It is

nervous action, self-delusion, and imposture. hard to say in what way those who pronounce the judgement can escape the conclusion.

But we who lean on the Book which has furnished spiritual food to all ages and conditions of men, whose prophecies have been fulfilled and are going on to their completion in the second coming of the Saviour, which is the entrance of the living Word into every soulwe need not fear that our staff will ever prove to be a broken reed.

The thought may occur-If it be true that the Bible is only a history of these mesmeric and psychological phenomena, it loses at once all its authority and its sacred character. These mesmeric and psychological phenomena are parts of a great whole, and are found to be a connecting link between what has been called the world of matter, and the world of spirit. And the ascent from matter to spirit is not difficult, neither are their respective boundaries undefined, if we remember that matter is the deposit of the life force, and that it becomes dead, and falls back into other forms, only to be acted on by new forces in the constant outpouring of spirit from the Fountain of life. We need not apprehend a diminished reverence for Scripture. The Bible will be found full of instruction, comfort, and hope for every soul in need, and in every degree of spiritual opening, and all the more when the obscure and mysterious passages whose meaning has been lost, are restored,

to life by a better knowledge of the states they describe, and when the things of the Spirit are recognised in the world as they are treated of in the history of the Word of God.

There is a deep meaning in the fact that the lowest spirit manifestations, or those in which the action of spiritual electricity on material substances is displayed, appeared soon after the means of communicating by earthly electricity were completed. We do not despise the child who first tried to catch up a thread by a piece of amber or sealing-wax, for the knowledge growing out of that simple experiment led to results which are yet far in the future. Neither should we undervalue the raps and movements, strange and childish as they appear: they form but the lowest step of a ladder whose base is on the earth, and whose top rests at the feet of the Lamb in the centre of the Throne.

381

NOTES TO CHAPTER XV.

NOTE 1, p. 350.

The word Loikh signified, in ancient Irish, the Holy Spirit. The belief in divers spiritual emanations coming in successive waves from the first fountain, and forming the pleroma of heaven, was not confined to the Platonic philosophy; it is found in all Eastern nations, and the Jews held it in a distinct though modified form in the Cabbala. Much of the confusion in which these doctrines are involved arises from our loss in this time of their essential spiritual truth. This, like all other such truths, is embodied in the phraseology and ideas of the people holding it, and is besides much incrusted with material growth. These two circumstances have been both cause and effect of the utter contempt with which it has been treated by the learned of modern times.

NOTE 2, P. 356.

I omitted to give in the right place a description of visions in which angels or very beautiful spirits were seen attending on a sick person. A writing medium was asked what those angels were, and her hand wrote 'seraphs, or healing angels.'

The serpents which bit the children of Israel were saraph, translated fiery serpents, so, we may suppose, was the brazen one made in imitation. Gesenius says, on the word seraphim,

that if anyone wishes to follow the Hebrew usage of language, in which saraph is a serpent, he may render it winged serpent, since the serpent among the ancient Hebrews (Num. xxi. 8, 2 Kings xviii. 4), and among the Egyptians (Herod. ii. 74, Aelian, Var. Hist. ii.17, 2), was the symbol both of wisdom and healing power. This notion is criticised very severely by the Editor of the Lexicon; but though the 'notion of winged serpents surrounding the throne of God, is wildly incongruous,' yet there is unquestionably a something which the magnetic serpent has in common with the glorious angel, though this something may be only a symbol.

Not one of the explanations given by Gesenius is satisfactory. There seems to be an unsuspected truth concealed in these and some other obscure Hebrew expressions, the understanding of which might throw some light on this part of my subject. I ask pardon of unlearned readers, though more apology is due to learned ones, for trying to call attention to these words in connection with spiritual processes, while I am unable to do more than guess at their specific meaning.

One derivation of the word seraph, traces it from the Arabic; if so, it is possible that it may be connected with the word rapha, to heal. I must, however, in order to justify my interpretation, 'healer,' connect the word seraph with winged serpent. I believe that the healing power of the angel, and the magnetic property of the serpent, are the attributes which have made one the symbol of the other, and that this symbolization was really used may be proved from the remains of early Egyptian worship. The seraphim, or supposed representations of glorious angels, are not originally Hebrew figures. Whatever their use, or whatever they represent, they were symbolic images derived from Egypt, and adapted to the holy worship of the tabernacle and temple. For the Cherubim of

the Temple were acknowledged by antiquarians to have been Seraphim. We find in Isaiah vi. 2-Above it stood the Seraphims,' which in the Septuagint is translated 'the Cherubim stood round about him.' The description in the same chapter, of figures with faces and wings, identifies the two. Remembering that the Cherubim are essentially the same as the Seraphim, we may turn to some of the earliest representations of cherubim, and see whether the original identity of these symbols with that of the 'winged serpent' will not be apparent. I find in Kitto's Cyclopædia of Biblical Literature, art. Cherubim, an engraving of old Egyptian sculptures, such as are found on a tablet or shrine. One of these consists of two figures standing on each side of a representation of the Divine power (a winged globe), with wings outstretched, exactly in the position of the Cherubim in the Temple, and each of these figures is a winged serpent; not the serpent with its tail in its mouth, like the ancient symbol of eternity, or rather, perhaps, of an age or air, but a waved serpent, not unlike those in the caduceus or staff of Mercury, which also had healing power, or like the Egyptian symbol of healing. The name of the Egyptian healing god was Serapis, in whose temples, as in those of Esculapius, the sick man passed a night, and the remedy was revealed in a dream. There is evidence that other mesmeric phenomena were introduced in the Serapeia, or temples of healing, but I have not the authority at hand.

It has never been clearly settled what was the nature of the teraphim, images which were used early in the Jewish worship (Judges xvii. 5).

The man Micah had an house of gods, and made an ephod, and teraphim, and consecrated (Heb., filled with the hand), one of his sons, who became his priest. The teraphim were used