, is that in spite
of occasional fraud, which Spiritualists deplore, and in spite of wild
imaginings, which they discourage, there remains a great solid core in
this movement which is infinitely nearer to positive proof than any
other religious development with which I am acquainted. As I have
shown, it would appear to be a rediscovery rather than an absolutely
new thing, but the result in this material age is the same. The days
are surely passing when the mature and considered opinions of such men
as Crookes, Wallace, Flammarion, Chas. Richet, Lodge, Barrett,
Lombroso, Generals Drayson and Turner, Sergeant Ballantyne, W. T.
Stead, Judge Edmunds, Admiral Usborne Moore, the late Archdeacon
Wilberforce, and such a cloud of other witnesses, can be dismissed with
the empty "All rot" or "Nauseating drivel" formulae. As Mr. Arthur
Hill has well said, we have reached a point where further proof is
superfluous, and where the weight of disproof lies upon those who deny.
The very people who clamour for proofs have as a rule never taken the
trouble to examine the copious proofs which already exist. Each seems
to think that the whole subject should begin de novo because he has
asked for information. The method of our opponents is to fasten upon
the latest man who has stated the case--at the present instant it
happens to be Sir Oliver Lodge--and then to deal with him as if he had
come forward with some new opinions which rested entirely upon his own
assertion, with no reference to the corroboration of so many
independent workers before him. This is not an honest method of
criticism, for in every case the agreement of witnesses is the very
root of conviction. But as a matter of fact, there are many single
witnesses upon whom this case could rest. If, for example, our only
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 wh