"The five material senses are continually deceiving us. The sense of sight I have spoken of before, but will give you a different illustration that shows up the deception of all the senses." "Father, do you believe life to be a reality?" "I certainly do." "Can you see life?" "I hardly know how to answer that, I can see that you are alive. No, I shall say we can not see life itself, but only the manifestation of life." "I agree with you, father, we cannot see life itself. Can we hear life?" "No." "Can we touch life?" "No." "Can we smell life?" "No." "Can we taste life?" "No." "Then our five material senses do not testify anything regarding a reality, for you said life was a reality." The pastor and his wife were very much surprised at Walter's ability to explain these things, and his mother was fully convinced of his being inspired, and the father was fast coming to the same conclusion. "Did you understand me, father?" "Yes, fully, you made it very plain." "Now, father, would you say that the opposite of a reality was an unreality?" The pastor hesitated, hardly daring to answer; at length he said, "Yes, it must be." "Is not death the opposite of life, father?" "Yes, Walter." "Then if life is real, its opposite, or death, must be unreal; can you agree with me, father?" He always addressed his father, for his mother was showing by the nod of her head that she fully agreed with him." "I must say, Walter, that I do agree with you, to quite an extent; but, I shall have to think it all over carefully before I will be fully convinced." Walter then continued: "We have found that the five senses do not testify regarding a reality, now let us see if they testify regarding an unreality. As we had agreed that death was the opposite of life and that life was real and death unreal, we will take death as our example. When a person dies, we say life, or the reality has flown, and the unreality, the material or dead body, remains. Do our five material senses testify anything regarding this unreality or dead body? Yes, all five of them, for we can see this unreality with the eye. If we move this unreality, we hear it move with the ear. If we reach forth our hand we can touch it. After decomposition sets in, we can smell it; and if we would put a piece of it into our mouth, as we do of the dead cow or bird, we could even taste this unreality. This ought to convince us of the unreliability of the knowledge transmitted to us by the five senses; for, as I have shown, they all say the unreal is real and that the real is unreal. St. Paul said, 'To be carnally minded is death, and to be spiritually minded is life eternal.'" "I know that St. Paul said this, but do not see as it has any bearing on the question we are discussing," said the pastor. "On the contrary, father, I think it is a verification of what I have been illustrating." "Can you explain what you mean, Walter, so your mother and I will understand?"