ Our home is always where our affections are. We 
 sigh and wander, we vibrate to and fro, till we rest 
 in that special centre where our deepest loves are gar¬ 
 nered up. Then the heart fills and brims over with its 
 own happiness, and spreads sweetness and fertility 
 around it. Very often when the eyes are closing in 
 death, and this world is shutting off the light from the 
 departing soul, the last wish which is made audible is 
 ‘ to go home.’ The words break out sometimes through 
 the cloud of delirium ; but it is the soul’s deepest and 
 most central want, groping after its object, haply soon 
 to find it as the clogs of earth clear away, and she 
 springs up on the line of swift affection, as the bee 
 with unerring precision shoots through the dusk of 
 evening to her cell. 
 
 “ How admirable are the arrangements of Providence, 
 by which he gradually removes the home-centre from 
 this world to the other, and so draws our affections 
 towards the heavenly abodes! We start in life an un¬ 
 broken company ; brothers and sisters, friends and 
 lovers, neighbours and comrades, are with us; there is 
 circle within circle, and each one of us is at the charmed 
 
HOME. 
 
 151 
 
 centre where the heart’s affections are aglow, and 
 whence they radiate outward upon society. Youth is 
 exuberant with joy and hope, the earth looks fair, for 
 it sparkles with May-dews wet, and no shadow hath 
 fallen upon it. We are all here, and we could live 
 here for ever. The home-centre is on the hither side 
 of the river, and why should we strain our eyes to look 
 beyond ? But this state of things does not contiuue 
 long. Our circle grows less and less. It is broken 
 and broken, and then closed up again; but every 
 break and close make it narrower and smaller. Per¬ 
 haps before the sun is at his meridian the majority are 
 on the other side, the circle there is as large as the 
 one here, and we are drawn contrariwise and vibrate 
 between the two. A little longer, and we have almost 
 all crossed over ; the balance settles down on the spirit¬ 
 ual side, aud the home-centre is removed to the upper 
 sphere. At length you see nothing but an aged 
 pilgrim standing alone on the river’s brink, and look¬ 
 ing earnestly towards the country on the other side. 
 In the morning, that large and goodly company re¬ 
 joicing together with music and wine ; in the evening, 
 dwindled down to that solitary old man, the last of his 
 family and the last of his generation, waiting to go 
 home, and filled with pensive memories of the Long 
 Ago! 
 
 “ A question, which the bereaved heart has sometimes 
 revolved painfully, receives now a full and satisfactory 
 solution: ‘ Shall we know our friends after death ?’ 
 
152 DOCTRINE OF FRIENDLY RECOGNITION. 
 
 How do we know them here ? We know them since 
 their peculiar qualities of mind and affection are 
 imaged in the features, and expressed and toned in the 
 living form, made effusive of the soul within. But all 
 this is more completely true of the spiritual man, for 
 spiritual body is more quickly and perfectly the expo¬ 
 nent of the soul, and the very effigy of its affection; 
 and hence it will result that we shall know those we 
 have loved even better than we knew them here. Bor 
 there, when thought meets thought, and heart opens to 
 heart, it will be the fond gaze of the old, familiar faces ; 
 faces that have not changed except to be made more 
 familiar, since more than ever they are the living trans¬ 
 parencies through which we look into the well-springs 
 of hearts that have beat in unison with our own. The 
 doctrine of friendly recognition is once formally stated 
 in the Hew Testament, and always implied. It need¬ 
 ed no other statement than the doctrine of the resur¬ 
 rection, from which it comes as a necessary corollary, 
 while it chimes in with the prophetic yearnings of 
 human hearts. The resurrection body is not manufac¬ 
 tured and put on afterwards, but it is the heart’s most 
 cherished love growing into its most perfect form and 
 likeness, putting on robes bright with the colours of 
 the spirit, and wavy with its treblements, and looking 
 unclouded from its own features and aspect. Recog¬ 
 nizing our friends ! We hardly do as much now; for 
 if we journey too far from each other, we find when we 
 meet again that time has been so busy with our clay 
 
DEATH. 
 
 53 
 
 tenement, and has so beaten and battered it, that we 
 look long, and must trace the old signs and lineaments, 
 as Old Mortality traced the inscriptions on the tombs. 
 Death does not obliterate the handwriting, but removes 
 the moss and the rubbish that had gathered over it, 
 and the resurrection brings it out more boldly than 
 alto-reliefs. Death removes the mask of time and age, 
 that the undecaying affections may take on the face and 
 features that belong to them in the freshness of their 
 immortal prime. Yea, further, it results, if we choose 
 to follow out the deduction, that we shall not only 
 recognize the friends we have seen and lcved, but 
 friends we never saw before, though they have long 
 been near us; for souls congenerous with each other 
 will meet as if they had been kith and kin from the 
 beginning,—just as here there are minds which on their 
 first meeting seem each the complement of the other, 
 and they will almost have it that they knew each other 
 in some pre-existent world.” 
 
154 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 ON GIFTS. 
 
 “ Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits, if they be of 
 God.” 
 
 Thus far my object bas been to lead the reader 
 through the train of ideas which has led us to believe 
 in the spirit-agency by which the drawings of flowers 
 and houses and temples, and their descriptions, have 
 been given ns; and we may hope that the belief has 
 some consistence in it, and is not worse at all events 
 than a contrary belief, which would seem to lead us 
 nowhere, and would in no way furnish any explana¬ 
 tion whatever of the actual phenomena. There would 
 seem also to be warrant for those who have the faith 
 to believe in the Holy Word, for what we have set 
 down, and there would seem to have been, and yet to 
 be, many minds, and those amongst the highest which 
 God has endowed in the world’s history, who have had 
 a belief with which these phenomena are entirely ana¬ 
 logous. And after all, there are the phenomena them¬ 
 selves—how else are they to be explained consistently 
 with their occurrence, and with the subject-matter of 
 them ? 
 
FLOWERS IN THE SPIRIT-WORLD. 
 
 155 
 
 Is it now so impossible to conceive that wbat bas 
 been written and drawn is not what is assumed— 
 namely, that these are representations of flowers and 
 houses in the spirit-world, as nearly as it was possible 
 they could be portrayed through the hand of the person 
 engaged, and that such portrayment is given to us 
 through our minds, by influx from spirit-beings with 
 whom all of us are associated, and through whom it is 
 possible for all to be acted upon in some similar way, 
 under the one only condition of being willing to re¬ 
 ceive such influx ? 
 
 Why or how else should the flowers and houses 
 have been drawn ? And of these we might otherwise 
 say, “ Why hast thou formed them thus ?” What is 
 their meaning, what their symbolism, if it be not what 
 we say ? Art thou dumb when this question is asked ? 
 or dost thou mutter that it is new, and that there are 
 no miracles or gifts possible at this day ? Thou hast 
 well-nigh said the truth, but it is we ourselves who 
 have created this to us seeming impossibility. It was 
 not so with our Lord and his Apostles, who went 
 about doing miracles and healing amongst the people, 
 so that as many as even touched the hem of His gar¬ 
 ment were made whole every one. And He not only 
 did this Himself, and His Apostles and disciples also, 
 but He commanded all His followers to do the like, 
 and He promised them “ even greater things than 
 these,” and such their power was to be the very evi¬ 
 dence of their faith and of their following of Him. 
 
156 
 
 THE FISHERMEN. 
 
 “ The channel of this was no learned science, but a 
 simple command in His name who has all power in 
 heaven and on earth. But where is the lineal priest¬ 
 hood of this great restoration ? Where are the claim¬ 
 ants for this substantial apostolical successorship ? 
 Where are the layers on of hands, who give man to 
 himself by casting out his devils, and increase the 
 prime wealth of the earth, as the sign and seal of the 
 advent of the kingdom of heaven ? Where is the 
 clergy to whom sickness makes its last appeal for 
 health, when doctors have pronounced the death- 
 words ? We find them among the fishermen of the 
 first century, but not among the prelates of the nine¬ 
 teenth—in mean-clad Peter and Paul, James and John, 
 but not under the lawn of the Eight Eeverend Bench. 
 Our pontiffs say that the age of miracles is past, but 
 no Hew Testament ever told them so. Christianity, 
 as we read it, was the institution of miracle in the 
 order of nature, and if the age of miracles be gone, 
 it is because the age of Christianity is gone. The 
 age of mathematics would be past if no man culti¬ 
 vated them. As in the sciences, which are the kings 
 of these late days, let the apostolic mode be fairly 
 experimented. Let the priesthood, to whom it belongs, 
 turn out into the inclemencies of society, and try 
 their adjurations against the storm of physical evil 
 that exasperates the nations to their core. Let them 
 put on the proofs of the apostolic power, and peril all 
 in the great attempt. Let the weak excuse of the age 
 
A NEW CREED. 
 
 157 
 
 of virtue being past, be exchanged for a godly resolve 
 to bring it back again; and if they fail, it will be 
 because they are not Christian, or else because Chris¬ 
 tianity cannot bide its own proofs.” 
 
 It would be unjust, however, not to recognize and 
 to thank God for the buddings which are showing 
 themselves at this day of a higher, and therefore a 
 more practical working of Christianity amongst the 
 people, and of the efforts made by some of the 
 liberal of the clergy to break down the lines of sepa¬ 
 ration between sects, so that all who worship the 
 same God may do so in communion and in love one 
 with another. Some new creed compatible with 
 “ gifts,” and of but a few articles, such as our 
 blessed Saviour left for our guidance, would be the 
 first step to this reaping of the fields which are now 
 white for the harvest—for bringing together the 
 multitudes “ who are scattered abroad as sheep having 
 no shepherd.” The few words which He said contained 
 all the law and the prophets, are large enough for this 
 new and most catholic creed, and those other first 
 divine words of His after He had glorified His human 
 nature would then become possible of accomplishment: 
 —“A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love 
 one another.” Let Churchmen and Dissenters mix 
 together, and open each other’s hearts and churches, 
 and pray together for the gifts which are promised to 
 earnest prayer and faith, so that of them too it may 
 be said, “ Go thy way, thy faith hath made thee 
 
158 
 
 FAITH. 
 
 whole.” This very faith will furnish the means for 
 its own accomplishment, and I’ender that possible 
 which was impossible before. “ Eeceive thy sight: 
 thy faith hath saved thee.” 
 
