Another of the difficulties we want to clear away in studying phenomena is the idea that the happening of a certain thing by a law that we do not understand in the realm of matter gives any sort of authority on questions of spiritual knowledge, or gives a person a right to speak with authority on things not concerned with the particular laws under which that phenomena takes place. The mischief of the old idea of miracle was that it was supposed to be a proof, not of knowledge of another world or other forces, but of the title of the miracle-worker to speak with authority on religious and moral questions; while, as a matter of fact, the knowledge of what occurs on the astral plane, the knowledge of what occurs on the mental plane, or the power to utilise the forces of these planes in the production of certain happenings here which are not usual, these things by no means give a man any authority to speak on moral problems or to decide on spiritual questions. That is a matter of the utmost importance, for knowledge of the astral and mental worlds is the same in kind as knowledge of the physical world; and it no more follows that a clairvoyant or clairaudient, or a man who can use any of the powers of subtler planes down here, has more authority on religious and moral questions than a good mathematician, a good electrician, or a good chemist. You are not likely, on the physical plane, to fall into the blunder of thinking that because a man is a good chemist he has authority on moral problems: you will at once see the absurdity. But many of you do not see that the same is true when you deal with good chemists or electricians belonging to the astral or mental planes. They have no more authority _quâ_ their knowledge of these planes than the chemist. I often wish that in the Theosophical Society the old fable of the Jewish Rabbis was better remembered and applied. Two Rabbis were arguing, and one of them, to support his side of the argument, made a wall fall down; whereupon the other Rabbi sensibly remarked: "Since when have walls had a voice in our discussions?" That spirit is of enormous importance, and does not in any sense touch the fact that you find the great Founders of religions and the illuminated men who surrounded them were men who had power to produce phenomena of various kinds, to heal the sick, to make the lame to walk, and so on, and that phenomena always accompanied the great religious Teacher in the past. These things did not give Him His religious authority: they were simply the outcome of His knowledge of natural laws; for a man who is thoroughly spiritual has matter subject to him on every plane in Nature. But it by no means follows that the man who can manipulate matter on the lower planes is therefore able to speak with authority on the higher. The fact that the spiritual man is always a great psychic, always has power to utilise higher forces for controlling physical matter, that fact, while true, does not prove the truth of