they have been credited with spiritual assistance by believing ob

servers.

It is impossible not to be amused with Dr. Hammond's account of a "trance medium's" performance he once witnessed :

Upon one occasion, while a socalled 'trance medium' was dilating upon the beauties of the summer land,' in an assumed state of insensibility, I took the liberty of treading on her foot as it rested under the table, and which, as I had seen, exhibited unmistakable evidence of having a large bunion on it. The foot was at once quickly withdrawn, there was unmistakable contortion of the countenance, and a very emphatic Oh!' escaped from the lips. The current of the discourse was interrupted, and when resumed touched upon Hell, or 'Hades,' as she called it, to which I have no doubt she in her heart consigned all inquiring unbelievers. Now if this woman had been in a condition of trance, my action would have been unfelt, and I would have obtained indubitable evidence of the existence of an abnormal condition of her nervous system and of her sincerity, though of course not of the manifestation being due to spiritual agency."

Another story, reminding one of the disclosures made by a wife when suing for a limited divorce from her husband at New York, who practised as a letter-writing medium, is as follows:-.

"In one case, a lady consulted a well-known orthodox medium, relative to the opinion of her deceased mother," in the matter of her marriage to a young man of rather questionable position and character. Knowing that the lady intended to visit the medium, the lover went first, and fully posted the necromancer in many of the details of the mother's life, and expressed his own strong desire, liberally supported by greenback arguments, that the advice should be in favour of the marriage. The young lady went; the mother appeared; the questions were answered, most unequivocally in favour of the marriage, and the lover was

extolled as a model of goodness and propriety. The recarnified spirit was clothed in white, and the lady noticed that the gown worn was marked with her mother's name. She retired perfectly satisfied, and immediately announced her engagement. But the accepted lover saw fit, soon afterwards, to change his mind, and, his reputation being already bad, he thought it better to have the engagement broken by the lady rather than himself. He therefore caused the medium to write a series of letters to the lady in her mother's name, in which it was stated, that, since the first communication. circumstances had come to light which were not then known, and that, therefore, having her daughter's happiness at heart, she felt bound to urge her daughter not to marry the man to whom she was engaged. These letters were signed exactly as her mother wrote her name. The daughter, who, it must be confessed, was a fit subject for mediumistic wiles, at once broke off the engagement, and the young man had the effrontery to tell her how he had contrived the whole business, even to furnishing the medium with a nightgown belonging to the deceased mother, and marked with her name."

Dr. Carpenter, in a recent article "On the Fallacies of Testimony in Relation to the Supernatural,' dwelt forcibly on the misleading influence of mental prepossessions, which not only vitiate the inferences drawn from the impressions of the senses, but even produce sensations without the presence of any real object. He does not for a moment dispute Mr. Crookes's scientific attainments, still less impugn his integrity, but regards his assertion of having repeatedly witnessed "the levitation of the human body" as simply an illustration of the tendency of strong mental prepossessions to produce belief in the creations of the mind's own visual imagination. By way of conformation he adds. "The most diverse accounts of the facts of a séance will be given by a believer and a sceptic. One will declare that a

table rose in the air, while another (who had been watching its feet) is confident that it never left the ground; a whole party of believers will affirm that they saw Mr. Home float out of one window and in at another, whilst a single honest sceptic declares that Mr. Home was sitting in his chair all the time."

To illustrate the way in which persons are sometimes unconsciously misled by a strong mental prepossession, Dr. Hammond relates the following incident:

"I took a small oblong Japanese table weighing only a pound and a half, and in the presence of a young man of a highly impressionable nervous organiz ation, and hence peculiarly well fitted to be acted upon by the force of suggestion, placed it upon the floor of my consulting room, raising a corner of the rug so that it could rest upon the bare floor. I then said to him, 'I am going to make this table so heavy that you cannot raise it: please give me your

attention for a few minutes.'

"I then placed the ends of my fingers of both hands on the table and stood in that position for about fifteen minutes. During this procedure, the young man looked at the table and me with the greatest interest, and when I saw from the expression of his face that his attention was sufficiently concentrated, I removed my hands and told him the table was now fastened to the floor, and that he could not lift it. He took hold of the light object with both hands, and appeared to be making strong efforts to raise it from the floor, but he could not, and I saw that so far from endeavouring to lift it as he supposed he was doing, he was in reality pressing it with all his might towards the floor. Finally he broke the top of the table in half, not by holding, but by pushing. He then desisted from his exertions and asked me to lighten the table so that he could lift it. I made a few passes over it, and then telling him he could raise it easily, he took hold of it and succeeded of course, without any appreciable exertion."

This seems scarcely credible. One would think there are not many

of such "a highly impressionable nervous organization" as to be thus deluded without being positively insane. Yet Dr. Hammond quotes equally astounding things from a lecturer on phrenology and animal magnetism, who has the greatest contempt for spiritism.

