confront us with hypotheses, however sublime and however affecting, if
they cannot be stated in terms of the rest of our knowledge, if they are
disparate to that world of sequence and sensation which to us is the
ultimate base of all our real knowledge, then we shake our heads and
turn aside." This is a most reasonable demand, and we humbly accept the
challenge. We think religious truth, or at all events certain of the
largest facts of the Spiritual Life, can be stated "in terms of the rest
of our knowledge."

We do not say, as already hinted, that the proposal includes an attempt
to prove the existence of the Spiritual World. Does that need proof? And
if so, what sort of evidence would be considered in court? The facts of
the Spiritual World are as real to thousands as the facts of the Natural
World--and more real to hundreds. But were one asked to prove that the
Spiritual World can be discerned by the appropriate faculties, one would
do it precisely as one would attempt to prove the Natural World to be an
object of recognition to the senses--and with as much or as little
success. In either instance probably the fact would be found incapable
of demonstration, but not more in the one case than in the other. Were
one asked to prove the existence of Spiritual Life, one would also do it
exactly as one would seek to prove Natural Life. And this perhaps might
be attempted with more hope. But this is not on the immediate
programme. Science deals with known facts; and accepting certain known
facts in the Spiritual World we proceed to arrange them, to discover
their Laws, to inquire if they can be stated "in terms of the rest of
our knowledge."

At the same time, although attempting no philosophical proof of the
existence of a Spiritual Life and a Spiritual World, we are not without
hope that the general line of thought here may be useful to some who are
honestly inquiring in these directions. The stumbling-block to most
minds is perhaps less the mere existence of the unseen than the want of
definition, the apparently hopeless vagueness, and not least, the
delight in this vagueness as mere vagueness by some who look upon this
as the mark of quality in Spiritual things. It will be at least
something to tell earnest seekers that the Spiritual World is not a
castle in the air, of an architecture unknown to earth or heaven, but a
fair ordered realm furnished with many familiar things and ruled by
well-remembered Laws.

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