The faith to which Science is sworn is a faith in the uniformity, the coherence, the intelligibility of, at any rate, the material universe. Science herself is but the practical development of this mighty postulate. And if any phenomenon on which she chances on her onward way seems arbitrary, or incoherent, or unintelligible, she does not therefore suppose that she has come upon an unravelled end in the texture of things; but rather takes for granted that a rational answer to the new problem must somewhere exist; - an answer which will be all the more instructive because it will involve facts of which that first question must have failed to take due account.

This faith in the uniformity of material Nature formulates itself in two great dogmas, - for such they are;- the dogma of the Conservation of Matter, and the dogma of the Conservation of Energy. Of the Conservation of Matter, within earthly limits, we are fairly well assured; but of the Conservation of Energy the proof is far less complete, simply because Energy is a conception which does not belong to the material world alone. Life is to us the most important of all forms of activity; - of energy, I would say, - except that we cannot transform other energies into Life, nor measure in foot-pounds that directive force which has changed the face of the world. Life comes we know not whence; it vanishes we know not whither; it is interlocked with a moving system vaster than that we know. To grasp the whole of its manifestation we should have to follow it into an unseen world. Yet scientific faith bids us believe that there, too, there is continuity; and that the past and the future of that force which we discern for a moment are still subject to universal Law.

Believing, then, that the whole Cosmos is such as to satisfy the claims of human Reason, we are irresistibly led to ask whether it satisfies other claims of our nature which are as imperious as Reason itself. Infinite Intelligence would see the Cosmos as infinitely intelligent; but would infinite Goodness also see it as infinitely good?

We know too well the standing difficulties in the way of such an assumption. They are that which we call Evil, and that which we see as Death. Now as to Evil, - which for us here and now seems so ineffaceable a blot on the idea of Omnipotence, - we can perhaps nevertheless just conceive that for the Cosmotheorus all these defects and incompatibilities of human impulse and sensibility may seem as relatively infinitesimal in the unimaginable Sum of Things, as for us are the whirl and clashing of molecules in the dewdrop, which cannot mar for our vision its crystalline calm.

But death, as it presents itself to us, cannot be similarly explained away. If it be really, as it seems, a sheer truncation of moral progress, absolute alike for the individual and for the race, - then any human conception of a moral universe must simply be given up. We are shut in land-locked pools; why speak to us of an infinite sea?

What, then, should be the impulse, what the faith of Science, if she finds even the least reason to suspect that this truncation is in fact illusory; that on the moral side also there is conservation and persistence; - conservation not only of such ether-vortices as we assume to underlie our visible matter, but of the spiritual systems or syntheses which underlie the personalities of men? - persistence not only of crude transformable energies, but of those specific non-transformable energies which inform a Plato or a Newton, and which seem the only commensurate object towards which the whole process of evolution can tend? Surely in such a case, whatever dreaminess or confusion may mark the opening of intercourse with worlds indefinitely remote, Science should summon all her fundamental trust in the coherence, the intelligibility of things, to assure her that the dreaminess must pass and the confusion clear, and that the veriest rudiment of communication between world and world bears yet the promise of completing and consummating her own mighty dogmas, - of effecting a unification of the universe such as she has never ventured to hope till now? What are our petty human preconceptions worth in such a case as this? If it was absurd to refuse to listen to Kepler, because he bade the planets move in no perfect circles, but in undignified ellipses; - because he hastened and slackened from hour to hour what ought to be a heavenly body's ideal and unwavering speed; - is it not absurder still to refuse to listen to these voices from afar, because they come stammering and wandering as in a dream confusedly, instead of with a trumpet's call? because spirits that bend nigh to earth may undergo, perhaps, an earthly bewilderment, and suffer unknown limitations, and half remember us and half forget?

Nay ! in the end it is not for us to choose; - we needs must join in this communion with what grace we may. We cannot, if we would, transform ourselves into the mere cynical spectators of an irrational universe. We are part and parcel of these incredible phenomena; our own souls shall soon be feeling the same attraction, the same hesitancy, upon the further shore.

"I am the doubter and the doubt, And I the song the Brahman sings".

Let us do what we can, then, to dignify the situation. Let us try, then, whether a more serious response on our part may enable the senders of the messages to speak with clearer voice. To whose care indeed has such response been hitherto for the most part left? May not the instances where adequate precautions have been taken, adequate record made, be counted on the fingers of one hand? Might not our unseen correspondents turn the tables on us when we complain of their incapacity, and ask whether it was worth while to do better for the "domestic muffs" of Mme. Blavatsky's far-famed cenacle, or for the sitters at the "materialisation seances" of the "Vampires of Onset"?

Assuredly we modern men have taken, in other quarters, more trouble than here is needed, with far less hope of reward. What has given its worth to the study of comparative religions except our steady effort to comprehend and to co-ordinate such childish and stammering utterances as have marked the rise in one nation after another of those spiritual needs and conceptions which make in the end the truest unity of the race of man? What should we have learnt from the Vedas, from the Book of the Dead - nay, from the Christian records themselves - had we approached those sacred texts in the spirit alternately of Simple Simon and of Voltaire?