Owen's Spiritualism (Catholic World, 1872)

OWEN ON SPIRITISM.*

[From the Catholic World, for March, 1872.]

Mr. Owen, though he has since been a member of Congress, and an American minister at Naples, was formerly well known in this city as associated with Frances Wright in editing the Free Enquirer, as the author of an infamous work on moral physiology, and as an avowed atheist. He now claims to be a believer in the existence of God, and in the truth of the Christian religion; but his God has no freedom of action, being hedged in and bound hand and foot by the laws of nature, and his Christianity is a Christianity without Christ, and indistinguishable from unmitigated heathenism. How much he has gained by his conversion, through the intervention of the spirits, from atheism to demonism and gross superstition, it is not easy to say, though it is better to believe in the devil, if one does not mistake him for God, than it is to believe in nothing.

Mr. Owen makes, as do hundreds of others, a mistake in using the word spiritualism for spiritism, and spiritual for spirital or spiritalistic. Spiritualism is appropriated to designate a system of philosophy opposed to sensism or materialism, and spiritual stands opposed to sensual or carnal, and is too holy a term to be applied to spiritrapping, table-tipping, and other antics of the spirits. Mr. Owen is unhappy in naming his books. He holds that the universe is governed by inflexible, immutable, and imperishable physical laws; that all events or manifestations take place by the agency of these laws; that the future is only the continuation and development of the present; and that death is only the throwing off of one's overcoat, and the life after death is the identical life, without any interruption, that we now live. We see not well how he can assert another world, or a debatable land between this world and the next. If all things and all events are produced by the agency of natural laws, and those laws are universal and unchangeable, we are unable to conceive any world above or beyond nature, or any world in any sense distinguishable from the present natural world. His books are therefore decidedly misnamed, and so named as to imply the existence of another world and a world after this, which cannot on his principles be true.

Mr. Owen's first book was mainly intended to establish the fact and to show the character of the spirit-manifestations; in his last work, his design is to show that these manifestations take place by virtue of the physical law of the universe, that they are of the same nature and origin with the Christian miracles, inspiration, and revelation, and are simply supplementary to them, or designed to continue, augment, and develop them; and to show, especially to Protestants, that, if they mean to make theology a progressive science, and win the victory over their enemy the Catholic Church, they must call in the spirits to their aid, and accept and profit by their inspirations and revelations.

This shows that the author leans to Protestantism, and seeks its triumph over Catholicity; or that he regards Protestantism as offering a more congenial soil for the seed he would sow than the old church with her hierarchy and infallibility. Certainly, he holds that, as it is, Protestantism is losing ground. In 1580 it held the vast majority of the people of Europe, but is now only a feeble minority. Even in this country, he says, if Catholics continue to increase for a third of a century to come in the same ratio that they have for the last three-fourths of a century, they will have a decided majority. As things now go, the whole world will become Catholic, and the only way to prevent it, he thinks, is to accept the aid of the spirits. We are not so sure that this aid would suffice, for Satan, their chief, has been the fast friend of Protestants ever since he persuaded Luther to give up private masses, and has done his best for them, and it is difficult to see what more he can do for them than he has hitherto done.

Mr. Owen, since he holds the spirit-manifestations take place by a natural law, always operative, and always producing the same effects in the same or like favorable circumstances, of course cannot recognize in them any thing miraculous or supernatural; and, as he holds the alleged Christian miracles, the wonderful things recorded in the Old and New Testaments, are of the same order, and produced by the same agency, he, while freely admitting them as facts, denies their miraculous or supernatural character. He thinks that the circumstances when these extraordinary events occurred were favorable to spirit-manifestations ; the age was exceedingly ignorant, superstitious, and semi-barbarous, and needed new accessions of light and truth, and the spirits, through our Lord and his apostles as medium—God forgive us for repeating the blasphemy—made such revelations as that age most needed or could bear or assimilate. This age also needs further revelations of truth, especially to enable it to throw off the incubus of a fixed, permanent, non-progressive, infallible church, and secure an open field, and a final victory for the rational religion and progressive theology implied in the Protestant reformation. So the spirits once more kindly come to our assistance, and reveal to us such further portions of truth as man is prepared for and especially needs. Very generous in them.

