45 JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 



mind, that originated and sustains all things for a purpose ; that that 

 purpose includes the greatest possible good for all his intelligent 

 creatures; that that greatest good consists in their knowing as 

 much about him as it is possible for their capacities to receive, and 

 to be as much like him in character as it is possible for them to be, 

 as the cause of all man's perplexity has ever been his ignorance of 

 the one and the absence of the other ; and that he had come for the 

 express purpose of enlightening him on the one, and putting him in 

 the way of obtaining the other, which would relieve him of that 

 conscious dread of an invisible power, that had ever followed him as 

 closely as his shadow ; that it was not necessary for him to torture 

 himself or make great personal sacrifices in order to obtain it, not^ 

 even the performance of a ceremonial, simple or elaborate, for all 

 that he required men to do was to believe what he told them> 

 when they would be put in possession of a conscious knowledge that 

 it was all true, a procedure directly at variance with the scientific 

 method. 



Now we have seen that it is natural for man to believe in the 

 existence of the supernatural ; indeed, it seems to require a laborious 

 intellectual effort for a man to succeed in rea;soning himself out of 

 the belief in it ; and when any individual has honestly arrived at the 

 conclusion that there is no conscious existence beyond the visible, it 

 is with a wail of regret that such splendid possibilities are to be 

 so ruthlesslj' extinguished. Now, as it does not require superior 

 intellectual powers to accept the statement of another, and there are 

 some who profess to have put this man's promise to the test, and 

 assert that they realize in their own consciousness that it is more 

 than fulfilled, therefore, when we find a man who stands pre-eminent 

 in the scientific world, who is gifted with as clear an intellect as ever 

 appeared in this or any other age, and a mind stored with facts on 

 all subjects relating to nature to an extent seldom equalled and 

 never excelled, and endowed with the power to express his thoughts 

 in the most exact and clearest of language, and that in copious flow, 

 saying, " I believe myself to be possessed of all the senses which be- 

 long to the race ; and when I find spiritualists making very positive 

 assertions of knowing about matters of which I know nothing, and 

 which I suspect they know just as little, I cannot help suspecting 

 that they are but visionary enthusiasts," we are not required to con- 

 sider it conclusive against such claims, as if it were a subject of 



