The Conclusion of the Matter.

To briefly review the mass of evidence submitted in these pages I presume it will be, at least, admitted that however much these phenomena may have been ridiculed in the past, the time has arrived when it must be acknowledged that, to quote the words of the most brilliant Scientists of the age, they are "absolutely real—absolutely genuine."

A pronouncement of this character is of portentous importance, apart altogether from the cause of the manifestations, and when we come to consider the latter point in the light of the conclusions arrived at by so many eminent minds, we are faced by an hypothesis which is sufficiently startling to make the most rigid mental fabric quiver.

We are, in short, told by all the best-endowed and most conspicuous leaders of Scientific thought that conclusive demonstrative proof has been obtained that the Spiritual world, which has hitherto been placed in the abysmal depths of the stars, is really in immanent contact with the earth, and that its ethereal denizens, who formerly "lived and moved and had their being" with their fellows in the flesh, can and do, communicate with us and manifest themselves in tangible form.

This conclusion is so momentous that it is little wonder that these Scientific intellectuelles have devoted such a great number of years to their investigations before determining to announce to the world the conviction at which they have arrived. Sir Oliver Lodge page 74 says "Not easily and not early" has this supreme information been broken to wondering mankind. It is the outcome of unusually-protracted experiments, and such an overwhelming volume of corroborative evidence, that there has been no possible escape from arriving at this stupendous decision. The more searching the inquiry the more deeply-rooted has become the certainty that the human personality survives the ordeal of death and that Man possesses a spirit that will never die.

This admission is the more striking when we remember that most of these gifted investigators were impregnated with rank Materialism when commencing their work of exploring the Invisible. The idea of a Spiritual existence was altogether foreign to their mode of thought. Their mental vision was bounded by the physical, and to them the grave ended all. The scales, however, have now fallen from their eyes, the veil has been rent in twain, and they to-day find themselves confronted with a future life guaranteed by such an abundance of mental and objective evidence that it cannot be overthrown. One after another, in rapid succession, they are being supported by similar declarations from other eminent minds in various parts of the world, and millions of "ordinary people" are adding their testimony in support of the intellectual giants who are in the van of Spiritual progress.

Let the world laugh at these men if it likes! Ignorance is always swift to jeer at intellect, and prejudice is ever ready to quench the flame of Truth. But neither ignorance nor prejudice can avail to stem this tide if it is the Spirit of Truth that is breathing upon the waters. The philosophers of Padua refused to look through the telescope of Galileo because they considered it impious to drag the planets down to earth and to dissect the moon. But the planets have, nevertheless, been brought within our grasp and the innermost recesses of the lunar orb have been laid bare to the eye of Man.

The advance of Science, in fact, has been impeded at every turn, and there are well-meaning people to-day who would even give the quietus to its efforts to demonstrate to groping humanity that a glorious country awaits the righteous just beyond the confines of death, that the Soul of Man has been endowed with an immortal spark, and that there is—

One God, one law, one element
Towards which the whole creation moves.

Personally, I do not require the verdict of these Scientific inquirers to assure me that there is a life to come. I know it. I know it instinctively—an instinct derived from a deeply-religious and spiritually-minded mother. But I also know that there are thousands of better men than I—men who are among the flower of Creation, whom the Church can never reach, and to whom the light will never come unless it be revealed through the agency of these convincing tests.

Jesus performed "many wondrous works" to undermine the scepticism by which He was confronted, and the divine power of page 75 God is working to-day for the fulfilment of a similar purpose. Call it Spiritualism, or by any other name you prefer, it emanates from the Supernal realms and its manifestations may be those "greater things" which the Master declared would be witnessed by mankind. To-day it may truly be said—

There are rifts within the darkness,
And the light is breaking through.

It is already shining in the lives of the great minds I have mentioned, and in a letter recently received by a Melbourne friend from Professor Larkin he makes the courageous and significant confession—"You know how strenuously I have written during just 40 years this month all over the world in 70 different papers and magazines on Natural Science and rigid Materialism—over 4000 articles which I now see clearly were on the wrong side. Now I am studying and writing all the time on psychology and mental subjects."

These are very striking words from such a source, and a singular triumph for the spiritualising influence of this transcendent theme. It has taken Professor Larkin many years to reach this stage in his development, but he has gripped the Truth at last and has now discovered that Death is only a name.

There is no death; what seems so is transition.
This life of mortal breath
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian
Whose portal we call death.

So sang Longfellow. And so have sung all the inspired poets of all the ages.

Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth unseen
Both when we sleep and when we wake

says the immortal Milton. And Tennyson takes up the strain when he exclaims—

Eternal process moving on,
From state to state the spirit walks.
That nothing walks with aimless feet,
That not one life shall be destroyed,
Or cast as rubbish to the void,
When God hath made the pile complete.

Tennyson was himself a trance medium. He acknowledged this much in a letter to a friend in 1874, and corroboration of the page 76 fact is to be found in his Memoir written by his son. Only a Spiritualist could have written "In Memoriam," more particularly the verse—

How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thoughts would hold
An hour's communion with the dead.

Two thousand years have elapsed since the advent of Christ, and now a new revelation is about to dawn on the world. "I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear (understand) them now. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of Truth is come, he will guide you into all truth, for he will not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear that shall he speak, and he will show you things to come." The Spirit of Truth may have started on his mission; mankind may be witnessing some of the wonders he has been sent to reveal, and the clay may not be very far distant when the fiat will go forth in the name of official Science that Heaven has been discovered and that the doctrine of Immortality has been Scientifically proved.

This would be the most joyful news proclaimed to the world since the herald angels sang—"Peace on earth, good-will to men." It would unite the earth to the Spiritual realms and link mankind by a chain of love to the very throne of God. It would be the crowning triumph of Scientific research and men and women would then drink deep from the Supernal fount of eternal Truth.

Death would be robbed of its mystery, and from the knowledge thus gained, the right-living man—the man who had shown his love to God by loving his fellow men, who had tempered justice with mercy, who had walked humbly in the sight of his Maker and whose life had been consecrated by the humanitarian spirit of Christ—would no longer regard his approaching transition with dread, for he would know for a certainty where he was going and that he had nothing to fear when he had "crossed the bar," whilst the selfish and evil-living man would know with equal certitude, from the experiences of others who had "gone before," that a just and exacting self-imposed retribution awaited his arrival on the other side and that he would assuredly have to face the consequences of an ill-spent life in all their remorse-engendering detail.

In that day the Scientist and the Theologian will walk along together, the one teaching Man how he ought to live and the other offering experimental proof of a life beyond the grave. When that beneficent era dawns there will be a great awakening of all the Spiritual forces of the earth; Religion will become established on the immutable rock of Scientific Truth; the Materialist will become an interesting factor of the past; the human family the wide world o'er will recognise the Fatherhood of God and the Universal Brotherhood of Man; Jesus will be understood, and His peerless life and sacrificial death will become a truly vitalising, truly energising, truly potent force in moulding the characters and shaping the destinies of men.