This is the doctrine, briefly and faithfully stated, of Mr. Owen's Debatable Land, which he sets forth with a charming naivete, and a self-complacency little short of the sublime. There is this to be said in his favor: the devil speaks better English through him than through the majority of the mediums he seems compelled to use; yet not much better sense. But what new light have the spirits shed over the great problems of life and death, time and eternity, good and evil, or what new revelations of truth have they made? Here is the author's summary of their teaching:

"1. This is a world governed by a God of love and mercy, in which all things work together for good to those who reverently conform to his eternal laws.

"2. In strictness there is no death. Life continues from the life which now is into that which is to come, even as it continues from one day to another ; the sleep which goes by the name of death being but a brief transition-slumber, from which, for the good, the awakening is immeasurably more glorious than is the dawn of earthly morning, the brightest that ever shone. In all cases in which life is well-spent, the change which men are wont to call death is God's last and best gift to his creatures here.

"3. The earth-phase of life is an essential preparation for the life which is to come. Its appropriate duties and callings cannot be neglected without injury to human welfare and development, both in this world and in the next. Even its enjoyments, temperately accepted, are fit preludes to the happiness of a higher state.

"4. The phase of life which follows the death-change is, in strictest sense, the supplement of that which precedes it. It has the same variety of avocations, duties, enjoyments, corresponding, in a measure, to those of earth, but far more elevated; and its denizens have the same variety of character and of intelligence; existing, too, as men do here, in a state of progress. Released from Jx>dily earth-clog, their periscope is wider, their perceptions more acute, their spiritual knowledge much greater, their judgment clearer, their progress more rapid, than ours. Vastly wiser and more dispassionate than we, they are still, however, fallible; and they are governed by the same general laws of being, modified only by corporal disenthralment, to which they were subjected here.

"5. Our state here determines our initial state there. The habitual promptings, the pervading impulses, the life-long yearnings, in a word the moving spirit, or what Swedenborg calls the * ruling loves' of man— these decide his condition on entering the next world: not the written articles of his creed, nor yet the incidental errors of his life.

'' 6. We do not, either by faith or works, earn heaven, nor are we sentenced, on any day of wrath, to hell. In the next world we simply gravitate to the position for which, by life on earth, we have fitted ourselves; and we occupy that position because we are fitted for it.

"7. There is no instantaneous change of character when we pass from the present phase of life. Our virtues, our vices; our intelligence, our ignorance; our aspirations, our grovellings; our habits, propensities, prejudices even—all pass over with us, modified, doubtless (but to what extent we know not), when the spiritual body emerges, divested of its fleshly encumbrance; yet essentially the same as when the death slumber came over us.

"8. The sufferings there, natural sequents of evil-doing and evilthinking here, are as various in character and in degree as the enjoyments; but they are mental, not bodily. There is no escape from them, except only, as on earth, by the door of repentance. There as here, sorrow for sin committed and desire for an amended life are the indispensable conditions-precedent of advancement to a better state of being.

"9. In the next world love ranks higher than what we call wisdom; being itself the highest wisdom. There deeds of benevolence far outweigh professions of faith. There simple goodness rates above intellectual power. There the humble are exalted. There the meek find their heritage. There the merciful obtain mercy. The better denizens of that world are charitable to frailty, and compassionate to sin far beyond the dwellers in this: they forgive the erring brethren they have left behind them, even to seventy times seven. There, is no respect of persons. There, too, self-righteousness is rebuked and pride brought low.

"10. A trustful, childlike spirit is the state of mind in which men are most receptive of beneficent spiritual impressions; and such a spirit is the best preparation for entrance into the next world.

