Another, only eleven years old, had comand a third, thirteen years old, twenty-one None of the boys of the School competed for three verses of Psalms. While woman in this country is in advance of man in many things, it cannot be denied that the former is more slow to give up those church ordinances which — born of the old ages, and invented to move the feelings are outgrown in America, and among all who realize the worth of thought. The priest in our country knows well that woman is the most pliable subject for his cant. But the reason is plain, and, instead of reflecting on woman, is another argument in favor of a change in her social and intellectual relations. Men in America are more American in their religion than the women, because they have a broader field for experiences, and are more accessible to the new influences of the age. Welcome, therefore, say we, to all efforts for giving woman legal and social liberty, or, rather, for persuading her to accept the liberty which is hers. The Woman's Rights movement is a thoroughly religious one. Until woman derives strength from brave encounter with daily life, she will seek it in the church. It was said of one, "he knew not what to do, and so he swore." The women know not what to do, and so they go to church. The girls know not what to do, and so they commit Proverbs. THE HE following passage, relating to Impeachment, is taken from a discourse upon the Divine Paternity, delivered May 17, at Fraternity Hall. "When the great party of liberty, having negligently transferred a noxious element to the centre where its life gathers, deliberately rejects the opportunity to get rid of it, and lets all the veins of the country still run with the mischief, our faith that there is a divine spirit in the conscience of every man, that proclaims at every crisis the plain yea and nay, is sadly shaken. We wonder if providence leaves a great cause to the mercy of littleness at the very moment when some providence, large as the cause, would seem to be in season; if he takes the occasion to show how he can make the smallness of man, as well as his wrath, praise him. Our indignation at the accomplices is just about to be transferred to the overruling agent, when we remember how often, since the period of the Fugitive Slave Bill, pettifoggers have embarrassed conscience, and stabbed the Republic with their technicalities. But the country has made blood faster than a thousand piteous wounds could lavish it: and we have lived to see how much can be inflicted upon God without abating one jot of his exacting presence. And we shall live to see it again : though mischief has received from the hands of republicanism a renewal of its lease to infest the republic, and pretexts seem to have won a golden moment from every white and black man at the South who suffers for liberty. Already we hear the tread of five States that return with precious memories of loyalty to strengthen our hands, and help us carry sods from Marshfield to pile oblivion over our false friends. God is always in the drift of events, even when no single event can be coaxed by analysis to yield one trace of his presence. Just as the most widely diffused mineral is gold, though apparently the scarcest and shyest, liberty is so rich in nothing as in the continual protest of the divine conscience: treason does not swarm with so many opportunities. How reluctantly does everything come forward in this spring's chilling breath. The meadows and the trees seem to be possessed with a deep chagrin which they are hardly able to overcome. Whitsunday will scarcely whiten with the apple-blossoms that Theodore Parker loved. God means to say to us that he is in no hurry, but will at all events have his usual summer. The sap mounts to every twig; and the old evil that still hangs on the verge of the government, suddenly will rot off and drop into an eager and twice disappointed grave. A LETTER. TO THE EDITORS OF THE RADICAL — Will you let me correct an error in the March Radical? Towards the close of the piece by About (the translation) it is stated that the population of France has come to a stand-still." I am assured beyond doubt," says the writer, "that the population of our country has ceased to increase for some years past." This statement was made in 1864, the time when the work of About was published. The French census is taken every five years. It was taken in 1856, in 1861, and in 1866. The amount of the population was as follows: It will be seen that the increase between 1856 and 1861 was 1,342,861. Nearly half of this increase was due to the annexation of Nice and Savoy, viz: 669,059; the remainder was due to the natural increase of population, viz: 673,802. The increase between 1861 and 1866 was 684,869. Thus the natural increase during ten years was more than 1,350,000. C. S. F. W. BOOK NOTICES. MEMORANDA OF PERSONS, PLACES AND EVENTS, &C; BY A. J. DAVIS. With an Appendix, containing Zschokke's great story of Hortensia, &c., pp. 488. Boston: William White & Co., 1868. It appears by the Publisher's Introduction that the contents of this volume are extracted from the author's private journal, and have not appeared before in any of his numerous works. Many of these extracts seem to be merely allusions to circumstances that receive amplification in other volumes. The curiosity is excited, but the reader must possess the "Magic Staff" and the "Great Harmonia " if he would advance towards its gratification. The volume may be welcome to Spiritualists who are acquainted with the literature that enlarges upon these obscure topics. But, a few things excepted, such as the letters of Professors Bush and Lewis, and a queer story or two, the outsider will be disappointed. The addition of Zschokke's story, occupying 120 pages, gives a book-making aspect to the whole. But perhaps a great many Spiritualists have not yet read that curious and powerful story. When we find on page 308 a section thus entitled, "Theodore Parker defines the teachings of Spiritualism," we expect from him a reputed communication. Mr. Davis says that Mr. Parker arrives from the land of spirits and imparts to him great thoughts on the question of Spirit and Matter: but without giving these thoughts, he says that they are the same as reported and embodied in a paragraph which follows. Now this paragraph is a statement of the Theism which Mr. Parker was in the habit of delivering while in the flesh. It inculcates that all human organs of the body and soul receive their natural nutriment, and that the presence of God secures to the universal mind and conscience a regular supply of truths. This is one of Mr. Parker's most familiar pages. We were in the habit of hearing this doctrine from his lips. But there is not a trace in it of any distinctive element of the so-called Spiritualism, for it is common to liberal and radical thought. It is a characteristic of Free Religion wherever that exists. All radical thinkers, including Mr. Parker, agree of course with a so-called Spiritualist upon every point where he is