"Then said Jesus to them again, peace be unto you. *

* And when he had said this, he breathed on them, and said, Receive ye the Holy Spirit."

"After they were come to Mysia, they assayed to go into Bithynia; but the spirit permitted them not."

"While Peter thought on the vision, the spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee."

"Then the spirit said unto Philip, Go near and join thyself to this. chariot."

"And when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came on them and they spake with tongues and prophesied."

"Then Peter and John *** laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit."

These apostles, as well as Paul, being powerful developing mediums, so intensified the spiritual atmosphere, that, by laying their hands upon those susceptible persons, thus increasing the magnetic battery, they were surcharged and thrilled with the electric influx. So at the Pentecostal scene described in Acts, "when they were all with one accord in one place, suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared cloven tongues like as of fire. * * * And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the spirit gave them utterance."

The spiritual manifestations upon present pentecostal occasions, when our media are in harmony, corroborate those of the past; and the past, to historic inclined minds, confirm the present. Thus the old and the new, as witnesses in a common cause, clasp hands.

One of the demonstrations of spiritual clairvoyance, establishes the fact that each individual is enveloped in a spiritual sphere or emanation. This is often seen by the exceedingly sensitive, and sometimes absolutely felt even by those of dull and deadened sensibilities. The discovery of the spectrum analysis, which now occupies so important a position in the investigation of the physical sciences, is already helping Spiritualism, by demonstrating similar auroral spheres

and emanations around physical substances. Spiritualists have taught this for years. It was a clairvoyant discovery. Science follows Spiritualism-a great way off.

Mr. Ruskin, writing a friend in the north of England, says:

"You most probably have heard of the marvelous power which chemical analysis has received in recent discoveries respecting the laws of light. My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the rainbow of the forest leaves being born, and the rainbow of forest leaves dying. And, last, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It was but the three-hundreth part of a grain, dissolved in a drop of water; and it cast its measured bars, for ever recognisable now to human sight, on the chord of the seven colors. And no drop of that red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out of the ground."

If there is a spheral emanation around the crystal, the plant, the rose, and a drop of blood, how natural that there should be electro-odylic spheres around physical and more etherealized spiritual bodies. The earthly is but the analogue of the spiritual.

Sensitive persons, with organisms like iodized plates, sympathetically sense these spheres. Clairvoyants see, and read therefrom the true character.

This age has few secrets. Seers see the innermost of things, and conscious souls know kindred souls. When rapt in this holy soul-blending sympathy, law is useless, labor a pleasure, and duty a word obsolete. Such souls converse across oceans when no sounds pass. Oblivious to the outward, to time and space, they live the inner life. Those positive impart to the negative-impart what they have, the quality of the efflux corresponding to the interior state. If good and pure-minded, they impart the "Holy Spirit," that is, a most uplifting and spiritualizing influence. This rationally explains why Jesus "took little children in his arms and blessed them." The blessing did not consist in the uttered words, but in the celestializing influence of the divine magnetism he imparted.

It explains also why he "breathed upon his disciples," and how it was that he "felt virtue go out of him" when the negative woman touched the hem of his garment.

"To feel the breath of the pure-to come into soul-fellowship with the true and noble, is equivalent to a baptism of the "Holy Spirit; " a crown of joy and a moral transfiguration.

"Teach me Thy Truth to know, That this new light which now I see

May both the work and workman show;

Then by baptismal love, I'll climb to Thee."

In tropical countries of the East, ablutions were common. Since water was efficacious in removing effete substances from the body, it became, in time, an accepted emblem of moral purification. Immersion was doubtless the outward method. The Christian church has contended that Jesus dictated a fixed formula of baptism, when he charged the apostles to "Teach all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost;" but the apostles themselves thought differently, and baptized simply in the name of Jesus. Spiritually interpreted and applied, the Father may signify the absolute religion; the Son, the religion of humanity; and the Holy Spirit the religion of the conscience and affectional nature, kindled into holy aspiration by the magnetisms of angels.

The Greek word baptisma, rendered baptism from the verb baptizo, implies rite or ceremony. Relative to this matter of baptism we accept the following Pauline teaching:

"One Lord, one faith, one baptism.

"One God and Father of all, who is above all, and through all, and in you all."-Eph. iv: 5-6.

This one genuine baptism, however, is not, never was, water baptism. All outward baptisms are Mosaic. After every act of defilement, the Israelites were commanded to bathe and wash themselves clean with water.

John the Baptist, seemingly disorderly and fanatical, a partially developed medium, controlled by Elias to cry in Judean forests, never embraced Christianity as taught by the Nazarene; neither did he spiritually enter in fulness the Messiah's "Kingdom of Heaven." Hence, said Jesus, "He that is least in the kingdom of heaven is greater than he.” John came under the law dispensation. Immersion in some flowing stream was his manner of initiating converts. Many of his more aspirational disciples soon left him, however, and followed the man of Nazareth. John, by the aid of his mediumship, caught a glimpse of this superior teacher and testifier: "I indeed baptized you with water unto repentance; but he that cometh after me, whose shoes I am not worthy to bear, shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire." "But Jesus himself baptized not" with

water.

His disciples in a few instances baptized by immersion; so, not having attained unto the higher and more spiritual, they also, in the earlier years of their mediumship, occasionally circumcised and practiced other Jewish ceremonies. None of them, save John the Evangelist, understood Jesus, or the import of his spiritual kingdom. They received the Nazarenean baptism of fire, of love, of consecration and holy spirit influx, only in part, and hence their doubts, fears and tergiversations. Honoring John the Baptist for his zeal, admiring his immersion rites because of their cleanly and invigorating effects in that dusty tropical country, and believing also in the necessity of present physical ablutions, we recommend daily baptisms in summer-time, and their frequency in winter.

There is, however, an efficacy of water baptism, under spiritual control, not yet understood or appreciated by the church-a baptism which the spirits were able to induce