at 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 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 it, we should not force it, but leave the
rest to higher wisdom than our own. We wish to subvert no religion.
We wish only to bring back the material-minded--to take them out