of lighting gas with the tip of the finger is a beautiful experiment, illustrating, in a most convincing manner, the electrical atmosphere (aura) surrounding the body, whereby spirits approach and act upon the media. The Tribune says:

"This is a feat anybody may perform. Let a person in his shoes or slippers walk briskly over a woolen carpet, scuffling his feet thereon, or stand upon a chair with its legs in four tumblers, to insulate it, and be there rubbed up and down on the body a few times with a muff, by another person, and he will light his gas by simply touching his finger to the tube. It is only necessary to take the precaution not to touch any thing, or be touched by anybody during the trial of the experiment. The stock of electricity acquired by the process we have described is discharged by contact with another object. A second person must turn on the gas while the other fires it. The writer has lighted it in this way, and seen it done by children not half a dozen years old. We are all peripatetic lucifer matches, if we did but know it."

The full and unequivocal discovery of the electrical attributes of man is equivalent to a scientific acknowledgment of the primary conditions on which we base our philosophy of spiritual intercourse-especially, the physical demonstrations. There is a remarkable difference in persons with regard to electrical susceptibility. "Persons," says Kerner, "highly susceptible of electrical influences, are often cured of their maladies by a change of residence; whilst others of the same description, frequently from a like cause, fall into sickness which the physician can not account for. Papponi,

a man spoken of by Amoretti, who was very susceptible to electrical influences, and who suffered from convulsions, was cured merely by a change of residence. Pennet, a man of the same susceptibility, could not go to rest, in a certain inn in Calabria, till he had wrapt himself in an isolating cloak of waxed cloth.”

The condition of man's constitution remains wrapt in mystery. Incomprehensible and undefinable, man emerged from the unfathomable vortex of divine vitality -a projected embodiment of an all-animating Spirit— the greatest living wonder. How fearfully-how wonderfully made! He is inwardly a spirit: externally a spiritual manifestation. If the demonstrations of invisible intelligence are marvelous, man is the origin of those marvels. Is man a chimera? Is man's existence a fiction? Lo! he is a spirit; a manifestation of an infinite reality. The mystery of innumerable worlds lies imbedded in man; there are, therefore, worlds innumerable, of endless progression, in which this mystery shall be unrolled and comprehended. Yet he is wonderfully simple, organically and spiritually; it is our ignorance, not his nature, that makes the attributes of his constitution marvelous.

Circles for spiritual evidences, when formed in a becoming spirit of inquiry, will quicken the intellect and unchain the heart. The general system, as explained in the former volume, is still applicable. All the laws therein given should be observed when circles for mental development are instituted, and, therefore, it is deemed unnecessary to recapitulate those directions in this connection.

But I now propose, by impression, the following

plan, as the best method to accumulate, refine, and concentrate the vital electricity of a circle:

Here is seen a new arrangement. The males and females (the positive and negative principles) are placed alternately; as so many zinc and copper plates in the construction of magnetic batteries. The medium or media have places assigned them on either side of the junction whereat the rope is crossed, the ends terminating each in a pail or jar of cold water. This rope may be formed as already described.* But these new things should be added. The copper wire should terminate in, or be clasped to, a zinc plate; the steel wire should, in the same manner, be attached to a copper plate. These plates should be dodecahedral, or cut with twelve angles or sides, because, by means of the points, the volume of terrestrial electricity is greatly augmented, and its accumulation is also, by the same means, accelerated, which the circle requires for a ru

*See "Philosophy of Spiritual Intercourse," page 98, for particular di rections concerning the magnetic rope.

dimental aura (or atmosphere) through which spirits can approach and act upon material bodies. The plates should be from six to ten inches in diameter; though this may be conformable to the size of the pails or jars.

Underneath, and brazed to the copper plates in four or five places, leaving one plate slightly raised above the other, so that the water can flow between them, should be corresponding plates of opposite denominations; that is to say, the copper plate should be brazed to a zinc plate, and vice versa. Then a copper wire (which the engraving does not indicate) should pass from one vessel to the other, simply to be immersed in the water at each end. The vessel containing the plates and water, may not be more than four feet asunder. The plates should be kept clean and bright. The magnetic cord, arising from these surfaces, should pass (as seen in the illustration) around the circle of individuals, rest on the knees of each, and be gently grasped by all hands. The result will soon be-on the supposition that the external atmosphere is favorable, and the members physically healthy-a repletion of organic or vital electricity. This element will soon saturate the table, penetrate its fibers and atoms, forming thus the menstruum for the physical manifestations -as exhibited in the action of Mind upon the muscles through the agency of the magnetism which continually pervades and penetrates them. By the foregoing method, a circle can accomplish and establish the prerequisites in one-fifth of the time now consumed by heterogeneous plans so generally adopted. And in order that the reader may intelligently know how the

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'raps" are produced, and "tables moved," I will introduce an impressive instance, in which I was myself the medium. But first let me remark, that the "tipping of tables" by resting of the hands on the outer edges of them, is doubtless the best way to be self-deceived, for in such cases, with few exceptions, the mere muscular and involuntary nervous pressure determines the external and visible motions.

AN ILLUSTRATIVE VISION.

THE circumstances under which the following vision was received were these: I had been writing upon the benefits and penalties of human experience. My mind was much but pleasantly exercised upon the subject. In the progress of my writing, I had come to this conclusion that those who prematurely pass away to the spirit land—that is, before the period of utter organic ripeness or maturity-are deprived of that wholesome foundation of experience which is essential to normal mental development. And when engaged in inditing these words, being meanwhile in the superior state, I felt a warm breathing over the side of my face and head, penetrating to the fibers of my brain, and causing me to look to the right, whence the warm current emanated.

Immediately I saw that the breathing proceeded from the will of a finely-molded Man,* leading by the hand.

*The reader will pardon any apparently unwarrantable use of this term, as applicable to a spiritual personage; but I am quite sure, that, to an appreciative and rational mind, the word is here employed with no impropriety.