Fort Worth daily gazette. (Fort Worth, Tex.) 1882-1891, 1890-03-22

| tional, and when they appeared in New
York in the following May announcing
| themselves IS 'spiritual mediums, a
| phrase which originated with them, they
| created an intense furore. These two
| young girls had thus founded a new
| faith, to which they gave the name of
/ spiritualism. Humble as was its origin
and insign ifioant as was the character of
its first manifestations, it soon found a
multitude of believers in both hemi-
spheres. Spiritual mediums quick ly
sprang up all over the country and were
soon multiplied by hundreds and even by
thousands. No better evidence of the
power of the new faith over the minds of
men and of its perpetuity could possibly
be desired than the fact that even its de-
nOuncement as the shallowest, fimsiest
humbuggery by those who founded it,
and their statement that it is an out-and-
out fraud, originated by two little girls
solely in spirit of mischief, have been
powerless to overthrow, or even to shake
it.
But believers in spiritualism now go
far back beyond the Fox sisters for the
origin of their faith. So long ago as the
Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries
there were many persons who professed
to be under the direct guidance of the
Divine Spirit, and who may in that sense
have been called spiritualists. Those
same individuals also claimed to be in
full and open communication with the
spiritual world and to hold daily CONVEX
sations of the most familiar character
with spirits and with angels. Prominent
among such mystical thinkers were
Jacob Bohme or Bohmen, Spencer, J.
Godfrey Arnold, John William Peterson,
John Albert Bengel, Heinrich Jung Still
ing, Madame sGuyon, Oetinger and
Swedenborg. The last named, when on
his death bed, in 1872, predicted that In
about eighty years from that time there
would be general revelation from the
spiritual world which would bring his
teachings into general notice and con-
firm their truth, prediction, which, it
Is claimed, was fulfilled in 1913, just
seventy-six years after the death of
Swedenborg, by the manifestations OF
spirit power which was then made here
in HYdesville and which soon attracted
general attention throughout the world.
Besides the prediction of Swedenborg,
the birth of modern spiritualism was
twice prophecied. In 1843 some mem
bers Of the Shaker communities at New
Lebanon and Watervliet, N. Y. +, seemed
to be under some strange psychological
influence which threw them into trance
state. While In that condition they de-
livered long discourses in the names Of
eminent men OF by-gone ages, by whose
spirits they said they were possessed.
After these manifestations had con-
tinued for nearly year the spirits one
day bid the brethren a solemn adieu,
telling them to say nothing to the world 3
people of what had passed, but TO treas
ure it in their hearts, and promising
that IN d few years they would return
and show to the whole world the same
manifestations which they had revealed
to chosen few of the pious members of
the Shaker communities, In that same
year of 1913 one Andrew jackson Davis,
poor, ignorant country lad, IN the en-
ploy OF farmer OF Orange county, n.
Y, was mesmerized into a trance state
by William Levingston, and ever after
ward seemed 70 have the power of pass
ing into such condition at will.
Though so illiterate that he could scarcely
read or write, yet in the fall Of 1916,
while in tbs trance state, he dictated,
under the title OF 1.-THE Principles OF
Nature, Her Divine Revelations, and A
Voice To Mankind, q learned treatise on
ontoiogical. cosmieal. theological. spirit