neglect of a charitable institution.---The White Lady is not in a state of salvation, much less of perdition.---Her proba- ble history and parentage. Her name is Bertha Von Ro- senberg, and she lived in the fifteenth century.--Her mar- riage with Johann Von Lichtenstein proves very unhappy, hence her mental bitterness, which hitherto prevents her sal- vation.---She is left a widow, builds the castle of Neuhaus, and institutes a yearly feast for the poor.---Her place and manner of appearing more precisely fixed.--- Probable rea- sons why she wanders about, and occasionally appears.--- Her state is not desirable, she is still in error. Apparitions of spirits do not produce amendment. Concluding remarks. 222 A brief review of the Theory of Pneumatology, and INTRODUCTION. If we take a retrospective view of the history of mankind, from the present period up to the earliest ages, we shall find that it is increasingly interwoven with the influence of super or sub-human, good or evil beings: beings, whose existence as well as whose actions seem to have no appropriate plan in the chain of sensible nature, and yet have been believed in by every nation upon earth, down to the present time. The observation, that all these beings adapt themselves precisely to the character and degree of culture of the people by whom they are believed, honored, or abhorred, is at the same time both very just and remarkable. If we compare the mythology of the ancient Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans with the wild romances of the Icelandic Edda, the grotesque labyrinth of the mythology of Brama, and the abominations of the ancient Mexicans, we shall find that the deities of each of these nations were, so to speak, their countrymen. The good conducted themselves precisely according to the manners of those that were esteemed the better class, and the wicked practised that which was regarded as vicious. This observation gives some shadow of probability to the present prevailing idea amongst rationalists, that all these beings have, at no period and in no nation, been any thing else than a dream, a deception of the imagination, and a fable, and that they are so still; but that this is nothing more or less than a shadow, may be easily proved. Let the following question be calmly, impartially, and conscientiously considered and investigated. "Can the human imagination conceive or create any thing for which it has no materials?" Every honest rational thinker will answer, "No, it cannot possibly form an image of that which does not strike the senses." It, therefore, incontestibly follows from hence, that mankind never would have had even a distant presentiment of an invisible world of spirits, of the continuation of our existence after death, of good and evil spirits and of deities, if that which is above sense had not revealed itself to sense. Why is it that we know nothing of an animal world of spirits? Why is the re-appearance of friendly domestic animals never spoken of? Naturally because such a world never manifested itself to man. But where is there such a revelation of the rational world of spirits to be found, on the statements of which we can safely depend, and on the certainty of which, irreversible systems may be founded? The genuine Israelite and the true-believing Christtian immediately and with confidence reply," In the Bible!"*: True; but the public, for whom I write, consists of parties, whose ideas of this holy document are much at variance. The first of these parties receives, without hesitation, all that is said in the Bible, as the word of God; and yet this party is likewise divided into two distinct classes. The individuals, who compose the first class, adhere firmly to the articles of faith of the Protestant church, and whilst they believe all the appearances from the invisible world, which are related in the Bible, reject every thing of this nature subsequent to the times of the Apostles; and when undeniable facts are adduced, ascribe them to a delusion of Satan and his angels, rather than retract any thing from their system. Those that belong to the other class not only believe all the supernatural appearances related in the Bible, but also the continuation of them down to the present time. See note 1. But they generally run too far into the other extreme, by regarding as supernatural, all those effects of the imagination, or even of material nature, which are not comprehensible by the understandings of the generality of and especially by attaching more value and importance to appearances from the invisible world, than belongs to them. The latter point forms a particular part of my object in the present undertaking; I beg the reader to keep it in view. The second of these parties divests the holy scriptures of all oriental embellishment, for thus they denominate all those images, for which their enlightened reason can find no place in the storehouse of their brain, because they do not suit its furniture. They give tolerable credence to the abstract history of the Bible, under the superintendence, however, of their rational criticism; but morals and morality they regard as the chief thing, whenever divine revelation is the subject of discourse... Finally, the third party believe neither in the Bible nor in an invisible world; it is to them a matter of indifference, whether, and in what manner they shall continue to exist after death; their element is intellectual knowledge and the pleasures of sense, and they reject that which is not capable of elucidation from the former and its approximate principles. This is properly the domi |