I take up the volume "Miracles and Modern Spiritualism" by that eminent scholar and scientist, Alfred Russel Wallace, D. C. L., LL. D., and read: "How valuable is the certainty gained by spiritual communications may be gathered from what was said to a friend of mine by a clergyman who had witnessed the modern phenomena: - 'Death is a different thing to me now from what it ever has been; from the greatest depression because of the death of my sons, I am full of confidence and cheerfulness; I am a changed man.' This is the effect of modern Spiritualism on a man who had all that a belief in Christianity could give him before; and this is the answer to those who ask, 'What use is it?' " Summing up his investigations, Dr. Wallace concludes:

"We have now to explain the Theory of Human Nature, which is the outcome of the phenomena taken in their entirety, and which is also more or less explicitly taught by the communications which purport to come from spirits. It may be briefly outlined as follows:

"1. Man is a duality, consisting of an organized spiritual form, evolved coincidently with and permeating the physical body, and having corresponding organs and development.

"2. Death is the separation of this duality, and effects no change in the spirit, morally or intellectually.

"3. Progressive evolution of the intellectual and moral nature is the destiny of individuals; the knowledge, attainments and experience of earth-life forming the basis of spirit-life.

"4. Spirits can communicate through properly-endowed mediums. They are attracted to those they love or sympathise with, and strive to warn, protect, and influence them for good, by mental impression, when they cannot effect any more direct communication."

I turn next to Rev. Dr. Minot J. Savage, whose work to discover the truth or falsity of Spiritualism has been most painstaking and thorough. In "Can Telepathy Explain?" he gives numerous experiences, from which I quote one. "An English girl was engaged to be married to a young American who had been a student abroad. They had met at Heidelberg. He died suddenly after returning to this country. She came over here shortly afterward to visit his mother. While in New York, she went to a medium. There was no appointment beforehand, and there was no way by which the psychic could know who she was. Taking her turn, she sat down by the medium, who went into a trance and began to speak. Immediately the girl's lover claimed to be present. He told her a number of things which only they two had ever known. He recalled circumstances connected with their acquaintance. Now, it so happened that this young lady's father was an English officer in the war in South Africa. Among other things which the young man told was this. He said: 'I am glad that I have been able to save your father's life once or twice during the past summer.' Now comes the strange coincidence, if coincidence only it be. The father writes home from South Africa, being entirely ignorant of all that had taken place here, and relates what seems to him a somewhat remarkable fact. He tells how he was sitting in his tent one day when there came upon him suddenly an unaccountable impression that he was in danger. It was as though someone was trying to make him feel this and induce him to move. So strong was the feeling that he got up and went over to the other side of his tent. He had hardly done this before a shell struck the chair where he had been sitting. Had he remained there he would have been instantly killed. Of course it is not asserted that this is anything more than a coincidence; but the suggestion is made that coincidences of this sort have been so very frequent of late as to make one wonder as to whether there is not some deeper meaning in it all."

Later on in this volume Doctor Savage sums up his deductions as follows: "It is practically true that all men everywhere have always believed in continued existence after death. It is the teaching of all the religions of the world. It is bound up with the deepest loves and dearest hopes of the human heart. Now if this hope have a substantial basis - that is, if all the people who have ever lived on this earth are still living, and if they are not far away somewhere in the deeps of space, - then what more natural than that they should attempt to come into communication with and influence the lives of those whom they used to know here. If they are living at all, there is no longer any reason for supposing that they are away off, shut up in certain places called heavens or hells. This earth of ours is as near to heaven and near to God as any of the planets in space. There is no reason, then, why we should suppose that the former inhabitants of this earth may not be near to us, provided they are living at all. It is within the limits of the conceivable and rational also that they should be in some way embodied. Paul said: ' There is a natural body and there is a pneumatical body.' I do not offer this phrase as authority. I simply say that so far as any science can tell us to the contrary, it may be true. The intelligence which once animated the body of a friend here may still be the animating principle of an ethereal body unspeakably more real and powerful than that which used to clothe it, and still it be not cognizable by our senses. I do not say that these things are so. I simply assert that they may be. The only person in the universe which ever does things is either a human being or a being with quasi-human intelligence. We have no knowledge of intelligently exercised force except such as it is under the guidance of a human or quasihuman will. I submit, then, that on the supposition that people do live through the fact of, and after death, the theory of their agency in accomplishing the things which we are discussing is much more simple and natural than any other which has been brought forward."

From "Immortality and our Employments Hereafter," by the eminent occultist and traveler, Dr. J. M. Peebles, I stop to take three brief extracts: