Swedenborgianism is discredited also by the indisputable fact that portions of Swedenborg's inculcations as to social life, marriage, and the family, are contrary to natural morality, and would work incalculable mischief if put into practice (as, I beg you to notice, they rarely or never are even by Swedenborgians themselves). Here and now I am attacking no living Swedenborgian, but simply Swedenborg himself. I have been corresponding with the foremost Swedenborgian Society of London of late, and have received from it a voluminous mass of laboured but utterly inconclusive manuscript in support of the proposition that there is nothing contrary to natural morality in Swedenborg's famous writings on marriage. I have replied in writing, and if the correspondence is ever published, I shall be willing to stand on it as a justification of this criticism of one portion of Swedenborg's social code. 17. Attested by strictly supernatural events, and especially by its fruits, Christianity needs no further support; and yet its teachings. concerning good and evil spirits, provided the claims of Spiritualism as to modern communications with spirits are ever sustained, would be illustrated and confirmed by modern evidence. 18. Two points are in debate concerning Spiritualism—the reality of communications between spirits and men, and the trustworthiness of these communications as a source of religious knowledge. 19. Between atheistic materialism and Spiritualism, the question is concerning the reality of the communications. 20. But between Christianity and Spiritualism the question is. chiefly concerning their trustworthiness. 21. The Biblical view of the world admits the reality of good and evil spirits, and that they may and do influence men. If this view should be confirmed by modern facts, the Christian believer would have nothing. to change in his creed as to the reality of spiritual communications. 22. The trustworthiness of those communications, however, he would be authorized to test by the Biblical rules of evidence, and by the scientific conditions of credence, as to all asserted revelations. 23. The great error of our time in dealing with Spiritualism, is that we do not sufficiently emphasize the fact that the question between the Biblical view and the Spiritualistic view of the world, is not as to the reality of communications of spirits with men, but as to their trustworthiness. It is known from Biblical evidence that for thousands of years. communications occurred between men and spirits, and that false religions were often founded upon the teachings of those who are said to have had familiar spirits. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, had in his experiences certain peculiar psychical events, which he thought supernatural. He affirms that he saw a man, with whom he prayed, lifted into the air. Visions and whisperings came to the young Smith, and he gave himself entirely to their guidance.* He regarded them as divine, although they were evidently of the same character with the lying communications said to be common in our day in Spiritualistic circles. I do not assert on modern evidence that evil spirits have communicated with the founders of evil religions. The Bible gives me authority to say that they did in ancient times; they may, therefore, have done so in modern. If you regard the facts which Smith mistook for miracles, as only superhuman actions of familiar spirits, you will have at once a philosophically and an historically adequate explanation of the origin of the very basis of Mormonism. You will not be surprised to find that similar experiences were behind Mahomet's career. I do not know that there is on the globe to-day a single false religion that does not appeal as a proof of the divinity of its communications to phenomena similar to those observed in our Spiritualistic circles. There was not in antiquity a single false religion that did not appeal for authority to what the Bible calls familiar spirits, as the source of its confidence that a revelation had been given to it. "Regard not them that have familiar spirits."† The perils against which those words were a warning are not unknown to modern times. "A man or woman that hath a familiar spirit shall be put to death." Do I mean to say we should adopt the Mosaic code on these points? There is a great difference between being assailed by evil spirits and not yielding to them; and, on the other hand, giving up to them, taking their will for your will, and their teachings as divine authority. It is this latter voluntary mental attitude of which the Bible speaks in thunderbolts. If I were at liberty to uncover the festering carcass of seventh-rate Spiritualism, I doubt whether you would think the Biblical severity of treatment of necromancy entirely uncalled for in modern days. Possession by spirits is treated with all pity in the Bible. It is distinguished from insanity. The language of the New Testament proves that lunatics and those possessed by evil spirits were regarded as two separate classes + The possessed are spoken of with all compassion in the Bible; but necromancy, or the giving up of the will to evil spirits, and taking their will as our will,-that is perhaps the most mischievous thing on earth! * See Stenhouse, "Rocky Mountain Saints." † Lev. xix. 31. Delitzsch's full discussion of this point in his "Biblical Psychology." See Alone among all religions known to ancient ages, Christianity and the Old Testament, in terms lurid with the Divine wrath, denounce communications with familiar spirits, not on the ground of their unreality, but on that of their untrustworthiness, impurity, and tendencies to immeasurable practical mischief. Natural law in one age of the world is natural law for all ages. The power of communicating with familiar spirits is known, on Biblical evidence, to have been a reality among men acting under natural law. If Spiritualism turns out to be only a re-discovery of the ancient art of consulting familiar spirits, there is no necessity of denying the reality of such communication, but there is great necessity of proclaiming with Biblical emphasis, its untrustworthiness, mischievousness, and wickedness. 24. It is historically known that Biblical revelations, although given through many different channels and in many different places, nations, and ages, were perfectly harmonious with each other, and were attested by such strictly supernatural events as to authenticate them to the world; and also that they have received supreme authentication from the Biblical rule of evidence,—“By their fruits ye shall know them." 25. It is to be inferred, therefore, that if good spirits communicate revelations in modern times, they will be in harmony not only with each other, but with former revelations, and will be attested by strictly supernatural events, and will bear the test of being judged by their fruits in the course of experience through ages. If modern Spiritualistic communications are real, they must be judged by the attested Biblical view of the world; and when such tests as Christianity and science both require to be applied to the case are used, the evidence shows that there is nothing supernatural in Spiritualism, but that there is in it something superhuman, and yet that as such it acquires no trustworthiness, but is merely a rediscovery of the ancient art of consulting familiar spirits. 