"11. There have always existed intermundane laws, according to which men may occasionally obtain, under certain conditions, revealings from those who have passed to the next world before them. A certain proportion of human beings are more sensitive to spiritual perceptions and influences than their fellows; and it is usually in the presence, or through the medium, of one or more of these, that ultramundane intercourse occurs.

"12. When the conditions are favorable, and the sensitive through whom the manifestations come is highly gifted, these may supply important materials for thought and valuable rules of conduct. But spiritual phenomena sometimes do much more than this. In their highest phases they furnish proof, strong as that which Christ's disciples enjoyed—proof addressed to the reason and tangible to the senses—of the reality of another life, better and happier than this, and of which our earthly pilgrimage is but the novitiate. They bring immortality to light under a blaze of evidence which outshines, as the sun the stars, all tiaditlonal or historical testimonies. For surmise they give us conviction, and assured knowledge of wavering belief.

"13. The chief motives which induce spirits to communicate with men appear to be—a benevolent desire to convince us, past doubt or denial, that there is a world to come; now and then, the attraction of unpleasant memories, 'such as murder or suicide; sometimes (in the worldly-minded) the earth-binding influence of cumber and trouble: but, fur more frequently, the divine impulse of human affections, seeking the good of the loved ones it has left behind, and, at times, drawn down, psrhaps, by their yearning cries.

"14. Under unfavorable or imperfect conditions, spiritual communications, how honestly reported soever, often prove vapid and valueless; and this chiefly happens when communications are too assiduously sought or continuously persisted in: brief volunteered messages being the most trustworthy. Imprudence, inexperience, supineness, or the idiosyncrasy of the recipient may occasionally result in arbitrary control by spirits of a low order; as men here sometimes yield to the infatuation exerted by evil associates. Or, again, there may be exerted by the inquirer, especially if dogmatic and self-willed, a dominating influence over the medium, so strong as to produce effects that might be readily mistaken for what has been called possession. As a general rule, however, any person of common intelligence and ordinary will can, in either case, cast off such mischievous control: or, if the weak or incautious give way, one who may not improperly be called an exorcist—if possessed of strong magnetic will, moved by benevolence, and it may be aided by prayer, can usually rid, or at least assist to rid, the sensitive from such abnormal influence."—(Debatable Land, pp. 171-176.)

We have no intention of criticising this creed of the spirits as set forth by their learned medium. It is heathen, not Christian, and we have discovered in it nothing new, true or false. It denies the essential points of the Christian faith, and what few things it affirms that Christianity denies are affirmed on no trustworthy or sufficient authority. A man must have little knowledge of human nature, and have felt little of the needs, desires, and aspirations of the human soul, who can be satisfied with this spirits-creed. In it all is vague, indefinite, and as empty as the shades the heathen imagined to be wandering up and "down on this side the Styx. But in it we find a statement that dispenses us from the necessity of examining and refuting it. In Article 4 we find it said: "Vastly wiser and more dispassionate than we, they [the spirits] are still, however, faUtble." 

Whether the spirits are wiser and more dispassionate than we or not may be questioned; they do not seem to be s0 in the author's illustrative narrations, and the fact that they have undergone no essential change by throwing off their overcoat of flesh, and living the same life they lived here, and are in the sphere for which they were fitted before entering the spirit-land, renders the matter somewhat doubtful, to say the least. But it is conceded that they are fallible. Who or what, then, vouches for the fact that they are not themselves deceived, or that they do not seek to deceive us? By acknowledging the fallibility of the spirits, Mr. Owen acknowledges that their testimony, in all cases, when we can have nothing else on which to rely, is perfectly worthless. We can bring it to no crucial test, and we have no vouchers either for their knowledge or their honesty. Even supposing them to be what they profess to be, which we by no means concede, it were sheer credulity to take their word for any thing not otherwise verifiable.

