ofs.

Those first manifestations at Hydesville varied in no way from many of
which we have record in the past, but the result arising from them
differed very much, because, for the first time, it occurred to a human
being not merely to listen to inexplicable sounds, and to fear them or
marvel at them, but to establish communication with them. John
Wesley's father might have done the same more than a century before had
the thought occurred to him when he was a witness of the manifestations
at Epworth in 1726. It was only when the young Fox girl struck her
hands together and cried "Do as I do" that there was instant
compliance, and consequent proof of the presence of an INTELLIGENT
invisible force, thus differing from all other forces of which we know.
The circumstances were humble, and even rather sordid, upon both sides
of the veil, human and spirit, yet it was, as time will more and more
clearly show, one of the turning points of the world's history, greater
far than the fall of thrones or the rout of armies. Some artist of the
future will draw the scene--the sitting-room of the wooden, shack-like
house, the circle of half-awed and half-critical neighbours, the child
clapping her hands with upturned laughing face, the dark corner shadows
where these strange new forces seem to lurk--forces often apparent, and
now come to stay and to effect the complete revolution of human
thought. We may well ask why should such great results arise from such
petty sources? So argued the highbrowed philosophers of Greece and
Rome when the outspoken Paul, with the fisherman Peter and his
half-educated disciples, traversed all their learned theories, and with
the help of women, slaves, and schismatic Jews, subverted their ancient
creeds. One can but answer that Providence has its own way of
attaining its results, and that it seldom conforms to our opinion of
what is most appropriate.

We have a larger experience of such phenomena now, and we can define
with some accuracy what it was that happened at Hydesville in the year
1848. We know that these matters are governed by law and by conditions
as much as any other phenomena of the universe, though at the moment it
seemed to the public to be an isolated and irregular outburst. On the
one hand, you had a material, earth-bound spirit of a low order of
development which needed a physical medium in order to be able to
indicate its presence. On the other, you had that rare thing, a good