thing of a wider vision, and that our present scientific associations are to be succeeded by others more worthy of the name, as in the progressive periods of the world's creation, the cold-blooded fishes and reptiles, were succeeded by the higher orders of beingsby birds, smammalia and man.

ART. V.-RECENT DEVELOPMENTS.

Many interesting incidents have recently occurred in the progress of spiritualism, especially at Cleveland and Pittsburgh; in both of which places, the lectures of Mr. Burr, of toe-snapping notoriety, have served to develope much additional evidence and interest, serving to confirm the faith of many who had previously entertained no positive opinions. The following interesting letters from Mr. Courtney, I feel compelled to insert, by their intrinsic interest and beauty:

LETTER FROM W. S. COURTNEY TO THE PITTSBURG MORNING POST.

Friend Harper:-As society developes it is ever turning up to the surface new agencies in the redemption and civilization of mankind. New functions and uses by which mankind are served and made happy, are every day discovered, and the humane and philanthropic ever awake to fill them. Among these late great discoveries is that to which the self-sacrificing Burrs have dedicated their genius, viz: the Exposition of Humbugs, on the principle, "similia similibus curantur." Those gentlemen, stimulated by the most disinterested benevolence and patriotism, have looked abroad and seen that the great mass of their fellow beings were not capable of thinking for themselves, or of weighing and considering facts and investigating scientific subjects; and in the tenderness of their sympathies, have bravely gone forth, like valorous knights, to purge the world of error and lead back the weak in mind, the halt, and the blind, to the "good old way of thinking," which they and every body can understand. Their mission has brought them to Pittsburgh, where they assume, in coming here, that there is a great field of error, ignorance and delusion for their missionary labors. We ought to be very grateful to them for the interest they are taking in our behalf, and giving us the benefit of their superior abilities, experience, honesty and integrity.

Since their advent here I have been kept posted up in their sayings and doings at the City Hall, and last night attended their lecture and exhibition. To rehearse all his arguments and allegations would be tedious and useless; they are the same he has made use of wherever he has been, and consist principally in the assertionsThat a prodigy requires more evidence to establish it than an every-day fact. That he has detected 52 mediums and 17 different ways of making the knocks. That there are 1000 media in the United States, all practicing this nefarious fraud; and at least 20,000 believers, who are all "cabbage heads," dolts and idiots. That "knocking" is contrary to Scripture and the clergy, and that "sainted mothers" and "angel babes" never "knock." That mediums "knock" with their toe joints, knee pans, thumb nails, shoulder joints, finger joints, and ankle joints; and if it is cold they have to go and warm them before they will crack. That they hold tables down with their toes and feet, and raise them up by "muscular action." That he was a man of honor, honesty and integrity, and was modest withal; then told what large audiences he had, and how the respectable Press all over the country espoused his side, and how effectually he used up Tiffany and Prof. Brittain. That spirits displayed no intelligence; didn't spell right. That it was all guess work. That he made nothing by these lectures but his expenses, and that his motive was solely and purely the love of truth. That "rappings" drove people to insanit and caused

suicide, etc., etc. From the reputation Mr. Burr had acquired as a speaker and controversialist, I expected at least if I was not enlightened by his arguments and experiments, to be entertained by his eloquence and address. I was disappointed. The man who is influenced solely by the love of truth, and is a calm, disinterested and impartial investigator and promulgator of it, is easy, cool, calm and subdued in his address; deliberate, dispassionate, dignified and graceful in his language and thought, with seriousness in his eye, reflection on his brow, and a placid tranquility on his countenance; he has no hurried thoughts and emotions, but all is peace within. Yet I found Mr. Burr grim and desperate with rage and denunciation, his manner gross and vulgar, and his language defamatory, vituperative and coarse. He sneers, cavils, grins, and cries "Bah!"-full of contempt, ridicule and sarcasm; he calls hard names, slanders and detracts character, and manifests all the bitterness and malice of a furious combatant. His gesticulations, frowns and attitudes are terrifying and threatening, evincing the controlling elements of his character to be combativeness and destructiveness heightened by vanity and conceit, as his phrenic conformation indicates. Mrs. Fish was made peculiarly the victim of his malice, vindictiveness and revenge; and Dr. Underhill and Mr. Gray, the editor of the "Plaisdealer," were "drivelling idiots," etc.

