The Two Worlds, the Natural and the Spiritual. By Thomas
Brevior. (F. Pitman.)—In this very curious and on the whole senfible produc- tion the history of supernatural phenomena - as manifested among the Jews and the heathen, in the first three centuries of Christianity and the middle ages, in Joan of Arc and Swedenborg, Count Zinzendorf and Joanna Southcote, Edward Irving and Joe Smith, is reviewed and the reality of spiritualism thence inferred. If he is asked to what purpose spirits are allowed to communicate with us he frankly says he does not know, but that if competent observers will study the facts we shall pro- bably discover. At all events, he says, the facts prove the future life of man after the death of the body, and that overthrows the position of the materialists, a class of persons who are in the present day on the increase. If spiritualists are generally anti-Christian that is because Christians deny the facts, while the majority of the people who accept thorn are infidels, and therefore explain them on infidel principles. The author repudiates all the theories of spiritualists as hasty generalizations, and seems to consider the only established fact to be that,spirits only differ from us in having no visible body; that they are fallible, and not more to be re- lied on than men on earth as guides of opinion or conduct. If their communications aro false or frivolous that may be precisely the lesson we have to learn. This seems to be sound enough, if you are once per- suaded of the truth of the spirit manifestations, and the evidence is un- questionably strong enough to give a certain colour to the possibility of intorceurse between the living and the souls of the dead. But no matt will ever bo convinced except by his own personal experience, for those who have, or think they have, these experiences are almost always of a rather credulous temper. We cannot acquit even our author of this charge. The laws of historical evidence are things he cares little about, and he likes a marvel too much to question its truth. If the book were condensed to half its size it would be very good. As it is there is a deal of skip, mostly consisting of quotations froth the writings of quite obscure clergymen.
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