Page:Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (1898).djvu/266

246 and there never will be, an immortal spirit.” Yet the

very periodical containing this sentence repeats weekly the assertion that spirit-communications are our only proofs of immortality.

I entertain no doubt of the humanity and philanthropy of many Spiritualists, but I cannot coincide with their

views. It is mysticism that gives Spiritualism its force. Science removes mystery, and explains extraordinary phenomena, but Science never removes such phenomena from the domain of reason into the realm of mysticism.

It should not seem mysterious that mind, without hands, can move a table, when we already know that it is

mind-power which moves both table and hand. Even Planchette — the French toy which years ago pleased so many people — attested the control of mortal mind over its lower substratum, called matter.

It is mortal mind which convulses its substratum called matter. These movements arise from the volition of belief, but are neither Scientific nor rational. Mortal mind produces table-tipping, and believes that this wonder emanates from spirits and electricity; and this belief rests on the common conviction that matter acts upon matter, both visibly and invisibly.

There is not so much evidence to prove any intercommunication between the so-called dead and the living,

as there is to show the sick that matter suffers and has sensation; yet this latter evidence is destroyed by Mind-Science. If Spiritualists understood the Science of Being, their belief in mediumship would vanish.

At the very best, on its own theories, Spiritualism can