 There is a great misconception as to the true 
 meaning of this word “ faith,” and, like many others 
 of the bright jewels of the Gospel, it has been allowed 
 to tarnish and to lose its brightness. Its general 
 popular acceptation has brought it down to an opera¬ 
 tion of the mind, by which it is to receive as true 
 what it cannot comprehend, and thus the greater the 
 difficulty of comprehension, the higher is the operation 
 of the faith. The Eomish Church has sublimated this 
 untrue reading of the word by actually pluming itself 
 on believing things because they are impossible. Credo 
 quia impossibile est, is that Church’s reflex of this 
 bright word. But faith is our means of obtaining 
 gifts; the gifts are always there, and waiting for us, 
 and for the faith which shall enable us to receive them, 
 and so throughout the miracles of our Lord and His 
 apostles it is always seen that this faith in gifts was 
 necessary as a preliminary means to them being given. 
 Thus, miracles were not possible where there was want 
 of faith. Peter, for want of faith, sank into the same 
 sea upon which his divine Master walked in the fulness 
 of His faith. “ 0 thou of little faith, wherefore didst 
 thou doubt ?” “ According to your faith be it unto 
 
 you.” “ Jesus, seeing their faith, said unto the sick 
 of the palsy, Son, be of good cheer. “ Daughter, be of 
 
THE MAHOMETAN STORY. 
 
 159 
 
 good cheer, thy faith hath made thee whole.” “ Be¬ 
 lieve ye that I am able to do this ? Then touched He 
 their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto 
 you.” It was through this faith that the apostles 
 received their “ gifts,” and so perfect were they, that 
 they were told to provide neither gold nor silver, and 
 no scrip for their journey, and that it should be “ more 
 tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah in the 
 day of judgment than for that city” which should not 
 receive them. “ That they should take no thought 
 how or what they should speak, for it should be given 
 them in that same hour what they should speak.” 
 “ Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he 
 will give it you. Hitherto have ye asked nothing in my 
 name.” “ Ask, and ye shall receive.” 
 
 There is an illustration of this faith written by 
 Dscheladeddin, a famous Mahometan mystic, which 
 shews that even from Mahomedans, Christians may 
 learn something. The little story so beautifully told 
 is worthy to be preserved not only in our heads, but 
 in our hearts. 
 
 “ The sick man lay on his bed of pain. * Allah !’ 
 he moaned, and his heart grew tender, and his eyes 
 moist with prayer. 
 
 “ The next morning the tempter said to him, ‘ No 
 answer comes from Allah. Call louder ; still no Allah 
 will hear thee or ease thy pain.’ 
 
 “ The sick man shuddered. His heart grew cold 
 with doubt and inquietude, when suddenly before him 
 stood Elias. 
 
160 
 
 SPIRITUAL GIFTS. 
 
 “ ‘ Child !’ said Elias, ‘ why art thou sad ? Dost 
 think thy prayers are unheard and unanswered, that 
 thy devotion is all in vain ?’ 
 
 “ And the sick man replied : ‘ Ah ! so often and with 
 such tears I have called on Allah, I call Allah, but 
 never do I hear His ‘ Here am I.’ 
 
 “ And Elias left the sick man ; but God said to 
 Elias : ‘Go to the tempted one; lift him up from his 
 despair and unbelief. 
 
 “ ‘ Tell him that his very longing is its own fulfil¬ 
 ment, that his very prayer, “ Come, Allah,” is Allah’s 
 answer, Here am I.’ 
 
 “ Tes, every good aspiration is an angel straight 
 from God. Say from the heart, ‘ 0 ! my Father,’ and 
 that very utterance is the Father’s reply, ‘ Here, my 
 child.’ ” 
 
 But for a fulness of description as to the gifts of the 
 Spirit, and the way in which they are to be obtained, and 
 the duty inculcated upon every one of obtaining them, 
 read the words of the apostle Paul, which I cannot 
 forbear to transcribe here, for if they are true, they 
 contain a light by which all spiritual phenomena may 
 be read. 
 
 “ Now concerning spiritual gifts, brethren, I would 
 not have you ignorant. Te know that ye were 
 Gentiles, carried away unto these dumb idols, even as 
 ye were led. Wherefore I give you to understand, 
 that no man speaking by the Spirit of God calleth 
 Jesus accursed, and that no man can say that Jesus is 
 
GIFTS. 
 
 161 
 
 the Lord but by the Holy Ghost. Now there are 
 diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.” “ The mani¬ 
 festation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit 
 withal. For to one is given, by the Spirit, the word 
 of wisdom ; to another, the word of knowledge, by the 
 same Spirit; to another, faith, by the same Spirit ; to 
 another, the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit; to 
 another, the working of miracles ; to another, prophecy ; 
 to another, discerning of spirits ; to another, divers kinds 
 of tongues ; to another, the interpretation of tongues.” 
 “ And God hath set some in the church, first apostles, 
 secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers, after that mi¬ 
 racles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, diver¬ 
 sities of tongues. Are all apostles ? are all prophets ? 
 are all teachers ? are all workers of miracles ? Have 
 all the gifts of healing ? Do all speak with tongues ? 
 Do all interpret ? But covet earnestly the best gifts, 
 and yet show I unto you a more excellent way.” This 
 more excellent way is what these gifts should lead to 
 — charity, the literal meaning of which word is love. 
 “ And though I have the gift of prophecy, and under¬ 
 stand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have 
 all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have 
 not charity, I am nothing.” “ Charity never faileth, 
 but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail ; 
 whether there be tongues, they shall cease; whether 
 there be knowledge, it shall vanish away.” “ Follow 
 after charity, and desire spiritual gifts, but rather that 
 ye may prophecy ; for he that speaketh in an unknown 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 DESIRE SPIRITUAL GIFTS. 
 
 tongue, speaketli not under men, but unto God, for no 
 man understandetb him. Howbeit in the spirit be 
 speaketh mysteries ; but lie tliat propbesietb, speaketb 
 unto men to edification, and exhortation, and comfort.” 
 “ I would that ye all spake with tongues, but rather 
 that ye prophesy.” “ Even so ye, forasmuch as ye 
 are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel, 
 to the edifying of the church.” “ What is it then, I 
 will pray with the spirit, and I will pray with the 
 understanding also ; I will sing with the spirit, and I 
 will sing with the understanding also.” “ In the law 
 it is written, ‘ With other tongues and other lips will 
 I speak unto this people, and yet for all that they will 
 not hear me, saith the Lord wherefore, tongues are 
 for a sign, not to them that believe, but to them that 
 believe not; but prophesying serveth not for them that 
 believe not, but for them that believe.” “ But if all 
 prophesy, and there come in one that believeth not, 
 or one unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged 
 of all, and thus are the secrets of the heart made 
 manifest, and so, falling down on his face, he will 
 worship God, and report that God is in you of a truth.” 
 “ Let the prophets speak, two or three, and let the 
 other judge.” “ For ye may all prophesy, one by one.” 
 “ And the spirits of the prophets, are subject to the 
 prophets.” “ And if any man thinks himself to be a 
 prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the 
 things which I write to you are the commandments 
 of the Lord.” “ Wherefore, brethren, covet to pro¬ 
 phesy, and forbid not to speak with tongues.” 
 
TRY THE SPIRITS. 
 
 163 
 
 “ Notwithstanding, in this rejoice not that the 
 spirits are subject to you, but rather rejoice because 
 your names are written in heaven.” Then again is 
 given us the command, “ Quench not the Spirit. De¬ 
 spise not prophesyingand also the way in which we 
 are to “ try the spirits.” “ Beloved, believe not every 
 spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God, be¬ 
 cause many false prophets are gone out into the world. 
 Hereby know ye the Spirit of God. Every spirit that 
 confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of 
 God, and evei'y spirit that confesseth not that Jesus 
 Christ is come in the flesh is not of God.” 
 
 In these passages are seen the grand difference be¬ 
 tween the old and new dispensations, between the 
 state of the world to which the old law was given, and 
 that to which the new was the revelation. To the 
 Jews it had been forbidden to hold all sorts of spiritual 
 communication, which, however it might have existed 
 in its purer form in an elder day, they had reduced to 
 mere divination, and necromancy, and witchcraft, and 
 they sold such low gifts as they had for money ; but 
 to those of the new dispensation, to whom the know¬ 
 ledge of immortality and higher life was brought by 
 the Gospel, a command was also given to renew their 
 souls by what was impossible in the darker time of the 
 Jewish law. 
 
 Here, then, we have not only gifts promised to us if 
 we will ask for them, but we are told in express words 
 of the ministering of spirits and angels, and how we 
 
 m 2 
 
164 
 
 WE HAVE THE RULES. 
 
 are to try them “ if they he of Godand if the words 
 have any meaning for us, we need be under no diffi¬ 
 culty and under no too great danger in obeying the 
 divine commands. It may be said that in doing so we 
 run into danger of being deceived as to the nature 
 and origin of the gifts that are accorded to us, and of 
 our being associated with evil as well as with good 
 spirits; but this responsibility we cannot shrink from. 
 It is no more than the responsibility which every man 
 avows himself to be under daily in each one of his 
 thoughts and acts, and he has divine rules for his 
 guidance in this addition to his responsibilities, no less 
 than under all his others. . The responsibility may be 
 greater in degree, because the gift is greater; but if it 
 be pursued in love, and prayer, and praise, a higher 
 and evei’-progressing association will be formed, and 
 man will rise in humbleness to the level of his gifts, 
 and be able to make them ever the vantage-ground to 
 new and greater victories of the spirit. If we had 
 not the rules to goby, I can see the great danger there 
 would be, and how false Christs would come and try 
 to deceive any who gave them free access to his 
 heart, until, like the “ possessed ” of old, devils would 
 enter in and dwell there ; but at the same time that 
 the command w T as given, the rules were given also, 
 which shoidd put this upon the same level as all man’s 
 other duties and responsibilities. In our particular 
 case, in the moving of the hand in drawing and writ¬ 
 ing, which I conceive to be one of the gifts open to all 
 
THE GIFTS OF SPEAKING. 
 
