I have contracted with you, in accepting you for disciples. You have followed me; you have partaken my works and my pains; you have been taught what it behooves man to know, when he wishes to fulfil exactly the duty imposed on him, during his sojourn upon the earth. In the deplorable state, in which things are to-day, and in view of the aversion men show every where to the reform of manners and the renewing of the Ancient Doctrine, you ought not to flatter yourselves with being able to recall the mass of men to the practice of their duties; you are witness of the little success which I have had in the enterprise which I have undertaken and in which I have not ceased to work during the whole of a long life. What you can do with some hope of success, is to contribute to preserve the precious deposit, of which I was only the depositor, and which I have intrusted to you."

To his little son, he said, as he felt the weakness of death draw near: "Oh! my dear Tseu Koung! The mountain of Tay-chan withdraws itself-I can no more raise my head to contemplate it. The piers of the building are more than half eaten away. I have no place, to which to withdraw myself. The grass without juice is dry; I have no more where I can sit down to repose myself. The Holy Doctrine had disappeared; it was entirely forgotten. I have hastened to recall it and re-establish its empire. I have not been able to succeed in it."

His last public act was a journey with a few intimate disciples to a neighboring mountain, on whose top he had erected an altar. Upon this, his books-the work of his life-were solemnly placed, and with devout ceremony, consecrated to Heaven.

He then kneeled seriously to each quarter of the compass, and thanked Heaven for its care of him, and of the books of "Ancient Doctrine," and solemnly committed them to the care of the unseen "Principle of Life"

The favorite Chinese pictures of the philosopher represent him in this act; kneeling by the altar, with a bow of light descending from the stars upon his head.

A characteristic trait is related of him in these his last days. An annual saturnalia was going on among the peasantssome festival to the genii of the fruits. The old man could not willingly die with

out looking on the genial face of human happiness again. He was helped upon a hill to see the merriment.

"I avow," said he, "I have a true pleasure in seeing these good people forget their misery and believing themselves happy a moment."

A devout disciple objected, that the people ought to thank Heaven for their fruits by prayers. "Ah well!" said the old warm heart, "It is in doing this. in rejoicing, that they perform their actions of grace and their prayers."

He still had strength once more to review his works-but after this gradually failed; and, as his biographers inform us, on the appearance of the same sign which had preceded his birth-the presence of a wonderful animal, the Ki-lin -he died. His age was 73, in the year 479 before Christ, and 9 before Socrates.

The works of Confucius* which form the classics of China, and which especially transmit his philosophy, are five in number. 1. The Great Science,—a treatise on the relations of politics and morals. 2. The True Medium, or invariableness in the middle way, a discussion of the great principle of life-" Right Reason." 3. Philosophic Conversations, or Book of Sentences. 4. The Filial Piety, being conversations on that subject. 5. The School for Infants, or a discourse on edu

cation.

How much of these books is original with him, and how much he has gathered from the "Ancient writings," is uncertain. It is supposed generally, that he made the old Treatises the basis and medium of his own sentiments and thoughts.

These and a few other writings form the code, moral, legal and social, of the Chinese people. No one can hold an office, or claim a high social position, or be considered an educated gentleman, without familiarity with them.

The System of Confucius may be described as a system of practical humanity. He stood on a basis of known facts, and taught human duties.

No philosopher, out of the influence of the Christian manifestation, has ever seized with such a grasp, on the great idea of Love as the renovator of the heart and the practical life. Except from CHRIST. no words of purer benevolence have ever fallen from human lips. Nobly confirming the theory, was a life which even the

superstitions of a childish age and the mists of twenty-three centuries cannot conceal, as among the most self-devoting and manful, which the world had witnessed. It has left its natural impress. During these long ages, all that has been of unknown heroism and love and filial piety and courtesy among this vast Chinese people, has fed itself from this one man's words. His lightest instructions have become part of the civil law; his maxims are the precepts of religion; his life the Divine Ideal, to which all in the empire who aspire after the true and good continually struggle. The discouraged death, the sad defeat, as it seemed then and seems always to the sufferer for goodness, has become a triumph in the eyes of the nation.

