their minds and in the proportion in which these are opened the man becomes more and more a man.” Swedenborg has some very beautiful observations with regard to the rejuvenescence of those who have passed into the higher life. “All who come into heaven,” he says, “return into their vernal youth, and remain so to eternity. The more thousands of years they live the more beautiful and happy is the spring to which they attain.... In a word, to grow old in heaven is to grow young.... They who live in the chaste life of marriage are above all others in the order and form of Heaven after death. Their beauty, therefore, is surpassing, and the flower of their youth endures for ever.” What are we to say of this man who propounded this amazing gospel as a direct message from the highest spheres? What are we to say of his communications and conversations with the unseen world? Of his _bona fides_ it is impossible to entertain a doubt. The ordinary hypothesis is that he suffered from hallucinations. It has been argued on the other hand, that for a man so sane and so shrewd in the ordinary affairs of the world, hallucinations of the kind were an impossibility. This, however, seems going rather too far. Some of the sanest men in the world have had special points on which they were not mentally sound. Monomania is a recognised form of mental aberration, and the man who suffers from it is as sane as his fellows on all matters except one. This spiritual communion, however, was continuous in the case of Swedenborg for many years, and during those years occupied either in itself or in the activities that arose from it the larger portion of his life. In spite of this absorption, his relations with his fellow men continued as sane and responsible as those of any of his neighbours. Would this have been possible, one may ask, in the face of so absorbing an interest, had this interest merely been founded on a monomania? It would, I think, be difficult to parallel such a case. If, however, we decide to take Swedenborg’s relations with the other world at his own valuation, are we called upon to accept his gospel at his own valuation on that account? Certainly I think not. Swedenborg’s estimate of the status of the spiritual beings with whom he communicated, even if we accept their reality, need not be ours. Recent investigations and records of innumerable psychic experiences have tended to show what a miscellaneous crowd of spirits hover around the confines of this material world. Swedenborg’s mistake has been made by many spiritualists of the present day, and sometimes with disastrous results. Swedenborg had not before him the evidence which we now hold to warn him of the necessity of testing the quality of his spiritual communicants. The experiences encountered overwhelmed him by their unexpected and apparently miraculous character, and his naturally sane judgment was at fault for want of a criterion by which to estimate them.[12] Few of