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

INTRODUCTION. 2653. In like manner an Eastern sovereign treated a Dutch ambassador asderanged, because he alleged that bodies of water, in his ci^tuidy, werecapable of solidification,so as to support people on the surface.54. But if this skepticism is shown with respect to observers of ourday, how can it be expected that it should not be displayed toward observersof antiquity ?55. Spiritualism will in this respect have a great advantage, as it willalways be supported by the intuition of its actual votaries. It will notrest on bygone miracles, never to be repeated, if they ever occurred, butwill rest upon an intercourse with the spirit world which will grow andimprove with time.56. One of the pre-eminent blessings resulting from this new philosophywill be its bringing religion within the scope of positive science.This word positive is employed by the learned atheist Comte to designatescience founded on observation and experiment. It will give the quietusto the cold, cheerless view of our being's end and aim presented in hiswork.57. Professor Nichol endeavoured, in the following way, to comfort hisChristian auditors against the apparent incompatibility of the phenomenaof the sidereal creation with the language of Scripture : Having drawntwo lines from the same point, making a right angle, the learned lecturersaid, fSupj^ose A sets out and pursues one of tliese routes, B pursues theother, and both arrive at certain truths; although these results should notseem to have any thing to do with each other; yet, said he, if they he truths,they must come together eventually ; they cannot always travel away f-omeach 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 possibleultimate approximation.58. It is upon this actual fundamental discordancy between scripturalimpressions, and the truths ascertained by experimental and intuitive investigation,that Comte builds his inference that theology is to be entirelyabandoned. But very different is the position of Spiritualism relativeto positive science. It starts from the same basis of intuition andinduction from facts.It does not controvert any of the results of positivescience within the ponderable material creation, to which the results contemplatedby Comte belong.It superadds new facts respecting the spiritworld, which had so entirely escaped the researches of materialists, thatthey entertain the highest incredulity merely upon negative grounds,merely because the facts in question have not taken place within the experienceof those who have investigated the laws of ponderable matterand one or two imponderable principles associated therewith.59. Such was the ground of my incredulity; which, however, vanishedbefore intuitive demonstration.