In order, we presume, to exhibit his doctrine by the strongest light, Mr. Lecky applies it first to two subjects which once were sustained by authority and belief, which now are almost abandoned by authority and belief, and in regard to which the change from plenary assent. to almost plenary dissent, is to be explained only by the altered attitude which the human mind has unconsciously assumed under the influence of impressions not immediately connected with the subjects themselves. These are witchcraft and miracles, both treated under the general title, "The declining sense of the miraculous." Two happier illustrations of his idea could not have been chosen; for the material is copious, the facts are abundant and striking, the literature is marked, and the opposite poles of thought are abruptly brought into a surprising conflict. Mr. Lecky presents with great power the force and character of the popular belief in witchcraft; traces it to its sources; follows it in the turns of its history; lays bare its deep strong roots in the prevailing religious credence, in the spiritual philosophy of centuries, in the Bible; shews how widely spread and how vital it was in the convictions of all men; how implicated it was in the radical faiths of Christendom. He details the arguments by which it was supported, and exhibits in masses the enormous accumulations of evidence that had gathered about it. The wisest men in Europe shared it; the ablest defended it; the best were zealous foes of all who assailed it. To disbelieve it seemed to be impossible. No man of any account disbelieved it for hundreds of years. Lord Bacon could not divest himself of it. Shakespeare accepted it, as did nearly all his most enlightened and gifted contemporaries. Sir Thomas Browne declared that those who denied the existence of witchcraft were not only infidels, but also, by implication, atheists. There were noble protests against the superstition, but they had no effect. Reginald Scott's Discovery of Witchcraft, published in 1684, was bold, exhaustive, masterly, and popular; but in effect it was powerless. On a sudden the belief declined all over Europe, all over the world of mind. It was not argued down. There stood the piles of testimony unexamined; there were the trains of reasoning unexploded; there were the Bible texts unexplained; there were the parent dogmas far enough from being extirpated. To the expressed beliefs of the mightiest intellects no opinions of anything like equal weight were opposed. Demonstration was still mainly on one side; but people who could give no reasons for their incredulity were stubbornly incredulous. There existed the same reasons for earnestness of faith; but the earnestness could not be excited. Interest in the subject was dead.

The same fate awaited the promiscuous belief in miracles.

For ages universal and inevitable, it has become limited and difficult. Once compelling the mind's assent, it now is retained only by the mind's compulsion. The miracles recorded as performed by the saints of the Romish Church were countless in number-the Bollandist collection containing about 25,000 lives, and each life is a tale of miracle from begining to end-miracles attested and accredited by solemn oaths of witnesses. Even Edward Gibbon was staggered by the array of proof in their favour. "The implicit undiscriminating acquiescence with which such narratives were once received has long since been replaced by a derisive incredulity. The very few modern miracles which are related are everywhere regarded as a scandal, a stumblingblock, and a difficulty." Why? Is scrutiny more keen than it was? It is far less keen. Is the evidence less? It is equal, to say the least. Have the books written against miracles surpassed in ability the books written in their defence? On the contrary, they have been fewer and feebler, written with less vigour, less learning, less definiteness of philosophical theory, less intensity of moral conviction. They have nearly all perished; but their cause is gained. It was virtually gained before they were produced, and their production was merely a sign that the human intelligence had silently moved on to another ground, where the natural and not the supernatural held sway.—

The Nation.

MR. SOTHERN AND SPIRITUALISM.

PROCEEDINGS have been taken by Mr. Sothern against the Spiritual Times, in respect of two passages in the article which was quoted in full in that journal from an editorial article which appeared in the New York Sunday Times of the 31st December last; and by means of that publication in the Spiritual Times Mr. Sothern's character is no doubt seriously challenged in the two points alluded to. For this the editor has made the fullest apology, as indeed he ought as a gentleman to do, and without the slightest reservation.

In this journal the passages complained of were not inserted, but the material words were expunged, and their place supplied by asterisks, and it was not intended that a prejudice should be raised against Mr. Sothern in those matters.

We are bound however to say, that as a contrary impression prevails with Mr. Sothern, to the fullest extent that such impression is well founded, either with him or others, we entirely repudiate and retract any charge or intention to make a charge

on those matters, which were out of the knowledge of the writer
of the article, or of any one known to us.
So much we feel

bound to say in justice to Mr. Sothern with regard to those two
inculpated points, and if we could use more expressive language
we would do so in repudiation of any such charges against his

character.

But this New York article was produced in answer to Mr. Sothern's letter to the Glasgow Citizen, in which he uses the most opprobrious epithets against this journal and against Spiritualism and Spiritualists. Spiritualism, he says, is a delusion, a snare, and a swindle, and Spiritualists are personally guilty of imbecility, irreligion, fraud, impudent chicanery, and blasphemous indecency. We do not know if the proverb that one man may steal a horse whilst another may not even look over the hedge, be true, but surely Spiritualists are to be allowed to be angry at such epithets as these, even if they cannot appeal to the law. But in addition to these charges, Mr. Sothern professed to expose the hitherto believed doings of the famous Miracle Circle of which he was a member, and gave an entirely new version of its proceedings, on his personal veracity, It is mainly in answer to this that the New York article was written; and it was a great and culpable error, that in reproducing it in this journal every word on the other subjects was not rigidly expunged. This is what requires an apology to him and withdrawal, and which is fully tendered to him. But surely there is something which he also should say in withdrawing the offensive charges which he has made, and with respect to which the written testimony of several of the members of the Miracle Circle has been received. These gentlemen's written declaration leaves the matter in no doubt as to Mr. Sothern's position in America with regard to Spiritualism, and which position is utterly at variance, as his companions allege, with the facts he states in his letter; and upon this question of Mr. Sothern's veracity as to the Miracle Circle, rests the whole basis of his opprobrious statements against Spiritualists. There remains also the attitude which Mr. Sothern has taken up in London in playing what he may call hoaxes, at Holloway, Maida-hill, and St. John's-wood. He certainly should feel himself bound to apologize for all these things, but whether he do so or not, there is no difficulty on our part in making the amplest apology to him for any reference being made to the two paragraphs in question.

The above was written before the hearing of Mr. Sothern's proceedings against our publisher and Mr. Coleman. We only wish to add that Messrs. Kent, the publishers, are quite innocent of any knowledge of the contents of the Magazine.

THE

Spiritual Magazine.

APRIL, 1866.

SPIRITUALISM IN GERMANY.

By WILLIAM HOWITT.

Truth, ever lovely,-since the world began,
The foe of tyrants, and the friend of man,-
How can thy words from balmy slumber start
Reposing Virtue, pillowed on the heart!
Yet if thy voice the note of thunder rolled,
And that were true which Nature never told,
Let Wisdom smile not on her conquered field:
No rapture dawns, no triumph is revealed!
Oh! let her read, not loudly nor elate,
The doom that bars us from a better fate
But sad as angels for the good man's sin
Weep to record, and blush to give it in!

Campbell's Pleasures of Hope.

Les miracles sont selon l'ignorance en quoy nous sommes de la nature, non selon l'estre de la nature."-Essais de Montaigne. Liv. I. c. xxii. p. 218.

It is a fact as curious as it is melancholy, that in Germany, a country which has always prided itself on its penetration into the heart of intellectual and psychological subjects; the country not only of Kant and Hegel, but of far more practical anthopologists -Jung Stilling, Kerner, Meyer, Schubert, and Hornung-Spiritualism is now at the lowest possible ebb. The reign of what is called "pure reason," that is, reason diving into the muddy and bottomless gulph of metaphysical abstractions, now fully prevails. What Kant planted and Hegel watered, Paulus and Strauss have cultivated into one great upas tree, which overshadows and breathes its soul-destroying aura over the whole Teutonic Fatherland.

With the exception of the Catholic church, a small section of Protestants, and a still larger portion of the ordinary country people, too little educated to be thus corrupted in faith, the whole of Germany may be said to have marched back under the banners of the infidel philosophers to Heathendom. The few

N. S.-I.

K

and feeble waves of unbelief which have reached the English shores in the shape of Essays and Reviews, and of Colensoism, give no idea of the great and wide ocean of Materialism which exists in and covers the general mind of Germany. Materialism of the grossest kind is entertained by the principal professors of philosophy and theology in its universities; and if they do not venture to go so far in their college lectures, it is plainly from the fear of endangering their places from the resentment of the Catholic and small section of yet remaining sound Protestant populations. There are few men of the whole academic class who would not blush at the faintest suspicion of being believers in the authenticity of the Bible, and, consequently in that of the origin of Christianity.

As for Spiritualism, it seems to exist in Germany only in little centres and groups, here and there, of sincere disciples, who, overborne by the prevalent Materialism of the schools and of public opinion, make but a dim figure in the general psychologic aspect of the country. Nevertheless, I believe that there really does exist more Spiritualism there than appears on the surface. Hornung in his zealous travels and inquiries found it in Berlin, Munich, Vienna, Stuttgard, Carlsruhe, Regensburg, and many other places. It is not likely to have died out there. On the contrary, we find that some remarkable works are still sold in the house in Berlin in which Hornung lived; that at Breslau and at Berlin the coadjutors of Hornung have been translating the works of Andrew Jackson Davis, and publish a small Spiritual journal called Psyche; at Vienna various Spiritual works are sold by Lechner, in the Graben, by Wenedikt, and others. Amongst these works is one called Der Spiritismus, which has been very popular, by G. C. Delhez; and the Odognostircher Brief, by Gottlieb Dämmerung of Mödling, near Vienna; who has also published a Critique on the Sidereal Photographies of Mumler of Berlin, and the Phenomena given through Home and Squire, &c.

M. Dämmerung's Odognostischer Brief, or Letter on the Science of Odyle, is a very learned work, and gives us glimpses of other Spiritualists and their writings, as the Natural History of Apparitions by Carus Sterne, and the remarkable discoveries of water-springs by the Abbé Richard, whose performances of this kind in several of the principal cities of Germany, without any divining-rod or any instrument whatever, have astonished all classes, even the most sceptical. Besides these, Herr Dämmerung brings to our knowledge the works of Dr. Berthelen; of Silverio, of Madrid; Gourges, of Mexico, &c. At this very moment also appears a remarkable work by Dr. Epp, of Heidelberg, called Seelenkunde, or science of soul, an out-and-out avowal of