A HAPPY New Year for Spiritualism, and for all other truths, both great and small. They alone, amongst all the changes and the changing things, are perennial, and do not fail.

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A notable advance has been made during the year that is past, in the acceptance by the public and the press of the great truths of Spiritualism, and there is all the more reason to believe, that during this year its progress will be still more rapid, and more widely spread. Let us look back to the beginning of the last year, and at the then state of this subject, which was in so bad odour that it could not even get abused in public. It was in such a hopeless slough, that the press would not touch it, and was at rare intervals only, that an unpleasant paragraph found its way into the papers, to shew the public that it had not been quite killed out of existence. It was not to be wondered at, that under such circumstances, there were few who would involve their names in the discussion and promulgation of the facts, and their bearings; and we could have reckoned up the known adherents of any mark as not much exceeding half a dozen. We commenced this "idiotic and ricketty little periodical," as one of our polite brother editors calls it, with less than twenty subscribers, and being ourselves quite unused to journalism, we were modest promises of what we would do. It was well to be had it been left to us to write up the subject, it had not fared as it deserved. We soon, however, found ourselves in the hands of friends willing and very able to assist, and by their help, much has been done. It was not long before the press came on, in the old wild way, and was even surprised to find itself wounded in its turn. It examined its old sword to find if it had lost its temper, or what was the cause of its defeat. It got a better blade, and furbished up some other arguments, but still with the same result. As each new Quixote has appeared, he has been met by some doughty knight, by whom he has been speedily unhorsed with aching bones. Some bystanders, cautiously watching, have thought

in our

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So, for

they discerned a better mode of attack which would ensure a victory; but, alas! one by one they have found themselves on their backs, gaping at the bright sun above them, bewildered

and abusive.

It is only natural, and very right therefore, that such should be the result when Dons will attack windmills. One admires their valour, more than their discretion, and hopes only that their experience may be instructive to others of the craft. It is too late now for the Blackwoods and Bentleys, the All the Year Rounds and Once a Weeks, the Examiner, the Lancet, the Literary Gazette, and the Athenæum, and, though last yet least, poor Punch, to recant. They have irretrievably sold themselves for a labour like that of Sisyphus-rolling up a fact to get it out of sight, and when they think they have succeeded, down comes the old fact back upon them like the stone of Sisyphus and crushes

them.

A respectable portion of the Press has even deigned to enquire into the facts, and has honestly stated its convictions; and the Morning Star has opened its columns to the subject. There is a very wise and knowing part of the Press remaining, who have fortunately for themselves not pronounced at all, and are cautiously waiting to see which will be the winning side. We strongly recommend their coming over at once and helping us, at a time when their help may be of some service. Very soon we shall be able to do without them. One paper, the Times, has managed to pursue an extraordinary course. Two or three years ago it abused the subject, and a few days ago pronounced its partial adhesion, on the occasion of witnessing some alleged phenomena of the impostor Dr. Bly, which are now proved to have been utterly fraudulent.

We trust that at the end of 1861, we may be able to report good progress. We enter on the year in the fullest trust that it will be so. If anything more than another will serve us, it will be that contributors of facts and correspondents should authorise the publication of their names. Already the giving of names is quite a feature of the Magazine, and we can refer with pride to the names now publicly associated with it.

NUTS TO CRACK.

A SHORT time ago the secretary of a literary institute in connection with the Society of Arts thought Spiritualism a fitting subject for discussion by the Institute. In the course of his address proposing this, he quoted Mr. Howitt's assertion in the Critic, that Fenelon, Pascal and Luther were, in their day, Spiritualists. The secretary found this assertion point-blank denied by the members, and he wrote to Mr. Howitt for his proofs of the fact. Mr. Howitt wrote him in reply the following letter, the observations of which apply to so many others besides the members of the Institute in question, that we have requested permission to print it, and particularly recommend it to the Blackwoods, Once a Weeks, and that class of journals which are in such precipitation to decide and condemn before they have used the common-sense plan of looking into a matter.

Dear Sir, I am not accountable for the fact of your opponents not being properly read; but certainly had they taken the trouble which I have done, they would not have exposed their ignorance by denying such easily ascertained things. Fenelon, besides in his writings giving many proofs of his belief in direct and palpable spiritual agency, was the close and staunch friend of Madame Guyon, one of the most confirmed Spiritualists which any age has seen. Madame Guyon asserts her continual contact with spiritual agency: she wrote directly from it, and I know those who do so now. She was brought into great trouble by Bossuet on these accounts, and Fenelon was her great defender through it all. As for Pascal, did your opponents ever take the trouble to read his Pensées, or Provincial Letters? Did they ever read Montgéron's history of the miracles performed at the touch of the Abbé Paris in the churchyard of St. Medard in Paris or Racine's Abregé de l'Historie du Port Royal? If so, they cannot be ignorant that Pascal defended the truth of those miracles against the Jesuits. Now these asserted facts-facts attested by numerous eye-witnesses-facts exhibited before the whole public-were far more astounding than any spiritual phenomena of the present day. Montgéron declares that, having seen a man under this influence lying on his back and pounded with a piece of iron of eighteen pounds' weight for half an hour on his stomach without hurting him, he took the iron and in a very short time smashed a hole through a brick wall with it. Yet Pascal defends the validity of all this, as he does of the miraculous cure of the young girl Perrier. Now this Pascal had

a logical force which cut down all the arguments of the cleverest Jesuits of his time, as easily as a barber with his razor would have sheared off their noses.

And Martin Luther. What! are your friends so ill read that they do not know that he professed to have as many actual personal contests with the devil as ever St. Dunstan had? Let them read his Table-Talk, which abounds with these relations. Why, Luther says there, "You need not call very loud for the devil; the devil is never very far off." Let them read his Letters and his book on private mass, De Missa Privata. In the latter of these he says he had a long conference with the devil on the subject. Carlyle says: "It was a faith of Luther's that there were devils, spiritual denizens of the pit, continually besetting men. Many times in his writings this turns up, and a most small sneer has been grounded on it by some." Carlyle, like myself, has seen the mark on the wall in the Castle of Wartburg -still carefully preserved-which Luther solemnly said he made by flinging his ink-horn at the devil's head, when he pestered him whilst writing his tracts against the Papal humbugs. Luther as gravely tells us that a boy having brought him a bag of nuts out of the Thüringian Forest, which surrounds the Wartburg, the devil used to come at night and crack these nuts to prevent him sleeping, and that he jumped out of bed and bade him begone like a dirty devil as he was, and that he did go.

Sir, my business here is not to inquire how far Luther saw these things, or only imagined them: I have only to say such are the facts, and that Luther-sturdy soul as he was, was as sturdy a Spiritualist. But it is not merely Luther, or Fenelon, or Pascal, who have believed in these spiritual agencies and spiritual phenomena; I find almost all the greatest men from the Apostles to our own time, believing them. I don't know what your opponents have read, but I know that I have read an immense deal in seven or eight different languages in my time, and I have not to seek for evidences of such belief in all ages and in all countries-I am overwhelmed with them. The fathers of the church abound with professions of such belief. Lactantius says, that in his time, the fourth century, no one dared to deny the reality of apparitions, for the very magicians would have immediately confounded them by raising such before their faces. Tertullian, says, "that man is only a pretender to Christianity who cannot perform the miracles which the Apostles could perform;" so common were the powers conferred by Christ on his followers in his time. I find similar claims advanced by eminent religious men and women through every future age. Luther's friend Melancthon tells us, that a spirit-messenger warned his friend Grynæus to escape, as his enemies were coming upon him, and