 165 
 
 from the spirit-world, we have found that the power to 
 form the divine symbol of the cross has been a sufficient 
 indication; so that if the hand could not first make 
 the cross, nothing more has been permitted; and fre¬ 
 quently in my own case have I seen the hand trying 
 to cross the line, but without the power of doing it. 
 I do not know that this can be a rule for all, or that 
 it be a sufficient rule for us ; but with all our watch¬ 
 fulness, we should arm ourselves to judge at all points, 
 lest we be deceived. 
 
 If you would inquire as to whether these gifts are 
 alone, and standing quite by themselves at this day, I 
 would refer you to the wonderful facts in what is called 
 mesmerism and mesmeric clairvoyance, which are but 
 the index-finger and the messenger sent before this 
 power, to show us the gifts of interior perception or 
 discerning of spirits, and the way in which the spirit 
 can roam at will into its spirit-world. 
 
 I intend to give some instances of the power of this 
 mesmeric clairvoyance at the end of the book, as they 
 appear to illustrate this subject of gifts ; but they are 
 not the only evidences. There are at this day, and 
 living in the midst of us, many who have some of 
 these gifts. Some I know who have the gift of speak¬ 
 ing as the spirit willeth, and “ who take no thought 
 in that hour what they shall speak ” — who have the 
 gift of speaking with spirit-knowledge on the highest 
 subjects, and of throwing a light on them at present 
 unseen by the world; of others who have the gift of 
 
166 
 
 THE TIME FOE GIFTS. 
 
 discerning spirits, and of second-sight, and to such an 
 extent that if the faculty be withdrawn for a time they 
 rub their eyes to see that they are not blind; and of 
 others through whose pens are given revelations of the 
 meanings of the Word. These are the beginnings of 
 the gifts that shall be acquired, and which want 
 cultivating as much as, nay more than, the ordinary 
 gifts of God to man. They are, however, but the fulfil¬ 
 ment of the Word of God, and therefore are to be looked 
 for and to be received as such, and not to be scoffed 
 at as strangers to our day and time. Surely if such 
 gifts were ever wanted it is now, when knowledge is 
 puffed up, and seeking to be great itself without God. 
 Surely if ever was the time for gifts it is now, when 
 man is yearning for the Spirit, and finds it not 
 amongst those who should lead him. At the darkest 
 hour the dawn of the daylight comes, and it shall 
 never be so surely looked for as when it is most re¬ 
 quired. Philosophy has done its worst, and it has had 
 its day ; let it now make way for something better, and 
 which can have a brighter and a longer day. 
 
 I look upon it that these “ gifts ” are now being 
 pressed upon man’s acceptance almost whether he will 
 or no, because there is so great need of them to soften 
 his heart, and to be the angels or messengers of the 
 new spirit-life which, if the Bible be true, is yet to 
 enlighten the world. They come to testify to men 
 concerning the fact of a l’eal spirit-world, and to give 
 them a higher and a truer life by opening their eyes 
 
THE STONES CRY OUT. 
 
 167 
 
 to what is around them, and to the influences by which 
 they are guided. Is it not better for man to know 
 how his mind is guided and guarded, in order that he 
 may assist and resist, as occasion comes, than to be the 
 unconscious prey, as we may say, of contending in¬ 
 fluences ? By the want of these gifts, and by the 
 causes which have led to their comparative absence 
 from man, a state of things has arrived at this day in 
 regard to these holy truths somewhat similar to that 
 which was expressed by our Lord when Hosannahs 
 were shouted before him as he rode into Jerusalem. 
 “ If these should hold their peace the very stones 
 would cry out,” and the stones are now crying out to 
 us, because we his disciples have shouted no Hosannahs 
 before Him to welcome Him to His chosen home in 
 our hearts. The mandrake, or love-flower, shrieks 
 when it is pulled out of the ground, and shall man be 
 less alive than the plant and the very stones, when the 
 Lord is seeking to raise him from the earth to heaven ? 
 
 And there is progression in the mode, too, of the 
 utterance of these gifts, for they come not, by the 
 Lord’s mercy, to us as miracles even, but He has 
 enabled us to receive and perceive them, as all in 
 divine order and with an analogy in the laws of His 
 creation, so that we are not at this day to be led, as 
 were the Jews, by the forcible projection of miraculous 
 power, but rather by the gentle breathings of His 
 Spirit drawing us on to even more wonderful develop¬ 
 ments by the operation and unfolding of His spirit laws. 
 
168 
 
 THE PREACHING EPIDEMIC. 
 
 By these hand-movings, spirit-spealiing, and clair¬ 
 voyant trances may be read in part the modes by 
 which the gospels and their enlightenments were given. 
 They are the light by which we may see the working 
 of the Spirit in the apostles and disciples of our Lord, 
 and their symbolic developments are all touched by 
 the prophetic breathing of the spirit-life. How can 
 we say, then, that these drawings do not represent, in 
 the only way possible to us, the very flowers and 
 houses and temples of the spirit-world, similar in kind 
 to what were seen of old, and that they are not the 
 very existences seen by the spirit-vision of our dear 
 boy, and through spirits communicated to us for our 
 knowledge and our love ? If this be so, are their 
 forms any longer meagre and purposeless ? Hay, do 
 they not give us new light and life, and open out to 
 us a new world of holy thoughts and teachings ? Can 
 it be bad for us to have such a belief? nay, does it 
 not belong to the better, and is it not “ a gift ” to be 
 cultivated as all the other gifts of God ? May they 
 not be the lowest step of the ladder which Jacob saw 
 in his dream, and upon which the angels of God were 
 ascending and descending, forming thus the conjunc¬ 
 tion between man and heaven ?” 
 
 It is only a few years ago that the northern world 
 was startled by the evidence of one of these gifts— 
 that of speaking, and which took the name in Sweden 
 of “ the preaching epidemic.” It was in 1842 that in 
 the province of Skara the bishop of that diocese, in a 
 
BUOTHSE MULLEE. 
 
 169 
 
 published letter addressed to the Archbishop of Upsala, 
 tells him of numbers of the peasant class who effected 
 much moral good by their eloquent harangues, preach¬ 
 ing some of them with their eyes open and some in 
 trance, in a state of perfect insensibility to outward 
 impressions, and opening to their hearers the Word of 
 God. I myself have seen many such instances of 
 speaking in both states, in the cases of both gentlemen 
 and ladies, of the year 1864, to whom it has come not 
 as an epidemic, but has been recognized as a gift, and 
 one that I believe is open to all. 
 
 Do you believe that the Lord answers the prayer of 
 faith and love, and that He provides for those who 
 trust in Him ? That there is at this day what 
 is scoffed at by some—the “ Bank of Faith,” and 
 would you place your soul in that bank? I some¬ 
 what doubt it. For myself, to my shame, I have not 
 dared it. 
 
 And yet there are some who have not feared to 
 trust the Lord in his continual providence over his 
 creatures and who have carried out His words in a 
 very literal way. I have not heard that such have 
 ever found them fail—“ Trust in the Lord, ye men, 
 liis creatures, and the offspring of his love.” Hun¬ 
 tingdon was an instance of this trust, and there is 
 living now to-day, at Bristol, another, and a more 
 remarkable man, “ Brother George Muller,” who 
 by the same trust has supported himself in the 
 ministry in England for the last thirty years. His 
 
170 
 
 OPEN THY MOUTH WIDE. 
 
 short history is thisHe began by getting married 
 to one who was a helpmate meet for such a man, 
 and about three weeks after their marriage he, with 
 her consent, gave up his stipend as minister, depend¬ 
 ing only upon what was put into a bos in the chapel 
 for their use. They distributed amongst the needy all 
 their little fortune, bringing in about .£100 a year, and 
 they then went to Bristol to found an orphan-house. 
 He tells, after four years’ trial, that “ the Lord greatly 
 honoured this little sacrifice, and gave them in return 
 not only as much as they had given up, but much 
 more. During the first year, He sent me about £130, 
 the second year £151 18s. 8d., the third year £195 3s., 
 the fourth year £267 15s. 8d.,—at the end of each 
 year all is gone, the excess having been always given to 
 the poor.” In 1835 he wishes to establish the orphan- 
 house, and on opening the Scripture he finds these 
 words—“ Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it,” and 
 he prays to the Lord for premises, a thousand pounds, 
 and suitable persons to take care of the children. At 
 a public meeting held soon after, there was no collec¬ 
 tion, no money asked for, and only ten shillings were 
 given. He has never asked for anything, nor allowed 
 it to be asked for by others, but donations came in, 
 and these are a few of them in the order of their 
 coming:—“ Odd shillings, pence, basins, mugs, four 
 knives and five forks, a blanket, fifty pounds, twenty- 
 nine yards of print, one plate, six teaspoons, a pillow¬ 
 case, one sovereign, fifty-five yards of sheeting, six pots 
 
PROVIDENCE. 
 
 171 
 
 of blacking, a hundred pounds, a ton of coals, premises 
 worth two or three thousand pounds, six little shirts, 
 fifty-five thimbles.” In this way the orphan-house was 
 opened for thirty girls, and not long after by the same 
 trustful means he organized one for boys. Sometimes 
 the pressure for bread and other necessaries for the 
 daily support is intense, but if money has not been 
 sent to pay for it, nothing is allowed to be taken in. 
 Everything must be paid for as it arrives, and not even 
 weekly bills are allowed; ■ but still the Lord has pro¬ 
 vided means, and increase, too; and what think you! 
 that now additions have been made till above 1000 
 children are there, and there have been furnished to 
 this trustful man hundreds of thousands of pounds for 
 his orphans. Truly, this is one of the men of whom it 
 is said they are “ worthy of their hire,” and who need 
 “ provide neither gold nor silver, and no scrip for 
 their journey.” 
 
