"I could have many new supporters, and some moneyed men and women, if I could see the truth of Spiritualism," was whispered in my ears by my own fears and hopes. And then hardly a Sunday passed when at the conclusion of the lecture I was not met by some believer in Spiritualism, who told me how he or she had seen Darwin, or Emerson, or Goethe, or Voltaire at my side on the platform, while I was delivering my address, and how one or the other had smiled upon me with approval. I received messages purporting to come from the world of Spirits, commending my course, and bidding me to go forward unafraid. Opportunities were given me to see tables tip, to hear "celestial" voices, and to be surprised by flashes of light in perfectly dark rooms. For many of the friends who tried to lead my steps toward Spiritualism, I still cherish the tenderest thoughts. They befriended me and my wife, they helped to render those desolate days of anxiety and hardship a little less of a strain upon our resources. But I could become a Spiritualist only with my eyes shut, and I had opened them when I parted with Calvinism. Was I now going to shut my eyes again? My neighbor and colleague, Dr. John E. Roberts, who left the Baptist church to join the Unitarians, and later, became minister of the Church of this World, has recently expressed his interest in Spiritualism. He thinks the Spiritualists have the most comforting doctrine, because of their hope of immortality. Dr. Roberts thinks that we need the spiritual glow of faith in immortality to keep us from withering. But is not immortality as inconceivable as the Trinity? Why should a man object to the Baptist or the Unitarian immortality, if he can accept the immortality of the Spiritualists? Is the evidence furnished by modern mediums more convincing than that furnished by the mediums in the Bible? Are the spirits who manifest themselves in the Old and New Testaments, impostors, while those who appear to Mrs. Piper in Brooklyn are genuine? And is the immortality promised by Mrs. Piper's ghosts different, or better, than the immortality promised by those who communed with Jesus, Peter and Paul? But let us hear Dr. Roberts' reasons for preferring the Spiritualist's certain hope of another life to the silence of Rationalism on the question of the hereafter: