The time, I think, is ripe for a generalisation wider than any which those ancient books contain. For just as a kind of spiritual fusion of Europe under Roman sway prepared the way for Christianity to become the European religion, so now also it seems to me that a growing conception of the unity, the solidarity, of the human race is preparing the way for a world-religion which expresses and rests upon that solidarity; - which conceives it in a fuller, more vital fashion than either Positivist or Catholic had ever dreamed. For the new conception is neither of benefactors dead and done for, inspiring us automatically from their dates in an almanac, nor, of shadowy saints imagined to intercede for us at Tribunals more shadowy still; - but rather of a human unity, - close-linked beneath an unknown Sway, - wherein every man who hath been or now is makes a living element; - inalienably incorporate, and imperishably co-operant, and joint-inheritor of one infinite Hope.

Of course, I am not here supposing that any human gaze can pierce deeply into the world unseen. Such communion as we may hold with spirits in any degree comparable with ourselves must needs be on a level far beneath the lowest of "Thrones, Dominations, Princedoms, Virtues, Powers"; - nay, must be in the very vestibule and antechamber of the outermost of the courts of Heaven. These souls of ours are but infantum animae flentes in limine primo; - the first and humblest conscious links in a wonderful order; - trembling still and half-bewildered at a future vaster than we know. I do not presume to forecast what we may come in time to learn; I only say that for the present hour there will be enough of motive to urge us to utmost effort to rise in the scale of being, if we can once be certain that such noble spirits as we have known by earthly intercourse or earthly record do still concern themselves with our progress, and still from their higher vantage-ground call to us that all is well.

Men objected of old to Copernicus that if our earth really swept round the sun in so vast an orbit, there should be an apparent displacement - a parallax - in the position of the fixed stars. Such parallax was long sought in vain; till at last advancing skill detected it in some few stars nearer than the rest; and our relation to these near luminaries proved to us our veritable voyage through the star-strewn deep. Perhaps in the spiritual world as well we have strained our gaze too exclusively on luminaries that are beyond the parallactic limit; and eyes turned steadily on some nearer brightness may teach us at last our kinship and community in the firmament of souls.

Not, then, with tears and lamentations should we think of the blessed dead. Rather we should rejoice with them in their enfranchisement, and know that they are still minded to keep us as sharers in their joy. It is they, not we, who are working now; they are more ready to hear than we to pray; they guide us as with a cloudy pillar, but it is kindling into steadfast fire.

Nay, it may be that our response, our devotion, is a needful element in their ascending joy; and God may have provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect; - ut non sine nobis consummarentur.

To most of my hearers I doubt not that this forecast of a coming co-operation between incarnate and discarnate spirits will have seemed speculative and premature. My defence is that I believe that upon our own attitude towards these nascent communications their progress and development depend, so that we cannot too soon direct serious attention to the high responsibilities opening on our view. And now yet another practical question is ready, I think, for immediate discussion. All great changes in speculative belief must modify in some way man's immediate duty. In what way must our idea of duty be modified, be expanded, if a religion is offered to us which no longer depends on tradition and intuition only, but on reason also and on experiment; which is not locked away in an emotional compartment of our being, nor adapted to the genius of special races alone, but is oecumenical as Science is oecumenical, is evolutionary as Science is evolutionary, and rests on a permanent and provable relationship of the whole spiritual to the whole material world?

No full answer to such a question can as yet be attempted or divined. But one point is clear; - and on that point it is already urgently necessary to insist. We must maintain, in old theological language, that the intellectual virtues have now become necessary to salvation. Curiosity, candour, care; - these are the intellectual virtues; - disinterested curiosity, unselfish candour, unremitting care. These virtues have grown up outside the ecclesiastical pale; Science, not Religion, has fostered them; - nay, Religion has held them scarcely consistent with that pious spirit which hopes to learn by humility and obedience the secrets of an unseen world. Here surely our new ideals suggest not opposition but fusion. To us as truly as to monk or anchorite the spiritual world is an intimate, an interpenetrating reality. But its very reality suggests the need of analysis, the risk of misinterpretation; the very fact that we have outgrown our sacerdotal swaddling-clothes bids us learn to walk warily among pitfalls which call for all the precautions that systematic reason can devise.

Upon a new scheme of beliefs, attractive to the popular mind as the scheme which I prefigure, a swarm of follies and credulities must Inevitably perch and settle. Yet let those who mock at the weaknesses of "modern Spiritualism" ask themselves to what extent either orthodox religion or official science has been at pains to guard the popular mind against losing balance upon contact with new facts, profoundly but obscurely significant. Have the people's religious instructors trained them to investigate for themselves? Have their scientific instructors condescended to investigate for them? Who should teach them to apply to their "inspirational speakers" any test more searching than they have been accustomed to apply to the sermons of priest or bishop? What scientific manual has told them enough of the hidden powers within them to prevent them from ascribing to spiritual agency whatever mental action their ordinary consciousness may fail to recognise as its own?