Lights and shadows of spiritualism

8 AXCJEXT SrJRITUALISM.We know fromIlcrodolus and others that when the Babyloiiianempire was in the glory of its pov/er, the influence of the Chaldeansages had also attained its zenith. Every secret of nature whichman had unveiled, the whole knowledge then acquired respectingthe visible and the invisible, was locked in the bosoms of thesefamous philosphers. They held in the Babylonian commonwealtha station equally dignified with that held in a neighbouring countryl)y the powerful magicians of Egypt. They guided the footstepsof the young just entering upon this present life—they smoothedthe passage of the old just departing to another. Futurity wastheir es^^ecial study, and, by diligent comparing and interpretingof dreams and prodigies, they had established what they believed tobe a complete system of divination.Especially were they famousfor their watchings of the stars.The astronomers of the eighteenthand nineteenth, and the astrologers of the sixteenth and seventeenthcenturies a.d., alike recognise predecessors in thoseinquiring spirits, Avho from the summit of the Tower of Belusnightly searched the Assyrian heavens. Even when the Babylonianempire fell before the shafts of the Mede the magisurvived. They flourished in Babylon in unchecked power, fromthe era of Cyrus to that of the Darius whom Alexander subdued,and they made one of their most remarkable prophecies to theMacedonian hero himself.At the distance of three hundred furlongs from the great cityAlexander was encountered by a deputation of the most famcusmagi. These warned him that he should on no account presumeto enter Babylon, as the gods had decreed that once within thev/alls he must assuredly die. So deeply Vv^as the conqueror of Asiamoved by this prediction that, while sending his chief friends into]3abylon, he himself encamped at a distance of two hundredfurlongs from the walls. But the Grecian philosophers who accompaniedhim, the doubting disciples of Anaxagoras and others, wentinto the King's presence, and by their lively ridicule temporarilycifaced from his mind all respect for the wisdom of the Chaldeans.Alexander enteredBabylon, and in a few months was gathered tohis fathers.Various other omens had foreboded the disappearance