Spiritualism, which is here used as a comprehensive term, frequently confuses the deliberations of honest truth-seekers with the advertised works of deceivers, but it includes much in its curriculum that is worth careful study. Among the host of disordered or weak minds who claim so much that is foolish in connection with spiritual revelations there are a respectable number of thoughtful, conservative searchers who cannot be easily deceived. In all the successful "isms" in a Christian civilization, and in all the popular religious sects, there is ever some basic truth. Some one idea is so true and so strongly emphasized that it often carries along a back-breaking load of absurd theories. The thoughtless throng hears of several well-authenticated cases of fraud, or of absurd teaching, in connection with spiritual meetings, or messages, and leaps to the conviction that all claims of so-called spiritualists are not worthy of consideration. So many thousands have tried so sincerely to recall their dead without the least sign of an answer that they refuse to examine the testimony of great men, like Sir Oliver Lodge, whose belief differs from their belief. They will not read what great minds have expressed on the subject. But the great discoveries recently made in materialistic sciences have led thoughtful men to hope for great discoveries in the relation of this existence to another life. This expectation, or strong hope, made the study of the spiritual revelations and conditions at the Temple a most thrilling occupation. The reports of the answers to prayer so often use the words "happened to think" that the observer cannot escape the conviction that either the living human mind does send spirit messages or that some mysterious power acts for it in forwarding messages. The great list of mysterious impulses and intuitions which were noticed in those interesting seasons of prayer could not have been all accidental nor could they be classed under the natural laws of cause and effect. The connection between the cause as seen in the prayer and the effect as related in the "happened-to-think" result is often wholly hidden. A mother in Philadelphia prayed for her prodigal son and at that exact time the son, alone in a Chicago hotel, felt an uncontrollable influence to turn back to his home. A father prayed that his son might decide to be a missionary, and the son, a sailor off the coast of South America, at that same moment made the decision. A wife prayed that her husband might be sent home sober. At the time she was kneeling by the kitchen table he was waiting at the saloon to be served with brandy, but he "happened to think" that his mother had prayed for him on her deathbed and he could not take the liquor.