hich underlays these
spiritual manifestations, as they are called, and MIND is after it,
looking for it carefully; and what MIND has once started in pursuit of
earnestly, it seldom fails to overtake.

"I have sometimes amused myself by endeavoring to furnish a theory for
the Spiritualists to stand upon, based upon the demonstrations of the
past, the evidences brought to light by the researches of science,
which at all events should have about it truth enough to give color
and respectability even to an error as stupendous as that of
Spiritualism. This theory I have predicated upon the progress of the
material world, aside from animal life, showing that what may have
been impossible thousands of years ago, may be possible, or about
becoming possible now; that we are about entering upon a new era in
the advancement of all things towards perfectability, and that the
advent of that era may be marked by an established communication
between the living and the spirits of the departed.

"Science demonstrates that the material world presents in its history
an illustration of the great principle and theory of progress. It is
quite certain that our planet was once a very different thing from
what it is now; it differed in form, in substance, in compactness, in
everything from its present condition. We do not _know_ that it was
once wholly aeriform, mere gasses in combination, too crude to admit
of solidarity; but reasoning back from established facts, the
conclusion is almost irresistible, that this earth, now so rock-ribbed
and solid, so ponderous, so ragged with mountain ranges, and cloud
piercing peaks, was once but vapor, floating without form through
limitless space, drifting as mere nebulous matter among the older
creations of God. However this may be, it is regarded as quite
certain, that time was when ft was entirely void of solidity, void of
dry land, with no continent, island, or solid ground, with no living
thing within its circumference. It was thus passing through one of the
remote eras of its existence. It was then young, just emerging, as it
were, from nothingness, growing into form, assuming shape, and
gathering attributes of fitness for exterior vitality, preparing the
way for higher existences than mere inorganic matter. How long this
era existed, science has failed to demonstrate, but it passed away,
and solid land marked the next era of the earth's progress. It was
surrounded by an atmosphere absolutely fatal