And this is the man whose high and holy love of truth has led him away from his home to disabuse the minds of his fellow-man of error and delusion! All the statements he has yet made, with but few exceptions, have been made by himself on bis OWN RESPONSIBILITY, which I think will not be sufficient evidence of their truth, to all, at least.

The grand denouement is reserved for the last night, and I see it charged in the Buffalo Express that many of his certificates and depositions are false, and neither signed by the party nor attested by a witness. As to the rappings," Herman is the practical operator, and the Reverend Chauncey "expounds and explains." The noises made by them have not one single characteristic with any of the raprings I have ever heard. Those I have been conversant with are a soft interior muffed sound, like you would make by knocking on the table with a piece of tight twisted yarn or an Indian rubber ball, as the following certificates will show. The expan ment with the bell disgusted the whole audience. Thus I have done with Mr. Bar, I have felt it a duty to say thus much, lest the seekers after truth abroad should think we were unable to appreciate his labors amongst us.

In addition to the following certificates, I am willing to testify on oath to the following facts: That I have heard those raps made on the table, wall, door or mantel when no one was near them or touched them. I have seen the table moved when no one touched it, and the room light enough to see all objects in it. That objects and articles have been thrown when all in the room had joined hands. That the knocks are made at the distance of 18 feet from the medium or any one else, and I have been in the daily habit of getting communications spelled out at that distance, when no one was present but myself and the medium. That I have seen sentences spelled out when the medium was asleep in her chair, or engaged in reading or writing or in conversation with others. That I have heard and felt the knocks made on the top of my hat when held in the presence of the medium, and have thus received communications. That the alphabet has been recited by third persons mentally and without pointing to the letter, when direct or unequivocal answers were speiled out to mental interrogatories. That communications wholly unexpected and beyond the knowledge of the medium have been spelled out, and purporting to be from spirits that none of the company thought of at the time. That almost all the comm@nications that I have received have been highly intelligent and instructive, and always correctly spelled. That a word which the medium was in the habit of spelling wrongly was spelled rightly by the spirit. That ingrammaticisms of which the medium was guilty were corrected by the spirit in the communications. That matters disagreeable to the medium and to the parties communicating have been spelled out, causing all great anxiety, trouble and difficulty. Peculiar instances of this within my experience would of themselves, beyond all doubt, settle the question of the integrity and good faith of all present.

ed

I have looked at all the objections which have hitherto been made against the hypothesis of the presence of invisible intelligences in those manifestations, and I think I have studied them to their foundations.

1. Imitations, however perfect, are not detections, and do not meet and disprove the facts-a monkey apeing the manners of a gentleman never makes him one.

2. An appeal to religious, philosophical, or scientific prejudices and routae, s invidious and assumes a knowledge of all the laws of God and nature.

3. True philosophy and religion affirm emphatically the hypothesis.

4. Negatives never disprove an affirmative, unless shown to be entirely inconsistent

with it.

5. The fraud or bad character of the guilty cannot be plead against the inno

cent.

6. The number of media and believers throughout the United States is an argument in its favor.

7. You can locate sound and do it correctly, every day hour and minute-it is a law of our nature that we should. We learn by experience to locate it, and cannot help doing it, just as we learn to see, and measure distance by the eye. Were our eyes opened for the first time, all things would appear equally near to them, and we would like the infant, grasp at the moon; but experience developes our faculty of seeing and measuring distance, and we cannot live without it-just so were our ears opened for the first time; all sound would appear to come from the same direction, and be close at our ears; but experience developes our faculty for locating it, and we act and live and rely upon it with entire confidence. Destroy this faculty, and you make common life confusion and chaos. A pretty story, if I have to run to my garret to see whether the wagon going along the street is on the roof or not, or to run all over the house to find out where the child is crying! Thus the sapient conclusion of the Buffalo Doctors is a sheer fallacy.

8. Silly, unimportant and false communications only prove that the cause is in keeping with the effect-that "like likes like," and that the spirit-world is, as contended for, an entire correspondent of the natural world, associated and conjoined with it.

9. The low manner of communicating is only, as I can state, initiatory to a higher mode, and is about as wise an objection as condemning the laws of gravitation because Newton discovered them by the fall of an apple. To the philosophic mind no fact loses its scientific value on account of its insignificance and ridiculousness.

10. The objection that, if it is true, it would have been made known to mankind before, is as rational as to deny the magnetic telegraph, because it was not discovered in the dark ages. We are ever learning and perfecting in religion, philosophy social science, the arts, etc., and blasted be the man who sets bounds to the everprogressive developinent of humanity.

