two-sided. It has facts by the million-facts which appeal to every possible condition of mind, from the most sensuous to the most spiritualminded; while for the deep and intuitive thinker it has the most transcendent and spiritual ideas. The unlettered can be surprised by the movement of a table without contact of visible power; while under the inspiration of the gifted seer and poet, the great fields of eternal day break on our rapt vision. It opens on the one hand the great questions of physiological psychology, and, on the other, the profound questions of transcendental theology. Hence it promises to reach all the world and every soul thereof. It is the democracy of religion and of philosophy combined. It is the Catholicism of Rationalism, with a fact, an idea, a reason, and a symbol, for every possible mood of man. In bridging over the grave, it connects the poorest barefooted, ragged child of earth-whose kindred watch him from the homes of the pure and the free, weeping when he strays, and rejoicing when he returns to the true path-with the highest archangel of the Summer Land.

4 The first act of the Divine Intelligence, as it appears in man's personality, is a vast synthetic intuition, involving a revelation of two worlds -the world of manifestations and the world of inter-conscious Ideas. The fact of sensation pre-supposes the reality of these coequal worlds. Hence the folly of the war of the "Idealists" and "Sensualists" of modern Europe.

5 Nothing can precede eternal dynamics. Nothing can antedate everlasting Ideas, which are archetypes of worlds.

6 The idealism of Berkeley, which reduced all the external world to a

mere phantasm of sensation; to a mere picture on the nerves of the body, whose cause was forever shut away from our reach; and the Pantheism of Spinoza, or more especially of his one-sided disciples, here find their grave, in common with that subjective Idealism of Spencer, Sir William Hamilton, and Mr. Mansel, which is of late so much in vogue. Sensationalism has a half truth; Idealism has a half truth; Pantheism has another half truth: but so long as each claimed to be the only truth, all were false in a double sense, and blind. The truth in each of these schools is revived, emancipated, and united in the Hramonial Philosophy. 7 Demonstrate the naturalness of spiritual forces and laws, and the realm of the divine is brought within reach of science. Science may then push its discoveries up into the immortal world; maymust-link the two worlds together in the bonds of a scientific as well as sacred fellowship, and so banish all hobgoblins, all ghosts, all superstitions, and all senseless religious fanaticism from the world.

8 Worlds come from suns, suns from vaster suns, and all, at first, from that burning vortex of eternal light in which converge the infinite laws of Pure Intelligence. This focus is the vortex through which the Ideas of Pure Reason rush forth into cosmic chronology, just as the human spirit is the other vortex of life through which these worlds rush upward into love, will, wisdom, philosophy.

9 I deny that a rock is a substance; deny that a tree is a substance. Yet, on the other hand, I affirm the outward world to be real. I am not a Berkeleian, because I affirm the external world to be a

10 I never realized more thoroughly than at this hour, that the world that men regard as so substantial, is only a world of shadow. These outside forms and facts are nothing but phenomena.

11 When we perceive the unity of nature; when we regard the mutual transformability of bodies, and of all forces; when we discover in the analyzed sunbeam and starbeam the elements which have been precipitated and hardened into rocks, and coal, and iron, and other metals; when we behold everywhere the reign of the same invisible power, ever changing in form, but ever the same in esse-the soul is carried on and on in the tide of inspiration, up to the same great central conception that spirit "is all, and in all."

12 Substance is necessarily eternal; phenomena necessarily limited in time and space.

13 Induction deals only with shadows; deals only with form, not substance; deals only with phenomenalities.

14 The universe swings between these two vortices: First, downward and outward, into forms of appearance; second, upward and inward-into thought, into consciousness, into eternal Light.

15 Does any one suppose that men first inferred that there was such a thing as love by induction? No! the human heart loves as spontaneously as the bird sings, because it cannot help it.

16 By induction we learn, from the present state of the rocks, that, though now so solid, they were once fluid. Then we find that the whole earth was a fire-mist; and, following the same inductive lead, where can we stop?

CHAPTER V.

Selden preacheth in the great cities, and pleadeth the cause of ministering spirits, and encourageth all men to seek the truth for its own sake. He declareth the aims of spiritualism, and calleth upon all men to behold the light.

NATURE is a unity—an undi

empire; and to him who affirms the God in it, there is no escape from the spiritual fraternity of all things, and of all spheres of being. SPIRITUAL COMMUNION is the glorious flower of all religious experience; the answer to all prayer; the ultimate of all study, the goal of all science and scholarship.

2 Spirit is the foundation of all things; continued inspiration from God the one condition of all life, high and low, and hence communion with Nature, universal.. There is no world too fine for the spirit in man; no angel too pure to work for us earthlings; and no spiritual aristocracy allowable in this God's world.

3 "Man lives in two worlds at once," said an ancient seer. "Forms are but images of ideas," said an immortal soul, fresh from the spirit land.

4 The only real substance in man is that divine intelligence which, operating from within through the senses, fills the body with light, compared to which the light of suns and stars is dim indeed. It is that light of wisdom which illumines the pathway of planets and holds worlds in order and orbit.

5 Believe me, brethren, there is a grander world than that in which these shadows dance across the sensible horizon; there is a diviner life, a serener consciousness, a more golden condition, than that of the body and its relations to the world.

6 Spiritualism is the only resort of all Christian progressives, who hold on to the idea of God, and in the possibility of a natural divine life; and Atheism is the only resort of all those who cannot so hold on. 7 Just where Spiritualism differs from Theology it agrees with the religion of Jesus. It is alive, fresh, spontaneous, progressive.

8 But what is the genius, spirit, scope of the great Spiritual Movement? What are its ideas, methods, sources of power, and aims? Is it all confined to the fact of intercourse between the two worlds? Nay, far from it.