26. In relation to atheistic materialism, Spiritualistic facts are of great importance, however, for they bring into view a new world in philosophy and a new world in religion. 27. The philosophical and religious world, so new to atheism and materialism as irretrievably to explode them both, turns out to be a Biblical world. We may, therefore, say with Lord Brougham, "In the most cloudless azure of scepticism, I see a rain-cloud no bigger than a man's hand. It is the modern evidence of the superhuman." TRANSCENDENTAL PHYSICS; OR, A NEW WORLD IN PHILOSOPHY. THE PRELUDE.-RECENT DESERTIONS FROM DARWINISM. It appears to be wholly impossible to turn God out of the universe in the name of exact science. Supernaturalism is pushed to the front even by the merely physical investigations of this latest and oldest of the centuries. Materialism is suffering many desertions, and of course this means that the extremest form of the doctrine of evolution is being abandoned by sober naturalists. It was fashionable a few years ago, in certain crude Spencerian circles, to boast of the triumph of Darwinism ;* but there are essential parts of Darwinism which are being -silently modified or abandoned. Virchow of Berlin, Allman of the British Association, Dana of New Haven, Wallace of England, and Gray of Harvard University, have all criticized Darwinism in such a way that the right hand of that system of thought, or the doctrine that natural selection is an adequate cause of the origin of species, is now a very limp and lame, I had almost said, a wholly severed, member. What is Darwinism? It is the hypothesis that the origin of species was effected chiefly by natural selection, or the survival of the fittest in the struggle of living things with each other. Professor Dana has lately been induced, by the superb enterprise of the New York Independent, the foremost religious newspaper of the United States, to speak very definitely on evolution. It is difficult to determine what any man thinks on evolution, unless he defines that word. Just as Americanism might mean twenty things in politics, so evolution may mean twenty things in physical science. There is an extreme doctrine of evolution which is materialistic; a medium doctrine which is agnostic; a conservative doctrine, which is somewhat theistic, although vaguely so; and then there is what I call an orthodox and evangelical doctrine of evolution,—a doctrine not the doctrine,—and which is pronouncedly theistic. That latter doctrine is Professor Dana's. As I have heretofore emphasized the criticisms made by Virchow and Allman on extreme doctrines in regard to evolution, so I think it my duty to emphasize also those of Dana. Omitting much, let me read, in his language, but not in his order of statement, some of the essential positions of this foremost of American men of science : 1. I am not a very vigorous supporter of evolution. 2. I believe that a creative act was necessary to the existence of man's body, or physical nature. Man's physical nature, as well as his spiritual, was not a product or educt of evolutionary processes. It demanded for its creation a divine act. For proof I refer, as done by Wallace, to the fact that the brain of the * See Mr. John Fiske's article on "The Triumph of Darwinism," North American Review, 1877. lowest race of men has twice the cubic contents of the highest man-ape; to the fact, further, that the skeleton of man is adapted throughout for a vertical position, and that of the ape for a horizontal or inclined, and that geology has discovered no human remains in the rocks that indicate a lower grade of man than now ·exists, or one that makes the first shade of approximation to the inclined structure of the ape, and also to the existence of a moral sense. Some other power than Nature's was required for man's existence. 3. The special means of change and progress by which it is supposed species may have been made from species, and the systems of life evolved, are not explained by any facts thus far ascertained, or by any theory of evolution. No system of causes has yet been proved to be adequate for the results. The insufficiency of all environments and environment conditions, without some profounder means, is manifest. The theory of natural selection is a theory of selections, and not of the origin of -species. The selective breeding exemplified in man, which it appeals to as a fundamental principle, can rarely take place under natural conditions, since Nature's methods are distributive, through the promiscuous breeding which, without man to direct, is almost sure to take place, and not selective. The principle" survival of the fittest," explains in part, survivals, and thereby the geographical distribution of species, as seen in the faunas and floras of dif ferent countries, but nothing as to how the fittest came to be, or species to exist or become involved. The theories of evolution which make progress mere transformism, as it has been designated, or a direct result of the pulling, shaping, or transforming action of environments, I regard as based on a superficial view of Nature. These are most excellent and cheerful doctrines, but they are a very marked desertion of portions of Darwinism. They are, indeed, radical anti-Darwinian teaching; but there seems to be on the part of the Popular Science Monthly, and the representatives of the Cosmic Philosophy, a conspiracy of silence concerning Dana's positions. Having for years contended for these doctrines myself, my purpose this morning is to put his trumpet to the lips of this Lectureship, and let it be known that one of the foremost names in science is not dazzled by the philosophical materialism of Hackel, nor by the monism and agnosticism taught yet by Huxley and various belated Spencerian schools in regard to evolution. 4. The introduction of life on the globe demanded divine intervention. There may have been divine intervention, for all that science has to say on the subject, in other cases in the grand system of progress. 5. I, nevertheless, admit, in view of known facts as to the general geographical relations and distribution of species, whether of animals or plants, the transitional forms which have been found, especially between modern species and those of the geological age next preceding-many existing species of plants, for example, So graduating into kinds but little different, and others much different, in the Tertiary era, that botanists have found no way out of the apparent confusion thus introduced, except by means of the principle of the derivation of species from species-and in view also of other considerations arising out of the structural unity of forms, effects under the law of heredity, and the character and extent of actual or known variations in animals and plants, that, however inadequate the known agencies of change may seem to be, it is altogether probable that there have been natural causes at work which were sufficient for the development of the systems of life so far that there were few occasions for divine intervention. Just here let me pause and prepare you for a surprise. If man's physical body originated through a divine act, did God create man out of dead matter, or from some other species of animal? It may be that the divine act was absolutely necessary, even if God created man from some lower animal by changing the |