The regions beyond the tomb have been terra incognita for ages back, and our fancy stimulated by our instinct of immortality and the love of continued existence, has peopled those shadowy dominions with her creations, exactly typifying and representing all our human desires, passions and emotions, so that we can read the history of the human heart and mind in every age by studying its theology and religion. But as the science of astronomy has dissipated our fears of the stars falling, or the sun's melting down and firing the world-as the science of geology has exploded our dreams of cosmogony-so the facts and philosophy of the new spiritual science will explode our mythological ideas of a life after death, and give tangible and demonstrable reality to its existence, and reveal its economy. In all God's economy of the Universe, there are no abrupt changes, but all goes on noiselessly and harmoniously, deveveloping and perfecting in due season, by and through and in the Divine Providence, which is general and particular in and over, governing and controlling all things, from the atom in the whirlwind to the globes in space. Time is a condition of this development. It sees error destroy itself by its own suicidal law, and truth reveal itself by its own intrinsic power-it punishes the guilty and vindicates the innocent-makes the crooked strait and the dark places light, and I, as a rational believer in those manifestations, am satisfied to await its slow verdict, and be of good cheer.

The following certificates have been placed in my hands to be used as I see proper. Numerous others might have been, and can be procured. 1 retain some in my possession, not deeming it advisable to give them to the public at present, but which I will exhibit to any sincere enquirer who calls upon me, and give a satisfactory reference to persons who have witnessed these manifestations. The following are regarded as abundantly sufficient to establish the phenomena so as to leave them entirely uncovered and unexplained by any hypothesis short of of the actual presence of invisible communicating intelligences.

'

Respectfully your obedient servant,

VOL. II.-W.

W. S. COURTNEY.

STATEMENT OF 0. s. FOWLER, PHRENOLOGIST.

PITTSBURGH, May 22, 1851.

Friend Courtney, -I gladly comply with your request to tell you what I know respecting the spirit rappings and Burr's pretended exposure of them. I heard these rappings in New York, in connection with the Foxes, last summer, and have heard others this spring in Pittsburgh. I have also heard Burr's noises. The latter are no more like the former than a church bell is like a Scotch fiddle. Burr's are obvidus cracks of the fingers or other joints, or such raps as any one can make; whereas these are inimitable. I said at first, I repeat now, no human agency can imitate these raps, nor even machinery, for that would prevent the variety now observed. You wish facts; I give you what I have seen and heard:-At one sitting, Christina, the medium, was sitting at least two feet from the table, and her feet at least two feet from those of the table. No other one was in the room except Mrs. Taylor, whose feet were also turned from the table, with sometimes her hands, sometimes her elbow on the table, but most of the time not touching it. I alone touched that table.

I heard the raps louder and more uumerous than I had ever heard them before, sometimes in response to mental questions, sometimes to written ones. Now who made these raps? Underneath that floor on which the table stood was nothing but dirt. I examined the table, and can swear that there was no machinery under, in, upon, or about the table-can swear that no other person but myself touched it, and yet I felt its vibrations as distinctly as I ever felt any vibrations in my life. The table vibrated with every rap-one of my feet was on the table leg - my foot alone touched that table. These raps I did not make, and yet that table vibrated. Could Christina, sitting two feet from the table, produce these vribrations? These vibrations were not on the floor, the others were on the table's leg. If these vibrations had had their origin in the floor, my other foot would have felt them. Christina did not make these raps; Mrs. Taylor could not have made them, ner would she if she could, for she is a true, trusty woman. I did not make them; no other living human being was in the room, and yet they were made. C. Chauncey Burr, who made them?

Besides, phrenologically considered, Christina is a perfectly honest girl. Not one head do I examine in months with as large an organ of Conscientiousness as she possesses. Her head is that of a downright honest girl, utterly incapable, either intellectually or morally, of trickery. If such a head should try tricks they would be perfectly transparent, for she has not sufficient cuteness to carry out a well concerted plan of deception. If Burr's conscience is half as large as Christina's, phrenologically or practically, then my eyes deceive me, for Burr has a very heavy buse to his brain, Christina a very heavy top head. Burr's entire lecture did not contain one iota of evidence to disprove the Rochester knockings. True he made noises, though they were utterly unlike the spirit-rappings, and if they had been exact imitations, that would no more prove the non-existence of spirit rappings than the existence of bogus proves the non-existence of genuine coin.

