actions' were best expressed by the beasts of the field, the vultures of the desert, or the monsters of the Nile. Imagine, farther, the priests who earnestly endeavoured to express, in their own persons, the characters and actions' of these pure and sublime deities; and then say what lofty, refined beings must these priests have become-how devoted to virtuous and hallowed contemplations-how far removed from all that is grovelling and corporeal-how admirably adapted to elevate the minds of the people. Imagine the intelligence and the purity of him who "expressed the character" of the bull or the goat; and the benignity, the humane charities of him whose life was devoted to setting forth the actions" of his vulture-goddess or his crocodile-god.

And let us not forget that if actions congenial to the corruptions of human nature were enjoined and hallowed as religious duties, they were certain to be practised at other times as well. If modern laws and the stern prohibitions of religion can scarcely, even in our own country, keep down wickedness to the level of civilized decorum, what was likely to be the moral state of a country where drunkenness, cruelty, vice, and even murder, were not only sanctioned, but commanded as services to the gods ?-when the worship is pure, self-denying, severe, there is little fear of the people at large becoming "righteous overmuch:" but where intemperance and crime are compulsory at the temple, we may reasonably expect to find the rites of the hideous sanctuary familiarized by practice at home.

A. F.

APRIL 1845.

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MESMERISM.

MANY and conflicting are the communications that have reached us on this fertile topic. The pros and the cons are brought forward with an energy that confirms our fixed belief of the momentous character that will more and more develop itself, as belonging to this impressive sign of the "last days." We are asked to reconsider the subject:' we have done so, again and again; and the result has been a reprint of the 'Letter to Miss Martineau,' verbatim et literatim, as it first appeared. Not that we could not now add many striking facts, with their inferences, to the original testimony; but having set forth what we know to be truth in the simplest form, we prefer so to leave it, that the truth may fight its own battle.

The objections brought against our theory are still these; Would Satan become a healer?' 'Would God permit his own children to be deceived by the enemy?' 'Can we, with so much that is marvellous, mysterious inexplicable, yet unquestionable, because of every-day occurrence before our eyes, limit the power of natural causes, yet to be brought more prominently into action by the amazing strides of scientific discovery in our days?' To all of these queries, we unhesitatingly answer, 'Yes.'

The first point we have already treated of at large; and we see no cause to retract or to modify one sylla

ble of the testimony: the second we reply to by reminding the querist, that it is to God's children the warnings are especially addressed, that are to deter them from falling into the snares of the devil. We quite marvel at the confidence with which some Christian people rest on the very unscriptural belief that he who led Peter into the open denial of his Lord, and who put it into the hearts of James and John to plan the miraculous destruction of a whole population by fire, is powerless to delude them. We know who brought a text of Scripture to show that the Son of Man might safely cast himself down from the pinnacle; and we shall do well to bear in mind the reply: "It is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God." The disciple must not aspire to be above his master; nor the servant above his Lord. We use plain language, seeking not less to strengthen ourselves than to caution others. We would "exhort one another daily, while it is called to-day, lest any be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin."

The grand point, insisted upon by some advocates of Mesmerism, consists in its having been known to lead from infidelity to faith in some published cases, it is clear that the conviction wrought in the mind amounted to an acknowledgment that spirit may exist, independent of matter; and from this first step to an admission of the divine origin of the Scriptures. How much farther it went, we do not know: but no sound believer can venture to call this a saving faith. It is one of the subtle forms of mischief peculiar to this art, that it leads men to fix their attention on spirit, abstractedly standing out in vaunting contradistinction to materialism, without ever touching on vital matters of salvation. It assumes this form to beguile the more

serious; but give full scope to a cunning infidel on the ground of his phreno-mesmeric exploits, and see whither the real tendency of the thing most manifestly points.

It is not enough that a spirit should be recognized: we must "TRY the spirits, whether they be of God;" and why? "because many false spirits are gone into the world," This false spirit is, moreover, a "false Christ; not an open impugner of His name and power, and glory, but a deceitful assumer of what belongs to him alone. We should not fear Mesmerism if it wore no mask of holiness; we should not tremble lest the " very elect" be deceived by a spirit with the brand of Satan on his brow. It is because it creeps in so softly among God's people, and fills their mouths with so much talk of science and learning, and the mighty powers of man's faculties, that we look on it with an anxious eye. When men of piety and sense speak of such phenomena as are displayed in the state of clairvoyance, as being analogous to those belonging to electricity, or to the communication of mutual thought by the eye and pen; or to the mysterious intercourse of man's spirit with what is to mortal eye invisible, we are more than pained; we are utterly confounded. For, what is this but an inlet to all infidelity. All, save the infidel, admit that between the highest order of instinct, involving as it assuredly does a reasoning process also, in the dog, the elephant, and other of God's animal creation; between these, we say, and the very lowest grade of human intellect, as developed in the little infant, and the imbecile adult, there is a gulf, vast, immeasurable, impassable, elevating the latter above the former, as high as the immortal and everlasting are removed from the material and the

perishable. Even such a gulf separates the phenomena of the mesmeric clairvoyance from all that man can compass or produce by merely natural means; and if we deny this, let men of science say and write what they will, we overthrow the very basis on which our faith rests,-miraculous interposition.

To cite but one instance out of many, let us look at Nathanael. He came to Jesus, who immediately bare testimony to the excellence and simplicity of his character: "Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile." This induced the question from the stranger, who was deeply prejudiced against the Nazarene, "Rabbi, whence knowest thou me ?" And the answer was, "Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the figtree, I saw thee." Conviction instantly struck to the mind of the doubter; he exclaimed, "Thou art the Son of God; thou art the king of Israel." Assured that no human eye was present to behold him, on the occasion specified, he recognized that of omniscience, and believed. This is certain from what follows; "Because I said that I saw thee when thou wast under the figtree, believest thou?"

But, according to the mesmerizers, the only wonder belonging to this transaction consisted in science not having yet discovered the means of seeing what was passing in any given corner of the world; and the attribute ascribed in Holy Scripture to Deity alone, of knowing all things, is attainable by any, the lowest, the vilest, of the human race: and when to this is added, the power of healing diseases by a touch, and the infusion of a new will into the person influenced, we cannot but recognize as dangerous a "false Christ as ever the true disciple was cautioned to shun. Very recently, a youth, right well known and dearly loved