and controlling the more mediumistic members, "spoke in tongues," prophesied, and gave remarkable communications relative to the opening of the "seals," and the descent of spiritual powers and gifts to the "world's people." Earth and heaven abounded in signs of an approaching new era.

In 1846, some two or three years before the faintest translatable echo from the summer-land had reached an American ear, A. J. Davis stated, and it stands recorded in his "Divine Revelations," (p. 175,) that the shining intelligences of the second sphere of existence were soon to hold tangible communion with the people of earth. These were his prophetic words "It is a truth that the spirits of the higher spheres commune with persons in the body by influx, although they are unconscious of the fact. This truth will ere long present itself in the form of a living demonstration. * * And the world will hail with delight the ushering in of the era!"

"Why come not spirits from the realms of glory
To visit earth, as in the days of old-
The times of ancient writ and sacred story?

Is heaven more distant? or has earth grown cold?

To Bethlehem's air was their last anthem given
When other stars before the One grew dim?
Was their last presence known in Peter's prison,

Or where exulting martyrs raised the hymn?"

* *

"He who, outside of pure mathematics, pronounces the word impossible, lacks prudence."-Arago.

"The Angel of the Lord descended from heaven and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it."-Matthew.

"Peter, sleeping between two soldiers, bound with chains, the keepers at the door of the prison! the Angel of the Lord came and smote him, and the chains fell from his hands.

'Passing the first and second wards and coming to an iron gate, it opened of its own accord, and they went out.

"When Peter knocked at the door of the gate; a damsel came, who knowing his voice opened the door with gladness, and returning told them Peter stood at the gate.

They said to her, thou art mad.

But Peter continued knocking.

*

It is his angel.

"When they had opened the door and saw him, they were astonished."-Acts.

"The thing that hath been, is that which shall be, and that which is done, is that which shall be done."-Ecclesiastes.

"Loved ones are rapping to-night!
Heaven seems not far away!
Death's sweeping river is bright!

Soft is the sheen of its spray.

Oh, bid them welcome in garments of white

To hearts that are pure and illumined with light."-EMMA TUTTLE.

The rappings!-listen, theologians! The "Rochester knockings!"-sweet molian-toned echoes from spirit-lands in demonstration of immortality!

"Behold," said Jesus, "I stand at the door and knock." That apostolic "cloud of witnesses "—our sainted loved ones, approaching the doors of our understanding through sounds, dreams, visions, premonitions and inspirations, plead for recognition and admission!

"The love which survives the tomb," says Irving, "is one of the noblest attributes of the soul."

.

Golden memories are undying. Pure love is immortal. The bud of friendship that begins to bloom on earth, bears precious fruitage in heaven. Holy remembra call the ascended hither. Death, the silent key that unlocks life's portal to let earth-encoffined spirits up one step higher, severs no sweet attraction. Sympathies between the two worlds, are as natural as between the two continents. The translated mother looks down lovingly upon her weeping child. Delicate the electric table-touch-musical the "rap" -blessed the intelligent response-sacred the message! and happy each glory-bathed soul, who, catching, cherishes the whisper-accents breathed from those angel dwellers upon the shadowless shores of immortality.

Minute the initial steps of all great movements! How pale the thinkers face, standing in that retired mechanic's workshop! He paces the cinder-paved floor crazily, while riveting processes are being adjusted through a succession of little continuous "raps." Rivet after rivet fastened-wheels poised-machinery arranged, and lo! steam engines bidding defiance to winds and waves-crossing continents and whitening oceans-dash the gifts of commerce at our feet. Robert Fulton, inspired by inventors of the better land, is on earth immortal!

Bouchard, digging in 1799, in the fort of St. Julian, discovered the Rosetta stone written over in speaking characters, epistolary, hieroglyphic and symbolic. This, with subsequent discoveries, equally important, led to a full verification of the historic records of Herodotus. These figures and hieroglyphs carved upon Lydian stones, on obelisks and pyramids, permitted ancient Egypt to tell the world, in her