The ordinary human mind only reaches out towards Spiritualism through curiosity or love. If through curiosity, it is a surface growth, and will be cut down like stubble in the early harvest of spiritual thought. If it be for love, it is the growth of centuries. It brings with it all the old-time phenomena to sustain its expression, and it breathes out through the immortality of the soul the longing of mankind in that direction.

First and foremost you are required to have faith. Of myself I do not laugh at this word; being a philosopher I can afford to accept it as a factor in the universe of spiritual cause and effect; and when it was said that Jesus could not perforin many miracles in his native place because of their unbelief or lack of faith, I understand what it meant. It means this: that the faith which was necessary, is the step that you must take to receive the fact, not to produce it.

Of what value shall it be that I discourse to you, if you will not listen? What would be the value of this morning's discourse if you were inattentive and trifling? The faith that Christ meant is the attitude of receptivity; to be willing to receive. I know of no blessing, especially in the moral world, that can be forced upon humanity. But, said one, "He might have performed miracles, had he such divine power, that would have vanquished their unbelief." Do not believe it! For they might sooner slay him if what they did not wish to have true were sooner proven. An attitude of unbelief is not simply negative but aggressive; it is not simply that the thing is not true, but that you do not wish it to be true. Theology crucifies the saviour of the new revelation; science crucifies the saviour of the new discovery because it destroys the finality and infallibility of the old.

If mankind has one failing more predominant than another, it is a wish to be considered infallible upon any subject that confers upon a man a standard amount of dignity; and from the police captain to the commander of the nation's armies you can usually multiply the degrees of authority by the inverse degrees of ostentation, until it comes to real greatness, when humility is manifested. So real knowledge brings humility, and it is only the fictitous mind that has not actual knowledge that so carefully entrenches itself behind the barricade of authority; and this is why faith is necessary.

As you would go out to meet your friend were he coming to you from a distant city, so should you go out to meet truth, let it come from wheresoe'er it will. As you would receive your friend though he came from the briny wave or from the hands of the bandits, so should you receive truth though it come to you in mangled form, and though it hath suffered the persecution of ages.

Spiritual phenomena came to you and found you in a condition of mind that is not only impressive, but that in every age has persecuted both science and religion. It comes to you in a state or period of time when everything must be utilitarian; when the great aggressive spirit of civilization is seeking to pervert all things to the natural level of material fact. And as such, it is the more potent and the more wonderful that these forces, impalpable except through intelligence, uncontrolled except by direct action of mind, and having not only volition but love for their prompting, shall be able to reach you who demand so much and who demand in such sin-gular and external ways. It is the phenomenon of the ages.

It is the more marvelous in this: that it does not spring from any school of theology nor any distinct department of science, but has made its way directly through the material line of thought into the hearts and lives of the people, ft is the more remarkable since it has cut its pathway in two directions: on the one hand encroaching upon the borders of theology, and on the other encroaching upon the borders of science, until it compels one to loose hold of its dogmas, and the other to reject its materialism. It is more remarkable since it expresses the one factor that has not been included in the great scientific summary of the universe, namely, the individual, immortal will of man.

Whatever God may mean to the theologian, or natural law to the man of science, they have never given any room or place to the disembodied human will. I would name the force by which spirits manifest, clairvoulance - a distinct and clear will power; not a will power governed by passion, for that is not will. The clear will or mind of earth, is the calm, self-poised, concentrated intellect inspired by the soul. He who is stubborn has very little will, for when once the barricade of his stubbornness is broken down he is a prey to all surrounding passions. He who is capricious has no will, for he is the subject of every whirlwind of passion that sweeps over him. But those who have swayed the nations of earth are the clear, calm, strong wills; and this must be the nearest to the etiological term that can be framed, to express what the spirit does in order to communicate with mortals through material forces.

The acting upon human wills by the clear power of the disembodied will of the spirit is the act of direct control, utterance, inspiration, or whatever else belongs to the realm of mental force or power; the act of a clear will upon those subtle forces that surround you and are within you: which not only can control your intelligence and direct your actions, but also can control the material substances which compose your bodies. A clear will alone can produce physical manifestations; and he who supposes that that realm or department of Spiritualism is under the control of inferior or ignorant spirits is very much mistaken. As you would employ, perhaps, ignorant laborers to dig a bed for your railways, but the civil engineer to survey and superintend the work, so the physical manifestations of Spiritualism are under the direct control of the clearest wills that the earth has produced. And Spiritualism is not divided into sections, classes nor kinds of Spiritualism. In the world of spirits there is but one Spiritualism, and that is the ministration of the love of your friends to you who are upon the earth.

There is but one fact in Spiritualism, and that is the conveying of intelligence from the spiritual realm to mortal minds; and whatever means is necessary to convey that intelligence the spirit world will employ. Angels, messengers, ministering spirits, or those who are in ignorance, may be made the means of manifestation, still not have a separate kind of Spiritualism. It may happen to include more in its sphere of love than your moral nature will reach; it may happen to include more in its sphere of intelligence than your intellect is capable of reaching. And if it throws its divine mantle over the whole human family, and reaches the most benighted as well as the most exalted, do not therefore think that it is degraded, but rather that it is so exalted that, like the sun's rays, it can descend to the lowest valleys.

It does not scorn the smallest methods; it will employ the meanest ways - we mean by this those that are most obscure and those that are considered least worthy - to express to every class and condition of mind the one fact of spiritual communion.

And if your philosophy will not include all humanity; if your heaven is too narrow to be extended to all; and if you cannot expand your brain or intelligence to include all the forces of the material and moral universe as portions of its purposes, then the sooner you cease to investigate Spiritualism the better. Rather seek some little corner of creed or some narrow limit of the materialistic philosophy, in which to shelter the broken pinions of the powerless apparatus of your intelligence.

But Spiritualism will employ every force, every method, every instrument, until the world shall know that the realm of spirit is a realm of most clear, distinct and immortal intelligence; more potent than winds, and waves, and tides; more potent than the atomic structure of the universe; more potent than the air that you breathe, or the sun which lights you on your way, since it can include all methods and powers, adapt them all to its uses, and make them all the bearers of its wondrous truth.