51. On my stating to a distinguished savan a fact which has been essentially verified since in more than a hundred instances, his reply was—I would believe you as soon as any man in the world, yet I cannot believe what you mention. He suggested the idea of its being an epidemic, with which I was of course infected; nevertheless, that savan, as a professing Christian, admitted facts vastly more incredible, depending on the alleged intuition of witnesses who lived two thousand years ago, nearly. This, doubtless, was the consequence of educational bigotry, which would have caused a belief in the miracles of any other religion in which he should have been brought up. 52. Such persons strain at the gnats of Spiritualism, yet swallow the camels of Scripture. 53. In like manner an Eastern sovereign treated a Dutch ambassador as deranged, because he alleged that bodies of water, in his country, were capable of solidification, so as to support people on the surface. 54. But if this skepticism is shown with respect to observers of our day, how can it be expected that it should not be displayed toward observers of antiquity? 55. Spiritualism will in this respect have a great advantage, as it will always be supported by the intuition of its actual votaries. It will not rest on bygone miracles, never to be repeated, if they ever occurred, but will rest upon an intercourse with the spirit world which will grow and improve with time. 56. One of the pre-eminent blessings resulting from this new philosophy will be its bringing religion within the scope of positive science. This word positive is employed by the learned atheist Comte to designate science founded on observation and experiment. It will give the quietus to the cold, cheerless view of our being’s end and aim presented in his work. 57. Professor Nichol endeavoured, in the following way, to comfort his Christian auditors against the apparent incompatibility of the phenomena of the sidereal creation with the language of Scripture: Having drawn two lines from the same point, making a right angle, the learned lecturer said, _Suppose A sets out and pursues one of these routes, B pursues the other, and both arrive at certain truths; although these results should not seem to have any thing to do with each other; yet_, said he, _if they be truths, they must come together eventually; they cannot always travel away from each 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 possible ultimate approximation.