[351]
-that must be Eliza.
Her spirit has ever seemed to cling to that mode of manifestation, and if you would keep it in your sleeping-room, no doubt you would hear from it oftener.
I have been reading lately a curious work from an old German in Paris who has been making experiments in spirit-writing.
He purports to describe a series of meetings held in the presence of fifty witnesses, whose names he gives, in which writing has come on paper, without the apparition of hands or any pen or pencil, from various historical people.
He seems a devout believer in inspiration, and the book is curious for its mixture of all the phenomena, Pagan and Christian, going over Hindoo, Chinese, Greek, and Italian literature for examples, and then bringing similar ones from the Bible.
One thing I am convinced of,--that spiritualism is a reaction from the intense materialism of the present age. Luther, when he recognized a personal devil, was much nearer right.
We ought to enter fully, at least, into the spiritualism of the Bible.
Circles and spiritual jugglery I regard as the lying signs and wonders, with all deceivableness of unrighteousness; but there is a real scriptural spiritualism which has fallen into disuse, and must be revived, and there are, doubtless, people who, from some constitutional formation, can more readily receive the impressions of the surrounding spiritual world.
Such were apostles, prophets, and workers of miracles.
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