Mr. Owen and all the spiritists tell us that the spiritmanifestations prove undeniably the immortality of the soul; bat they prove nothing of the sort. We need, in the first place, no ghost from hell to assure us that the immortality of the soul follows necessarily from the immateriality of the soul; for that is demonstrable from reason, and was generally believed by the heathen. What was not believed by the heathen, and is not provable by reason, is the Christian doctrine of the resurrection ; and this, and supernatural life and immortality, the spirits do not even pretend to teach. Look through Mr. Owen's statement of their teaching, and you will find no hint of the " resurrectionem carnis" or " vitam aeternam " of the apostolic symbol. Are we to reject the doctrine of the resurrection of the body, and the life and immortality brought to light through the Gospel—which is something far different from a simple continuation of the soul's physical existence —a doctrine so necessary to virtue, and so dear and consoling to the afflicted, on the authority of fallible spirits, -whose knowledge or veracity nothing vouches for, and who prove themselves not seldom to be lying spirits?

In the second place, what proof have we that those rapping or table-tippingspirits are the spirits of men and women once in the flesh? mr. Owen undertakes to establish their identity, but he does not do it and cannot do it; for no proof in the case is possible except by a miracle, and miracles the author rejects, and declares the argument from them in all cases a non-seguitur. The spirit-manifestations of which the spiritists make so much, and in which they fancy they have a new inspiration and revelation, are nothing new in history, and are not more frequent now than they have been at various other epochs. They were more common amongst the polished pagan Greeks ana Romans than they are in any really or nominally Christian nation now. They are nothing new or peculiar to our times. Tertullian speaks of them, the author of the Clementine Recognitions was acquainted with them, and so was St. Augustine. The trance was one of the live faculties or states of the soul recognized by the NeoPlatonists, and was the principle of the Alexandrine theurgy. The church has in every age encountered them, been obliged to deal with them, and she has uniformly ascribed them to Satan and his angels. She has had from the first, and still has, her forms of exorcism against them, to cast them out, and relieve those who are troubled by them. Every day she in some locality even now exorcises them, compels them to acknowledge the power of the name of Jesus, and sends them back discomfited to hell.

The spiritists cannot say the doctrine of the church is impossible or prove that it is not true. It certainly is a possible hypothesis, if nothing more. Then spiritists cannot say that Satan does not personify the spirits of the departed, or that it is not Satan or some one of his angels that speaks in those pretending to be the spirit of Washington, of Jefferson, of Franklin, of Shakespeare, of Milton, of Byron, or of some near and dear deceased relative? You must prove that it is not so, before you can affirm the identity claimed. The great Tichborne case now before the English courts proves that it is no easy matter to establish one's own identity even while in the flesh, and it must be much more difficult for a ghost, which is not even visible.

The spiritists admit that the spirits are fallible; that there are among them lying, malevolent spirits. A gentleman with whom we were well acquainted, a firm believer in the spirits, and himself a medium, holding frequent communications with them, assured us that he held them to be evil spirits, and knew them to be lying spirits. "I asked them," he said, " at an interview with them, if they could tell me where my sister then was. 'Your sister,' I was answered, 'has some time since entered the spirit-world, and is now in the third circle.' It was false : my sister was alive and well, and I knew it. I told them so, and that they lied; and they laughed at me : and then I asked whose spirit was speaking with me. I was answered, 'Voltaire.' 'That is a lie, too, is it not?' Another laugh, or chuckle rather. I assure you," said our friend, " one can place no confidence in what they say. In my intercourse with them, I have found them a pack of liars."

