378 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL CHAP. 



Religious belief would, on the other hand, furnish an 

 adequate incentive to morality, if it were so firmly held 

 and fully realized as to be constantly present to the mind 

 in all its dread reality. But, as a matter of fact, it 

 produces little effect of the kind, and we must impute 

 this, not to any shadow of doubt as to the reality of future 

 rewards and punishments, but rather to the undue 

 importance attached to belief, to prayer, to church-going, 

 and to repentance, which are often held to be sufficient to 

 ensure salvation, notwithstanding repeated lapses from 

 morality during an otherwise religious life. The existence 

 of such a possible escape from the consequences of 

 immoral acts is quite sufficient to explain why the most 

 sincere religious belief of the ordinary kind is no adequate 

 guarantee against vice or crime under the stress of 

 temptation. 



There is, however, one form of religious belief which, if 

 it were to become general, would, I believe, afford a better 

 sanction for a moral life than can now be found either in 

 rationalism or in religion. It is to be found in the 

 teachings of Modern Spiritualism, which, though they 

 were to some extent anticipated by a few spiritual and 

 poetical natures, have never been so fully and authorita- 

 tively set forth as through those exceptionally gifted in- 

 dividuals termed mediums. We have here nothing to do 

 with the evidence for the truth of Spiritualistic 

 phenomena, which the present writer has discussed else- 

 where, 1 but only with the question whether its teachings 

 do really afford the required sanction for a moral life. Let 

 us then see what these teachings are. 



The uniform and consistent statements, obtained through 

 various forms of alleged spiritual communications during 

 the last fifty years, declare that we are, all of us, in every 

 act and thought of our lives, helping to build up a mental 

 fabric which will be and constitute ourselves in the future 

 life, even more completely than now. Just in proportion 

 as we have developed our higher intellectual and moral 

 nature, or starved it by disuse, shall we be well or ill fitted 



1 See Miracles and Modern Spiritualism (Triibner and Co.) ; and the 

 article "Spiritualism," in the new edition of Chambers' 's Encyclopaedia. 



