WHAT THIS MODERN DEVELOPMENT IS, AND WHAT IS TO COME OF IT.

P. Can you, then, bear an announcement still more startling than any I have yet made?

I. I really know not; I will try; let us have it.

P. Well, then, I call it a Fourth Great Divine Epiphany or Manifestation; or what you will perhaps better understand as one of the developments characterizing the beginning of a Fourth Great Divine Dispensation. What is to come of it, you will be able to judge as well as I when you understand its nature.

I. What! so great an event heralded by so questionable an instrumentality as the rapping and table tipping spirits?

P. Be calm, and at the same time be humble. Remember that it is not unusual for God to employ the foolish things of this world to confound the wise, and that when He comes to visit His people, He almost always comes in disguises, and sometimes even “as a thief in the night.” Besides the spirits of which you speak are only the rough but very useful pioneers to open a highway through which the King is coming with innumerable hosts of angels, who, indeed, are already near you, though you see them not. It is, indeed, an hour of temptation that has come upon all the world; but be watchful and true, prayerful and faithful, and fear not.

I. Please tell us then, if you can, something of the nature and objects of this new Divine Epiphany which you announce; and as you say it is a Fourth, please tell us, in brief, what were the preceding Three, the times of their occurrence, and how they are all distinguished from each other.

P. The First appealed only to the affections and the inner sense of the soul, and was the Dispensation of the most ancient Church, when God walked with man in the midst of the garden of his own interior delights, and when “Enoch walked with God and was not, for God took him.” But as this sense of the indwelling presence of God was little more than a mere emotion, for which, in that period of humanity’s childhood, there was no adequate, rational, and directive intelligence, men, in process of time, began to mistake every delight as being divine and holy; thus they justified themselves in their evil delights, or in the gratification of their lusts and passions, considering even these as all divine. [The “sons of God” marrying the “daughters of men.”—Gen. vi. 2-4.] And as they possessed no adequate reasoning faculty to which appeals might be made for the correction of these tendencies, and thus no ground of reformation, the race gradually grew to such a towering height of wickedness that it had to be almost entirely destroyed. The Second age or Dispensation, commencing with Noah, was distinctively characterized by the more special manifestation of God in outward types and shadows, in the adyta of temples and other consecrated places and things, from which, as representative seats of the Divine Presence, and through inspired men, were issued laws to which terrible penalties were annexed, as is exemplified by the law issued from Mount Sinai. The evil passions of men were thus put under restraint, and a rational faculty of discriminating between right and wrong—that is to say, a Conscience—was at the same time developed. But the sophistical use of these types and shadows (of which all ancient mythology is an outgrowth), and the accompanying perversion of the general conscience of mankind, gradually generated Idolatry and Magic with all their complicated evils, against which the Jewish Church, though belonging to the same general Dispensation, was specially instituted to react. Furthermore, as the mere restraints of penal law necessarily imply the existence in man of latent evils upon which the restraint is imposed, it is manifest that such a dispensation alone could not bring human nature to a state of perfection; and so a Third was instituted, in which God was manifested in the flesh. That is to say, He became incarnate in one man who was so constituted as to embody in himself the qualitative totality of Human Nature, that through this one Man as the Head of the Body of which other men were the subordinate organs, He might become united with all others—so that by the spontaneous movings of the living Christ within, and thus in perfect freedom, they might live the divine life in their very fleshly nature, previously the source of all sinful lusts, but now, together with the inner man, wholly regenerated and made anew. Here, then, is a Trinity of Divine manifestations, to the corresponding triune degrees of the nature of man—the inner or affectional degree, the intermediate, rational, or conscience degree, and the external, or sensuous degree.

But while this was all that was necessary as a ground for the perfect union of man with God, in the graduated triune degrees here mentioned, and thus all that was necessary for his personal salvation in a sphere of being beyond and above the earthy, it was not all that was necessary to perfect his relations to the great and mysterious realm of forms, materials, and forces which constitute the theater of his earthly struggles; nor was it quite all that was necessary to project and carry into execution the plan of that true and divine structure, order and government of human society which might be appropriately termed “the kingdom of heaven upon earth; wherefore you have now, according to a divine promise frequently repeated in the New Testament, a Fourth Great Divine Manifestation, which proves to be a manifestation of God in universal science.