And yet in one sense, the life of Confucius has been a failure. He did not appeal to man's infinite aspirations; he did not address the soul, from its highest thought; he taught nothing of the unseen, the Eternal, the Divine. He could not elevate human nature, by awakening its hope of a relation to a limitless unknown Future or to the grand Infinite Spirit. He gave it little to support it in disaster, or to soothe its nameless and ever-recurring sorrows. He attempted to make men love one another, but without meeting the gigantic selfishness of the human soul, with these momentous motives, or without seeking to transmute it by the love all-pervading to the only Perfect One. He perhaps could love his vague conjecture of a deity, or even the abstract Goodness, which to him represented Godhood. The mass of men cannot. The results of this system were natural. The upper and thoughtful classes of China have in the main settled into an indifferent or aggressive skepticism, of all which belongs to man's higher nature. The people have

sought for their religious instincts, what Confucianism never afforded, and have found it in the grossest superstitions which corrupt the doctrines of Buddha or of Lautsz. In no country of even an imperfect civilization, has the dignity of human life fallen so low as in China.

Not elevated by any grand religious truth from Confucius, the people have fastened on the letter of his gospel. The detail, the trivialities of his teachings have taken the place of his principles. And yet in the broad estimate of human history, Confucius has done a noble and important part. The preparations for high development in the moral world, may be as slow as in the material world. Both the greatness and defects of the philosophy of Confucius, thoroughly tested during these many ages, have perhaps been slowly and firmly preparing a foundation among his people, for the highest Manifestation, and thus far the most complete Embodiment of religion. The humanity as well as the silent skepticism of the Chinese philosopher, may be equally in the plans of the universe, a preparation for the all-embracing Love and the unwavering Faith which have sprung alone from the divine revealing in CHRISTIANITY.

This Movement, now so steadily and mysteriously progressing in China-the most important event, doubtless, in many centuries to the human race-may trace its origin and its wonderful success, to these very thoughts and aspirations which we have been following. And if this vast homogeneous people-welded as no other nation by common law, usage and institutions-ever be enlightened by a purer faith, we may find the dawn far back in the humane words, the self-devoting life, and the discouraged death of the simple Chinese scholar

THE

HERE is a mysterious knocking which began to be heard in Rochester, a few years ago, and which waxed louder and multiplied its reverberations, until the sound of it is now echoing through all the limits of Christendom; and men at the antipodes may be seen gathering themselves together in scared "circles" to investigate the startling phenomenon. They tell us it is the heralding of messengers from the land of spirits; and although, at one time, a certain toe exposure threatened an easier solution of the mystery, and in spite of fierce opposition and unbounded ridicule, the advocates of the spiritual theory have ended by triumphantly turning the tables upon all unbelievers; and they now rest their case, confidently, upon this last, more wonderful and, as yet, not invalidated evidence. Grave judges have slipped down from the bench into this arena of controversy, and have tilted with spiritual weapons. Men of great reputation have not hesitated to stake all their fame in support of the strange faith. But the subject assumes a serious importance which almost places it without the pale of jesting, when we find it unseating reason and peopling our lunatic asylums. There is certainly" something in it." It deserves candid and logical investigation; and if the system is founded in truth and reason, by all means let us embrace it. For our own part, we should be very sorry to find ourselves forced to believe. We are at a loss to discover the consolation and happiness of this faith. To be sure, there are those who pretend to listen with complacency to these signals from the land of shadows, and who avow that they take great comfort in the thought that ghosts and goblins are dancing about their pillows, and disturbing their dreams, and ready, at the least sign of insubordination, to rap them sharply across the knuckles, or play the dickens with their crockery. For ourselves, we plead guilty to a certain share of the frailty of human nature; and this bringing together of the two worlds, which have no congeniality of composition, and which have been mercifully kept asunder for so many ages; this dragging down of the supernatural to a

familiar contact and communion with the natural; this opening of graves, and conjuring up of the spirits of our forgotten ancestors with all their armor on, and the same sledge-hammer fists as of old, to grapple with us, and trip up our heels, and play all fantastical tricks with our rosewood furniture; we protest, it is beyond patience, fearful and unendurable.

And we will not endure it. We deny that the knockings and tippings and such like physical phenomena, are spiritual manifestations. We challenge these unstable and meddlesome spirits to mortal combat, and enter the lists to prove them a lie, and to whip them back yelping to their Stygian groves. But lest any man should accuse us of sacrilege or blasphemy, in any words or weapons we may resort to in our process of exorcism, let us forestall this objection of a tender conscience, by an extract from Judge Edmonds' book, which may place all parties upon a fair footing.