Dr. Hammond gives a good account of the experiments made by Mr. Crookes with regard to the variations in the weight of bodies produced by what he terms psychic force. After a careful consideration of the experiments performed by so accurate and trustworthy au investigator as Mr. Crookes, and attested as to the material facts by so cautious an observer as Mr. Huggins, he has arrived at the conclusion that to that extent they are correct, and that "Mr. Home was capable, without the exertion of muscular force, of so acting on the spring balance through the medium of the board as to indicate an increase of weight." Having made this liberal concession, he thus proceeds :

"But in admitting the facts, we go as far as it is possible to advance without meeting with uncertainties and assumptions. To attribute the falling of the index of the spring balance to spiritual agency is about as sensible as to allege its causation by lunar influence. Indeed, far less so, for we know that the moon does exert a very have no satisfactory evidence to show powerful effect upon the earth, and we that spiritual beings affect in any way the substances belonging to our planet, or even that such beings exist. Neither is Mr. Crookes much more happy with his psychic force.' Because a spring balance with a board attached to it indicates increased weight when a person touches the arrangement in the manner described, that is certainly no adequate reason for rushing to the conclusion that a new force has been discovered. Mr. Huggins, while admitting the facts, exercises a proper degree of philosophical caution when he declines to express an opinion rela

tive to the cause of the phenomenon. There are so many ways in which known forces manifest themselves, and so little is known of the laws which govern them, that Mr. Crookes might, for the present, with safety and propriety, have held his opinion in abeyance. Of course such a thing as a 'psychic force' is possible. But possibilities and actualities are very different things, and it will require much more evidence than that now submitted to remove Mr. Crookes's new power from the one category to the other.

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But the best evidence against the existence of spiritualistic force in the matter of Mr. Crookes's experiment, is the fact that the index can be made to move in the way and probably to the extent mentioned by him by similar pressure exerted by many persons not pretenders to mediumistic powers, and in whom there is no evidence tending to show the existence of any hitherto unknown force."

Experimenting with an apparatus like Mr. Crookes's, Dr. Hammond succeeded in producing similar variations of weight by means of electricity, and he thinks it not improbable that Mr. Home may have exercised sufficient electric force to have produced the observed results. Be this correct or not, there is no warrant for the assumption of a psychic or spiritual force. The utmost that can with reason be maintained is, that there is some force in operation, the laws of which have not yet been ascertained-in short, an unknown force. To call it psychic or spiritual conveys no real knowledge, and suggests all sorts of fallacious notions.

Reason and Revelation. Being an Examination into the Nature and Contents of Scripture Revelation as Compared with other forms of Truth. By W. Horne, M.A. H. S. King nd Co., 1876.-Some years ago a rize of £100 was offered by a

gentleman, who did not make known his name, for the best essay on "The Nature and Contents of Scripture Revelation as Compared with other Forms of Truth." The

adjudicators awarded the prize to Mr. Horne, who has since re-written, enlarged, and remodelled his essay, which now forms a considerable volume. Mr. Horne, while admitting that many previous writers have fully discussed particular parts of the subject, claims the credit of being the first to treat it as a whole. He has certainly taken a wide range, as was perhaps inevitable from the extended and indeterminate character of the title given him. "The Nature and Contents of Scripture Revelation " is a pretty considerable subject in itself, if treated with any sort of thoroughness and completeness, to say nothing of "other Forms of Truth," which may embrace any branch of philosophy and science, if not history, biography, and every-day news. In fact, it is hard to say what may not be included within such elastic limits. Mr. Horne has treated, not so much of one subject as of many and various topics. He says his object has "been that of comparing the flitting images and apparent (query, apparently?) broken outlines of truth which come to us from various sources." It was a natural, if not necessary result of including so many subjects within his scope, that he should not have discussed any oue of them otherwise than in very fragmentary fashion. He touches upon mythology, ancient and modern theism, conscience, miracles, prophecy, inspiration, the consciousness of spiritual facts, the Bible and theology, the Bible and science, Christianity and morality, and various other matters. Strange to say, out of nineteen chapters, he has only one on "The Contents of the Bible."

Mr. Horne objects to the popular

as a com

conception of revelation munication of a set of doctrines contained in a particular book," and prefers regarding it as "the unveiling of the divine through spiritual facts made luminous in the ordinary course of events, whether in nature or in history." This may wear rather a startling aspect for some, but other portions of the volume show plainly enough that on the main points of religious belief Mr. Horne does not differ from the generality of Christians. He is more mystical than sceptical. It is to be regretted that he has not expressed his views with such distinctness and precision as to be clearly understood by all. He talks much about spiritual facts, spiritual experiences, spiritual consciousness, spiritual manifestation, the spiritual faculty, and so forth, without giving any precise definition of the sense he attaches to the word spiritual, which in these days has various meanings. He does, indeed, give a negative description of what he means: "The character of the spiritual is such that the common eye cannot discern it, and the ordinary course of things cannot suggest it to the mind of man." But this is hardly precise enough, because it may without violence be said of the proceedings at spiritualistic séances, and even the performances of conjurors. Elsewhere Mr. Horne says, "There are impressions produced upon men from a sphere outside that of the visual, the tactual, or any other form of the merely sensible sphere." Those who have experienced such impressions may understand Mr. Horne's meaning, but others and they are many, ac cording to his own confessionwhose "consciousness is a great blank on supersensuous things," will find it impossible to enter into the mystical phraseology with which his book abounds. How he supposes "spiritual facts" are "made luminous

