contain it, and the witnesses are not shadowy people
living in the dim past and inaccessible to our cross-
examination, but are our own contemporaries, men of
character and intellect whom all must respect. The
situation may, as it seems to me, be summed up in a
simple alternative. The one supposition is that
there has been an outbreak of lunacy extending over two
generations of mankind, and two great continents--a
lunacy which assails men or women who are otherwise
eminently sane. The alternative supposition is that in
recent years there has come to us from divine sources a
new revelation which constitutes by far the greatest
religious event since the death of Christ (for the
Reformation was a re-arrangement of the old, not a
revelation of the new), a revelation which alters the
whole aspect of death and the fate of man. Between
these two suppositions there is no solid position.
Theories of fraud or of delusion will not meet the
evidence. It is absolute lunacy or it is a revolution
in religious thought, a revolution which gives us as
by-products an utter fearlessness of death, and an
immense consolation when those who are dear to us pass
behind the veil.

I should like to add a few practical words to those
who know the truth of what I say. We have here an
enormous new development, the greatest in the history
of mankind. How are we to use it? We are bound in
honour, I think, to state our own belief,
especially to those who are in trouble. Having stated