be remembered other doctrines name the name of God with reverence; hold the Bible the book of books; teach our infant lips the Lord's prayer; and bid man obey the ten commandments, that are perfect in Wisdom. Its military drills on Sabbath, the aboriginal vernacular of its oracles, its rites and ceremonies that choose darkness rather than light, and above all its loose morals, do not entitle spiritualism to the standing it has gained in society; hence aside from these its worst features, it has a humanitarianism and liberality that should redeem it from under the infatuation of mediumship. Spirit has neither Life, nor Intelligence in matter; and if our departed friends are Spirit, and we believe ourselves in matter, we cannot commune together; or if they are yet in matter-beliefs, we have shut them out of our consciousness by a belief of the change death has wrought, making them no longer tangible to personal sense.
Again, if we would commune through the affections, we must be on the same plane of belief, or understanding with them, to make this possible; and if their body is changed to us (as is manifest by its burial), so are their affections changed; and we cannot commune on former terms of personal sense and sympathy. We are separated mentally according to our own views, and on our own grounds, as effectually as distance here separates our bodies. Mediumship is mind-reading on this plane, and nothing more. Some one here knows all the mediums tell; the imagery with which they clothe expression is but futile conjecture and imagination, else thoughts let loose from the limits of personal sense, and the regret is that in this step they should not understand it.