In Burr's whole manner, as I read it, there was not an open, earnest, manly investigation, and defence of truth. If he had been actuated by a sincere love of truth, and desire to propagate it, his entire manner would have been differentwould have had more heart, and less attempted oratory; more actual, less apparent interest; more pathos, less bathos. His whole manner struck me as that of a special pleader, not a developer of truth. His reference to Dr. Ackley, of Cleveland, is singularly unfortunate, for Ackley is behind the age in everything, and his opposition I regard as a sure proof of truth. Let C. Chauncey Burr look out, for if this matter be from the spirit world, its authors will soon take care of him.

In thus casting my influence in favor of the rappings I do simply what my fullest convictions of truth and duty oblige me to do. I testify, actuated solely by a love of truth, and a willingness to sacrifice if needs be in its behalf.

O. S. FOWLER.

STATEMENT OF MRS. SARAH W. TAYLOR.

Having had considerable experience and opportunity of examining and observing the rappings or spiritual manifestations which have taken place at my house through the medium of Christina and Mrs. Bushnell latterly, and of Miss Mary Cronk, some time since, I am able, and do make the following statements in regard to them, which I am willing to swear to, viz:

It is now upward of two months since I first heard them through the medium of Miss Cronk. In her presence they are loud, distinct and satisfactory-made on the floor, on the table, on the mantle, on the wall, on the fender, or wherever else they are directed to be made by any one present. They would change from place to place as desired— they are not made by her feet, because pillows have been placed under her feet, and the knocks still made in answer to questions. On one occasion she complained of cold feet, when I wrapped two warm bricks rolled in a blanket and put under her feet, when the noises were still heard. The noises have frequently been made on the mantle and wall when she was sitting in front of the fire. In regard to Christina, my experience and observation has been more extensive, having been long acquainted with her, and until latterly she has lived in my family for several months; I, and all who know her intimately, have entire confidence in her honesty, sincerity, truthfulness and modesty. She was discovered to be a medium while living with me. Through her, while she lived with me, we recieved daily communications from what we believe to be spirits. Through her, communications have been spelled out which have surprised the company and not at all anticipated by any person present, and not at all within the knowledge of the medium, relating to things she knew nothing about, and from spirits she never heard of. Entire strangers have visited her, and had communications of the most satisfactory and convincing kind, she not knowing or ever having heard of any of the parties. Those knocks have been made on the tables, floors, and walls of every room in the house. They are made on the wall when she is standing near it, or when she is lying in bed. They are made on the floor when she is at her work, sewing or washing, and on one occasion I had a communication spelled out on the floor near where she stood while at the wash tub. They are made on the table when she sits off, not touching it, or it being touched by any person present. They have been made on the floor when her feet have been held in the lap of another lady, and while her knees are held; they have also been made on the chair she sat on, and on the sofa, or wherever she might be they are made on the nearest object to her. A great variety of communications have been spelled out through her from a variety of spirits, and tunes have been correctly rapped so that we could recognize the tune and sing with the rapping, they keeping time. It is not morally possible that we are deceived. I have heard dozens of raps at once, all different sounds, purporting to be from a great number of spirits present, old and young.

With regard to Mrs. Bushnell, we have have had frequent communications through her, in her room, where she received her visitors, and at the dinner table, from the spirits of friends, acquaintances and relations, altogether unknown to her. They have been made on the dinner table so as to jar it and all the dishes, etc. when neither she nor any one else was touching it. From my acquaintance with her, I have entire confidence in her honesty, integrity, sincerity and modesty, as a lady of superior intelligence and high morality.

I have been to hear Mr. Burr lecture and experiment on the subject, and can state that the knocks made by him are not at all like those made by the spirits, differing from them in almost every particular. The sounds made by him are hard and concussive, those made by the spirits soft and muffled, somewhat like throwing an India-rubber ball against the floor or wall, and of a great variety, every spirit having a different sound.

SARAH W. TAYLOR.

The foregoing documents are followed by the statement of Mrs. PARKER, that she had received many satisfactory communications from deceased relatives and friends through Christina-that the table was loudly jarred when no one was near it, and that she has entire confidence in the good faith and integrity of Christina.

Mr. J. P. GLASS testifies that although he is not convinced or willing to express faith in spirit rappings, he is satisfied that the medium, Christina, is above suspicion or reproach, and that the sounds heard in her presence are totally different from the counterfeit sounds of Burr.

CHRISTINA BEAIL testifies on oath that she has been a medium of