The ghost of Swedenborg has been summoned (Judge Edmonds' principal witness), and is giving his testimony as to the validity and authority of spiritual communications in general. His words are thus reported:-"What the nature of all the concurrent causes was, which influenced this manifestation of spirit communion with material organization, I cannot pretend to say; but that they were by no special directions of the Creator, I am satisfied." And again. "Take no statements, therefore, that are not based on laws satisfactory to your judgment, and depend upon it, that when any revelation is made, having the garment of marvellousness wrapped about it, that either it is a compound of the medium's imagination, or it emanates from some spirit whose veracity is to be doubted."

Here we have not only an admission that this counsel and this work are not of God; but an admission of liability to mendacity in the very revelations themselves (to say nothing of the media); and also a frank appeal to the supremacy of human reason, as the tribunal by which the whole doctrine should be judged.

We hesitate not, therefore, to grasp

firmly our scourge of logic, and advance with boldness to the fight.

Let our position be clearly understood. We intend to prove, if we can, first, that it is impossible that a spirit should manifest itself physically; secondly, that the power which, it is pretended, does reveal certain mysteries of an unknown life, by means of these outward demonstrations and living media, is, by its own confession, not a spiritual power, and yet, that it is none the less (by its own showing again), incapable of physical manifestations; and thirdly, that this supposed revealing power, whatever it may be, is an evil power; for the system of religion advanced by its agents is opposed to divine revelation, contradictory, irrational, and pernicious.

And first, as to the nature of a spirit, and the reasons why the "rappings" and "tippings" &c., cannot be spiritual manifestations. Now a spirit (i. e. a free, untrammelled, disembodied, pure spirit), by all the definitions of the school-men, by all the traditions of mythology, by all the legends of superstition, and by the very necessities of language, is an immaterial, unsubstantial being, with intelligence and the power of locomotion, but destitute of impressibility, or tangibility, or any analogy, in composition, with a material existence. So that if in the vanity of his heart, a man should think to shut up a ghost within stone walls, or to fasten him by a chain, or to annihilate him by a bullet, such a man should be proved a fool. And on the other hand, should a vainglorious spirit boast, that by the weight of his arm he might fell an ox, or that by the strength of his spine he might lift a mountain, or by the hardness of his knuckles he might split a door-pannel, or an oak table, or the headboard of a bedstead, he should be made to eat his own words. He would lie in his spiritual throat. If a spirit finds no obstacle in high walls, and closed doors, and stopped cracks and keyholes hermetically sealed; so long as he retains his purely spiritual nature, he cannot directly offer any resistance to any such objects. If a door cannot offer any opposition to his passage, he cannot rap upon it. Or if a table cannot by any possibility stand in his way, he cannot by any possibility personally push it, or maul it, or upset it.

But," says one, "you must not deny the power of spirit to affect material objects. Here am I, a living illustration of that power. By the mere force of my will, I move my limbs. I can walk, or leap, or dance, or sit still, according as the

spirit that is in me is disposed. Why should not a free spirit, then, animate any material object, so that tables should become saltatory, chairs peripatetic, &c. ?"

Simply noticing the fact, that this objection does not approach the rappings at all (for no amount of life in a door could produce raps upon a door), we must not forget, that the spirit by which a man moves his limbs is not a separate existence, but absolutely a part of himself, wholly inseparable, so long as he exists bodily, from his physical organization. As such it bears no analogy to a free spirit, and an argument from one to the other will not hold. It is, in reality, not the spirit in a man which wills to walk, but it is he who wills to walk as truly as it is he who walks. This intimate union of spirit and matter constitutes the life of the intelligent man. These physical acts, are the acts of an embodied spirit; and these spiritual volitions are the volitions of a physical man. The spiritual and immortal has become for the time, a part of the mortal and physical, in an identity which only death can destroy.

This is a mystery of divine creation. The spirit had no hand in producing this identity, and cannot withdraw from it by any simple act of will.