9 He who accepts the fact of spiritual intercourse, must take all that goes logically with that fact as part of the truth of the whole Movement.

10 Spiritualism shows how the career of a soul in this life affects its condition in the next. Is it not proper, then, for it to deal with the conditions of this life?

11 We felt that the ministering angels of the spiritual world inspired and pushed us on to the work, as well as the deep voice of our inmost spiritual nature.

12 Our aim is the attainment of that "perfection and truthfulness of mind which is the secret intention of Nature." Verily, our aim is too large to admit a creed or sect.

13 We hold that the "chief end of man " is the highest and most harmonious development of all the powers of life to a complete and consistent whole.

14 We do not wish to get "settled" or "fixed." There is no more hope of a society than of a person when it becomes "fixed."

tion around the empire of independent thought; we dictate no terms of belief; we establish no religious or ecclesiastical Sanhedrim.

16 Every argument that can be brought to sustain the popular religion, is stronger when applied to the great spiritual religion. It is said Jesus was inspired, communed with angels, was strengthened by them, healed the sick by the laying on of hands, read the hearts of men, opened the eyes of the blind, and hence that his religion is divinely revealed? We reply, So do hundreds of spiritual mediums. Did the disciples speak in unknown tongues? So do spiritual mediums by the thousand. and the disciples persecuted? So are mediums. Are spiritual mediums accused of every wickedness? So were the disciples.

Was Jesus

17 The breadth of our purpose is parallel to the very purpose of the providence of God, as displayed in the history of the human race; for, what else than the complete education of man can be considered as an adequate aim for the providence of history?

CHAPTER VI.

Again he preacheth to a great multitude beyond the Alleghanies. The Spirit of prophecy possesseth him, and he lifteth up his voice against the Babylon of Supernaturalism. He speaketh in plain tongues. Ile succeedeth in aflicting all the disciples of Peace" who heard him. But he strengtheneth the young men, and counseleth eternal resistance to the imps of tyranny.

R

ELIGION and Philosophy are

2 Brethren, our word to you is, "Come up higher;" leave for a little time your dusty libraries, step out under the stars and open your eyes, and you will then find that no ism can command the soul of this rising world.

3 When souls awake, thrones and oligarchies crumble in ruin; Liberty, Equality, and Education become the watchwords of the race. From the rising consciousness of the democracy of souls comes the demand for "equality of all before the law," and the consequent enfranchisement of woman, of labor, and of the negro. Society is being remolded; creeds are falling to ruins; principles lead the march of nations. And all this because the era of spiritual fraternity has dawned in society, and unfolded a Spiritual Philosophy of religion.

4 The gospel of this epoch is for progress-for the enfranchisement of woman, and her admission, on terms of equality with man, to all the rights, privileges, and immunities of life. It demands justice to all classes of citizens. It calls on government to make all equal before the law. It opens itself to science and philosophy, and all truth, from every quarter of the globe.

6 The greatness of antiquity stands eclipsed before the prowess of this time! The control of steam and of lightning, the laying of the Atlantic Cable, the emancipation of the American Republic, the downfall of Russian serfdom, and the political resurrection of Italy, are among the marvels of but a few years in this century.

7 Supernaturalism is now rapidly sinking into hopeless decrepitude and remediless decay. Under the influence of liberal scholarship, free thought, fearless criticism, and the great Spiritual Movement, joined with the late discoveries in science, popular theology is being actually destroyed.

8 And yet this same Supernaturalism, with its tyrant God, its despair of man, its chronic distrust of human nature, its curses on the human heart, its worn-out creed and ritual, its "infallible Bible," its priestly aristocracy, "chanting damnation hymns over dead babies," with its subjugation of slaves to masters and of women to their husbands, its Jesuitism, and its horrid lust after political power and authority, is aiming to become the religion of the Republic!

9 The time has arrived, say the popular "evangelical" divines, when the affairs of government are to be taken out of the hands of the "ungodly," and to be administered by "the saints"-i. e., by themselves, or by their supporters.

10 Behold, the seventh great reli

upon us. Brahminism, Buddhism, Judaism, Classicalism, Mohammedanism, and even modern Christianity, are, regarding their claims, only failures. All have failed to save man from ignorance, crime, war,

slavery, and woe. Now, the race advances either to Atheism or to a universal Spiritualism.

11 Millions of men and women have believed these things with all their might, and yet their lives have been the purest of the pure, the truest of the true, and, like fair trees, have blossomed sweetly forth on every side with fair humanities, and bent beneath a golden weight of love. But were they so because of their belief? No, but in spite of it.

12 We do not forget the history of sects, creeds, and ecclesiastical despotisms on the one side; neither do we neglect to note the anarchy and isolation of absolute individualism on the other.

13 Religious anarchy has nearly come again. It was not till the old world was reduced to a similar chaos, that the Divine voice said, "Let there be light."

14 The spirit of nature is always fixing and unfixing things, molding and remolding over and over her forms of inanimate and animate being; continual flux and reflux

keeps ocean, air, and stars pure, lifegiving, and beneficent.

15 The wrecks of the old institutions floating around us, attest that the currents of Spiritual power have risen to high-water mark, and will, out of their sediment, create a fairer world.

16 That holy" Providence "which guides justice and liberty to victory is the "Providence" of armies of angels, inspired and sent down to us by the eternal decrees of the Infinite Reason.

17 At last the whole human race shall break away from idolatries, bibliolatrous creeds, and church craft, and, uniting, build the temple of a World-Religion out of blocks of solid Light, quarried from the zenith of Eternal Love, Liberty, and Law.

18 A day will come to every soul, when into the channels of its purified being will pour the Love, the Truth, and the Beauty of the world.

19 To be passive to the spirit of Nature is the secret of genius, and the path of salvation.