- teriorly into our consciousness than it can come
through the ear, the eye, or the sense of feeling. It may be true; and give me time enough to investigate, and I can determine whether it be true or not. But if I am to act upon it without investigation, I can not know. I do not care if all the Spirits in Christendom testify to it, still I can not know; for that means of communication can not, in the nature of things, bring certainty—can not produce interior conviction in the mind.
I may be persuaded that a thing is so, and shape my course as though it were so; still I am liable to be mistaken. Therefore I affirm again, that this outward method of communication can not be relied upon for the communnication of absolute or positive truth. You can not make it the basis of action as you can when you have clear and positive information; and even if it should become as reliable as the ordinary communications passing between man and man, still it will not bring sufficient certainty to make it the basis of action. I might give many other reasons why this external means of communication can not be relied upon as sufficient to give us the necessary information respecting our connection with the Spirit-world. It may give facts or tests which may prove to be sufficient to satisfy the mind of every inquirer that Spirits do exist and communicate. This is no unusual thing; but the point is to make them the instruments of communicating to us such information as from day to day we need, and upon which we must rely. Those who do thus rely upon their communications, and yield implicit confidence to them, nine times in ten show themselves to
