Of the nature of this intelligent agency we are profoundly ignorant as far as Science is concerned. So far as Science can inform us, it may consist of a multitude of beings, as the Gnostics have supposed, or of one Supreme Intelligence, as is generally believed by the followers of Christ. As scientific men we are absolutely ignorant of the subject. Nor can we easily conceive information to be attainable except by means of some trustworthy communication between the beings resident in the Unseen and ourselves. It is absolutely and utterly hopeless to expect any light on this point from mere scientific reasoning. Can scientific reasoning tell us what kind of life we shall find in the interior of Africa, or in New Guinea, or at the North Pole, before explorers have been there, and if this be so, is it not utterly absurd to imagine that we can know anything regarding the spiritual inhabitants of the unseen, unless we either go to them or they come to us? It is therefore of supreme importance for us to know whether there has been any such communication. It would be affectation in us not to say that if there be any such trustworthy communication, we believe it will be found in the Christian records. It has been said to us by our critics, ‘What have you to do with these records?’ To this we reply, Not perhaps so much as a professed theologian, but still something. There is a well-known record, which claims to give us the history of a communication with the spiritual intelligences of the unseen. If true, it must of course teach us many things which science is utterly incompetent to reveal. Nevertheless it is the object of this book to prove that science alone gives us by logic and analogy combined a certain insight into this most interesting and mysterious region. Working our way upwards, we have reached by the principle of Continuity certain regions. Working their way downwards, the Christian records have reached these same regions of thought. Now if our scientific logic be correct, and if the Christian records be trustworthy, we should expect the two accounts of this common region to be consistent with one another. Let us here therefore inquire what the Christian records say regarding this mysterious, infinitely energetic, intelligent developing agency residing _in_ the universe, and therefore in some sense conditioned, to which we have been led by scientific analogy. 222. These records, as they are interpreted by the majority of the disciples of Christ, are believed to lead to a conception of the Godhead, in which there is a plurality of persons but a unity of substance. It ought, however, to be remembered that here the word _person_ does not mean the same thing as it does when applied to ourselves, but only denotes some distinction which may be regarded as best expressed by this word. _Our_ idea of person or individual is derived solely from our experience in the position which we occupy in the universe.