This pretension of the spiritists that the spirits that manifest themselves through nervous, sickly, half-crazy mediums, or mediums confessedly in an abnormal or exceptional state, are really spirits who once lived in the flesh, is not sustainable; for they cannot be relied on, and nothing hinders us from holding them to be devils or evil demons, personating the spirits of deceased persons, as the church has always taught us. This, certainly, is very possible, and the character of the manifestations themselves favors such an interpretation ; for only devils, and very silly devils too, dealing with very ignorant, superstitious, and credulous people, would mingle so much of the ludicrous and ridiculous in their manifestations, as the thumping, knocking, rollicking spirits, tipping over chairs and tables, and creating a sort of universal hubbub wherever they come. The spirits of the dead, if permitted at all to communicate with the living for any good purpose, we may well believe, would be permitted to do it more quietly, more gravely, and in a more open and direct way; it is only the devil or his subjects that would turn all their grave communications into ridicule by their antics or comic accompaniments. These considerations, added to the fact that the spirits communicate nothing not otherwise known or knowable, that is not demonstrably false, and that they tell us nothing very clear or definite about the condition of departed souls, nothing but what their consultors are predisposed to believe, convince us that, if they prove the existence of powers in some sense superhuman, they prove nothing for or against the reality of a life after this life. They leave the question of life and immortality, of good and evil, rewards and punishments, heaven and hell, where they were.

Mr. Owen places the spirit-manifestations, and the Biblical miracles, and Christian inspiration and revelation, in the same category, attributes them all alike to the agency of the spirits, and thinks he has discovered a way in which one may accept the extraordinary events and doings recorded in the Old and New Testaments as historical facts, without being obliged to recognize them as miracles. This is absurd. The resemblance between the two classes of facts is far less than honest Fluellen's resemblance of Harry of Monmouth to Alexander of Macedon, "There is a river in Macedon, so is there a river also in Wales." The man who can detect any relation between the two classes of facts, but that of dissimilarity and contrast, is the very man to believe in the spirit-revelations, to mistake evil for good, darkness for light, and the devil for God. We find both classes of facts in the New Testament. The Christian miracles are all marked by an air of quiet power. There is no bluster, no rage, no foaming at the mouth, no fierceness of look or gesture, no falling, or rending, as in the case of the demoniacs ; and no rapping, no table-tipping, no antics, no stammering, no half-utterances, no convulsions, no disturbance, as in the case of the spirit-manifestations described by Mr. Owen in his books, m the one case, all is calm and serene, pure and holy; there is no effort, no straining, but a simple, normal exercise of power. Our Lord rebukes the winds and the waves, and there comes a great calm; he speaks, the leper is cleansed, the blind see, the deaf hear, the lame walk, the dead live. What like this is there in Mr. Owen's ghostly or ghastly narratives of trances, thundering noises, and haunted houses? Every one of his narratives shows, so far as it shows any thing not explicable by simple psychical states and powers, the marks which the church has always regarded as signs of the presence of the devil. Some of the cases he describes are clearly cases of possession, and others are as clearly cases of obsession. Unhappily, Mr. Owen, who formerly believed in no God, now takes, knowingly or not, the devil to be God.

Mr. Owen has hardly improved on the heathen Celsus, who was refuted by Origen. Celsus charged the miracles of our Lord to magic. Mr. Owen ascribes them to necromancy, and regards the apostles and saints each as a person with a familiar spirit, or, in the language of the spiritists, a medium. The Jews also ascribed the miracles of our Lord to the agency of the devil, and charged that it was by Beelzebub, the prince of devils, that he did his wonderful works. But there is a striking difference between the Jews and Celsus and our late minister to Naples. They sought to prove the satanic origin of the miracles of our Lord as a reason for rejecting him and his teaching; he attempts to do it as a reason for believing him and reverencing his doctrine and character. But they lived in an age of darkness, superstition, and semi-barbarism, and he in an age of light, reason, and civilization, and the distance between him and them is the measure of the progress the world has made since their time—a mighty progress indeed, but a progress backward. The Bible tells us all the gods of the heathen were devils, and Mr. Owen agrees and takes the devil for God, and demon-worship as true divine worship. What the Jews and Celsus falsely alleged against our Lord as an objection, he reasserts as a recommendation. He has discovered that evil is good.

The class of facts which the spirits call spirit-manifestations are recognized in the Bible from beginning to end, but always as the works of the devil or evil spirits, always as works to be condemned and to be avoided; and any communication with those who do them is forbidden. Necromancers, or those who consult the spirits of the dead, are mentioned and condemned in the book of Genesis. The Mosaic law ordained that a witch or a woman with a familiar spirit—that is, a medium, whether a rapping or a clearseeing, a talking or a writing, medium—should not be suffered to live. The church has always condemned every thing of the sort, and requires a candidate for baptism to renounce the devil and his works, and expels the devil from him by her exorcisms, before receiving the postulant to her communion. And yet Mr. Owen would have us believe that the Bible and the church sanction his doctrine, that the Christian miracles and the spirit-manifestations are produced by one and the same agency! Verily, Mr. Owen throws a strong light on the origin of the great gentile apostasy, and snows us how easily men who break from the unity of divine tradition, and set up for themselves, can lose sight of God, and come step by step to worship the devil in his place. The thing seemed incredible, and we had some difficulty in taking the assertion of the Holy Scriptures literally, "All the gods of the gentiles are devils ;" but since we see apostasy from the church running the same career, and actually inaugurating the worship of demons, actually exalting the devil above our Lord, the Mystery of Iniquity is explained, and the matter becomes plain and credible.

It is curious to see what has been the course of thought in the Protestant apostasy in regard to the class of facts in question. Having lost the power of exorcism with their loss of the true faith, the Protestant nations had no resource against the invasions of the spirits but to carry out the injunction of the Mosaic law, "Thou shall uot suffer a witch" —that is, a medium—'* to live." Hence we find their annals in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries blackened with accounts of the trials and cruel punishments of persons suspected of witchcraft, sorcery, or dealings with the devil, especially in England, Scotland, and the Anglo-American colonies. Having no well-defined and certain criteria, as the church has, by which to determine the presence of Satan, many persons, no doubt, were put to death who were innocent of the offences of which they were accused. This produced a reaction in the public mind against the laws and against the execution of persons for witchcraft or dealing with the devil. This reaction was followed by a denial of witchcraft, or that the devil had any thing to do with matters and things on earth, and a shower of ridicule fell on all who believed in any thing of the sort. Then came the general doubt, and then the denial of the existence of the devil and all infernal spirits, save in human nature itself. Finally came the spirit-manifestations, in which Satan is no longer regarded as Satan, but is held to be divine, and worshipped as God, by thousands and millions.

We must be excused from entering into any elaborate refutation of Mr. Owen's blasphemous attempts to bring the Christian miracles under the general law, as he regards it, of spirit-manifestations. He has proved the reality of no such law, and if he had, the spirit-manifestations themselves would prove nothing more than a gale of wind, a shower of rain, a flash of lightning, or the growth of a spire of grass. Could we prove the Christian miracles to be facts in the order of nature, or show them as taking place by a general law, and not by the immediate act of God, and therefore no miracles at all, we should deprive them of all their importance. The value of the facts is not in their being facts, but in their being miraculous facts, which none but God can work. The author does not understand this, but supposes that he has won a victory for Christianity when he has proved the miracles as facts, but at the same time that they are no miracles.

It is clear from his pages that the author does not know what Christians understand by a miracle. He cites St. Augustine to prove that a miracle is something that may take place by some law of nature to us unknown, but St. Augustine, in the passage he cites, is not speaking of miracles at all; he is speaking of portents, prodigies, or extraordinary events, which the ignorant, and the superstitious ascribe to a supernatural agency; but which may, after all, however wonderful, be produced by a natural cause, as in our days not a few believe to be the case with the spirit-manifestations themselves, and no doubt is the case with most of the wonders the spiritists relate. The devil may work portents or prodigies, but not miracles, because he has no creative power, and can work only with materials created to his hand.

It is necessary also to distinguish between what is simply superhuman and what is supernatural. Whatever is creature is in the order of nature. Nature embraces the entire creation—whatever exists that is notGod or is distinguishable from him. Whether the created powers are above man or below him in the scale of existence, they are equally natural, and so is whatever they are capable, as second causes, of doing. The angels in heaven, the very highest as the lowest, are God's creatures, distinguishable from him, and therefore included in nature. The same must be said of the devils in hell, or the ghosts, if the spirits of the departed, and hence whatever they do is within the natural order. The devil is superior, if you will, by nature to man—for man is made little lower than the angels, and the devil is an angel fallen; he may know many things beyond human intelligence, and do many things beyond the power of man; but what the devil does, is, if superhuman, not in any sense supernatural, but as natural as what man himself does. We agree with Mr. Owen, though not for the same reason, that there is nothing miraculous in the spirit-manifestations, even supposing them to be facts, and therefore they are of no value in relation to the truth or falsehood of Christianity as a revelation of and by the supernatural.

God alone, and what he does immediately by his direct and immediate act, is supernatural. God alone can work a miracle, which is a supernatural effect wrought without any natural medium, law, or agency, in or on nature, and is, as far as it goes, a manifestation of creative power.

Miracles do what portents, prodigies, spirit-rappings, &c., do not—they manifest the supernatural, or the existence of a real order above nature. They do not indeed directly prove the truth of the Christian mysteries, but they do accredit our Lord as a teacher sent from God. As Nicodemus said when he came by night to Jesus, "Rabbi, we know that thou art come a teacher from God, for no man can do the miracles thou doest, unless God were with him." God in the miracles accredits the teacher, and vouches for the truth of what he in whose favor they are wrought teaches. What our Lord teaches, then, is true. If he teaches that he is perfect God and perfect man in hypostatic union, then he is a0, and then is to be believed, on his own word, whatever he teaches, for "it is impossible for God to lie." The facts, then, are of no importance if not miracles. Hence the "natural-supernaturatism" of the Sartor Resartus is not only a contradiction in terms, but utterly worthless, as are most of the admired utterances of its author, and aid us not in solving a single problem for which revelation is needed.

Deprive us of the prophecies under the Old Law and the miracles under the New, and we should be deprived of all means of proving Christianity as a supernatural religion, as supernaturally inspired and revealed, and should be reduced, as Mr. Owen is, to naked rationalism, or downright demonism. The prodigies of the devil do not carry us above nature. They are indeed Satan's efforts to counterfeit genuine miracles, but at best they only give us the superhuman for the supernatural. If the author could prove the Christian miracles are not miracles, though credible as facts, or if he could bring them into the category of the spirit-manifestations, he would in effect divest Christianity of its supernatural character, and render it all as worthless as any man-constructed system of ethics or philosophy. His Christianity, as set forth in his pages, has not a trace of the Christianity of Christ, and is as little worthy of being called Christian as the bald Unitarianism of Channing, or the Deism of Rousseau, Tom Paine, or Voltaire, or the Free Religion of Emerson, Higginson, and Julia Ward Howe.

What Mr. Owen regards as a highly important fact, and which he urges Protestants to accept as the means of triumphing over the Catholic Church, namely, that the Christian miracles and the spirit-manifestations are worthy of precisely the same respect and confidence in a Christian point of view, is far less important than he in his profound ignorance of Christianity imagines. How far he will be successful with Protestants we know not; but his success, we imagine, will be greatest among people of his own class, who, having no settled belief in any religion, who know little of the principles of Christianity, are, as all such people are, exceedingly credulous and superstitious. These people hover on the Dorders of Protestantism, have certain sympathies with the reformation, but it would be hardly just to call them in the ordinary sense of the term Protestants. Yet Protestantism, being substantially a revival in principle of the ancient gentile apostasy which led to the worship of the devil in the place of God before our Lord's advent, there can be no doubt that Protestants are peculiarly exposed to satanic invasions, and there is no certainty that they may not follow Mr. Owen back to the devil-worship from which Christianity rescued the nations that embraced it. But we have said enough for the present. Perhaps we may say more hereafter.