“And you have been mainly intent on and carried away, I presume, by the revelations you have received, or doctrines on the greatest of all topics taught you by the spirits.” “That is true. I have been much more impressed and confirmed by them than by the visible or physical manifestations which I have witnessed. The sublime doctrines and pure morality which the spirits teach have chiefly won my conviction.” “But these, however much they may seem to you, are very little to the Christian believer. In their most favorable light, they do not approach in sublimity and purity, human reason alone being judge, the Gospel of our Lord. There is nothing new in your spiritual philosophy, and your morality merely travesties a few principles of Christian morality. You assert the immortality of the soul, never, in ancient or modern times, denied by the heathen world; but the peculiar Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, and of future rewards and punishments, you do not recognize. You hardly stand on a level with Cicero or Seneca. You travestie the Christian doctrine of charity, or substitute for it a watery philanthropy, or a sickly sentimentality. There is in your system some subtilty, some cunning, chicanery, and ingenuity, but no deep philosophy, no lofty wisdom, no broad, comprehensive principles, no robust, manly virtue. The point on which you place the most importance is that of infinite progression, which is an infinite absurdity; and inasmuch as it denies the doctrine of final causes, denies God himself, and is, in the last analysis, pure atheism. “That some true and good things are said by the spirits, I do not deny. The devil can disguise himself and appear as an angel of light. He is a great fool, no doubt, but not fool enough to attempt to seduce men by evil as evil. He must present falsehood in the guise of truth, and evil in the guise of good, if he would do evil. It is not likely that he would begin by shocking the moral sense of the community, and we should expect him to recognize and appeal to the moral sentiments and dominant beliefs of the men of the age; and this is all that you can say of the teachings of the spirits. But, except the confirmation of the fact taught by religion in all ages, that there are spiritual beings, superior to man, who surround us and may invade us, nothing they teach can be relied on, because their veracity is not established, and their unveracious and lying character is conceded.” “There are lying spirits, I concede, but all are not,” interposed the Judge.