 But there are other gifts of the Spirit by which we 
 may as plainly see the finger of God and His ever- 
 working care—His providence over us. Cannot every 
 one of us, in looking back through the vista of the 
 past, see how each has been guided and overruled in 
 every action of our lives, so that everything has come 
 to form part of the circle which we recognize as our 
 life ? Even the bad in us has been permitted to our 
 evil loves, and made to form a part of it for our warn¬ 
 ing, or for that of others; and in tracing back our 
 lives, the finger of God is clearly seen in all our goings 
 
172 
 
 SIR C. NAPIER. 
 
 out and comings in. Like tlie fulfilment of prophecy, 
 this is not recognized at tlie time of its being acted, or 
 man would lose liis freedom of will, and his choice 
 which is preserved to him; and so, from the history of 
 individuals to that of nations, all is divinely watched 
 over and guided according to the best possible of the 
 state of men. There is no blunder in the past, neither 
 will there be any in the future: but man is ever made 
 the best of, that may be, for the progression of the 
 race and the progress of the spirit-life. 
 
 In the “ Life of Sir Charles James Napier ” is an 
 anecdote, told in his own strong words, which illustrates 
 this in a remarkable way. Every man’s life would 
 supply him with thousands of instances—indeed it is 
 made up of such; but here is one of the “ great cap¬ 
 tain.” Napier has successfully conquered and taken 
 prisoners the robber chiefs in Scinde, and he thus re¬ 
 cords his feelings :—“ In my heart I swore, when in 
 Greece, to put down banditti there, if God permitted, 
 and in Scinde I repeated that oath. The Spirit of 
 God refused permission in Greece, here he has permit¬ 
 ted it; and, as if some outward power moved events, 
 all my minutest projects have come to pass, errors, 
 neglects, and sound calculations, all have turned out 
 right in the end. Can I then feel proud of my ability ? 
 No; it is a power unseen, though to me evident, that 
 has guided me. When I have condemned myself for 
 going to the left instead of to the right, it has suddenly 
 answered me that the left was the way to go. Have I 
 
TRUKKEE. 
 
 173 
 
 not a right, then, to say the unseen power is evident? 
 I have been guided either by the good spirit or the 
 bad. Yet why say the bad ? No, no ; a forecast of 
 events conies over me—a thousand thoughts collect, 
 and bring conviction in an unaccountable manner. Lo ! 
 an example. Some days ago a conviction came to me 
 that the robbers would go to Trulckee [this was the 
 place in which he ultimately captured them.] It was 
 not reason ; there were as many reasons against as for ; 
 but a sort of spirit told me so. On the 28th of 
 February my mind was engrossed with my intended 
 movement northwards, which was ordered for the 1st 
 of March. While ruminating, a man came hastily to 
 say my convoy was attacked. My thoughts were then 
 intent on how to force the enemy to my purpose in the 
 north, whether by skill or by riding upon them, but 
 suddenly a voice seemed to repeat, ‘ Trukkee, Trukkee !’ 
 It had done so before. They cannot be so mad as to 
 go there, I internally repeated. ‘ They are,’ replied the 
 spirit. What else but a spirit could it be ? I walked 
 about irresolutely. ‘ Beware ! Beware !’ said the warn¬ 
 ing voice, and suddenly, ere my thoughts could settle, 
 I called out almost involuntarily, ‘Bring my horse;’ 
 and in ten minutes we were cantering towards the 
 scene of combat. My staff attacked the retiring enemy; 
 
 * Trukkee,’ said my guide, ‘ The game is mine,’ re¬ 
 echoed the internal voice. My heart was wroth with 
 McMurdo for pursuing the robbers like a recruit; I 
 thought he had done me mischief, yet still the voice 
 
174 
 
 THE INDIAN MUTINY. 
 
 whispered, ‘ The game is yours.’ It was not my mind 
 that spoke : I am a child in the hands of God.” 
 
 It was most noticeable during the late horrible 
 rebellion in India, not only that we were to see what 
 the fierce devilry of the human mind was capable of in 
 these days of civilization without the spirit of religion, 
 but how the Spirit of the Lord—one of his greatest 
 gifts to man—could support the helpless victims of the 
 fiends, whilst facing the greatest agonies of the flesh, 
 and even worse than “ the King of Terrors,” who was 
 truly their only dearest friend. See how the letters of 
 all classes and of both sexes are full of this, and what 
 noble spirit-life these trials have given birth to; so 
 that, if even India were lost to us, something far 
 better than an earthly kingdom has been given in ex¬ 
 change—the visible finger of His providence for our 
 example and our love. All the shortcomings of some 
 at the beginning, and which have called down such 
 painful obloquy upon them in having, by their irre¬ 
 solution, allowed the first buddings of the mutiny to 
 go on into their hellish developments, have since been 
 seen to have been the only causes of the success which 
 has subsequently attended the inspii’ed valour of our 
 brave English warriors. Thus overruled by Providence 
 were the errors of men, for the higher good of the 
 Christian rule amongst the nations of the East; and 
 thus only has this impotent mutiny been divinely per¬ 
 mitted for our teaching, and for the final subjugating 
 of the nations to the gentle yoke of Christian love. I 
 
THE YOUNG MARTYR. 
 
 175 
 
 will not deny myself the pleasure of writing here, what 
 can be out of place nowhere in the world’s humanity, 
 the short history of a young martyr, whom no father 
 would not willingly have yielded to his God. He 
 spoke some words which, in God’s providence, shall 
 not soon die nor lose their gentle force , — “ Oh, my 
 friend, come what may, do not deny the Lord Jesus !” 
 
 “ When the wretched 6th Regiment mutinied at 
 Allahabad and murdered their officers, an ensign, only 
 sixteen years of age, who was left for dead among the 
 rest, escaped in the darkness to a neighbouring 
 ravine; here he found a stream, the waters of which 
 sustained his life for four days and nights. Although 
 desperately wounded he contrived to raise himself into 
 a tree during the night for protection from wild 
 beasts. Poor boy ! he had a high commission to fulfil 
 before death released him from his sufferings. On the 
 fifth day he was discovered, and dragged by the brutal 
 Sepoys before one of their leaders to have the little life 
 left in him extinguished. There he found another 
 prisoner, a Christian catechist, formerly a Mohamme¬ 
 dan, whom the Sepoys were endeavouring to torment 
 and terrify into a recantation. The firmness of the 
 native was giving way as he knelt amid his persecu¬ 
 tors, with no human sympathy to support him. The 
 boy-officer, after anxiously watching him for a short 
 time, cried out, ‘ Oh, my friend, come what may, do 
 not deny the Lord Jesus !’ Just at this moment the 
 alarm of a sudden attack by the gallant Colonel Neile 
 
176 
 
 ARTHUR CHEEK. 
 
 with his Madras Fusileers caused the instant flight of 
 the murderous fanatics. The catechist’s life was saved. 
 He turned to bless the boy whose faith had strengthened 
 his faltering spirit. But the young martyr had passed 
 beyond all reach of human cruelty. He had entered 
 into rest.” 
 
 This boy’s name was Arthur Marcus Hill Cheek ; 
 and let us tell of him, and of the holy gift of God to 
 him, to all who feel “ weary and are heavy laden.” 
 
177 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE. 
 
 “ I was in the city of Joppa praying, and in a trance I saw a 
 vision.” 
 
 The speakings, the drawings, and the writings, are 
 not the only known modern ways of arriving at the 
 knowledge of the great spirit-world. No doubt all the 
 faculties of man may be sublimated, so that they may 
 give us glimpses of its working in us. And as it is my 
 concern to give the reader what has come within my 
 ken, I must here introduce some descriptions which 
 were written down as they were spoken by a lady, not 
 known to us at the time, nor were we known to her. 
 She has for some years been the subject of mesmeric 
 trauces, and during the deepest sleep or trance has a 
 clear-seeing power, and also the power of describing, 
 whilst in this sleep, what passes before her interior 
 perceptions: and what follows has been written down 
 by a quick pen from her lips, as it was uttered. It is 
 well that this should be borne in mind in reading what 
 she spoke, because we are in no sense responsible, nor is 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 TRANCE VISIONS. 
 
 she, for it, any more than if I were to write down the 
 words uttered by any one who talks in his sleep. I 
 do not, however, in the least disavow, but on the 
 contrary I affirm my entire belief, that all she spoke 
 she saw and heard in this wonderful interior state ; 
 and that it was most real to her, was evident from her 
 sweet smiles, and the beautiful speaking of her face. 
 On only one of the occasions when these visions were 
 given was I present; and the others were only sent to 
 us as likely to interest us, about our dear boy’s state 
 so newly put on. She had never seen him in this 
 world, but afterwards recognized him by a photogra¬ 
 phic portrait which was shown to her. Soon after 
 ceasing to speak, she awoke, and then knew nothing 
 of what she had spoken ; but she told me that some¬ 
 times a dim perception of it came to her after two 
 or three days. 
 
 But do not the visions themselves consist with all 
 that has been written of the spirit-world, and give us 
 a light there is no reason within us to reject ? They 
 appear to us to belong to the old Socratic rule of “ the 
 better,” the clearer, the more beautiful, and the truer, 
 and to take us at once to a kinder place than the cold 
 grave. 
 
 August 26, 1856. 
 
 “ I can see him, but shall not be able to speak with 
 him just now. He is with two angel guides. They 
 are instructing him that he has passed from the earth 
 
THE SECOND. 
 
 179 
 
 into the spiritual world. He cannot understand his 
 passing away from the earth, because the guides are 
 so like his father and mother—as nearly like them as 
 can be.” (A pause.) “ I asked this angel who was 
 near me, how he appeared when he first came into the 
 world of spirits. He said, as if he had a pain in his 
 neck, where he held his hand. He looks very well 
 now, and I think will progress rapidly. The angels 
 are so like the family, that he thought they were his 
 parents.” 
 
 September 4, 1856. 
 
