Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations .. - New Age ...

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INTRODUCTION. 25
53. In like manner an Eastern sovereign treated a Dutch ambassador as
deranged, because he alleged that bodies of water, in his country, were
capable of solidification, so as to support people on the surface.
54. But if this skepticism is shown with respect to observers of our
day, how can it be expected that it should not be displayed toward observers
of antiquity
55. Spiritualism will in this respect have a great advantage, as it will
always be supported by the intuition of its actual votaries. It will not
rest on bygone miracles, never to be repeated, if they ever occurred, but
will rest upon an intercourse with the spirit world which will grow and
improve with time.
56. One of the pre-eminent blessings resulting from this n^w philosophy
will be its bringing religion within the scope of positive science.
This word positive is employed by the
learned atheist Comte to designate
science founded on observation and experiment. It will give the quietus
to the cold, cheerless view of our being's end and aim presented in his
work.
57. Professor Nichol endeavoured, in the following way, to comfort his
Christian auditors against the apparent
incompatibility of the phenomena
of the sidereal creation with the language of Scripture : Having drawn
two lines from the
same point, making a right angle, the learned lecturer
said, Suppose A sets out and pursues one of these routes, B pursues the
other, and both arrive at certain truths; although these results should not
seem to have any thing to do tcith each other ; yet, said he, if they be truths,
they must come together eventually ;
they cannot always travel away from
each other. But if any person find that, agreeably to all his experience,
the results thus attained, tend to greater and greater remoteness and inconsistency,
there would be little comfort found in the idea of a possible
ultimate approximation.
58. It is upon this actual fundamental discordancy between scriptural
impressions, and the truths ascertained by experimental and intuitive investigation,
that
-
Comte
builds his inference that theology is to be entirely
abandoned. But very different is the position of Spiritualism relative
to positive science. It starts from the same basis of intuition and
induction from facts.
It does not controvert any of the results of positive
science within the ponderable material creation, to which the results contemplated
by Comte belong.
It superadds new facts respecting the spirit
world, which had so entirely escaped the researches of materialists, that
they entertain the highest incredulity merely upon negative grounds,
merely because the facts
in question have not taken place within the experience
of those who have investigated the laws of ponderable matter
and one or two imponderable principles associated therewith.
59. Such was the ground of my incredulity; which, however, vanished
before intuitive demonstration.