Page:The Other Life.djvu/35

 We do not ask for more miracles and mysteries, but for rational light on those already recorded. We will believe truth when we see it, without miracles; and no miracles can impose the unintelligible and contradictory on our minds as truth. Not a new Bible, but a divinely-authorized interpretation of the old one, is the grand theological desideratum of modern times.

"We do not ask for dead men to come out of their graves and tell us what they saw and heard in the other world. We do not ask for spirits to come and take possession of our minds and bodies and write and speak through us as mediums. Nor for holy men to have visions and ecstasies in which the life to come is revealed to them. These modes of instruction belong to the past. They are apt to be the sources of innumerable fallacies. At the best they are imperfect and unsatisfactory. They are not adapted to the present scientific and realistic stage of human development. Revelations must change their character according to the varying states and progressive evolution of the human mind.

"Revelations are only made through men as instruments of God's providence. Some man must be raised up for this new and stupendous mission.