lying witnesses, and all religions empty fables, and the worldwide beliefs of man in all that pertains to the spiritual, the supernatural, and the immortal, a weak delusion; or they are the most momentous truths with which man has to do. If truths, then the material and the spiritual world are in communion. Such is the record. The mind and heart of all men, in all ages, have confessed and declared it. Whenever and wherever the human intellect has risen above material things, it has looked in upon a higher state of being. All nature and all revelation have so taught. Why then, this profound resistance to the idea, or faith, or belief, that man may, and does, under fitting circumstances, commune, while in his mortal state, directly with the spirit world? That he has done so is the perpetual teaching of all "sacred" books and all religions. Why, especially, should Christendom, whose religion is based upon the spiritual and supernatural, and whose faith, without an accessible spiritworld, would be but a rope of sand or a shadow, rebel against an ever-present communion between heaven and earth? Its Scriptures teach little else of moment; its prophets, its oracles, its Saviour, and its miracles are as nothing, if materialism triumph. Íf an angel loosed Peter from prison, if angels appeared to the Marys, and if John saw the vision he revealed from Patmos, why should angels and spirits more akin to earth, not now and then, at least, be visible to us. For four thousand years there was no lack of celestial visitants upon earth. They walked and talked with the prophets and seers; and where is it taught that thereafter they should come unto men no more? Has the earth less need of such ministries than of old? I think not; and I insist that I be permitted to believe in close communion with the world of spirits, without being called a fanatic or blasphemer, or that my instincts, my sympathies and my reason be erased as deceivers, and the cradle song and the pulpit teaching cease to utter fables. Until this come to pass, must believe as I have believed.

And why is it that the "profane" intellect of the world-so called-the literary mind-scoffs at and contemns practical faith in spiritual relations? Strip literature of its ideal world and nothing is left. Do its professors simply utter fancies in all their imagery drawn from higher sources than earth and sense, or do they utter an all-pervading faith and belief? Do they believe in the angels and spirits, and genii, and nymphs, and fairies, and and sprites, so populous in their vision-land, or do they but play with shadows? These questions are worth pondering. The soul of poetry, music, sculpture, and painting is ideal, spiritual. Rob them of this divine light and fire and they are formless and soulless. What are the immortal thoughts of Homer, of

Eschylus, of Plato, of Virgil, of Dante, of Tasso, of Goethe, of Bunyan, and Milton, or the better genius of the great souls of psalm and song in all ages, if the spiritual world be a myth, or so far a myth that it only mocks at earnest belief and practical realization? And Art, which has glorified itself on the canvas of Appelles or Raphael, and through the chisel of Phidias or Angelo, shall it be stripped bare of heaven, leaving to it only the harsh, sin-stained anatomy of mortal man? If it has lied in its interpretation, shall we longer exalt and idolize it? And if "divine" poesy has but conjured scenes from tricky fables and unsubstantial fancies, shall we delight and glory in its strains?

To come direct to the heart of the matter, in how much of its own expressed or implied faith does the human mind believe? I see clearly that all exalted mind lives and has lived more in a spiritual than in a material world. I see, upon a casual recurrence to its utterances, that it has devoutly believed in man's affinity with the spiritual and supernatural, as well as with the material and natural, and I am not willing that it should go on preaching and singing, and impressing the world with its imaginations, unless it stand by them itself. Let Milton and Shakspeare be held to as close account as Isaiah or David, and either stand by their utterance, or fall. Let us know that they, or whoever rises in thought, song, or revelation, above the material world, speak fancies or truths, fables or facts, illusions or realities. It seems to me that the mass of mankind little realize the faiths they confess at altars and shrines, and the only spirit that exalts their religions and literature. I put it to the materialist, in and out of the Church, whether any credence is to be given to Isaiah, or Shakspeare, or Milton, or Dante, when they draw, in their sublimest strains, upon the spiritual and supernatural. I ask, too, how the universal belief in these came to man, if they have no bases in fact. If they are but the conjecture of disordered fancy, why has the world built upon them its most sacred and delightful revelations and faiths? But mankind hold to them as the most precious truth. That is, all men believe, theoretically, in what the earnest Spiritualist believes practically. They reject realization of their faith on earth, possibly for two reasons: first, because corrupt sense disputes with the spirit for the possession of man on earth; and second, because realization of Spiritualism compels to higher life than man's corrupt senses incline to. It is convenient enough to the churchman or the worldling to have an invisible and unmeddling guard of spirits to bless and protect him; pleasant enough to think angels watch his slumber and wait to convey his soul; but it is not so convenient to believe that spirits and angels, and God himself, do really have cognizance of all we think and act, and

that our account with the Creator may have to do with the everyday record of our lives. Such a belief, reduced to sincere and realizing faith, would startle the soul of sin, in the midst of its religious and social formalism and hypocrisy, and force it to sacrifices disagreeable to sense. Suppose earnest belief in man's power to commune intimately with spirits and with God entailed no repentance and reform of his earth courses, would there be one man in the universe to reject the extremest claims of Spiritualism? Nay, not one!