 “ The little boy is here ; he says he has been waiting 
 seven minutes for us. He has brought a rose for his 
 mother, a jessamine for his father, and two little 
 daisies for Florence; and a piece of paper, a letter, for 
 his mother. I found it inside the rose: — 
 
 “ ‘ My own dear mother, — -I find I have passed from 
 the external world to one more real and substantial. 
 I am very happy, and I will try to be good. The 
 angels are very kind, and take every care of me. I 
 have not seen heaven, but am promised to see some 
 part of it when I have learnt more. The last new 
 dress the angels brought me was a tunic of velvet and 
 gold.’ 
 
 “ He has stopped from reading the paper, taken 
 it out of my hand, and said I was not to read more. 
 The di’ess means desire to improve. He says he 
 thought I could not read it ; but I can read it from 
 
180 
 
 THE THIRD. 
 
 the correspondence of the jessamine to the Father. It 
 is faithfulness. He will be his father’s guide. The 
 last words of the paper were— 
 
 “ e I have been called from earth, that I might lead 
 my parents to heaven.’ 
 
 “ He is gone. 
 
 “ The angel guide, who has been with us, says he 
 has been waiting so anxiously to send this message to 
 his parents. He has tried so many mediums to com¬ 
 municate with them.” 
 
 September 16, 1856. 
 
 “ Here is the little boy. He is with two children. 
 He cannot speak to me. He has given me a paper 
 again. 
 
 “ ‘ My love to my parents, and tell them I have 
 work to do. Two little children came to me yesterday, 
 that I might teach them. I must be very good, and 
 learn a great deal, or they will go away for a better 
 teacher.’ 
 
 “ He’s gone. He took the hands of these two little 
 ones so carefully; one on each side, a boy and a girl. 
 The angels say it is the best way to teach him. To 
 himself he appears very busy ; but in reality he’s doing 
 nothing but instructing himself.” 
 
 September 29. 
 
 “ The guides are here ; we came to see him. He’s 
 not here, but we have to go to him. We are now 
 
THE FOURTH. 
 
 1S1 
 
 with him. There are two angels here instructing him ; 
 the two children are away. He has the Word, but it 
 is divided into four parts: the first part pictorial, the 
 second statuary, the third water, the fourth life, or 
 small living substances. He is receiving instruction, 
 that he may teach the children. He looks very well, 
 better than I’ve ever seen him. His hair is turning 
 white, rather flaxen. His dress is a white tunic, with 
 a silver border; it represents the reception of Truth 
 from Innocence. The room is beautifully arrayed. 
 From one side you see a corn-field—it is called the 
 life-side ; it is the east from which you see that view. 
 On the west you see the sea with ships. On the north 
 bright moonlight and mountains; on the south a 
 beautiful flower-garden, with sunset in the distance. 
 In the centre of the room there are two globes ; it is 
 the Word divided into two parts, as globes here. 
 There’s a beautiful white light by which I know it to 
 be the Word, and you see the names of the external 
 books in our Word written upon the globes, as if they 
 were countries. But when standing side by side in 
 the distance, you see a grand human form in the 
 globes together. He came away from the angels to 
 speak. He sends his love to his friends ; cannot stay 
 to send a longer message.” 
 
 November 7. 
 
 “ He is here. He has grown very much, and is 
 quite altered in appearance. He is much taller, and 
 
182 
 
 THE FIFTH. 
 
 loots very handsome. His hair is quite light. He 
 has on a purple dress. You can see it is he; though 
 he is so altered to look at, you can see the old face. 
 He is in a class now. He has only one child to teach. 
 He is learning the correspondence of heavenly societies. 
 The angels take the class through the societies once 
 every twelve days, counting in our days. They are 
 with that society as long as they can remain, to see 
 how they live. He was through one yesterday—it 
 corresponded to Time and Order combined. He can¬ 
 not remember all that was done. When they arrived 
 there in the morning, two angels met them at the 
 gate of a city. There were twelve boys. They 
 divided, and each angel took six of them. They 
 washed their hands and their feet, and changed their 
 garments, before going into the house. They then 
 had to read a verse from the Word each, and as they 
 read, each verse took a different form ; some became 
 flowers, some fruit, some precious stones. His was a 
 small ring. In the stone of this ring they can read 
 all the instruction required till they go the next excur¬ 
 sion. They then passed into more interior states, 
 which he cannot remember. They would then be 
 seeing the more internal life. He sends his love to 
 his parents and brothers, and tells them he is very 
 happy. The angels say that when he is fit he will 
 be near one of his brothers as a guide. He is very 
 anxious to do something for those he has left in the 
 world. This is for his parents :— 
 
THE SIXTH. 
 
 183 
 
 “ ‘ The Lord is goodness itself, and truth itself, and 
 doth lead His children through paths they have not 
 known. Jehovah will pour His spirit into His people, 
 and will guide them by the stream of truth. He will 
 bless and protect His people through all generations.’ 
 
 “ It is part of the lesson he learned yesterday, more 
 interior than he could have received from this place. 
 He looks about sixteen.” 
 
 December 15 tTi, 1856. 
 
 “ My guides are with me. They will lead me to 
 him. We have passed through a park filled with deer 
 and sheep; it is beautifully green, like spring, re¬ 
 presenting bis state. I can see him ; he is alone. He 
 has been withdrawn from his companions, because the 
 angels knew we were wishing to see him. He has the 
 New Testament open on the table : there is a footstool 
 near ; he has been repeating the £ Lord’s prayer.’ He 
 can see you : he saw his mamma for a moment, and 
 said —‘ My own darling mamma.’ He tried to touch 
 her : he can see his baby-brother sometimes, whose state 
 of innocence is such, that his internal can be with¬ 
 drawn for a time, and be only seen by angels. He 
 has made a little sliipo by himself; the parts in the 
 ship generally made of iron are of silver, and the ropes 
 plaited, and the sails of blue silk; it represents doc¬ 
 trine, its being of silver represents truth. There is a 
 letter:— 
 
 “ ‘ My own dear Mamma,—I often long to sit beside 
 
184 
 
 THE SIXTH. 
 
 you and kiss your soft cheek, but your boy is very 
 happy, and sometimes the angels take me down, as it 
 were, a long ladder (a real journey, representing the 
 descent from a spiritual to a natural state, and there 
 he can be present with the spiritual part of his 
 mother) ; the angels are very kind, and I have every¬ 
 thing I wish for at once. I have a little new Bible, 
 brought to me by a bright spirit, which I read every 
 morning and evening. It is more wonderful than 
 your Bibles, because it has two or three meanings.’ 
 
 “ He looks very well; he has a purple dress and a 
 girdle round the waist. He is always desirous of 
 making something ; the most beautiful thing he has 
 made is a lamb, carved out of a living tree. The 
 angels helped him to cut the wood, and he carved it. 
 The spiritual life of a tree cannot die. This lamb 
 appears to breathe, it is so beautifully carved; the 
 wool is so soft, like spun glass. It means, ‘ Innocence 
 of wisdom is the great gift our heavenly Father be¬ 
 stows on all mankind; but mankind must fight against 
 evil, overcome temptation, and love Jehovah his 
 Maker.’ 
 
 “ I can read some writing— 
 
 “ ‘ Write thy thoughts in a book, and they shall be 
 wisdom to thy old age. Pray to the Lord every morn¬ 
 ing, and a blessing will be with you.’ 
 
 “ Question—Can we have a little prayer given us 
 for children ? 
 
 “ The Lord’s Prayer is the prayer of the heavens, 
 
THE PRAYER. 
 
 185 
 
 because framed by the Lord himself, and no other 
 prayer has an internal meaning; it appears different 
 in every society of the heavens. He told me he re¬ 
 members two verses of a prayer he used to say with 
 you, and he is now repeating it 
 
 “ ‘Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me ; 
 
 Bless thy little lamb to-night; 
 
 Through the darkness be thou near me ; 
 
 Watch my sleep ’till morning light. 
 
 “ ‘ Every day thy hand hath led me, 
 
 And I thank thee for thy care ; 
 
 Thou hast clothed me, warmed, and fed me ; 
 
 Listen to my evening prayer.’ 
 
 “ His removal is a great blessing ; it was very hard 
 to part with him, but it is one of the great mercies 
 of Providence ; it may be the means of regenerating a 
 whole family of children. If we had not one object in 
 the heavens on which to place our affections, we should 
 forget to look there, and we must be drawn from the 
 creature to the Creator. He is sometimes permitted 
 to descend the ladder, to be with you when you are all 
 together. 
 
 “ Question—Hoes he grieve because he cannot be 
 always with us ? 
 
 “ If it became a trouble, the Lord would introduce 
 a society of spirits exactly corresponding to your state. 
 The Lord has the same care for one little child as He 
 has for the whole heavens. The same providence 
 guides all His actions—He is going now—a golden 
 
186 
 
 THE SEVENTH. 
 
 light came over him. I saw the angels forming round 
 him, and the eleven companions.” 
 
 January 14, 1857. 
 
 “ I can go into his garden and see if there is any 
 flower like it. Here is one something like it; but 
 instead of one there are three. Here is a bowl of pure 
 water. They are watered from above, not beneath; 
 there are three together; the flower in full bloom 
 corresponds to the life of man, natural, spiritual, and 
 internal spiritual; the water in the centre corresponds 
 to truth in the third degree, and is provided by the 
 Lord for the natural equally with the others. You 
 never see this flower twice alike ; it is the life-flower 
 of his garden. In the bowl of the flower he always 
 finds his lesson of the day, which he has to learn. He 
 could not tell how these lessons were brought, but they 
 are provided by the Lord, who cares for little children 
 as for all others. He is going with us to the guides 
 to another part of the garden. He looks very well; 
 his dress is a very deep blue. The scene is very grand. 
 As we passed over two of the mountains, and stood 
 on the third, twelve angels were blowing trumpets, so 
 loud it was like thunder, but musical. I can only 
 hear, as it dies away at the end, ‘ Rise, O man, and 
 stand in thy place! Look to Jehovah and pass by, 
 His servants. Enter His temple and bow before His 
 throne. Cry aloud and spare not, for Jehovah is very 
 mighty. Kneel to receive his blessings.’ I could not 
 
THE TEAE. 
 