It would be rather poor logic, we think. to argue that, because a spirit forcibly and involuntarily embodied must act through a material organization, therefore a disembodied spirit may voluntarily possess and animate any inanimate material object;-not to speak of an assumption of the divine prerogative, which such an action would involve. But even admitting the thing possible, and supposing that a spirit should "enter into" a table, and endow it with life and intelligence,would it go? We think not. Suppose a man's arm should be destitute of joints and muscles, but still tingling with sensation to the finger tips; of how much motion would it be capable, think you? The influence of the man's will upon the movement of his limbs, depends upon the perfection of his anatomy, and the free circulation of the vital fluids. In other words, to use a very imperfect simile, the machinery and the capacity of motion must exist, before the spiritual motive power can be applied with effect. An engine would be as efficient for locomotion, without wheels, or cranks, or gearing, as an animate and intelligent table for walking, without articulated limbs and a nervous system.

But if it is contrary to reason that

spirits should directly affect inanimate matter, may they not act upon it by the intervention of the natural forces, as Magnetism, Electricity, or the Odic force?

Unfortunately for such a position these forces are material, and the same "nature of things" which would prevent a spirit from directly influencing a table or an ottoman, would bar it from directly using any material force. How could a spirit handle electricity; confine it; bring it to bear upon any specified point? There is no such conceivable possibility. This fact has, it seems, occurred to the minds of the inventors of the new system; and accordingly a canon of spiritualism requires, that in order to the awakening of the mysterious furniture-moving influence. there must be assembled a "circle" technically so called, of tangible human bodies.* This is logical. Spirits cannot upset the furniture themselves; neither can they make a medium of Electricity or the Odic force; but to affect these material objects there must be an immediate bodily presence. Now we unhesitatingly assert that the results of this bodily presence are not spiritual manifestations. For, either the active visible agents are sufficient of themselves to put the requisite operation, or they are not. If they are sufficient, then there is no need of spiritual, or other interposition. If they are not sufficient, then if the force is brought into operation at all, it must be by other than spiritual aid, since, as we have seen, the spiritual aid is impossible, as the direct action of spirit upon matter, (i. e. upon a material force.)

There remains, so far as we can see, but one way in which physical phenomena can be the action of spirits. If the spirits can obtain the complete control of a human agent; if the persons in a "circle," beneath whose fingers a table takes to its legs and perambulates, are really and truly acting without any volition of their own, under the immediate possession of spirits, then, and not otherwise, may these manifestations be in a certain sense spiritual. Let us give this question full scope. A party of young people, we will suppose, are assembled, and as a sport of the evening it is suggested that they attempt a table moving. The party may consist of two persons or half a dozen. They arrange themselves according to rule, and the table tips up in due course,

performs satisfactory evolutions, and answers questions with docility. Now this evident and remarkable effect has sprung, apparently, from the simple laying on of hands of these merry-makers. The experiment was made for amusement. The plan was their own. They are unconscious of any suggestions but those of curiosity, of any influence but their own love of fun, of any power but the touch of their own fingers. The fun, and the tipping, and the fingers, are all that are evident to their senses, or to any spectator. But the phenomena are claimed as a manifestation of spiritual power. By what right or reason? Some force has moved the table. It must have been a material force, for no other could produce the effect upon the material obiect. The force must have been called into operation by material action alone, for no other could affect a material force. The material action is evident in the assembling and arrangement of the "circle;" without which it is not pretended that there would have been any tipping of the table. Evidently, therefore, if there is any spiritual manifestation here, it must be identical with the material action, i. e. the material act (that merry laying on of hands), which awakened the force, which moved the table, must be the spiritual manifestation. Now this could only be true, if the agents were completely under the control of some foreign spiritual power, Their own free agency must have been destroyed. The volition by which they laid their hands upon the table must have been a foreign volition and not their own. It is only by this absolute annihilation of the will of the agent that spirits can claim the acts of the agent, and, as we have seen, it is only the act of the agent which can be the spiritual manifestation. If at the mere request (hidden influence), of spirits, the agents themselves can awaken a force which shall move a table, there is no spiritual aid; and the agents perform the act as well without the suggestion, as with it: so that said suggestive spirits could claim no credit whatever for the effect, as having any, the slightest, share in producing it.

Their only course is to get rid of the identity of the agent, as an intelligent active cause, by the infusion into his organization of a new element, which shall thrust aside and take possession; of which