manifestations; also, I have offered a few thoughts on the general conditions of spirit manifestations. I now pass to consider

THE MORALS OF SPIRITUALISM.

There is no question on which there exists greater differences of opinion than on this. It is true that Spiritualism, to some extent, ignores old traditions, authorities, and standards. It is also true that old ideas of morality, unless they have something more than age to recommend them, are below par among some of the Spiritualists. This is enough to cause certain persons, who borrow their ideas of right from the past, to see all the evidence that could possibly be required to prove that Spiritualism is leading the people away from virtue's paths. There are people in the world who could not be convinced that ancient landmarks can be departed from without ignoring every rule of right, and having a general chaos ensue. With others, there seems an actual necessity of departing from the old, as it has, after eighteen centuries of experience and effort, failed to make moral men and women of even its own adherents. Spiritualists have, many of them, noted the slavery, war, drunkenness, murder, burglary, and licentiousness yet in the world, and often practiced under the very steeples of the churches, and sometimes by ministers who occupy the pulpits. This occasionally causes one to say, as many more think, There is a radical wrong somewhere, Christianity, as a system, has failed to make the world good. Thus investigation has led them to conclude that Christianity has too nearly ignored or rejected the inward monitor; that if people had been looking

within more, instead of to outside standards of right, and had striven to more thoroughly cultivate the acquaintance of the internal monitor, and developed good from within, working it out into every day practice, the world would to-day have been nearer heaven. Hence Spiritualism, if it has not already done so, must in a measure reject outside authorities with regard to right and wrong. In fact, until man is absolutely perfect, there can be no universal and infallible standard of right and wrong. It is acknowledged on all hands that man is more or less the creature of circumstances. Thousands of the Christians to-day, who denounce others for not looking through their glasses, owe all their Christianity to the circumstance of their having been born and reared at the time and place, and under the circumstances that have in turn been. regarded as blessings or curses. Had they been born in a Mohammedan country, and educated by Mohammedan parents and teachers, they would probably denounce "Christian dogs" as infidels, worthy of nothing better than a Mohammedan hell. When it is understood that all are not born and reared under the same circumstances, it will be understood that all can not be tried by the same standard. I doubt whether any one, after a little reflection, would hold an idiot. as thoroughly responsible for an infringement on the rights of others as they would one of greater capacity. We are all responsible in proportion to our capacity and development. This being the case, when a man kills another, the blame, if there be any, lies back of the murderer: it goes at least as far back as the cause that made him such. Our courts are beginning to recognize this idea: scarcely a murderer is tried but

an effort is made, often with success, to prove him insane. Every child has a right to demand of society a birth and rearing beyond that of a murderer: conditions that will preclude the possibility of murder. The crimes of the present generation point to the sins of the past, and those to the past, and so ad infi

nitum.

Believing this, Spiritualists generally doubt whether the world can be reformed by precepts. They argue that men now know better than they can do. Spiritualists are therefore trying to develop a philosophy, the carrying out of which will as naturally make man better as the spring showers and sun will quicken vegetation into germination. Spiritualists claim that a child, begotten by the proper parents (those whose union should produce children), and under proper conditions, can not possibly be as bad as one begotten and born under other conditions. Many of them claim that if a child is properly generated and reared, he needs no regeneration. A person raised in filth and on improper food can not, out of that, develop as pure rules of life, nor a practice of as pure precepts, as one well washed, who lives in the right kind of a house, breathes the right kind of air, sleeps in the right kind of beds, wears the right kind of clothing, and eats food calculated to develop the right kind of brain and muscle. Therefore, instead of denouncing sin and sinners, they are going to work to eradicate sin and cure sinners. Moral and mental disease should be made a study, and treated in a manner analagous to the treatment of physical disease. All who have followed me thus far, are prepared to hear me say, that our courts are no more justifiable in hanging

a murderer than they would be in hanging a consumptive, hunchback, or paralytic.

If the foregoing argument is true, no book standard of right and wrong can be given, any more than a book should regulate how often the heart should beat, or how often its readers should sneeze or cough, or how many fits of ague he should have, and by what intervals they should be separated. One will take cold more frequently than another, in spite of all the books in the world; so the one born a kleptomaniac will steal more frequently than the one having no temptation in that direction. Books can not stop it.

HISTORY OF SPIRITUALISM.

The reader will not understand from the above heading that it is my design to go into the minutiœ of the history of the Spiritual movement. To do that would require a volume as large as Webster's large dictionary; besides, it is at this stage of its development quite an unnecessary work. The history of Spiritualism besides, in part at least, written in books, is so perfectly engraved on the minds of the readers of this volume, that but little need be said. The every-day occurrences of the spiritual phenomena, in almost every department of the globe, has given it such a wide-spread notoriety, that enough of its history is within easy reach of every one to answer the purpose of this book.

Modern spirit manifestations came into the world unsought and unheralded, except by A. J. Davis, the Poughkeepsie seer. As much as four years before the "Rochester knockings," he was laughed at and regarded as insane, for publishing that the spirit world

and this world would soon come in communication with each other. In fulfillment of Mr. Davis's prophecy, Spiritualism came undesired and unwelcomed. With no preacher or press to advocate its claims, it immediately began to make converts, gathering among its adherents persons of every rank and station in life. Editors, ministers, lawyers, doctors, actors on the stage, in short, men from every rank and station in life, fell before this mighty power. Nothing has stayed or even retarded the onward march of this new conqueror of the world. It has not only proved its right to life by living and thriving through all opposition, but it has questioned the right of hoaryheaded errors to longer stay the march of mind. The doctrines that have been examined in this chapter have slunk away before Spiritualism, as bats and owls retire before the rising sun.

Although Spiritualism has in some way interwoven itself into the every-day reading, thoughts and life of the great majority of the Christian world, besides making between ten and fifteen millions of out-andout converts; and although it has instilled itself into about all the literature, and almost everything else. of the age, the evils that were prophesied by ministers and editors as sure to follow, have in no case ensued. Those who embrace the new religion, instead of becoming the lawless horde of religious and spiritual adventurers, that some had prophesied as being the inevitable result, settled down, attending to their own. business, with an honor, integrity, and ability often excelling their evangelical neighbors.

Spiritual halls are now being built, lyceums founded, societies incorporated, Young People's Spiritual