knowledge of unknown forces depended upon the
researches of Dr. Crawford of Belfast, who places his
amateur medium in a weighing chair with her feet from
the ground, and has been able to register a difference
of weight of many pounds, corresponding with the
physical phenomena produced, a result which he has
tested and recorded in a true scientific spirit of
caution, I do not see how it could be shaken. The
phenomena are and have long been firmly established for
every open mind. One feels that the stage of
investigation is passed, and that of religious
construction is overdue.

For are we to satisfy ourselves by observing
phenomena with no attention to what the phenomena mean,
as a group of savages might stare at a wireless
installation with no appreciation of the messages
coming through it, or are we resolutely to set
ourselves to define these subtle and elusive utterances
from beyond, and to construct from them a religious
scheme, which will be founded upon human reason on this
side and upon spirit inspiration upon the other? These
phenomena have passed through the stage of being a
parlour game; they are now emerging from that of a
debatable scientific novelty; and they are, or should
be, taking shape as the foundations of a definite
system of religious thought, in some ways confirmatory
of ancient systems, in some ways entirely new. The
evidence upon which this system rests is so enormous
that it would take a very considerable library to