 187 
 
 tell all the words that came, but these were the last I 
 heard; they were like thunder, musical. 
 
 “ We have left him, and are going a little way with 
 the guides to meet him again. He is seated with 
 three children. A star opened before us, and the light 
 attracted us; and we were lifted up, as it were, from 
 the mountain into the star, and we saw as if the 
 heavens were opened — like a rainbow. It appeared at 
 first as if it was raining very fast. The rain corre¬ 
 sponds to divine truth descending from an interior 
 heaven. The truth was not new, but as it were re¬ 
 flected. It was all known to the Lord. The mind 
 has to be formed to receive the truth—not the truth 
 for the mind. In this rainbow sphere were twelve 
 companies of angels. The space is so immense. Each 
 company with the word in a different form ; and from 
 above came the figure of a hand, with an eye in the 
 centre of the hand, which represented Providence 
 ruling the internal power in spheres. From the eye 
 appeared to fall a tear, which immediate^ crystallized, 
 and formed part of the word. I cannot understand it 
 in the least as it fell. I can feel it, but it is impossible 
 to find words to make you understand the least part. 
 I can’t find enough words. The eye represents Provi¬ 
 dence ; the tear from that eye would be the first in¬ 
 ternal manifestation of redemption — the falling into 
 the natural world. The tear would be sympathy, 
 which would clothe itself to work, and ultimately 
 become the child born into the world. The angels all 
 
188 
 
 REAL VISIONS. 
 
 receive it differently, eacli society according to tlieir 
 own states. A cloud lias come between us, and we 
 are going back to the mountain. We cannot stay 
 very long bere. It is strange. I came back to him, 
 and he said he had been trying for crystals in water, 
 and he had found one exactly corresponding to the one 
 I had just seen, but not so interior. I asked him 
 what he saw in it, and he said, ‘ A little angel, and, in 
 the hand of the angel, “ I am your friend.’ ” Though 
 he was left here, he has been instructed all the 
 time, as much as he could receive by the society he 
 was in.” 
 
 I need not say how unwilling I should be to pro¬ 
 nounce so unsatisfactory a judgment upon these trance- 
 visions as to call them “ delusions.” I should want to 
 know what delusion means when used in such a sense. 
 Certainly not that a real vision was not presented to 
 the mind of the seer ; and if it were a real vision, it 
 must be judged by the revelation it contains. When 
 judged in this way, do we not find a consistence and a 
 beauty in the descriptions ? and do they not appear to 
 have an intelligence and a prophetic air breathing 
 through them, as if they were the reflex of what is 
 seen, as in a glass, and either more or less darkly, ac¬ 
 cording to our several modes of viewing them ? That 
 the lady was under no delusion, nor insane, nor any¬ 
 thing else that is bad, I can personally vouch as to one 
 of them ; but it is the fashion of the day, I know, to 
 
SOCRATES A LUNATIC. 
 
 189 
 
 attribute all spirit-phenomena to some form of insanity, 
 whereas the unsoundness consists only in the disbelief 
 of them. Socrates, we believe, has maintained a 
 reputation for sanity for 2,200 years ; but a learned 
 Frenchman has recently published an elaborate work 
 proving that he was mad, and that if he were alive at 
 this day, he ought to be placed in a lunatic asylum. 
 And why think you ? This stern rebuker of vice and 
 uncompromising enemy of injustice—this living re¬ 
 proach to impurity and terrible enemy to the darken¬ 
 ing of counsel by words without knowledge—was him¬ 
 self sometimes the subject of a species of trance or 
 interior state; and he was, moreover, attended con¬ 
 stantly by what has been known as his familiar or 
 guiding spirit, and he had the persuasion of a special 
 religious mission, which he says was “ enjoined him by 
 the Deity, by oracles, by dreams, and by every mode 
 by which any other divine decree has ever enjoined 
 anything to man to do.” Elsewhere he speaks of being 
 “ moved by a certain diviue and spiritual influence, 
 which began with me from childhood, being a kind of 
 voice, which, when present, always diverts me from 
 what I am about to do, but never urges me on. M. 
 Lclut considers the “ actual insanity” of Socrates to 
 have commenced at the siege of Potidsea, in which he 
 took a part, and where he had a trance or a state of 
 abstraction, an account of which is given by Alcibiades 
 in the “ Banquet,” as follows :— 
 
190 
 
 THE BANQUET. 
 
 “ While he was thinking of some question he stood 
 from the dawn investigating it. Mid-day came, and 
 some persons perceived him, and, wondering, said that 
 Socrates had been standing from the morning, think¬ 
 ing upon something. At length some Ionian soldiers, 
 when it was evening, brought out their ground litters, 
 and partly slept in the cold, and partly kept watch 
 whether he would stand there all night; and he did 
 stand until the dawn appeared and the sun rose, after 
 which he departed, having first offered a prayer to the 
 sun.” Another time Socrates says :—“ These things, 
 be assured, I hear, as the votaries of Cybele seem to 
 hear the flutes, and the sound of these words booms 
 in my ear, and makes me incapable of hearing anything 
 else.” He alludes also to a mesmeric power he had, 
 in a conversation with one of his disciples, who tells 
 him that when in the same room with him, and with 
 his eyes fixed on him, he advanced most rapidly in 
 knowledge, but “ most especially if I sat near you and 
 touched you”—a case of true spirit-power. 
 
 Numberless instances might be given of the different 
 manifestations of this interior consciousness and vision ; 
 but with such as M. Lelut they would only give 
 additional grounds for the theory of insanity, by which 
 “ visions” are explained by the learned. 
 
 Justinus Kernel’, in his introduction to “ the Seeress 
 of Pi’evorst,” in that part called “ Disclosures concern¬ 
 ing the Inner Life of Man,” speaks of the external life 
 
JUSTINUS KEENER. 
 
 191 
 
 as being in the dominion of the brain, whilst the inner 
 life dwells in the region of the heart, within the sphere 
 of sensitive life in the sympathetic and ganglionic 
 system. That by virtue of this inner life man is 
 bound up in an eternal connexion, from which this 
 outer existence does only apparently release him. It 
 is this secret, unseen, connexion with the spiritual and 
 eternal which unites man with that world, and conducts 
 him towai’ds it. The more in the tumult of the world 
 and the bustle of existence this inner life makes itself 
 felt — the more the gentle voices within us drown the 
 loud music of the world — the greater is our debt to 
 the spirit that guides us. But if thou art carried 
 away by the current of worldly life, seeking only what 
 belongs to it, believe, dear reader, that an hour will 
 one day come, and God grant it be not thy last ! an 
 hour of sorrow and of tears— an hour when thou shalt 
 stand by the death-bed of thy beloved, or from the 
 summit of earthly happiness be cast into the depths of 
 repentance and of shame, deserted and alone— when 
 thy inner life shall rise up before thee, embracing thee 
 again within its sphere; that life which since thy 
 childhood has been hidden from thee, of which thou 
 hast only been visited by glimpses in thy dreams— 
 dreams which thou knewest not to interpret. Be¬ 
 loved, to so many has this befallen! By the bedside 
 of such an one I once stood, and with the death-rattle 
 in his throat, he said to me, £ I feel that this life has 
 
192 
 
 JUSTINUS KEENER. 
 
 passed from my brain to the epigastric region ; of my 
 brain I have no more consciousness, I no longer feel 
 my arms or my feet; but I see unspeakable things— 
 things which I never believed. There is another 
 world,’ and so saying he expired.” 
 
193 
 
 CHAPTEE IX. 
 
 CONCLUSIONS AND TEACHINGS. 
 
 “ And it sliall come to pass in the last days, saith God, I will 
 pour out my spirit upon all flesh.” 
 
 As to the facts I have described, I cannot let the 
 world off the assertion that they are true, and if it 
 finds them strange, I have done my best to shew their 
 possibility, by bringing together analogies from old 
 history, and from modern times. I have also given the 
 result of my seven years close observation and ex¬ 
 perience of them, in my own house and with my own 
 family. Certainly they are very persistent, and refuse 
 to be put out by denials of their possibility, or as it is 
 wittily put by Professor De Morgan, in a recent preface 
 “ What is to be done when the extinguishers themselves 
 catch fire ?” And I now know many of those once 
 would-be extinguishers who now possess the power of 
 writing and drawing themselves. I find traces too of 
 its existence in all ages, and, to my mind, there is no 
 subject which can throw so much light as this upon the 
 questions of inspiration and revelation, and the mode 
 in which prophetic utterances have been and may be 
 still given through the soul 
 
 For what is it towards which these facts lead us ? 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 I may be mistaken, but it is at all events in a good 
 direction, for they teach me that this world is not 
 nearer to our bodies than God is to our souls, accord¬ 
 ing as we make them temples wherein He can dwell, 
 and that through our inner life we have access to 
 them, just as through our outer sensations we have 
 access to the world. If man were in a high and 
 holy state, the absence of inspiration would be a 
 miracle, instead of as now its presence being considered 
 miraculous. “ This inspiration is no miracle, but a 
 regular mode of God’s action on conscious spirit, as 
 gravitation is on unconscious matter—it is not a rare 
 condescension of God, but a universal uplifting of man.” 
 The vulgar idea of miracle is a great hindrance instead 
 of a help, and it has been well observed that so long as 
 inspiration is regarded as purely miraculous, good 
 sense will lessen instances of it, as far as possible, for 
 most thinking men feel more or less repugnance at 
 believing in any violation on God’s part of spiritual 
 laws. There can be but one mode of inspiration, 
 namely, the action of spirit upon the soul, and the in¬ 
 vestigation of this mode, or law, in which it operates, 
 it is of the extreinest consequence to investigate. But 
 in the absence of knowledge of what inspiration is, and 
 of its mode of action on the soul through the senses 
 and faculties of man, not only the ancient instances of 
 it have been entirely misconceived, but all modern 
 instances have been rejected as impossible. This should 
 not be so, because if it has ever been, it must have 
 been through some ordinary and always existent chan- 
 
A VEXED QUESTION. 
 
 195 
 
 nels of the soul, and to deny its possibility now, would 
 be to make it to have been always impossible. 
 
 To me, I say the facts that have occurred under my 
 eyes, for now many years, and which are the subject of 
 this little book, have been, and are, fraught with deep 
 instruction, as regards the possibility of action from that 
 inner life whence all inspiration must come. In all 
 the treatises which have been written on the soul and its 
 action on the body, and in all that has been written 
 on this vexed question of inspiration and its infalli¬ 
 bility, I have met with nothing that would do for 
 even the basis of a true science of pneumatology. 
 That, indeed, is a science yet to be born, and the first 
 step will be to rid one’s mind entirely of modern 
 opinion on the subject, and to endeavour to lay a 
 foundation by gathering together all the despised 
 facts, which are tossing about as waifs and strays on 
 the surface of history. When gathered and laid to¬ 
 gether, in orderly series, it will be found that we have 
 not, hitherto, been wise in rejecting them piecemeal, 
 and that there is a cohesion and substantial verisimili¬ 
 tude in them, which will enable us to commence a 
 new study, with some chance of progress towards a 
 system. 
 
 No fact in nature is more assured to me than this, 
 that there is a deep in man, which under conditions 
 of acquiescence and faith may be made a fountain for 
 the bringing forth of intelligence which is not his 
 That this proceeds from, or near to, that in- 
 
 o 2 
 
 own. 
 
196 
 
 ALL LAWS SPIRITUAL. 
 
 most part of him, which is, from its nature and essence, 
 in connection with the world of spirit, is, I think, 
 equally sure, and, moreover, in the view of a true 
 philosophy, is in the order of his being, and therefore 
 probable. But if we consider that the spirit-world is 
 the true world of causes, by which, and as its inefficient 
 prototype, this material world is formed and sustained, 
 and may, therefore, be truly said to exist only by 
 virtue of spiritual laws, we reverse the ordinary con¬ 
 ceptions of sceptical philosophy, and put it upon its 
 defence, instead of allowing it to be the attacking 
 party. What becomes of natural laws under this 
 larger system, which substitutes one great trunk force 
 of dynamics, dividing itself into so many branches, as 
 are necessary for the varied operations of the natural 
 world? Is this not better, and more likely to be 
 true, than a system which makes an arbitrary divi¬ 
 sion between natural laws and spiritual laws? My 
 idea is that all laws are, in their inmost force, spiritual 
 laws ; and whilst I accept all nature’s laws, and can 
 see the beneficence of scientific search and research 
 into them, I look further back for their cause, and 
 find it in the spiritual world. 
 
 Natural science is ever tending to lessen the num¬ 
 ber of primary substances in matter, and there is a 
 belief that, as science advances, they will even yet be 
 greatly reduced. All is tending, though still re¬ 
 motely, to a unity of matter, and from the branches it 
 is leading towards the trunk. In many parts of 
 chemistry, and in dealing with what are called the 
 
THE FORCES OF THE SOUL. 
 
 197 
 
 imponderables, we get almost to the verge of tlie 
 spiritual, or what is rather a removal of the successive 
 layers which the spiritual has, by its innate force, 
 accreted upon itself of this material world. These laws, 
 too, are never found to vary, though each atom of mat¬ 
 ter is always tending to change, and ready for decompo¬ 
 sition. The spiritual has the advantage over matter, in 
 being the only lasting and unchanging substantiality. 
 
 I have thought that the little facts I have brought 
 forward, may help to an understanding of the bearing 
 of spirit upon matter, and of the soul upon the out¬ 
 ward man, and that, by analogy with the action of 
 spiritual laws in forming material substances, so 
 spiritual action is possible upon the soul, and, 
 through that, upon the body. The soul has its own 
 inherent forces and individuality, and, consequent 
 responsibility, and it is by virtue of these, in its re¬ 
 lations with the great world of causes, and with its 
 Divine Father — so much higher than those of plants 
 and minerals, which merely subsist by virtue of the 
 unintelligent action of laws upon them — that it is 
 immortal. The soul is a power and not a thing, and 
 it has therefore a faculty by which it can make 
 its sallies into the infinite spiritual, and bring back 
 gleams of light; but what is necessary to enable it 
 to do this ? It must not take with it self-derived 
 knowledge or conceit. It must not go there as a man 
 of science, who knows all already. It must not take 
 its scrip and baggage with it; but it must be filled with 
 love and trusting faith, which are the gift of God, 
 
198 
 
 THE GRAND PROBLEM. 
 
 that so it may be lifted up from earth, and enter 
 through the ever-open portals of the spirit. 
 
 This is the grand problem of the inner life, and thus 
 only to be solved, and this is how to reach the sources 
 of inspiration which we are fitted to drink of and 
 absorb. Here are the rivers of life, and the living 
 waters of the Spirit. But each must drink his little fill, 
 and all will not partake of the same branching river. 
 As each one differs from all others, and no two men 
 have ever been made alike, so this very difference will 
 difference also the nature and quality and quantity of 
 his inspiration. We see this in the books of the Old 
 and New Testaments. The inspiration of Moses, of 
 Samuel, of Isaiah, of Daniel, of Jeremiah, of Ezekiel, 
 of the Evangelists, of Paul, of James, of Peter and 
 John, differs in wide and sensible degrees. There are 
 the major and the minor prophets, and the inspiration 
 of each of them is different in portions, from that of 
 other portions of his words. Through some of them 
 inspiration comes in bad grammar.* How vast is 
 the difference between the magnificent, but querulous, 
 poem of Job, and the grand thunderings of the 
 prophet Isaiah. How j does not the Jeremiad differ 
 from the inspiration of the Psalms, and the quiet 
 narrative of Ezra from the mystic breathings of 
 
 * “ Then Peter filled with the Holy Ghost (or with the Holy 
 Spirit), said unto them. ... Now when they saw the boldness of 
 Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and 
 ignorant men, they marvelled ; and they took knowledge of them 
 that they had been with Jesus.” 
 
PROTESTANTISM. 
 
 199 
 
 Ezekiel, and the zealous burning of the Platonist Paul 
 from the soul-breathing of the beloved disciple! 
 If all were the same, why was not the canon closed 
 with Moses, and he made to write the whole of 
 the Old Testament and the New as well ? and yet 
 inspiration is oiie, as the body is one, though com¬ 
 posed of many members, and thus it is that the 
 New Gospel is not entirely new, but only the fulfilling 
 of the Old, according to the uses of the time at which 
 each was given. Each degree of their inspiration may 
 lie compared with the flowers, which do not all respond 
 to the same amount of light and heat, or we should 
 have all the beauties of the year blazoning in the 
 earliest spring, instead of being so bountifully and 
 happily discriminated through the year. Some re¬ 
 quire months of the holy influence of the sun to 
 perfect their lives, whilst others fulfil their life by 
 peering through the ice-bound ground of the early 
 year. 
 
 It has been said that the capital vice of Protes¬ 
 tantism has been to limit the power of private inspira¬ 
 tion, and to make infallibility take so all-commanding 
 a position in the only great recognized instance of in¬ 
 spiration. This error, in itself, has narrowed religious 
 thought on the subject, and has prevented it from 
 acknowledging the possibility of any inspiration, since 
 the alleged closing of the canon of Scripture. However, 
 the recent judgment of the Privy Council has made this 
 now an open question in the Church, and only good 
 
200 
 
 DEGREES OP INSPIRATION. 
 
 can come of its discussion. When once degrees of in¬ 
 spiration are admitted, it will be necessary for each to 
 do, what should always be done before any saying should 
 be received, and that is, to judge of its quality and 
 true prophetic value, because only so can the soul get 
 what will warm and enlighten it. Some one must 
 first have received, through inspiration, the words, 
 and found them good, and they must have been then 
 approved by others as God’s words, and so have be¬ 
 come generally accepted; but as they were first ac¬ 
 cepted after examination and scrutiny, so, by the very 
 genius of our nature, we are each not only entitled 
 but bound to pass them in review in our own minds, 
 according to our light. Suppose the Bible were first 
 written to-day, how would it be received by the world ? 
 Would the whole of it be equally valued as infallible 
 truth? Would not every word be examined and 
 criticized ? and could it be even pronounced to be holy, 
 without going through such an ordeal? It is no 
 answer to this to say that it has been done already 
 by churches, and synods, and councils, for we have 
 each the right and the high necessity to do it for our¬ 
 selves, and it is, indeed, seen that now this right is 
 being exercised, and will not be gainsaid. 
 
 The inquiry has everything to lose, and nothing to 
 gain, by ignorance of the true principles of inspiration, 
 and by putting it so high as that no analogies may be 
 found elsewhere, or at any other period of the race. 
 Were this so, some faculty or mental condition of man, 
 
HOW FROPHECY IS POSSIBLE. 
 
 201 
 
 must, eighteen hundred years ago, have dropped out 
 of the human organization, and this we are not will¬ 
 ing to believe, but rather that by disuse and ignorance, 
 and want of love and sympathy, it has been covered 
 over, to be some day re-established, when the condi¬ 
 tions and necessities of its first exercise are restored. 
 In this way it has become difficult to recognize any of 
 the loosely-observed and isolated instances of it, which 
 have since occurred at intervals, and, in general, the 
 poverty of the revelation which has come through it, 
 and its phenomenal nature, have not induced the or¬ 
 thodox to respect it, whilst the sceptics have helped 
 them to deny it altogether. 
 
 However, the involuntary moving of the hand in 
 writing and drawing seems to have some deep bearing 
 on the question of the mode in which prophecy and 
 inspiration are possible, and it leads to the inquiry, 
 on which, hitherto, there is entire ignorance, of the 
 exact mode in which the prophets wrote, and how 
 their divine revelations were born into the world. The 
 modern visions and trance-speaking, in which last 
 equally, words are supplied unconsciously to the 
 speaker, illustrate the manner in which the apostles 
 were bidden to take no thought what they should 
 speak, for that it should be given them what they 
 should say. 
 
