47. I declare solemnly, that I always was intensely anxious to know the truth; that although, theoretically, I doubted the possibility of changing the course of things by prayer, yet I did often lift my thoughts up to God, imploring that some light might be given to me. Of course, as soon as the facts admitted of no other explanation than that my father, sister, brother, and other spirit friends, had been engaged in efforts to convince me of their existence, and of that of the spirit world, the most intense desire arose to verify the facts tending to settle the all-important question, whether man is immortal. 48. If the evidence of the truth of revelation were as adequate as represented by its votaries, my conscientious inability to believe in it would indicate an undue constitutional skepticism; whence I required more proof than the great mass of Christians, in order to produce credence. Yet, now having found the evidence of immortality in the case of Spiritualism satisfactory, it cannot be urged that my hesitation respecting the evidence of revelation arose from any unwillingness to believe in a future state, or unreasonableness as to the evidence requisite to justify belief. Manifestly, it would be inconsistent to accuse me of disbelieving in the one case from undue, hard-hearted incredulity, and yet, in the other, yielding from the opposite characteristics. 49. Fundamentally, my reasons for not believing in revelation have been, that it violates certain axioms above stated, (18,) which have been as clear to my mind as those collated by Euclid. 50. It may be shown that the existing system fails to give any evidence which can be _subjected to the intuition of each generation successively_. It rests on the alleged intuition of human beings who existed ages ago, and of whom we know nothing but what they say of themselves through history or recorded tradition. It reposes entirely on the testimony of propagandists, who were interested to give it importance, or on partial human narrators or compilers. It has been erected on a species of hearsay evidence, inadmissible in courts of justice. This species of testimony in the case of Spiritualism is contemptuously set aside. No one will believe in manifestations unless intuitively observed. Wherefore this _faith_ in _ancient_ witnesses, this _skepticism of those of our own times_, even when they are known to be truthful?