THE Spiritual Magazine. JANUARY, 1868. "RING OUT THE OLD, RING IN THE NEW." So sings our noble Tennyson, apostrophising the midnight bells that toll out the dying, ring in the advent of the new-born, Year. As we listen to their wild music, borne to the wild sky, they recall the history of the wild, stormy, changeful Old Year dying in the night, whose life is even now fast ebbing as we write these lines; and as we again listen with attent ear our spirits drink in the rejoicing music which speaks of hope and promise with the Coming Year. For this Old Year has been specially busy, beyond its predecessors, in ringing out the changes of Time and Destiny. In Political Government we have seen it Ring out the old, ring in the new; Sounding the note of passage from the Past, to what we trust will prove the better Future;-a Future in which the young shall be educated, and the aged cared for; in which the poor shall not need to beg for bread, nor the erring to lead a hopeless life of shame, nor the criminal to be swung from the gallows; -a Future that shall Ring in the nobler modes of life, With sweeter manners, purer laws, and a higher Christian civilization. This Old Year, too, has been ringing the Church bells:they have indeed pealed but little with the sweet music for which they were cast-the gentle notes of "Peace on Earth, Goodwill to Men;" on the contrary, they have been harsh and jangled and out of tune; telling of sectarian bitterness and party strife; sounding the alarm of danger-but in reality of N.S.-III. A danger only to withered trees of barren formula, bearing neither fruit nor leaves, cumbering the ground,-and to vested interests in the perpetuation of mental slavery and conventional pretence. The Church bells have rung out their summons to Bishops to assemble from all the ends of the earth, as if to shew by an example of utter impotence how effete are Ecclesiastical Synods, how incompetent to deal with, or even to apprehend, the life and thought and movement of the age. And what mean those notes the midnight bells ring outwhich sound faint and feeble indeed, but gathering in volume and in power as they say "Free Christian Union;" "New Catholic Church?" Ah! is not that what we need-Union more free and Christian;-Churches more Catholic? The attempts at their realization may at present be abortive, but however crude in themselves, they indicate the growing conviction that the wine of the New Age needs other keeping than the old bottles of Ecclesiasticism. Christendom however, while it sadly needs deliverance from the bondage and spiritual deadness of systems and sects; wants no New Christless ChurchChurch only in name-in pursuit of a futile Catholicity emptying itself of all distinctive truth,-a new sect with a genesis of yesterday; but while holding to its rich inheritance of Christian thought and pious memories, and claiming freedom from all shackles that would fetter the conscience or the intellect, it needs a new outpouring of the Divine Spirit; the Christ-spirit -Christ within, ruling the heart, outworking in the life, regnant in all the institutions of Society. It needs in fuller measure the new and higher-the divinely spiritual life,-the life of Love and Reverence and Trust; for there can be no outgrowth where there is no life, and the character of the outward growth will be in close correspondence to the character of the inward life. If the Christspirit-the spirit of self-sacrifice and disinterested love is born in us it must as surely outwork itself in forms and institutions, in individual and social action, as the tree developes leaves and fruit corresponding to the seed from which it springs. Dig and water the soil as you may unless the seed is first planted you will gather no fruit; you may as well grind the air. But how can we look for even the beginning of a higher spiritual life, while men, as far as it is possible to them, close up the channels through which the Divine life flows into the soul; living a merely external life, denying all present inspiration and communion, and even affirming it to be impossible;-shutting out God and the Spirit-world from view-denying their existence, or acknowledging them only with lip-confession which springs not from the heart? We confess that observation and experience do not warrant us to hope much from merely verbal argument and metaphysical discussion. However useful these may be in carrying the mind forward from some ground of existing conviction, they can do little in displacing primary convictions and implanting new ones. Where the only outlook is from sensuous perception, and the mind rests in phenomena alone, it is vain to appeal to considerations which, however strongly they may affect ourselves, bear with no force upon those whose principles and methods alike are fundamentally different from our own. It is here that Modern Spiritualism renders an important service. It meets the Materialist on his own ground. He clamours for facts which his senses can take note of. Spiritualism meets that demand in the most simple and direct way. It gives him the very kind of evidence he needs-plain, palpable facts, and plenty of them. Not facts of history merely, but contemporary facts, which he may see, hear, and feel, and to which, or the like of which, he may recur again and again. Of the sufficiency of this method for the end in view and its superior efficacy there can be no question with those, who, from a knowledge of its results, are competent to judge. It has demonstrated itself. Its statistics (making all allowance and abatement for possible error) are conclusive on this point It is on this ground then, that we ask our readers-many of whom must now be familiar with the facts and arguments we are accustomed to