a famous philosopher, known to us through history as Thales, the Milesian; and there is no doubt but that he was one of the first, if not the very first man of great mental rank and caliber, who publicly taught the doctrine of human immortality.
Doubtless the same general train of reasoning resorted to by Thales was nearly, if not quite, identical with that which constitutes the basis of nearly all human hope to-day, if we except the modern 'Spiritual' theory, which, while very comforting and satisfactory to great numbers, is far from being so to millions more; for there are quite a number of questions which a doubting man may ask of those who predicate an hereafter upon the evidence furnished by the 'Spiritualism' of the day, which those who are asked are not able to clearly and satisfactorily answer. To many, the reasoning of the 'Spiritualists,' like that of the ancient, amounts to "It is quite possible that human beings are immortal;" and that is all. Many a man and woman are dying daily deaths from the fearful doubts that constantly arise as to the truth of the Immortality of the Soul; doubts, too, that will still insist on coming up, in spite of the startling phenomena of the 'manifestations' whose origin is attributed to disembodied men and women; they still leave an aching void—a void which I am about to attempt to fill; and, I believe, successfully.
After the great Milesian, came other philosophers—men of genius and intuition—who had dim and indistinct glimmerings of the great truth. Feeling, rather than seeing, that there must be a life beyond the body they strove to impress their convictions upon others; yet the sum total still amounted to but a probability at best. As a result of the great search for light upon
