“Affirm to your people that man never dies, that his immortality is proved, not by books but by material and tangible facts, of which every one can convince himself; that anon our houses of correction, and our prisons, will disappear; suicide will be erased from our mortuary tables; and nobly borne, the calamities of earth shall no longer produce madness.” Mrs. R. S. Lillie, in a speech at the Thirty-eighth Anniversary services in Horticultural Hall, Boston, Mass., and reported in the _Banner of Light_, of April, 1886, said:— “Christianity never had a Pentecost to be compared with modern Spiritualism. The latter is as far in advance of the former, as the electric light is in advance of the tallow dip of the past; for it is nineteen centuries ahead of it.” These are most astounding claims; and if there is any truth in them, Spiritualism ought to have shown itself as a great uplifting moral power, provided it has been able to get any foothold among the people. We therefore inquire what its success has been. On this point Professor Keck, at the Thirty-ninth Anniversary of Modern Spiritualism, at Bridgeport, Conn. (_Banner of Light_, April 9, 1887), said:— “It [Spiritualism] has made converts of more scientific men and profound thinkers than any other sect in the world. In thirty-nine years it has grown to ten or fifteen millions of believers, with thousands of mediums, a literature printed in every known language, and converts in every quarter of the globe.” With all these facilities and all this success, it surely has been able to make good its claims, and fulfil its promises, if its nature is such as it assumes, and its promises are good for anything; and its course should be marked by a great decrease of crime, by the promotion of virtue and a general improvement in the moral tone of society, wherever it has gone. For nearly fifty years it has now been operating in the world; and with all its glowing professions of what it was able to do, and its millions of converts, “energized to all that is good and elevating,” its impress for good should everywhere be seen. But what are the facts?—Just the reverse of what has been promised. Free love, which is free lust, has followed in its wake; homes have been ruined, families scattered, characters blighted; while insanity and suicide have been the fate, or the last resort, of too many of its victims. And outside of its own ranks, in the world at large, the fifty years since the advent of Spiritualism have been years of increase of crime and every evil in a fast growing ratio. Liquor drinking, tobacco using, gambling, prostitution, defalcations, robberies, bribery, municipal corruption, divorces, thefts, insanity, suicide, and murder, have increased in far more rapid ratio than the population itself.