tion of certain noble faculties native to humanity; faculties overlaid by the specific functionalities of every other nation than the peculiar people of God, and among them awakened into full activity only in their highest men and women; faculties, the morbid and impotent struggle of which towards development has been actually going on in almost every age and country, and can be witnessed by the curious in nearly every district of the world to-morrow or the next day; faculties, in a word, which are destined to add a new glory to life with their completed efflorescence, in those happy æons in which the Race shall be drawing near its first or terrestrial goal! It is true that all the things contained in this long sentence cannot be attributed to any one author, either mesmeric or theological; and they are neither to be inculcated nor repudiated at present. They have been brought together, in this instance, solely for the purpose of setting forth the great importance of a thorough investigation of the so-called science of Mesmerism, whether the inquiry is to end in the utter rejection, the unqualified acceptation, or the critical modification of its claims. Nor is this importance not deeply felt in quarters where the impregnability of the popular Christianity is a thing of far greater moment than it is with us; for Tholuck of Halle, perhaps the greatest of the theologians now belonging to the school of orthodox protestantism, has not only become convinced of the general truth of Animal Magnetism, but he has actually proceeded to speculate and write upon it in his own way, in order to confront and do battle with the positions of such as Strauss. On the other hand, there is the case of Professor Bush. That ingenious interpreter, dissatisfied with the common way of conceiving of the resurrection of the dead, and holding by the Bible as the sole and sacred oracle on the subject, proceeded to reinvestigate the scriptural phraseology concerning it. These inquiries into the true meaning of the word put for Resurrection in the New Testament soon became an elaborate examination of all the language held, in Testaments new and old, anent the nature of man. The conclusion at which our philologist arrived, after a careful comparison of instances, was nothing less than the proposition that is implicitly, if not very explicitly, inculcated in the holy scriptures, that a man is composed of body, soul, and spirit; the soul differing in nature from the spirit quite as much as from the body; the difference between the three being a genuine difference in kind. It seems to have been in

this way that Mr. Bush developed for himself the conception that the spirit, or godlike element, is ensouled in or invested with the soul, just as this, the ensouled spirit, is embodied in or invested with the body. He learned to conceive of the soul as being the spiritual body of St. Paul; and then the doctrine of the resurrection was as clear as day. When the. body, or earthly house, is dissolved, we have the soul, a house with God, around the indwelling spirit. The body stript off by the serviceable hand of Nature who lent it for awhile, the spirit stands up within the shapely soul. This upstanding or anastasis is the resurrection; and the moment of a man's death is also the moment of his rising again. This is not the place to enter into controversy with either those views or the grounds on which they are presented; it is not the place either to dissent from or agree with their reviewer: but it is very much to the purpose to observe that not only has the Professor found additional conviction in the phenomena of zoo-magnetism, and especially in the hypothesis he adopts for the explanation of these phenomena; but these, the phenomena and his hypothesis of them, have been not a little instrumental in converting the hard-eyed exegete into an enthusi astic though somewhat self-asserting disciple of Swedenborg the Swedish Seer.

The mixing up of the phenomena now referred to, however, with the more momentous interests of theological doctrine, is by no means confined to such high-places of the field; for it is undeniable that the religious opinions of many among the laity in Europe and America have been disturbed and thrown into dissonance, if not seriously modified, by their vague convictions concerning the statements and experiments of the magnetist. Such disturbance, it ought in justice to be added, has neither always nor generally been of an ungenial kind. It is competent to our knowledge, on the contrary, that not a few earnest, if unmethodical inquirers of this great class have been dislodged from the position of materialism by the hints of Mesmerism. There are undoubtedly many of these slight but eager students, whom their notions regarding such amazing things as clearseeing have enabled, for the first time in their lives, to peruse the New Testament with patience, respect, and hope. In a word, Mesmerism, be it what it may, has actually opened the Bible to thousands; the Bible, of which it is enough for our present purpose to observe that the history of Christendom has demonstrated it to be at least the most

potent manifestation the world has yet beheld. Now it ap pears to us that it were inhumane and disloyal not frankly to accord the rights of an impartial inquisition to a topic, which is working such serious effects in the depths of a multitude of our brethren's spirits. Surely, if Mesmerism can be and literally is brought or forced into connection with the highest question that can engage the attention, the sooner Mesmerism is tried and set in order the better for all concerned; the better for its more crude believers, the better for its few real investigators, and the better for the prudent spectators of the controversy.

