The great majority of these suppositions are too material, crude, shallow and baseless, on their very faces, to even challenge the attention of a thinker for a single moment; others are too far-fetched; and not one of them all is there, but presents itself in the face of a dozen objections, from every one of ten thousand objectors.
That this assertion may not appear groundless, and seem to be dictated by improper reasoning, let us merely glance at the three theories held by the people who claim to know most about the matter—'Spiritualists.' One of the lights of that class gravely informs us that the spiritual world is located quite a distance on the other side of 'The Milky Way;' he and his disciples affirm that spirits can and do come back to earth daily; that our desires draw them, and that they, being there and feeling us draw them, instantly quit the land of bliss, and flit toward us, accomplishing the distance in 'no time at all;' which very indefinite period we may safely assume to be three or four hours, more or less. Now, light coming from the nearest fixed star at the rate of two hundred thousand miles a minute, cannot reach us in less than eighteen years—while light from any star on the further side of the same great belt of suns, requires a period of time too vast for us to comprehend, ere it can gladden our eyes.
The Spirits' dwelling, according to this school, lies beyond even those vastly distant orbs. Supposing, however, that it exists in the neighborhood of the nearest star, any spirit who gets here after a journey of three hours, must travel through space at not less than the rate of twelve thousand three hundred and eighty-seven millions of miles during every second of the awful
