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the very same old jade, on the same errands. And if time cannot convert a falsehood into truth, that which was a fraud and delusion two thousand years ago remains in falsehood still. Unerring truth is the attribute of Deity. Through the entire universe perfect order and regularity everywhere prevails, and nothing ever occurs, or can occur, to disturb that harmony. Therefore every pretended Spiritual manifestation which impugns that harmony must be false, and we are well assured that in all the farrago of Spiritual manifestation nothing has ever taken place, or can take place, which scientific investigations cannot account for.
Men talk about Spirits as though they were ordinary things, well known and understood. But what are Spirits? Who has seen a Spirit or can describe such an incorporeal existence? We cannot even in imagination have any conception of an immaterial being, because, we have no faculties by which we can recognize such existences. All experience proves that our knowledge of the external world is acquired wholly through the medium of bodily organs. Each organ has its distinct and separate task, and can never perform any vicarious duty. The optic nerve is the sole organ of vision, and when wholly destroyed, total blindness ensues. The sense of hearing comes through the auditory nerves; when these are destroyed or wanting we have no means of acquiring a knowledge of sounds, and perfect deafness is the consequence: so of every other organ by which we become acquainted with external objects. Therefore when we are told, upon no matter what authority, that any individual can see without eyes, or has the faculty of any other sense