 Revelation comes to the soul rather than to the eyes 
 and ears, and it was thus that the soul of the prophet 
 was filled and expanded to the measure of its new recep- 
 
202 
 
 HOW PROPH15CIES WRITTEN. 
 
 lions. The teaching of the apostles during the earliest 
 time, must have been inspired by this illuminated mode, 
 for the New Testament was not then written, and their 
 Pentecostal conversions were the direct work of the in¬ 
 spiration that was thus poured through them. And if 
 men could be inspired to speak, without taking thought, 
 it is not difficult to recognize the hand moving, as similar 
 to the tongue moving, which was promised and given 
 to them in such abounding measure. Of course the 
 written prophecies might in the main be received first 
 by mental illumination or inspiration, and written in 
 the ordinary way, but there is the very strongest and 
 most powerful evidence in the Bible that, at all events, 
 some of the most important facts in the history of the 
 race were attended with the more phenomenal mode of 
 communication, as if they were too great to be passed 
 through the ordinary channels of revelation. 
 
 After the ten commandments had been spoken 
 amidst the thunders and lightnings of Sinai, the words 
 were written on tables of stone, “ by the finger of God,” 
 without passing through the inspiration of any of His 
 creatures, and again, after these tables had been broken 
 by Moses, beneath the mount, they were again written 
 upon the two new tables hewn by Moses. Then it was 
 that the Tabernacle was to be made fitting for them, 
 and that men were to be inspired in various ways for the 
 special works and services required of them. The 
 Tabernacle itself as a grand type of humanity was to 
 be copied according to the most minute particulars, 
 
INSTANCES FEOM THE BIBLE. 
 
 203 
 
 “ according to all tliat I shall shew thee, and the pat¬ 
 tern of all the instruments thereof, even so slialt thou 
 make it,” and again, as to the candlesticks and the bowls, 
 and the knops and their branches, and the lamps, and 
 tongs, he was told, “ and look that thou make them after 
 their pattern, which was shewed thee [or which thou 
 wast caused to see] in the mount.” The workmen re¬ 
 quired were then inspired, and Bezaleel was “ called by 
 name,” and we are told, “ I have filled them with the 
 Spirit of God, in wisdom, and in understanding, and in 
 knowledge, and in all manner of workmanship, to devise 
 cunning works, to work in gold, and in silver, and in 
 brass .... and in the hearts of all that are wise- 
 hearted, I have put wisdom, that they may make all 
 that I have commanded thee.” The tabernacle, and 
 the ark of the testimony, and the furniture of the 
 tabernacle, were all to be according to the patterns 
 which Moses was made to see on the holy mount of 
 Sinai, and we are thus shewn conclusively how the in¬ 
 spiration was conveyed into his mind by types or 
 drawings. 
 
 When at last the Temple itself was to be built, and 
 which was to be so holy, that David, in the last great 
 and solemn closing scene of his life, “ assembled all 
 the princes of Israel, the princes of the tribes, and 
 the captains of the companies, and with the mighty 
 men, and all the valiant men, unto Jerusalem. Then 
 David the king stood up upon his feet, and said 
 ‘ Hear me my brethren, and my people! as for me, I 
 
204 
 
 THE BUILDING OP THE TEMPLE. 
 
 had it in my heart to build an house for the art of the 
 covenant of the Lord, and for the footstool of our God, 
 and had made ready for the building, but God said 
 unto me, Thou shalt not build an house for my name, 
 because thou hast been a man of war, and hast shed 
 blood, and of all my sous He hath chosen Solomon, my 
 son, to sit upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord, 
 over Israel, and he said unto me, Solomon, thy son, 
 he shall build my house, and my courts, for I have 
 chosen him to be my son, and I will be his father. 
 Take heed now, for the Lord hath chosen thee to build 
 an house for the sanctuary; be strong, and do it. 
 Then David gave to Solomon, his son, the pattern of 
 the porch, and of the houses thereof, and of the 
 treasures thereof, and of the chambers thereof, and of 
 the inner parlours thereof, and of the place of the 
 mercy-seat, and the pattern of all that he had by the 
 Spirit, (or of all that was with him by the Spirit-,) of 
 the courts of the house of the Lord, and of all the 
 chambers round about, of the treasuries of the house 
 of God, and of the treasuries of the dedicated things, 
 also for the courses of the priests and of the Levites, 
 and for all the work of the service in the house of 
 the Lord. All this, said David, the Lord made me 
 understand in writing by His hand upon me, even 
 all the works of this pattern. And David said to 
 Solomon, his son, Be strong, and of good courage, 
 and do it, fear not nor be dismayed, for the Lord 
 God, even my God, will be with thee, He will not 
 
GIVEN BY SPIRIT DRAWING. 
 
 205 
 
 fail thee, nor forsake thee, until thou hast finished 
 all the work for the service of the house of the Lord. 
 . . . . And there shall be with thee for all manner 
 of workmanship, every willing, skilful man, for any 
 manner of service, also the princes and all the people 
 shall be at thy commandment.’ ” 
 
 Here we are distinctly told of the pattern being 
 inspired into David, the pattern of all that he had by 
 the Spirit, and of which the only literal and under¬ 
 standable meaning is that it was drawn by him as the 
 plan of the building, in some way greatly differing 
 from that of ordinary drawing; and that as to the 
 directions for the courses of the priests and levites, and 
 for all the work of the served of the house of the Lord, 
 “ all this the Lord made me understand in writing by 
 his hand upon me.” Such an expression abounds with 
 light as to the mode in which the communication was 
 made to him, for he thereby negatives that he knew it 
 previous to his seeing it, in his own writing, and in a 
 similar way he speaks of all the works of this pattern 
 which were given to him. It is remarkable in this 
 connexion that the literal meaning of the word “ con¬ 
 secration ” is the “ filling of the hand,” and as a 
 matter of experience, many who have felt this power of 
 writing or drawing, have described it, as coming 
 on with a filling of the arm and hand, and which is 
 sometimes so marked as to produce a lightness which 
 raises the hand. The act of consecration may be, 
 therefore, an out-pouring of some spiritual force which 
 
206 
 
 A CLUE IS GIVEN. 
 
 is attended by, and is explanatory of tlie same phe¬ 
 nomenal mode, by which the drawing and writing are 
 produced. 
 
 These passages, however, are brought forward, not for 
 the purpose of drawing an analogy between the subjects 
 of the inspiration, but only by the remarkable instances 
 given to show the mode, or the faculty in man, which 
 has always existed, and does of course still exist in 
 him, however it may now be veiled and covered over, 
 by which inspiration of different kinds can be as a fact 
 received by him. We see that whilst some were 
 inspired for the highest prophecy, others were inspired, 
 or “ filled with the spirit of God, in wisdom, and in 
 understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner 
 of workmanship, to devise cunning works, and to work 
 in gold, and in silver, and in brass,” and thus one 
 source is predicated of all kinds and degrees of inspira¬ 
 tion, leaving the differences to evidence themselves in 
 the results produced. If this view were acknowledged 
 at this day, we should not be questioning as we are, as 
 to the difference between genius and inspiration, but 
 we should call it all inspiration, and if we used the 
 word genius at all, it would be by it to discriminate 
 inspiration as to worldly and scientific truths, from 
 those highest prophetic truths, to which alone inspira¬ 
 tion has wrongly come to be confined. 
 
 Inspiration is universal. A modern expositor says 
 well in illusti'ating this broader view of it. 
 
 “ I turn to the lofty souls who, through breathing 
 
INSPIRATION UNIVERSAL. 
 
 207 
 
 numbers, or melodies, colors, marble, or words, have 
 entranced tlie world, and I hear them declaring that 
 in their higher creations they are overmastered by a 
 power beyond their will. I turn to the reformers and 
 the martyrs, and I hear them proclaim that the word 
 they speak is not their own. I turn to the private 
 experience of us all, and ask if we have not felt, when¬ 
 ever in our highest moments of thought, of duty, or of 
 prayer, some great truth of principle, or energy, or 
 peace has flushed into our reason, quickened our 
 conscience, moved our will, filled our hearts—whether 
 we have not always felt that it was no creation of our 
 own, but rather something that has entered us, within 
 us, and yet from above us ?” 
 
 The recognition of such a faculty, and of such an 
 origin of it, would enable us to imbibe a universality 
 of spirit, which would see everything fashioning itself 
 into one great altar, on which man might present his 
 offspring to God, whilst for want of this recognition, 
 man seems in the pride of his intelligence to be 
 constantly attempting to create backwards from the 
 natural to the spiritual, and by human reason to con¬ 
 struct his God. 
 
 Such a view of inspiration, as I would wish to indi¬ 
 cate, is not compatible with an a priori pronounced 
 notion of infallibility, which the experience of the 
 present modes of thought amongst some of our best 
 theologians, not less than the decision of the Privy 
 Council, have cut away from the church, but this will 
 
208 
 
 INSPIKATION. 
 
 be found a benefit and not a hurt for the Bible, which 
 if it have to be judged from its intrinsic merits, can 
 never be valued at less than it deserves from the world 
 at large. The simple will still understand it in 
 simplicity, and the wise in wisdom, and it will speak, 
 as it has always done, to the inmost heart of man, 
 from its meeting him in those spiritual depths of his 
 nature, where it is his only guide and helper. It has 
 not so much to fear from the attack of foes, as from the 
 strained exigencies of ignorant friends, who are zealous 
 for it above what is written, and who by putting for¬ 
 ward claims which it does not warrant for itself, and 
 which they cannot substantiate, drive into opposition 
 those who are only wise enough to know that the 
 others are wrong. 
 
 This I know, that whenever the great question of 
 inspiration comes to be investigated in such wise as to 
 give any hope of its being settled, the phenomena 
 which I have brought forward here, and others which 
 are connected with them, will throw more light upon 
 it, than any others that can be produced in the discus¬ 
 sion of it, and it is on this ground, and because I 
 know that the facts I have stated are to be relied on, 
 and will stand for ever, that I, with no unwillingness, 
 assert their truth, and am content again to stand 
 before the tribunal of my fellow-sinners to r plead for 
 their consideration. 
 
I 
 
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