I. But that “Fourth Manifestation” (or “second coming,” as we are in the habit of calling it), which was promised in the New Testament, was to be attended with imposing phenomena, of which we have as yet seen nothing. It was to be a coming of Christ “in the clouds of heaven, with power and great glory,” and the resurrection of the dead, the final judgment, etc., were to occur at the same time?

P. Certainly; but you would not, of course, insist upon putting a strictly literal interpretation upon this language, and thus turning it into utter and senseless absurdity. The real “heaven” is not that boundary of your vision in upper space which you call the sky, but the interior and living reality of things. The “clouds” that are meant are not those sheets of condensed aqueous vapor which float above your head, but the material coatings which have hitherto obscured interior realities, and through which the Divine Logos, the “Sun of Righteousness,” is now breaking with a “power” which moves dead matter without visible hands, and with a “great glory,” or light, which reveals a spiritual world within the natural. The “Resurrection” is not the opening of the literal graves, and re-assembling of the identical flesh, blood, and bones of dead men and nations which, during hundreds and even thousands of years, have been combining and re-combining with the universal elements; but it is the re-establishment of the long-suspended relations of spirits with the earthly sphere of being, by which they are enabled to freely manifest themselves again to their friends in the earthly life, and often to receive great benefits in return; and if you do not yet see, as accompanying and growing out of all this, the beginning of an ordeal that is to try souls, institutions, creeds, churches, and nations, as by fire, you had better wait awhile for a more full exposition of the “last judgment.” People should learn that the kingdom of God comes not to outward but to inward observation, and that as for the prophetic words which have been spoken on this subject, “they are spirit, and they are life.”

I. And what of the changed aspects of science that is to grow out of this alleged peculiar Divine manifestation?

P. To answer that question fully would require volumes. Be content, then, for the present, with the following brief words: Hitherto science has been almost wholly materialistic in its tendencies, having nothing to do with spiritual things, but ignoring and casting doubts upon them; while spiritual matters, on the other hand, have been regarded by the Church wholly as matters of faith with which science has nothing to do. But through these modern manifestations, God is providentially furnishing to the world all the elements of a spiritual science which, when established and recognized, will be the stand-point from which all physical science will be viewed. It will then be more distinctly known that all external and visible forms and motions originate from invisible, spiritual, and ultimately divine causes; that between cause and effect there is always a necessary and intimate correspondence; and hence that the whole outer universe is but the symbol and sure index of an invisible and vastly more real universe within. From this unitary basis of thought the different sciences as now correctly understood may be co-related in harmonic order as One Grand Science, the known of which, by the rule of correspondence, will lead by easy clews to the unknown. The true structure and government of human society will be clearly hinted by the structure and laws of the universe, and especially by that microcosm, or little universe, the human organization. All the great stirring questions of the day, including the questions of suffrage, woman’s rights, the relations between labor and capital, and the questions of general political reform, will be put into the way of an easy and speedy solution; and mankind will be ushered into the light of a brighter day, socially, politically, and religiously, than has ever yet dawned upon the world.

I. My invisible friend, the wonderful nature of your communication excites my curiosity to know your name ere we part. Will you have the kindness to gratify me in this particular?

P. That I may not do. My name is of no consequence in any respect. Besides, if I should give it, you might, unconsciously to yourself, be influenced to attach to it the weight of a personal authority, which is specially to be avoided in communications of this kind. There is nothing to prevent deceiving spirits from assuming great names, and you have no way of holding them responsible for their statements. With thinkers—minds that are developed to a vigorous maturity—the truth itself should be its only and sufficient authority. If what I have told you appears intrinsically rational, logical, scientific, in harmony with known facts, and appeals to your convictions with the force of truth, accept it; if not, reject it; but I advise you not to reject it before giving it a candid and careful examination. I may tell you more at some future time, but for the present, farewell.