The writings of the spirit rappers abound with accounts of sights, sounds, visions, and wonders. We are forcibly reminded of a similar display in the writings of the Adventists, previous to the predicted end of the world in 1843—an overwhelming array of facts, calculations, signs, visions, wonders, miracles, maps, pictures, drawings, and hieroglyphics, all going to show, in the most positive manner, that in that year the world would be annihilated. And still it remains; and the works containing the omens and facts to substantiate the prediction are called to share the fate of a Farmer's Almanac quite out of date. Some few still hold on to a semblance of the theory, like him who, in the spring of 1851, declared that a talking cow, somewhere in Maine, had prophesied that the world would be burned up the following June. How lamentable to view the numbers of men and women who have given heed to such things, when assured that the day and the hour is not known even by the Son himself. (Matt. xxiv. 36.) Many of these persons were once active in the church, and exerted an influence for good; but by remaining in their present position, their influence in the cause of Christ is palsied, and their, talents buried in the earth. And yet we have propounded to us another "New Church," which, according to the predictions of its adherents, is destined to destroy all other churches, as it was to be, according to the predictions of Miller, Fitch, Himes, and others.

In conclusion upon these things, we would add, that it has been our belief from the first, that there is nothing supernatural in the so-called spiritual manifestations. They all bear the marks of earthly origin. The public not knowing how to explain them, the first rappings were attributed to the "spirits;" and the idea having been set afloat, it has been adopted without investigation, being the easiest way of accounting for it.

To the common mind, three hundred years ago, it was plain and easy, that the world was flat, and rested on something—on the back of Atlas, and he stood on a tortoise, and the tortoise again on something; and the fact that nobody could tell what, was not allowed to stumble any one; it rested on a foundation, and that was enough for any one to know or believe. Motion, space, attraction, and repulsion were not understood, and Galileo came near losing his life, and did lose his personal liberty and character, for intelligence. When the world is as fully instructed in certain principles connected with our existence as it is in the laws of the physical universe, the "rappings," we think, will cease to be a wonder.