spiritual. They believe in common in the immortality of the soul, in the divine presence and inspiration, in the divine love on both sides of the grave: they believe that Society should be reorganized upon the golden rule of love to Man and to God: they are Anti-Slavery, they are temperate, they worship chastity, they long for pure and perfect Marriage; they trust the future of the country to great laws of co-operation and harmony. Is this Spiritualism, with a capital S? No; something else is always connected with that word in the popular mind. A radical thinker will gratefully acknowledge that it is the most important part of Spiritualism, as it is of the Bible, and of all holy literature, and of all progressive statements of human nature. But it is not the part that has been spelling spiritualism with a capital S : not the element that originated and still helps to keep alive the faith of so many people in spiritual truths. People include the "manifestations," the "communications," the "phenomena," the assumption of intercourse with departed spirits, in the impression that the word Spiritualism makes upon them. Now Mr. Parker had all the spiritualism of the Spiritualists, but he did not share their faith in their distinguishing element. They have no right, then, to quote his words and label them Spiritualism: the words themselves refute the application. There is not a trace in them of the distinguishing doctrine. The Spiritualists say that they are unwilling to call themselves Spiritists, or to employ any term that may instantly suggest their real distinction, because they are all the time just as spiritual as any other thinkers, and they do not see why they have not as much right as any to the word. Very well but in the meantime they should not use it in connections where it becomes ambiguous: least of all, to color it with the authority of a great man's name, who, while living, used to amuse his friends over the "phenomena." If it could be shown that Mr. Parker had changed his mind in this respect, and was now as ready to "communicate" as he was formerly sceptical about "communication," still it is disingenuous to use his old words as if they always bore the novel meaning. J. W. THEODORE PARKER IN SPIRIT LIFE. A Narrative of Personal Experience inspirationally given to Fred. L. H. Willis, M. D. pp. 22. Boston: Wm. White & Co. New York: Banner of Light Branch Office. 1868. If we believed the substance of this pamphlet we should believe that Mr. Parker had changed his mind. But we do not believe the substance of the pamphlet: and the pamphlet itself furnishes no proof or reason why we should believe it. Quite the contrary. When Mr. Willis says he most earnestly and devoutly believes that this narrative came directly from Mr. Parker's inspiring spirit, we believe he is sincere. When he adds that he saw Mr. Parker distinctly at the time the manuscript was being written, as did also the wife of Mr. Willis, we believe that they both believed they saw him. We indulge in no imputations of duplicity. William Blake, the mystical artist and poet, believed that he saw angels sitting in the trees near his window and he was a man who could see an angel as often as his pictorial imagination lent objectiveness to his thought. We believe that Mr. Blake believed he saw the angels. But we do not believe he did. And this, so far from being an imputation upon his sincerity, is a tribute to the possibility that a man can believe he sees the thing he is only imagining. The world is full of such cases of mistake that arise from the powerful objectiveness that belongs to certain temperaments. They are not always the products of disease, of typhus-fever, of ocular derangement, of abnormal action. St. Paul believed, if we rely upon the record, that he saw Jesus; in short, the spiritual literature of mankind is full of these delusions of exalted temperaments. So is the profane literature. We believe in the sincerity, but we utterly disbelieve in the facts that the sincerity reports. By this time we know enough about the illusions that arise from clairvoyant conditions of the brain, from its automatic action, from its subjection to moods or elements that are as yet unclassified by science, to demand some proof beyond a man's assertion that he does or says a thing by the direct agency of spirits. Is it possible that Mr. Willis read this manuscript in the Melodeon at Mr. Parker's "most urgent and persistent request"? There is nothing in the manuscript to justify the urgency of such a man. The "Summer land,” as Spiritualists call it, must have a very debilitating climate, if this is one of the results of it upon that most masculine intelligence. There is one thing that we do believe, that the process of dying and passing into another sphere, does not destroy a man's virility. We have sometimes reflected whether the persons who were made eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake were not at the bottom of the mediumistic communications. They are always in a state of happy fatuity: they hope their friends will be equally fatuous and happy: they have nothing to say, excepting that they are happy, that, instead of living in hell, they have a cottage with vine-wreathed trellis, and bay-windows that command a lovely prospect, "moonlight, music, love, and flowers." Their easy circumstances have been sadly wasted, for, instead of advancing in the knowledge of the wonderful things of God, they have deteriorated into a sentimentality of which on earth they would have been heartily ashamed. This pamphlet contains an amplification of these weak surmises about the future life. We look through it in vain for a hint that adds to the substance of our moral and spiritual state. There are allusions to love, joy, tenderness, recognition of friends, repose and satisfaction, the delight of seeing again “the old, familiar faces": nothing that we do not expect and surmise beforehand. But it is so mixed up with cottage architecture, landscape gardening, busts, books, arbors with rustic seats, shrubs and muslin curtains, birds singing and music playing, that we only feel as if we had escaped from work and were squandering a day in the rural districts. It is not a Mormon's nor a Mahommedan's paradise, but its sensuousness is none the less a mere extension of this world's lazy and picturesque vacations. Mr. Willis suggests that cavillers may say that his production is not marked with the intellectual vigor that characterized the mind of Mr. Parker when it was embodied in the flesh : and he goes on to apologize for this alarming discrepancy by falling back upon that much abused book, the Bible. He says that the law of inspiration has ever been the same; it must adapt itself to the mind through which it flows. Jeremiah lamented, David sang Psalms, and Solomon ran to Proverbs. What a confusion is here! All men have expressed their own gift and disposition, of course. The gift was organized for its purpose by the divine mind. The perpetual inflowing of the divine mind was a part of the organ |