SPIRITUALISM, a term formerly used to designate the doctrines and religious life of a class of mystics who professed to be under the sensible guidance of the Divine Spirit, and who were distinguished by a habit of spiritualizing the Sacred Scriptures. Jacob Böhme, Mme. Guyon, Miguel de Molinos, and Mme. de Bourignon, though not all ostensibly of the same communion, are representatives of the somewhat numerous class of religionists, particularly of the 17th century, to whose teachings and practice the appellation of spiritualism has been applied. Latterly, however, especially in the United States, the word has been employed exclusively to designate the belief in and practice of open intercourse with the spiritual world. This alleged intercourse has attained an extraordinary development in recent times, and especially since about the year 1848. Although it was not until that period that the so called spiritual manifestations assumed a form and conspicuousness which forced them into universal notice, it is asserted that many startling instances of them, as precursors and prophets of the more signal wonders, had been in the course of development during many years previous; and that, in fact, the spiritualism of the day is the growth of a century. We are referred to the alleged fact that 100 years ago Emanuel Swedenborg was in full and open communication with the spiritual world, and in daily converse with spirits and angels, with all the familiarity with which man converses with man. There is also a tradition that while Swedenborg was on his deathbed, he was asked by a friend whether in that solemn hour he still adhered to the statements and doctrines set forth in his books; when he answered emphatically in the affirmative, adding that in about 80 years from that time events would occur that would greatly tend to bring his teachings into general notice. It is noted by spiritualists as a singular coincidence that the 80 years from that time (1772) expired in 1852, at which time the alleged spiritual phenomena, corroborating in many respects what Swedenborg had taught concerning spirits and the spiritual world, were exciting universal attention. In his book on VOL. XV.-1

"Divine Love and Wisdom" (paragragh 257) Swedenborg avers that a man in whom the spiritual degree of the mind is open may come into angelic wisdom "by laying asleep the sensations of the body, and by influx from above at the same time into the spirituals of his mind."-Clairvoyance appears to have played an important part in the introduction of modern spiritualism, and a historical sketch of the latter, to be complete, must include some notice of the former. Jung-Stilling, in his various writings on pneumatology early in the present century, appears to have been the first to notice that clairvoyants, during their more exalted states of ecstasis, professed, with what seemed to him satisfactory evidence, to be in converse with invisible intelligences. The same claims to open intercourse with the spiritual world, with many phenomenal evidences which he regarded as establishing their truth, were afterward noted by Dr. Justinus Kerner, and detailed at large in his biography of one of his patients, Frederica Hauffe, more familiarly known as the seeress of Prevorst, and who is said to have been in a magnetic state for most of the time during the last 7 years of her life, describing the persons and repeating the language of what she represented to be spirits, and being often accompanied with mysterious rapping sounds. Many similar instances of alleged intercourse with the invisible world through clairvoyance subsequently occurred, not only in Germany and other parts of Europe, but in the United States; but none of these phenomena were of so remarkable a character as those presented in the case of Andrew Jackson Davis. (See DAVIS, ANDREW JACKSON.) Thrown into an abnormal state of mind and body by the process of magnetism, this young man, while professing to be in immediate converse with the spiritual world, dictated a large Svo. volume which was published under the title of "The Principles of Nature, her Divine Revelations, and a Voice to Mankind." In a portion of this book that was dictated in the autumn of 1846 (pp. 675-'6) the entranced author distinctly predicted that the communication with the spiritual world would ere long assumo "the