But I wander somewhat from my purpose in these thoughts. My design in touching upon this theme was chiefly to show in how far the most exalted minds of earth have declared their sympathy with, and their belief in man's relation to God, and earth's to heaven. I find that the highest elements and the best value of all literature, "sacred and profane," lie in the ideal or spiritual world in connection with man. I find Homer beggared when shorn of his draft on the supernatural; that Tasso cannot deliver his Jerusalem; that Dante has no vision of hell; that Milton is shut from a survey of Paradise; that Bunyan abandons his Pilgrim; while Shakspeare halts and staggers in a dull and darkened universe. And treading on a holier ground, no angels walk in Eden or with the prophets, nor appear to release Peter or comfort the women at the Sepulchre; no revelation breaks upon the eye of John, nor upon the vision of Constantine or St. Augustine, and the Bible itself is a stupendous fiction. In fact, the kingdom of heaven, the great world of spirits, shut out from the literature of earth, and man has little knowledge or consolation above the beasts that perish. If any mind is capacitated more than another to fathom truth that lies above materialism, it is the mind inspired with the ideal. If the Divine afflatus has fallen upon man, it has fallen upon prophets and poets. From these the world has accepted its revelations and beliefs in whatever transcends the narrow vision of sense. The faith of prophets and poets is not doubtful, unless all their noblest utterances are falsehood and deception.

"Ah!" says one, all necessary revelation is made; the day of miracles and direct intercourse with spirits is past. More than is accepted in the canons of the church and the schools is a dream—a distempered fancy. Trust not to fancy! But Milton, who has created more theology for Christendom than the Bible, says, "Fancy is the eye of the soul," and that—

And Coleridge, whose vision was not dull, and whose evidence weighs, if man's can weigh, on a point like this, says―

Fancy is the power

That first unsensualizes the dark mind,
Giving it new delights; * * *
Emancipates it from the grosser thrall

Of the present impulse, teaching self-control,
Till superstition, with unconscious hand,
Seat reason on her throne.

Coleridge gives this credit to superstition, doubtless, because fancy, in its first exercise by the mind, peoples the universe with false and obscure fears of beings invisible. When it rises to a more calm and disciplined survey, the false fears vanish, but the beings (spirits) remain, made visible and beautiful to reason and faith.

Whoever has read Milton cannot doubt his belief in the communion of the material with the spiritual world. I take it that the sentiments and faith he puts on the tongues of his characters, in "Paradise Lost," for instance, are his own-that he has but written out his own faith and belief. How his great epic teems with God, with angels, and archangels. They are with Adam; they speak with him face to face. Indeed, Heaven is ajar with war, and the whole world of spirits concentres its interests, on account of our progenitor, in that garden of the East. Before and after the "Fall," Adam is admitted to converse and communion with spirits. On the completion of the world, Milton puts this song on the lips of the "angelic harmonies, the heavens and all the constellations :"

Open, ye heavens! your living doors; let in
The Great Creator, from his work returned
Magnificent-his six days' work, a world:
Open, and henceforth oft; for God will deign
To visit oft the dwellings of just men,
Delighted; and with frequent intercourse
Thither will send his winged messengers
On errands of supernal grace.

When Satan has worked his mischief in Paradise, Milton's God does not abandon our first parents, but sends (or rather the archangel directs) Ithuriel and Zephon to search for the Tempter, and to watch the bower of Adam and Eve. The obedient angel finds Satan squatted like a toad,

Close at the ear of Eve,

Assaying, by his devilish art, to reach
The organs of her fancy.

A touch from Ithuriel's spear causes Satan to upstart,

Milton confesses his faith in the direct communion of Divine.

agencies with our race, even in sleep, when he makes Eve, waking from slumber in Paradise, say to Adam, just returned from conference with an angel:

Whence thou return'st and whither went'st I know;

For God is also in sleep, and dreams advise,

Which he hath sent propitious, some great good

Presaging.

Milton a believer not only in spirits, but in the divinity of dreams! What say the churchmen to this? But he bears strongest witness when he puts a final speech on the tongue of the angel addressing Adam, after the expulsion:

Said the angel, But from heaven

He to his own a Comforter will send,

The promise of the Father; who shall dwell
His Spirit within them; and the law of faith,
Working through love, upon their hearts shall write,
To guide them in all truth; and also arm
With spiritual armour, able to resist

Satan's assaults, and quench his fiery darts,
What man can do against them, not afraid
Though to the death; against such cruelties
With inward consolations recompensed;
And oft supported so as shall amaze
Their proudest persecutors, for the Spirit
(Poured first on his Apostles, whom he sends
To evangelise the nations; then on all
Baptised) shall them with wondrous gifts endue,
To speak all tongues and do all miracles,

As did their Lord before them. Thus they win
Great numbers of each nation, to receive
With joy the tidings brought from heaven.

But the sublime poet warns (or rather his angel warns) that wolves will seek place in this spiritual fold :

Who all the sacred mysteries of heaven
To their own vile advantages shall turn,
Of lucre and ambition; and the truth
With superstitions and traditions taint,
Left only in those written records pure,
Though not but by the spirit understood,

Then shall they seek to avail themselves of names,
Places, and titles; and with these to join
Secular power, though feigning still to act
By spiritual; to themselves appropriating
The Spirit of God, promised alike, and given
To all believers; and, from that pretence,
Spiritual laws by carnal power shall force
On every conscience. *

*

What will they then
But force the spirit of grace itself—
Unbuild his living temples,

* *