present to bear with us in our persistent efforts to press them upon public attention, for the sake of those who may still need them. We shall be glad when the more general acceptance of their truth shall render their reiteration by us no longer necessary or desirable; and when we, or better qualified successors, shall be more free to trace out the higher teachings and philosophy of Spiritualism, which, (as it seems to us) in their ultimate aim, embrace no less than the entire renovation of the individual and collective life of humanity, and their fit preparation for that immortal life of the Spirit, which the facts of Spiritualism so fully demonstrate. With the New Year we trust our Friends will with new earnestness aid us in our work, and so help to extend a knowledge of those truths to which our pages are devoted. It is becoming evident to all thinking men that education is the great work, as it is the great hope, of the future. But education is of many kinds, and works by many methods. Our work we believe to be educational in a most important sense; for we seek to draw out into consciousness, to exercise and strengthen, man's highest nature,-to elevate his character and his aspirations, and enable him to realize that Earth is the Seminary for Heaven. So, in sincere fellowship with all earnest co-workers, we would labour for that "good time coming "-the World's HAPPY NEW YEAR whose glad bells shall Ring out old shapes of foul disease; Ring out the narrowing lust of gold; The larger heart, the kindlier hand; NEW WORKS BY THOMAS LAKE HARRIS. 1.- The Breath of God with Man: An Essay on the Grounds and Evidences of Universal Religion. By THOMAS LAKE HARRIS, New York and London, pp. 104. The 2.-Arcana of Christianity: An Unfolding of the Celestial Sense of the Divine Word, through THOMAS LAKE HARRIS. Part III. Apocalypse," Vol. i. pp. 487. New York and London. MR. HARRIS has made a long visit to England apparently for the sole purpose of dictating and printing these new volumes. We suppose this to have been his sole object, as this appears to have been the sole result. Mr. Harris isolated himself, or hid himself carefully from all, or nearly all, of those friends who on his former visit received him with open hands and hearts, and exerted themselves to insure success to his mission which then was to lecture publicly on the great topic of Spiritualism, or at least, on his peculiar view of it. As in these volumes Mr. Harris takes every possible opportunity of treating Spiritualism and its phenomena as emanations from the hells, we suppose he regarded contact with his former friends who still adhere to their more charitable, more general, and more logical views of this power, as the height of contamination. Supposing this to be the fact, we cannot sufficiently marvel at the inconsistencies of the man. If Spiritualism be the diabolical system which Mr. Harris now proclaims it, it is at the same time a system and dispensation through which he himself has passed from beginning to end, and by which he has arrived at the ground, whatever it be, on which he now stands. From it he has drawn his experiences, his lights, his strength and his reputation. But whilst kicking down the ladder by which he rose, he expresses no regrets, remorse or repentance for having ascended so criminal a machine, nor attempts to explain the many mischiefs that he has done. All his earlier works were avowedly dictated to him by individual spirits assuming great names in the literature of this world. His great poems, the "Lyric of the Golden Age," and "Lyric of the Morning Land," were according to his own statement, dictated by the spirits of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Pollok, &c. Now, every one of these spirits, according to Mr. Harris's present belief, and indeed, a belief which he held when he visited and lectured in London, in 1861, are devils and impudent impostors. But has he, therefore, on making this discovery, in any way denounced these impositions and devilish dictations of which he had been made the unconscious medium? Has he done all in his power to put a stop to the circulation of these devilinspired books? Has he burnt those in his own possession? On the contrary, he suffers them most complacently to go on, and himself as complacently to reap the benefit of their sale. At the very time that in his lectures at the Marylebone Institute he was denouncing all dictations by individual spirits, as emanations from the hells, he had these very books daily exposed at the door of the lecture-room that he might sell as many as possible to the attendants of his lectures, and thus to spread as far as possible the knowledge of them. Still more, before this time, he had made himself the willing mouthpiece of Satan, and at his dictation wrote down and published a set of the most diabolical effusions, which, collected into a volume, he entitled "The Song of Satan," but more properly the "Songs of Satan,' of which a second edition appeared in 1860, the year preceding Mr. Harris's visit to England, In no work that has come under our observation is the practice of every sensuality and every blasphemy inculcated with more satanic recklessness than in this volume. Many of the songs are worse than any Rochester ever wrote in their debased principle and hellward tendency. Take a stanza :— The juggler has his tricks, they say, The village priest can't always pray, The maiden has many a string to her bow, Life is a game, and the merriest plan Is to dance while you may, and to kiss while you can, Take a few more stanzas : Now curses on the Man divine, With a ha, ho! follow me down; To light us through the devil's town, There are who say that spirits win Through death a milk-white angel's crown; |