Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. MODERN SPIRITISM. '"T"SHE only way to arrive at any clear conceptions of our relations with a spiritual world is by first defining the words which we use in speaking of the subject. When we come to examine a good many of our opinions, we find that they are only marks of our want of precision in the use of words, and of our habit to be satisfied with phrases. The word " Spiritual," and the phrase " Kingdom of Heaven," have lent, by their vagueness, peculiar temptation to our taste for sentiments which have not been clarified and severely defined by reflection. We often prefer an illusion to the mental effort that dissipates it; and it is safe to say that human opinions, on every subject, contain a great body of floating, ill-digested, half-grown thinking and feeling. Surely, in all matters which relate to the religious life, involving, as they do, some of our tenderest and most lofty emotions, we ought to try to shift our faith from words to facts, if it be possible for the mind, in its present condition, to furnish such facts to the consciousness. We ought to be sure, too, that the facts are universal in their character,—not exceptional nor abnormal states either of the body or of the soul, but true for all people, at all tirriQs and in all places, like the facts of a science or the daily necessities of life. What do we mean, then, by using the word " Spiritual ? " Sometimes, as when we speak of a highly spiritual person, or poem, or piece of music, or work of art, we simply contrast a refined quality with an ordinary one, something subtle with something mechanical and material. We mean that it is the manifestation of a delicate, highly-cultivated, noble and pure mind. But when we use the phrase " Spiritual World," we mean, or ought to mean, two distinct things ; and...