Spiritual manifestations, the greatest marvel, and no doubt the greatest phenomenon, of the nineteenth century, are the subject of these pages. Numerous books in relation to it have been published, and scarcely a person in this country who has arrived to the years of understanding, but has heard of it, and great numbers have investigated it personally. People of all grades and conditions have given it their attention, and various and conflicting have been the opinions expressed in regard to it, all varying according to the light, experience, and opportunity they have had in the investigation.

There is also a very large class who have never given it a hearing or investigation for themselves, and have condemned it, either from their own convictions, unaided by personal experience, from hearsay evidence, or the denunciations of its enemies. A correct judgment or opinion can scarcely ever be formed by hearing one side of a question only, and many have misjudged and denounced it from this cause. When the facts of the case are patiently elicited from evidence on both sides, and sufficiently and carefully weighed, a person may come to a just conclusion with much more certainty. Such evidence we propose to offer, and, in doing so, we respectfully solicit your careful attention, and ask an impartial decision. Let all prejudice be thrown aside, and let facts speak for themselves.

Our opportunities for a calm, deliberate, and close investigation of Spiritualism, for a term of years, have been as good, perhaps, as could fall to the lot of any individual, and the medium was one of the best we have heard of We conducted it, from first to last, with candor, earnestness, and scrutiny.

Early imbued with a deep regard and veneration for religion, and believing it the most conducive to the welfare and happiness of mankind, both here and hereafter, we have ever most earnestly desired to see the principles and precepts of the Redeemer, received, adopted, and practiced by mankind, in that united and fraternal spirit which that great teacher so urgently and eloquently portrayed by his example and instruction. Sectarianism, and creeds, and traditions of men, the fruitful sources of division, discord, prejudice and bigotry, we never could harmonize with the true principles of charity, love and truth, which emanate from God, and always attend the true follower of Christ, It cannot be done, With this in view, we have endeavored to take our stand upon the broad platform of charity and love, and cast aside all action and feeling as wrong, in the professed christian or the church, which come in conflict with these glorious principles ; and on entering the church at the age of mature manhood, we were pained to discover the pride, the fashionable corruption, if not the open vice of which it had become the too common receptacle ; but, most of all, the sectarian divisions of it. Each branch of it seemed a party warring against all others of its household, and claimed for itself the greatest amount of truth and piety. If they attempted to cover each other with the mantle of charity, thrown over all externally, to endeavor to hide this deformity from the eye of the world, beneath its ample folds might still be seen jealousy, self-love, and cold prejudice. We do not say that in the church we did not find noble exceptions to this. There are such exceptions, we believe, in all its branches. In a general sense, however, the facts are lamentably prominent. …