Spiritual Monthly and Lyceum Record.
Life,—and its issues.
Other titles: Spiritual Analyst and Scientific Record
1870—1871 Monthly
Boston, MA. Publisher: W.F. Brown & Co.. Editor: J.H. Powell, and then J.H.W. Toohey. Succeeded by: Spiritual Analyst and Scientific Record
1/1, October 1870-1871. $1.50 a year, 48 pp.

The journal was still alive in April 1871 when the Banner of Light noted that Toohey was about to become the journal's editor, and the successor Spiritual Analyst began with 1/6 in June 1871, indicating a hiatus in publication. Powell's "Inaugural" says that the journal was "designed to supply a need. It will avoid party politics, hut embrace universal politics, which enter, whether we will or no, into all the avenues of common life. Its base of operations is scientific and essentially practical. That which can be scientifically demonstrated is alone capable of moulding universal conviction. Spiritual phenomena, we contend, are scientific, and capable of being demonstrated to the most logical thinker. We shall deal with facts, trusting to their stubborn reality for results." The first issue sought to convince the journal's readers that Dickens was a spiritualist and (in an article by William Howitt) that William Blake was a medium. The issue was rounded out with an obituary of J.B. Ferguson, a novelette by Powell, and reports of visits to local Boston mediums, including Dr. Slade. The pattern was continued in subsequent issues with columns by Howitt, novelettes by Powell and Louisa A. Powell, regular columns on "Progressive Jottings" and "Sittings with Mediums" (Dr. Buffum, Mrs. C.M. Smith, Charles H. Foster, Isabella Smith, Mary E. Courrier, Rogers and Mumler, Mrs. Mary Webster, et al.). The issue of January 1871 had a biting article on "The Recantation of A.J. Davis" and his denunciation of spiritualism. On Powell, see the notes under the Spiritual Times and the Spiritual Lyceum (London). In 1868 he left Britain for the United States and immediately became an active correspondent of several American papers. In no. 4, January 1871, of this journal, Powell announced that it had been "rendered into the hands of its Publishers," and withdrew, to be replaced by Toohey who proclaimed that it would thenceforth be called the Spiritual Analyst and Scientific Record and would be "devoted to the critical examinations of the phenomena, philosophy and tests of spirit-intercourse." The successor journal seems to have started with 1/6, June 1871. Amherst College.

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