“It is every preacher’s duty to denounce the things of hell just as much as it is to preach the beauty of Christ.”
“I know you denounce drunkenness, but how few pulpits pull out their dagger and stab it.”
“God has not lost his power, but the pulpit has lost its voice.”
“Boston had a fire once, but that does not hurt you half as much as the fire of damnation that is smouldering in the hearts of people of this town.”
“I don’t know what will become of my converts if I leave them in Boston.”
The greatest religious work that has been done in Boston, is that of Jones and Small. Every hall they occupied was crowded, and at mid-day in the week they filled Fanueil Hall.
Psychometry.—The entire pages of the Journal of Man would be insufficient for the presentation which this subject demands, and for the present readers must be content with the “Manual of Psychometry.” The article designed for this number must be postponed until April, after which it will receive more attention.
The American Psychical Society, poor thing, is in a bad way. It needs nourishment, warmth, and interested attention, to prevent it from dying of a compilation of infantile maladies which arise from bad nursing. The chief nurse, Professor Newcomb (president), gave the bantling an ice-bath in January (his presidential address), and this practically puts the thing in its coffin. We have never had high anticipations of the usefulness or continued existence of this organization. It is a queer proceeding to throw a new-born baby on a rubbish-heap, and leave it there, while its parents walk around on stilts to look at it. The British society is glowing with warmth compared with the state of its American cousin. It is clear that the psychical knowledge which the society desires to obtain will never come to it under its present management; indeed, we are inclined to think no society under any management can obtain satisfactory knowledge of the kind which is sought. It must be obtained in private, under conditions far different from any which can be secured in organizations, where men act together with diverse views and opinions.—Pop. Sci. News.
Progress of Spiritualism.—In all European countries, Spiritualism is making rapid progress. In England, the eloquent and distinguished lecturer, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, says in a recent letter to the London Medium that “Spiritualism in England is not only on the increase, but has already take too deep and earnest a hold of the public heart, up here in the north, to be uprooted by imbecile antagonism, or even marred by the petty shams of imposture. In places where I have been told it was recently difficult to collect together a score of people to listen to spiritual lectures, the largest halls are often found insufficient to accommodate my Sunday evening audiences, and the spoken blessings and thanks that follow me, as well as the floods of inquiring letters that besiege me, bear ample testimony to the fact, that the seed sown has not all fallen on stony places.”
Its progress is rapid in Italy, Spain, Norway, Denmark, and Russia, and is steadily onward in France and Germany. On our Pacific Coast, the Golden Gate says, “it is advancing with grand strides.” In the Eastern States it is obtaining a much needed purification by discussing the genuineness of the phenomena.