in the ordinary course of events," he does not explain, still less does he furnish any sort of proof of the correctness of his view, though he says "prove all things" is an essential part of the teaching of Christianity. One of the most marked features of his volume is the dearth of argument in support of the assertions made throughout it. The writer repeatedly says he has proved this and that in previous pages; but on turning back to them, we have found nothing beyond bare assertion. His notion of proof is evidently different from the ordinary one. Logic is a study to which he appears to have devoted little attention, otherwise he would surely have been more precise in his statements, and more careful to substantiate them by intelligible and legitimate argu

"There never has been an objection, that could bear looking at, brought against Christianity as a spiritual religion. Without exception they have been objections brought against many things which a false theology has bound up with religion. With ill-directed generosity men have undertaken to support as universal truths, and even as vitally united with a spiritual revelation, statements that are merely the historical facts of the growth of intelligence. They have themselves believed, and made others imagine, through these facts, and have involved that spiritual truth might be assailed themselves in questionable answers to objections that were pointless so far as regards the main question at issue. It may be granted, once for all, that you can match the early myths of the Hebrews with those of neighbouring nations, that the Phoenicians, Egyptians, Chaldees, and others with whom they came into contact, contributed to their intellectual growth, and furnished them with a body of tales and systems of beliefs that were interwoven with

those of native origin; that you may find a cosmogony and the story of a flood in every nation; that you may discover the exact counterpart of the story of Eden in many lands, and the principle underlying it in almost all; that you may convict the Hebrew writers of as childish views of heaven and earth as other people, of as unworthy and degrading superstitions, or of beliefs as fantastical as those to whom no revelation such as theirs came. But no candid reader of the Bible would look for anything else. There is evident among the Jews a spiritual development, but there is no sign of a special immunity from error in thought on ordinary experiences. In the life eternal they were taught of God, as we must all be, if we are taught at all; in the knowledge of the sensible world around them they were taught as men from the beginning have been, and, to all appearances, to the end will be taught, viz., through gradual accumulations of experiences, and by careful and methodical comparisons. Knowledge in itself, that is not the result of inquiry and thought, is not so great a gain. A greater gain than any special knowledge is the cultivation and perfection of our powers of knowing. If, therefore, the Hebrews were exempted from pursuing the common road to wisdom, as some appear to think, we cannot envy them, since they must have missed the chief end of the acquisition of wisdom, the cultivation and perfection of their mental and moral nature. It is only by the exercise of any. function that its ideal excellence can be realized, and we have no reason to think that the Jews were deprived of the only means by which their powers of observation and thought could be improved. A spiritual advantage that implies an irreparable intellectual loss of this kind would be, as we are constituted, a questionable gain.

"This appears to be the place for remarking that, when it is objected, as it often has been, against the Jewish religion and revelation, that the Jews. in their treatment of the Canaanites, and in their exultation over deeds of cruelty, as, for example, in one of their earliest and most vigorous and apparently most genuine songs, exhibit a condition of morality that is unworthy

a people who had the knowledge of God which they are reported to have had, it is an objection that tells unmistakably against the view of Divine guidance in every act of life and thought that has just been noticed. An answer to an objection like this is precluded to those who contend for guidance in every point. It is not open to them, as it would otherwise be, to say, who cares to defend the moral development of the Jews any more than their intellectual development? We do not seek to defend such developments elsewhere. The proper course here, as elsewhere, is explanation, not defence. Especially is it dangerous to defend this feature of Jewish history, as Mr. Mansel has done, by the extravagant supposition of a moral miracle-by what, to us, is worse than the act that is sought to be defended-the idea that murder may be a temporary suspension of morals and consistent with eternal morality. I shall have to notice elsewhere this notion of eternal morality; but I may say here that explanations intended to smooth such acts down as the result of special precepts cannot escape the prime difficulty, that they are expressions of a moral nature, which we are bound to interpret by these manifestations of itself."

One cannot but be amused at the easy confidence with which the author lays down the law, declaring (but not proving) that objections will not "bear looking at," summarily brushing aside the prevalent belief as "a false theology," and autocratically condemning the course adopted by other writers with the curt observation, that "The proper course here, as elsewhere, is explanation, not defence," without, however, furnishing the required explanation. It is all very well for him to deny the vital union of spiritual truth with what he obscurely describes as "merely the historical facts of the growth of intelligence;" but he is scarcely reasonable if he expects his solitary denial to outweigh the judgment of writers on both sides, without at least some explanation and argument. To make