Some sixty years ago that acute thinker Lord Brougham remarked that in the clear sky of scepticism he saw only one small cloud drifting up and that was Modern Spiritualism. It was a curiously¹ inverted² simile³, for one would surely have expected him to say that in the drifting clouds of scepticism he saw one patch of clear sky, but at least it showed how conscious he was of the coming importance of the movement. Ruskin, too, an equally agile⁴ mind, said that his assurance of immortality⁵ depended upon the observed facts of Spiritualism. Scores, and indeed hundreds, of famous names could be quoted who have subscribed⁶ the same statement, and whose support would dignify⁷ any cause upon earth. They are the higher peaks who have been the first to catch the light, but the dawn will spread until none are too lowly to share it. Let us turn, therefore, and inspect this movement which is most certainly destined⁸ to revolutionise human thought and action as none other has done within the Christian¹⁰ era. We shall look at it both in its strength and in its weakness, for where one is dealing¹¹ with what one knows to be true one can fearlessly insist upon the whole of the truth.

 

The movement which is destined to bring vitality¹² to the dead and cold religions has been called "Modern Spiritualism." The "modern" is good, since the thing itself, in one form or another, is as old as history, and has always, however obscured by forms, been the red central glow in the depths of all religious ideas,

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