that because a proposition regarding the condition of affairs in the spirit-world cannot be controverted by the science of the physical world, the proposition must necessarily be true? Clearly not. Again, does it follow that because a system of philosophy, the alleged facts of which are necessarily undemonstrable, has stood the test of thousands of years of investigation, it is necessarily correct? By no means. Time has effected for the Oriental philosophy that which has not been effected for the Western spiritual philosophy, simply for the want of time; it has perfected it as a system. The lapse of time has enabled the system to be evolved by the gradual but constant accretions of human thought, from generation to generation, until it has grown, from the first vague hope of the human soul for a life beyond the grave, to its present stupendous proportions. The processes of its growth can readily be seen and understood by a glance at the evolution of our own spiritistic philosophy within the memory of men now living. It is true that modern spiritism found a philosophy ready made to its hand in the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. His descriptions of the spirit-world were in the main confirmed by the earlier mediums who were acquainted with his writings. His was essentially a material heaven. "As on earth, so in heaven," was his highest conception of the beauties and glories of the land of "spirits of just men made perfect." But he believed in hell, and he found one. He was inimical to certain Christian sects, and he found that all who belonged to those sects were condemned to everlasting punishment. When modern spiritism became a belief, it found its most enthusiastic followers among those who were outside of the pale of the Church, those who were in revolt against the asceticism of the Puritan belief and practices, those who refused to believe that a God of love and mercy would condemn any portion of his creatures to everlasting fire. They found in the Rochester knockings the first evidence which appealed to their senses of a life beyond the tomb; and they consulted their mediums with perfect confidence in their ability correctly to portray the condition of the denizens of the land of spirits. They learned from those oracles that their preconceived notions of divine justice were eminently correct, that there was no such place as hell, and that all alike shared in the boon of immortality; and, by a series of progressive steps, through seven or eight concentric spheres, all at last reached the highest state of divine felicity. They found that Swedenborg was right in the main, but was a little incorrect in his information concerning hell. It would be tedious, as well as superfluous, to enumerate the steps by which the philosophy of modern spiritism has advanced from the crude notions of the earlier writers to its present status. Every intelligent reader will recognize the wide difference between the rhapsodic hodge-podge of