not undertake to pronounce all lies.  Some of them are doubtless impostures—­the work of knaves, who speculate upon the credulity and superstitions which are attributes of the human mind; but they are not all such.  But while I admit their reality, I insist that such as are so, are the results of natural laws, which will one day be discovered, and which will turn out to be as simple as the spirit which presides over the telegraph, or that which constitutes the life of a steam engine.  There may be, and probably is, a great undiscovered principle which underlays these spiritual manifestations, as they are called, and MIND is after it, looking for it carefully; and what MIND has once started in pursuit of earnestly, it seldom fails to overtake.

“I have sometimes amused myself by endeavoring to furnish a theory for the Spiritualists to stand upon, based upon the demonstrations of the past, the evidences brought to light by the researches of science, which at all events should have about it truth enough to give color and respectability even to an error as stupendous as that of Spiritualism.  This theory I have predicated upon the progress of the material world, aside from animal life, showing that what may have been impossible thousands of years ago, may be possible, or about becoming possible now; that we are about entering upon a new era in the advancement of all things towards perfectability, and that the advent of that era may be marked by an established communication between the living and the spirits of the departed.

“Science demonstrates that the material world presents in its history an illustration of the great principle and theory of progress.  It is quite certain that our planet was once a very different thing from what it is now; it differed in form, in substance, in compactness, in everything from its present condition.  We do not know that it was once wholly aeriform, mere gasses in combination, too crude to admit of solidarity; but reasoning back from established facts, the conclusion is almost irresistible, that this earth, now so rock-ribbed and solid, so ponderous, so ragged with mountain ranges, and cloud piercing peaks, was once but vapor, floating without form through limitless space, drifting as mere nebulous matter among the older creations of God.  However this may be, it is regarded as quite certain, that time was when ft was entirely void of solidity, void of dry land, with no continent, island, or solid ground, with no living thing within its circumference.  It was thus passing through one of the remote eras of its existence.  It was then young, just emerging, as it were, from nothingness, growing into form, assuming shape, and gathering attributes of fitness for exterior vitality, preparing the way for higher existences than mere inorganic matter.  How long this era existed, science has failed to demonstrate, but it passed away, and solid land marked the next era of the earth’s progress.  It was surrounded