vered in
Store-street. Of course I am not a Spiritualist. I am one of the
profane--I am little better than one of the wicked, though I, and all men
who are not beasts, feel that man is spirit as well as flesh; that he is
made in the image of his Maker; that the inspiration of the Almighty
giveth him understanding. Spiritualism in this sense is old as Adam and
Eve, old as the day when Jehovah, resting from his labours, pronounced
them to be good. But this is not the Spiritualism of Mr. Harris, and of
the organ of his denomination, _The Spiritual Magazine_. That spirits
appear to us--that they move tables--that they express their meaning by
knocks, form the great distinctive peculiarity of Spiritualism, and they
are things which people in our days are many of them more and more
beginning to believe. At any rate the Spiritualists of the new school
ought not to be angry with us. Mr. Howitt writes, "Moles don't believe
in eagles, nor even skylarks; they believe in the solid earth and
earth-worms;--things which soar up into the air, and look full at the
noon sun, and perch on the tops of mountains, and see wide prospect of
the earth and air, of men and things, are utterly incomprehensible, and
therefore don't exist, to moles. Things which, like skylarks, mount also
in the air, to bathe their tremulous pinions in the living aether, and in
the floods of golden sunshine, and behold the earth beneath; the more
green, and soft, and beautiful, because they see the heavens above them,
and pour out exulting melodies which are the fruits and streaming
delights of and in these things, are equally incomprehensible to moles,
which, having only eyes of the size of pins' heads, and no ears that
ordinary eyes can discover, neither _can_ see the face of heaven, nor
hear the music of the spheres, nor any other music. Learned pigs don't
believe in pneumatology, nor in astronomy, but in gastronomy. They
believe in troughs, pig-nuts, and substantial potatoes. Learned pigs
_see_ the wind, or have credit for it--but that other [Greek text], which
we translate SPIRIT, they most learnedly ignore. Moles and learned pigs
were contemporaries of Adam, and have existed in all ages, and,
therefore, they _know_ that there are no such things as eagles, or
skylarks and their songs; no suns, skies, heavens, and their orbs, or
even such sublunary objects as those we call men and things. They _know_
that there is nothing real, and that there are no g