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Rh joy of the New York press on discovering that a revelation from the spirit-world was being delivered in the very heart of the city! It was an excellent "stunt," as the modern American reporter would say, and the book, when it was published, was very widely discussed. Numbers who were dissatisfied with the Churches, yet were not prepared to discard religion, embraced the new message. It had about it a pronounced flavour of science, especially evolutionary science, and it promised a way out of the growing conflict of science and religion. It absorbed the sentiments of early socialism, which was very common in America, especially since the work done there by Robert Owen (1824–8). It dealt very freely with old dogmas which the Churches still refused to modify. The number of Davisites grew considerably, and before the end of 1847 they founded a paper, The Univeroœlum.

In one respect the theological controversy had proceeded farther in America than in the old world, and a kind of new Christianity had appeared which gave many recruits to Davis. Large numbers resented the doctrine of eternal punishment and the idea that salvation was confined to any particular sect or religion. They organised under the name of Universalists, and they had churches and ministers in all the large towns. Davis found many supporters amongst these Universalist ministers, as we shall presently find Spiritualism doing. There was no dogmatic authority to control them, and the social and scientific teaching of the new message seemed to