therefore, may be nothing more than the creations of a powerful imagination.
I answer: That such a singular hallucination continued without interruption for a period of twenty-seven years, must surely be regarded as a species of insanity. And his writings, therefore, ought to furnish conclusive evidence of this. Let the objector, then, open at a venture to almost any chapter in the present volume; let him read especially, and with close attention, such chapters as those from XXXII. to XXXVII. inclusive; let him examine what he there finds by the light of reason, experience, the accepted laws of the human soul, and his highest conception of the love and wisdom of God and the final destiny of man; let him also bear in mind that the teaching in these chapters is altogether different from the belief of Christians a hundred years ago, however acceptable it be to multitudes at the present day; let him remember, too, that the author professes to have here reported what he had learned about heaven "from things heard and seen;" let him do all this, and then say whether such a report can be the offspring of mental hallucination.
3. Another test—the surest, perhaps, of all—I would respectfully ask our objector to apply; and that is, the obvious practical tendency of these disclosures.
