Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, [electronic ...

126 APOLOGY FOR MY CONVERSION.involving bofcli reason and po\ycr, might consistently justify me in lookingfor agents endowed with the reason and power manifested by the phenomena.This power being invisible and imponderable, and at tlie sametime rational, there was no alternative but to consider it as spiritual, noless than that to which planetary motion is due. In its potentiality thepower thus manifested might be extremely minute as compared with thepotentiality of the Creator; still it had to be of the same spiritual nature.662. It has not appeared unreasonable to infer that the soul in assumingtlie spirit form should acquire a power of which material beings arcdestitute, and of which they can only conceive an idea from its necessityto the operations of God. Parting with its material attributes, were thesoul not to acquire others, even if it could exist, it would bo perfectlyhelpless. Hence, in becoming an immaterial spirit, it must acquire powersindispensable and appropriate to that state of existence.603. Since we know that the animal frame for the most part after death,on the exposure to the air, warmth, and moisture, returns to the atmospherewhence it is mainly derived, it follows that on undergoing that awfulchange the soul must take the spirit form, unless it perish with its materialtenement. So far, then, all who believe in the immortality of thesoul,must concur with spiritualists that on dying we become spirits.664. It will then be admitted by all who believe in the immortality ofthe soul that, as for every mortal that dies a spirit is born, innumerablespirits must exist. Is it not then reasonable to consider them as agents inproducing phenomena which can only be ascribed to invisible, imponderable,rational, and aficctionate beings, especially when they themselvessanction this inference by word and deed ?665. Were a tyrant to enclose a human being while alive within a castironvessel, the aperture through which the introduction should be madebeing closed by a stopple soldered in air-tight, allthe ponderable elementsof the coporeal body would be retained ;but can any one who believes thesoul to survive the body, think that it would remain included in that vesselso long as it should endure ? Cast-iron coats itself with a carbonatedperoxide, vulgarly called rust, and then undergoes no farther change ', sothat the corporeal elements might be retained to an infinite time. Butcould the soul be thus imprisoned, perhaps to eternity ? Could the tyrannyof a man thus imprison an immortal soul ? Does it not follow that thesoul would not be confined by the air-tight and apparently impenetrablemetallic vessel ?Invisibility of tlieSoul.666. The invisibility of the soul in leaving the body, must be admitted,since, however the dying may be surrounded by their friends andnurses, and vigilantly guarded after death by watches, as customary withmany, the soul is not seen to leave the body. It must, therefore, be in-