that he is fairly accurate in his description of his
own experiences and state of life at the very
moment at which he is communicating? Or when Mr.
Arthur Hill receives messages from folk of whom he
never heard, and afterwards verifies that they are true
in every detail, is it not a fair inference that they
are speaking truths also when they give any light upon
their present condition? The cases are manifold, and I
mention only a few of them, but my point is that the
whole of this system, from the lowest physical
phenomenon of a table-rap up to the most inspired
utterance of a prophet, is one complete whole, each
attached to the next one, and that when the humbler end
of that chain was placed in the hand of humanity, it
was in order that they might, by diligence and reason,
feel their way up it until they reached the revelation
which waited in the end. Do not sneer at the humble
beginnings, the heaving table or the flying tambourine,
however much such phenomena may have been abused or
simulated, but remember that a falling apple taught us
gravity, a boiling kettle brought us the steam engine,
and the twitching leg of a frog opened up the train
of thought and experiment which gave us electricity.
So the lowly manifestations of Hydesville have ripened
into results which have engaged the finest group of
intellects in this country during the last twenty
years, and which are destined, in my opinion, to bring
about far the greatest development of human experience
which the world has ever seen.