step of life is a step towards the one end. This intense purpose makes a fervid atmosphere about them, so that those with whom they come in contact are unconsciously drawn into the same great design. They are spiritually infected with it. Of such men history gives multitudes of examples, and our own age furnishes two prominent ones--Garibaldi and Louis Napoleon. Of the good or evil tendency of their lives I do not now speak, but of the fact that they illustrate the subject we are discussing. History gives many instances of men who have become rulers, not only of their own, but of following ages. They have stamped themselves upon the institutions, ideas, and laws of their age. These institutions, doctrines, and laws have endured long afterwards, and by means of them they have still reigned on earth, though they had left the outward vision. Such men were Menu, Zoroaster, Moses, Plato, Aristotle, Cæsar, Charlemagne, Luther, Calvin, Napoleon, and many others.

I have said that these men governed in the world, long after they had passed away. Every one will admit that this is true in the way I have indicated. But there is another view, not so common. The works which these men left behind them were their creations-the results of their spiritual action. These works-thoughts, inventions, institutions, laws-whatever they may be, continue to exist only by virtue of the life which is in them, and that life is the life of their creators. Each thought is a veritable spiritual thing, and subsists only from the life of its thinger or thinker. (Our Saxon word gives this spiritual fact in its etymology.) The maker still lives in his works, though he has left his earthly body, and these works subsist only as a part of himself. They are, in fact, a part of his life sphere, and contain his vital essences, his active forces. So long as they exist-so long as history speaks admiringly of him—and so long as men live who have sympathy with his thoughts or works-so long he himself has access and power of control, or of influence among men, though he is no longer seen of them. Whether he have risen to the highest heaven, or sunk to the deepest hell, there is still a telegraphic wire, if I may use the figure, along which he can flash currents of influence. He is yet en rapport with the world below. Like a monarch who has retired into the inner recesses of his palace, and is invisible to the crowd, he reigns, though unseen.

And here, I think, we gain a glimpse of a great law of progress. The spirit of a great teacher, or law-giver, when he has risen far above our lower region of thought and feeling, into a glory unspeakable, and into light and wisdom which would be darkness to our dim eyes, may still infuse his own influence into his works. And hence, those works may become the means

by which a higher and purer influence can be communicated in each succeeding age. The hard, natural outlines continue the same, but who can estimate the spiritual influence communicated from these externals? No two men receive the same spiritual impress from the same work of art, even if they stand side by side to view it. Does any one suppose that Shakespeare saw all that has since been seen in his works, at the time he wrote them? Spiritual influences depend on two great conditions-the tendency of our own being in receiving them, and the quality of the spirits with whom we are in communication. And I think that, sometimes, when one stands before a picture of one of the great, devout, and truly inspired old painters, one may see in the work, thoughts which we can hardly suppose possible to have been present to the consciousness of the artist himself when he painted it. The master painted "better than he knew"--perhaps he painted forms which he then understood not, or understood dimly; but now, having entered into the knowledge of those forms, he can teach us, through them, more than he knew when on earth. And, in this sense, "though he rest from his labours, his works follow him."

It must necessarily result, also, that the works of a bad man are infernally inspired, and become vehicles for his pestilential influence, when he has himself become a disembodied spirit; but, happily, evil is shorter lived than good, and the bad man's works sink into the oblivion and spiritual death which have overtaken their author. The wicked man's curse may endure to the third or fourth generation, but the good man's blessing descends to the thousandth generation. It is thus, that in the Divine government of the world, evil shall finally cease, and the good prevail. At length, the spiritual kingdom of the Divine Man, Christ, will come, even in the earth; for, as good is stronger than evil, the greatest good is the strongest. And so, Christ himself becomes the highest illustration of the law I have stated, and His own words the supreme exposition of spherical influence: "And I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto me.' His sphere is the magnetism of the spiritual universe.

I will not endeavour to follow a strictly inductive method in stating what I conceive to be the true doctrine respecting spiritual spheres and atmospheres. Space, and probably the patience of my readers, will not permit more than a rapid glance thereat, and this, and all other theories, must stand or fall by their application to life. If this seem to me to be the truth, that is no reason why I should be dogmatic, or endeavour to force it upon others, nor even is it a reason for my elaborately fortifying it according to the most approved principles of logical engineering. I am not an army besieged therein. If I have explored a new region, or

have followed another explorer, and others think I have only dreamt it, my discovery cannot be other than a dream to them, and however I may be disconcerted, I can only say to them, "You, and I, and heaven, and earth shall pass away, but truth shalĺ stand."

But why do I speak as an explorer? I have to speak of the oldest belief of mankind. I explore only as he explores who digs among ruined cities. The doctrine of spiritual atmospheres and spheres is as old as human language. Like those everlasting columns of porphyry and marble, dug from the temples of ancient Rome, and made to serve again in its modern churches, there are words which we now use, every day, gathered from the ancient languages, which tell as plainly of this ancient belief, as an altar tells of sacrifice.

I need hardly tell my readers that the Hebrew ruach, the Greek pneuma, and the Latin spiritus, are all of this class. These words have each a double signification-the first in the material world, and the second in the spiritual world. They signify, first, the air of the natural world, and secondly, the spiritual atmosphere. With the ancients the idea seems to have been distinct and clear, not confused and cloudy, as with us. The air of the natural world was the outer clothing, and at the same time the symbol, of the inner atmosphere. We have distinct words to express the two, and it might, at first sight, seem to be better they should be thus distinguished. But the fact is, that by disconnecting the idea of spirit from that of air, which is its symbol and counterpart in the world of nature, we have almost entirely lost the true notion of spirit. We suffer in this as in many other things, from the curse of Babel-the confusion of tongues. In consequence of this divorce, of inner from outer ideas of things, of the souls from the bodies of words, there is inextricable confusion in our understanding of the Bible, of the world, and of ourselves. And until He who alone is able, shall "turn a pure language upon us," and send to us again men with seeing eyes, we may flounder in vain.

Let me illustrate this point. Take the first chapter of Genesis. It has long been observed, that thoughout this chapter, and the first three verses of Chapter II., the Divine Creator is called simply "God." In the first chapter the name "God," occurs thirty times; but in verse two, only, we find the phrase, "The spirit of God." Now, in reading this, in our English translation, we are apt to look upon this word "spirit" as vague in meaning; and upon the phrase "spirit of God," as simply equivalent to the word God, as used in every verse of this chapter. But we may be sure that no word here is without meaning. In the original, the phrase is, literally, "the air of God," or "wind

of God." It signifies the Divine atmosphere or emanation, which here first moved upon the chaotic mass. And the word "moved," signifies fluttered as with a tremulous motion. As we go through the chapter we read of successive volitions and thoughts of God, issuing in progressive states of living manifestation. Each of these is introduced by the words, "and God said." But the operating influence which executes these Divine fiats, throughout the whole, is this, "God-wind," or "God-atmosphere," moving upon the deep. Hence we find nothing expressed here of that popular notion that God modelled and fashioned one thing of a kind and set it to reproduce others. The words are (v. 11.) "Let the earth bring forth. (v. 20.) "Let the waters bring forth." (v. 24.) "Let the earth bring forth living creatures, &c." And the earth and the waters brought forth, we are told; not single specimens, but "abundantly." They began to swarm with life. I suppose, if we, reader, had been standing by, and had seen this creation in the very act, we might have taken the creation as a matter of course, as we do the continued existence of the world of to-day. One man would have said, it was simply the operation of the laws of the universe, which made organic life a necessity. Another would have attributed it to nature, constantly at work. A third might have coolly admitted, that there was a Divine element operating, and have immediately fallen to speculating on the rate of increase of life, with a view to appropriating its productive and enriching power to his own purposes. Such are the manifestations of Pantheism, Naturalism, and religion of the present day.*

This creative power of the Divine Aura or Sphere is constantly operating; but it is manifested once again in the Divine Word, in the very central fact of the world's life, viz. :-the Incarnation of Christ, in Matthew i. 20, and Luke i. 35, the Divine Man-child is said to be conceived in the womb of Mary by the overshadowing operation of the "Pneuma Agion," the "Holy air," "Holy breath," or "Holy Ghost, as our translation has it. (Pneuma is the word from which we derive Pneumatics-the science of the air.) As all men were corrupt, death was inevitable, and the race

* The followers of Swedenborg generally say that the first chapter of Genesis has no relation to the natural world, but only refers to man's spiritual formations. In this they contradict their great teacher. In the Adversaria (very little known among them) the whole is applied to the natural creation-but in the Arcana Celestia the spiritual sense only is given. If Swedenborg's principle of correspondence of natural with spiritual be true, it must apply to both, because the natural is based on, and springs from, the spiritual. In the Adversaria, in explaining those words "the spirit of God moved on the faces of the waters," he says, "per Spiritum Divinum intelligitur æther, sicut ex compluribus sacræ Scripture locis constare potest," &c. When we rightly understand Nature and the Bible, there will be no need to give up one jot or tittle of the latter as unscientific.

was sinking to perdition. But a new Divine creation was grafted on the spiritual trunk of the poisoned tree, and hence comes healing.

Recurring to the Hebrew word ruach, which is translated spirit in Genesis i., 2, I will mention that this word occurs again in Genesis iii., 8. Adam and Eve had fallen into sin, their eyes were opened to this fact, and they sought concealment, because they were ashamed and afraid. It is said in our translation that "they heard the voice of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day." The word here given as cool is the same word, ruach, which is rendered "spirit," in Genesis i., 2. A true literal translation would be "they heard the voice of Jehovah God going from Himself in the garden, in the air [spiritual atmosphere] of the day." They were still keenly sensitive to those spiritual auras to which we are so callous, and they felt and heard in this air which their spiritual lungs breathed, the comdemning voice of Jehovah. They felt that the sphere around them was changed; and any one conversant with the facts of Spiritualism will well understand this.

It is not my province or intention to enter into theological controversy. But I will express my belief here, that by the Divine mercy we are on the eve of a new revelation of the will and the word of God, and of this world and the next world, and to a great extent by the help of spiritual facts and phenomena. It is true the manifestations we have yet seen are very undignified, according to our notions, but it is God's way, to confound the wise with foolish things. And if we rush into these manifestations unbidden, we run into great dangers. But if they are carefully and reverently observed as they come, we shall find them to be chinks and loop-holes in our mortal tabernacle, through which we gain glimpses of the eternal light.

To me it seems that the view we gain of the Holy Spirit, by the help of this knowledge of spiritual spheres, is one which will in the end establish itself in the whole domain of theology. It is the idea of the Bible. There will be no longer any need to impose upon us the doctrine of God's tri-personality as a mystery to be believed without understanding. We can well see, in this light, all that is said of the Holy Spirit in many parts of the Sacred Writings to be perfectly philosophical, if we may use the word without irreverence. We can see how this Divine creative and redeeming sphere of God, His own active essence, may be heard as a voice, or as thunder in the air (Matthew iii. 17, John xii. 28, 29); how it may be seen in the form of a dove, lighting upon Jesus in baptism (Matthew iii., 16), or in the form of cloven tongues, as of fire (Acts ii. 3,) how it may come with a sound of a mighty rushing wind filling the house (Acts ii. 2,) or