hindrance in all spiritual working; and that such powers are intensified by union and brought to a focus, is certain. Even the Master Miracle-worker, in the midst of a sceptical community, "could do no mighty works because of their unbelief." So far were His miracles from being acts of omnipotence, that He expressly insists on their limitations, and on the conditionsspiritual and physical-necessary to their performance,—faith, prayer, fasting, unity, harmony. No doubt it was to the observance of these divine laws, to His habits of solitude, meditation, and prayer; His perfect trust in God, and His oneness with the Father, that He was able to perform those beneficent mighty works that were indeed a sign to that faithless and perverse generation. Doubtless there was also conjointly in Him what may be called an organic fitness-a harmony of the entire nature, an openness to the highest influx, the natural body itself being pre-eminently a temple for the Divine Spirit; so that both spiritually and physically, and in an especial manner, He was thus constituted the living organ and medium of its communication and power. And if now, as we are told, "such things never happen," let it, among other things, be remembered that such a personality is never found, that such a life is never lived. When our "experienced savans" are thus open to influx from the Heavens, and attain that moral and spiritual union with God which Christ exemplified, and to which His true disciples aspire, they may realise the truth of His words, "The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater than these;" and of His promise to be in the midst of those who were gathered together in His name; and understand how the great Pentecostal outpouring occurred, when "the disciples were all with one accord in one place.'

To our "experienced savans," however, I am aware such language is like talking in an unknown tongue. Spiritual insight indeed is rarely found in men profoundly penetrated with a sense of their own learning and wise in their own conceit. It is true now, as of old, that spiritual mysteries are often hidden from these wise and prudent persons and revealed to fishermen, and even unto babes. Scholarship may teach us of the past, and science of the facts of Nature and her methods, but spiritual arcana are beyond their province. Philology and mathematics will not help us to any knowledge of the laws, forces, and relations of the spiritual world, and the most experienced savant may be stone-blind to the simplest factsconcerning it; as indeed he is when he seeks to test and gauge those facts by the laws and methods of purely natural science, except in so far as they relate to phenomena and effects of spiritual action within the range of physics.

While we contend that there is no antecedent impossibility in miracles; that, like other facts, they may be established on sufficient evidence; that they violate no law of the Divine Order, when we take a comprehensive view of that Order as including both the natural and the spiritual universe with which they may be coeval and co-extensive; they at the same time become divested of that false and superstitious character which in a scientific age has so impeded their reception.

I trust that the time is not far distant when this whole subject will be reconsidered on larger grounds than those on which it is now generally discussed, and apart from any bearings it may be supposed to have on theories and systems on either side. It may be that our definitions may have to be corrected and our theories revised, and that our systems may be found partial and incomplete; but let us take all facts into the account and resolve to follow Truth whithersoever it may lead us, and I apprehend we shall be on the high road to a better understanding of the rationale of miracles, past and present.

NOTE. I have abstained from direct discussion of the New Testament miracles (to which, in consideration of this subject, our thoughts naturally revert) as their adequate discussion would demand much fuller treatment than is here possible. I would, however, recommend the reader desirous of prosecuting this enquiry to Trench's Notes on the Miracles, especially to the Introduction, which gives a historical and critical review of the objections to them. It is a pity this Introduction is not published as a separate essay in a cheap form for more extensive circulation.

In reply to Hume and more recent objectors to miracles, see an able paper by Alfred Russell Wallace, read before the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, and published in The Spiritual Magazine, No. 3, Vol. VII., New Series.

SOME "MEMORABLE RELATIONS."

A LADY writing from Lucan, County Dublin, has communicated the following memorable relations :""I have been lately reading cases of insensibility to fire related in the Spiritual Magazine; my husband can bear witness to a case of the same kind in this neighbourhood. Within a mile from this place, my husband has seen a man who worked at the blacksmith's forge in the village, take a red-hot bar of iron from the forge out of the furnace and lick it, all present hearing his tongue upon it sound as if frying; and he would take live coals in his hands, receiving thereby no injury, his skin remaining without any trace of fire having passed over it."

The spirit of a suicide is described by the same lady as

lately to have appeared in their neighbourhood under the following circumstances:-She says, "A man committed suicide the other day by cutting his throat. He was unmarried, and had a sister who lived close to his house; but I do not know whether she lived with him. On the day of the funeral, when she returned home, she went into a shed for his spade and shovel. They were standing in a corner. When she entered she saw a cloudy form between them and the wall. She became alarmed and ran out, but gathering courage ran in again, upon which the spade and shovel attacked her as if they were in a man's hands. She ran out terrified, and after a little while she asked a man (who knew nothing of what had happened to her) to get for her the spade and shovel. He went in and brought them to her without their showing any hostility to him. But immediately upon their being brought into her presence they attacked her furiously, and she had to fly for her life."

In a later letter received from this lady, she says that the cottage of the suicide is now empty, no people being found, however poor, willing to live in it, owing to this disturbance caused by the uneasy spirit.

