5‘2 
Relations between 
[September, 
much I may say : — I have never known a person who became 
truly impressed by the spiritual idea who was not most ladi- 
cally improved in moral and social tone. At the same time 
it is not to be denied that charlatanry has enteied largely 
into its precinCts, and this is its difficulty : the same diffi- 
culty experienced by the Early Christians when base peisons 
presented themselves as teachers, and cupidity (for means 
or rank) became its almost ruling passion. The sale ol 
remedies, real or assumed, by professing spiritual mediums, 
and individual payment for seances, have wrought much o 
the mischief. „ _ . , 
When R. M. N. talks of the harmony of Science and 
Spiritualism, and that it will “ in the first place be necessary 
to discover the limits of the power of the Spirits, under 
what conditions it is exerted, and how it may be combatted 
when and where it may be undesirable,” he will pardon me 
for saying that he has not given expression to much wisdom. 
Physical combinations and Spiritual manifestations have 
nothing in common, and cannot be governed by the same 
class of laws, and therefore they can never harmonise, lo 
his question of physical faffis, wrought as it is said by 
spiritual agency, the only answer that can be given is the 
well-evidenced faCts and the assumption that such results 
have been achieved by some supermundane agency. 1 he 
simplest and most stupendous of the manifestations, the 
subversion or the apparent destruction of Energy, tend to 
the same and only result, viz., that there are powers in the 
outer world of the laws of which men know nothing , that 
the manifestations of those powers are the proofs that the 
world life is not the only life of man ; that beyond the 
death of the creature, the soul or spiritual energy of man 
has an existence, a power and a life, verifying Shakspeare’s 
beautiful ideal — 
“ I gazed within the jaws of death and saw life teeming.” 
In conclusion R. M. N. says — “ My estimate of the visions 
of Swedenborg is founded on the faCt that whilst he could 
furnish descriptions of planets known in his time, such as 
Jupiter or Saturn, he gives no hint of Uranus and Neptune. 
Had he done so his visions woidd have been completely freed from 
the stain of delusion and imposture .” 
If R. M. N. had happened on a work, “ Nature’s Divine 
Revelations,” by Andrew Jackson Davis, he would never 
have penned the sentence italicised by me immediately 
above, for in that he would find an evidence in favour of 
Spiritual seership which he pronounces would in his 
