But the marvel is that the mind of man, instead of accept ing. the fact as he would any other fact in the universe and waiting gradually for the methods to develop to his consciousness, pauses on the very threshold of his investigation, making the fact dependent upon his ability to comprehend the methods. If science were to pause in that manner because the world is not capable of following her intricacies, you would never have advanced from the dull level of earthly existence that preceded Galileo, and would now be walking upon a flat and barren earth while the stars would be still moving in glass spheres around.

If science waited for the average mind to comprehend her propositions e'er they were stated, or even for the discoverer of a fact to be certain of the methods by which he arrived at the fact, there would to-day be no steam engine, no electrical apparatus, no vast improvements in telegraphy and in the science of chemistry and geology. It is only by accepting in the great whirl of the universe such facts as appear before your vision, being forever on the alert that you may perceive, having your senses quickened, that you finally arrive at the wonderful processes of the universe.

Spiritual phenomena have swept in to the great sphere of facts in the nineteenth century, not only with startling rapidity, but with singular exactness and clearness, baffling every department of science in its endeavor to explain them, and compelled from such men of science who have had time, not only attention, but allegiance.

None can tell better than the man of science where the ordinary routine of natural law breaks off and the conscious entity steps in; no one can tell better than the electrician that unless the electrical force is governed by intelligence it will convey no message; none better qualified to judge upon this point than such men as Mr. Varley, Prof. Crookes, and others who have devoted their lives to the study of electrical phenomena; and yet they distinctly declare that electricity, unless guided by intelligence, can never produce a single intellectual action. But if electricity does manifest intelligence, if it be under the government of ordinary electrical apparatus, it may be man; but if it express intelligence without that apparatus, and is able to be directed independently of electrical wires, batteries and electrical jars, then there must be an intelligence outside of man; not only so, but so carefully have they pursued their investigations, that it is distinctly shown that electricity plays not even a small part in the manifestations which an ordinary and vulgar mind usually describes as the physical phenomena of spiritualism; that in the closest weight and most careful experiment with electrical apparatus that would test to the thousandth part of an inch any pressure, there has been found to be no electrical current radiating from the medium, even though there was produced various phenomena requiring some power of surpassing strength.

Whatever the force may be that the spirits employ to produce manifestations, it is certainly no force with which the human mind is yet in any degree familiar, and herein is the difficulty in expressing to you the methods by which spirits communicate; you, who are not even familiar with the existence of the forces that they employ, much less have not yet comprehended, nor are you capable of comprehending any terms for those forces.

The usual term of psychology may be applied, and very properly, to the class of phenomena known as mental. But when it is attempted to apply this to the physical manifestations of spiritualism, all are at sea; because if, as Dr. Beard of New York insists, you are psychologized, mesmerized, or to use his scientific phrase " hypnotized in your physical observation of the phenomena of spiritualism."Were this so, then the whole universe of fact in the material world is liable to be produced by the same mental hallucination. You are not capable, therefore, of observation in any direction of natural science. If, on the other hand, the power or force employed is not only that with which you are not yet familiar, but the effects are such as you can observe, how eagerly should you avail yourselves of the opportunity to observe those effects and note down with care the manifestations and circumstances under which they occur, and above all that the mind shall be in the condition, not of prejudgment but of receptivity; for no man of intelligence can possibly pretend to view a series of phenomena new to him, with whose methods he is entirely unfamiliar, and bring there a prejudgment or a preconceived opinion as a part of his intellectual observation. "Nor can it be said that he is a careful and intelligent witness if he brings either prejudice, preconceived opinion, or a denial of the fad with him. To be an investigator it is not required that one should be a bigot in skepticism; to be the most careful investigator it does not mean that one is credulous, but it means that one is clear-thoughted; that his mind is not previously prejudiced either by education or religious bias, and that he intends to receive such facts as are in the universe waiting for such time as his own intelligence, or the revelations accompanying, shall make him capable of comprehending it.

To me, the solution of the physical problems of Spiritualism is of much less importance than the sublimity of the fact itself. To me, were I in your place, as I once was, it would not so much matter the manner in which I received a message from my friend as that I received it, while afterwards I might be interested in tracing the laws of manifestation.

The first great proposition in spiritual phenomena is the love of the departed for those who remain on earth; and if, according to history and poetry, according to that which bards have sung and novelists have written in their age, love may work such miracles on earth, why may not that love which becomes divine, that sacred flame of the human spirit which outlives death, which is triumphant over time, in fact perform more miracles in the world of spirits than when in contact with organic human lives? And why may not this be an accepted fact by the man of science who does not scorn the gentle amenities of life, as by those who, dependent upon love alone, sometimes rise triumphant beyond all science, and prove that its subtle alchemy is more potent than all that the chemist can analyze?