Writing, June 14th, 1872, our correspondent tells us of another haunted cottage in her neighbourhood.

writes:

She thus

"We live close to the Grand Canal, at the 12th lock from Dublin (that is how we reckon here). About twelve years ago there was a lock-keeper who lived in the lock-house, which stands about 12 yards from the lock. There are sluices in the gates which are like wickets drawn up by an immense key that works like the key of a barrel-organ. I need not say how laborious the turning is of this key; and if it slips off, which it sometimes does, the person turning it generally falls into the water, and not unfrequently is drowned. At the time I speak of, the lock-keeper was a man of the name of Michael Dunn. He was a quiet, decent man, with only one fault. He occasionally took a dram, and then he drank in fits; for months he would drink nothing, then take to it again and drink incessantly for a week at a time. He was married to a heartless, vixen of a woman, who completely ruled him. They had three or four children, the eldest of whom was a boy named Isaac, who was an unusually smart, intelligent, amiable lad. The unfortunate father at the time I speak of, the summer of 1860 or thereabouts, in one of his drunken fits, was lying on his bed sleeping off his drink, when a boat was seen coming up to the lock. Poor little Isaac was ordered by his parents to prepare for the entrance of the boat. The child cried bitterly and besought that he might not have to empty the water out of the lock, for that very

In

morning the key had slipped, and but for the presence of a bigger boy who assisted him, he would have then been thrown into the water. His entreaties were in vain, the father stupid with drink and drunken with sleep, drove him off with curses. a moment the heavy key once more slipped from the child's weak hands, and the child was driven through the aperture by the violence of the water and hurled to the bottom of the lock, his back-bone being broken by his having been forced through so small an opening, not more than two feet square, or so. The wretched father was sobered by this horrible accident, but appeared as one stunned so as to scarcely understand what really had occurred. At length he was roused by the curses and screams of his wife, who from that day forth never for one moment ceased calling him the murderer of her child. One morning about ten days after the tragedy, the wretched father, driven wild by his wife's reproaches, fled from the house like a madman, and, about half a mile away in the fields smothered himself.

There is at the present time a lock-keeper, together with his wife and his little son, living in the house by the lock; and his wife's sister, a decent young woman, a dress-maker, who sleeps in the room formerly occupied by Michael Dunn. For a considerable time, the dress-maker has seen lights and heard voices. Lately she has constantly seen the figure of a little boy with bare feet and head, with a kind of cloak, however, partly drawn over the head and concealing the face. This figure would walk from her room to her sister and brother-in-law's bed-room. She bore this as well as she could, telling the priest of it, who only laughed at her account. Four mornings since (this is written, as we have already said, June 14th, 1872), she saw the boy, instead of passing on without noticing her as usual, turn and look up in her face, and the poor girl has been in a dreadful state of mind ever since.

Since writing the above, our correspondent sends us word that she learns that during the miserable eight days of his life after the death of little Isaac, the father used every night at eleven o'clock to say he should go to the lock, as Isaac had promised to meet him there. And there for an hour he would be seen pacing up and down, as though conversing with some

one.

THE DARK SÉANCE, AND COLOURED LIGHT.

By CAPTAIN CAsement.

DURING my early investigations of the spiritual phenomena in North America, commenced in 1851, I happened to be at New York, on one of my visits to that country, in the Spring of 1853 or 54, and shall never forget the sensation produced among Spiritualists and others there, on the introduction of the spirit-voice and accompanying manifestations by the spirit of "John King," at a spirit-room, built to spirit-order, in a very secluded spot among spot among the mountains of Western New York, by a Spiritualist named Koons.

I was prevented then from paying a visit to Koons' spiritroom, as I had arranged to do, but I heard Mr. Charles Partridge, the publisher of the first modern spiritual newspaper, the New York Spiritual Telegraph, relate his experiences at the spiritrooms in question, avowing the extremely satisfactory character of the manifestations taking place there, which were free to the public, and visited by persons from the most distant parts of the country, he having met one gentleman there, who had actually come through 11 degrees of latitude, expressly to witness those extraordinary manifestations. I had, however, once crossed the Atlantic previously, chiefly to investigate the wonderful case of Andrew Jackson Davis, and I may add that I never regretted it. As to the reason why "John King" had selected such an out-of-the-way spot for his astounding manifestations, much curiosity existed, for it was near no town or village, and part of the journey was fatiguing, the mode of locomotion being arduous and difficult during the latter stages.

In reply to queries put, it was explained that the magnetic and electric emanations of that district, influenced as they were by the peculiar geological formations underneath, produced conditions, which in connexion with the mediumistic powers developed in Koons' family, enabled the spirits operating to give the peculiar manifestations then and there exhibited. It may be asked, how is it that the same "John King," with his spiritassistants, are able to afford to us now, in the heart of London, manifestations equal, and in some instances far superior, to those originally given at Mr. Koons' spirit-room? The explanation is simple yet instructive, as pointing to that great law of progression, which controls all things seen and unseen, animate and inanimate in the universe. For since the time