It is not only Theology, moreover, but Physics, also, that begins to be entangled with Mesmerism; and this is a circumstance very much to the point. It is now several years since the Baron von Reichenbach, a man of experience, an elaborately trained experimentalist, a chemical analyst of acknowledged excellence, and a discoverer of facts, commenced the indagation of these subtile and escaping phenomena from the side of purely physical science. Nor do the results, obtained by this patient adept in the positive method of inquiry, conflict with the still more startling things asserted by the authors of a less sensuous school. He seems, in fact, to have rediscovered, in his own more cautious and ascendental way, many little phenomena which have long been known and alleged by the followers of Mesmer. He appears to have found that magnets and crystals (or statically polarized matter) on the one hand, as well as light, heat, electricity, galvanism, and chemical action (or dynamically polarizing matter) on the other, exert the most unlooked-for influence over the nervoussystems of four or five out of every twenty human beings. Chemical action going constantly on within every visible point of the animal frame, he has not only found that one person may affect another in a similar manner, but supposed that therein resides the power of the magnetic operator. He has endeavoured to explain the vaunted might of the old mesmeric baquet on the same principle; on the principle, namely, of the vast amount of chemical change that is going on within it. Like Mesmer, the careful chemist has been forced to infer the existence of a peculiar fluid or force, resembling but differing from light, heat, and the rest of the so-called Imponderables, in order to render his observations coherent and intelligible. There is no present need of discussing his hypothetical views. It is enough to take cognizance of the signifi

cant fact that an eminent physicist is now engaged in the study of phenomena, long included in Mesmerism, from the physical point of view. Nor is it less important to remember that his researches were introduced to the world of science under the auspices of Liebig and Wochler, that the late illustrious Berzelius has reported somewhat favorably regarding them, and that his experiments are of such a kind as can be readily repeated by any one who chooses. Suffice it, also, that the effects asserted to be produced by the agents enumerated above consist, for the most part, of peculiar sensations, generally more or less obscure, sometimes very pronounced and even pungent, now pleasurable, now painful, in one case distressing, in another restorative and exhilarating, but always unique and unmistakable. For example, some of his patients see beautiful flames, of some six, eight, or ten inches in height, twisting and turning around points where the common eye sees nothing at all; at the poles of strong magnets and large crystals, at the finger-ends of some human hands as well as about some people's lips, at the free ends of long wires the moment the other ends are immersed in vessels containing substances in the process of chemical reaction, and so forth. It were little short of an insult to the understanding of Reichenbach and his editors to mention that the whole investigation was conducted with the most stringent precautions against imposture or illusion. But it is by no means unbecoming to observe that the Baron's earliest subjects were chiefly patients either laboring under or recovering from deep-rooted diseases of the nervous-system; and it is not easy to escape the suspicion that they were all predisposed to such disorders: a remark which applies with equal force, however, to the most remarkable subjects of mesmeric experimentation. This circumstance is not mentioned for the purpose of derogating from the value of the experiments in question, so much as to render the occurrence of such exceptional and curious things more intelligible, or at least less repugnant to the maxims of ordinary experience. In case, however, any body should draw out of it an argument against Von Reichenbach's procedure, it may be well to qualify it by the statement that we were informed about a year ago, by his English editor, Professor Gregory of Edinburgh, that the Baron had for some time been confining his experiments to patients apparently in a state of perfect health, that is to say, a state of as good health as other people enjoy. At that time he had no fewer than sixty sound minds

in sound bodies testifying to their perception of his new lights, and permitting themselves to be used as dynamometers for the discovery of the properties of his new preponderable!

As for the character of those who have unreservedly advocated the cause of Vital Magnetism, we are distinctly of opinion that the body of mesmeric authors is very far above the contempt of any man now belonging to the commonwealth of letters. In Great Britain, indeed, there has yet been published nothing remarkable; but the genius of Britain has never been the foremost in the newer and more vague departments of science. It holds back till a science has gained a rooting in the earth, then steps forward and plucks its richest fruits. This proceeds partly from the national caution and reserve, and partly from the essentially practical tendency of the national mind. The English intellect cannot go to work until it has something very sensible to work upon. It ignores the embryotic. The merely dynamical cannot awaken its curiosity. It prefers a visible somewhat to all the forces in the world. It swallows sulphuric ether and chloroform with avidity, but it rejects the thought of one nervous-system being struck into insensibility by the reaction of another, with something very like disgust. The stomach is its type, not the lungs. It likes a good mouthful of its subject, for it cannot digest the air. In one word, it might have been predicated that the mind of England would have been the very last to accord any thing like a kindly reception to such chameleon's food as trances and clearseeings. Notwithstanding all this, however, there are really some respectable names among the British authors on Mesmerism. Mr. Colquhoun is a man of good training, a disciple of the Scottish psychology, and not unacquainted with anatomy and physiology. Elliotson and Engledue are capital observers and clear writers, although their point of view is lamentably one-sided, being that of materialism; a circumstance which will certainly vitiate their doctrinal conclusions and consequently embarrass their writings, even while it does not diminish the value of their observations. It must likewise be granted that Chauncey Townshend, Spencer Hall, Harriet Martineau, Atkinson, and Dove, to say nothing of Braid the hypnotist and Eodaile the Indian operator, are all single-hearted and intelligent lovers of truth and man. If they are neither philosophers nor possessed of very rare scientific endowments, they are certainly honest, fearless, and disinterested people. The same sort of things has to be said