Some artist
of the future will draw the scene--the sitting-room of the
wooden, shack-like house, the circle of half-awed and half-
critical neighbours, the child clapping her hands with upturned
laughing face, the dark corner shadows where these strange new
forces seem to lurk--forces often apparent, and now come to stay
and to effect the complete revolution of human thought. We may
well ask why should such great results arise from such petty
sources? So argued the highbrowed philosophers of Greece and
Rome when the outspoken Paul, with the fisherman Peter and his
half-educated disciples, traversed all their learned theories,
and with the help of women, slaves, and schismatic Jews,
subverted their ancient creeds. One can but answer that
Providence has its own way of attaining its, results, and that it
seldom conforms to our opinion of what is most appropriate.
We have a larger experience of such phenomena now, and we can
define with some accuracy what it was that happened at Hydesville
in the year 1848. We know that these matters are governed by law
and by conditions as much as any other phenomena of the universe,
though at the moment it seemed to the public to be an isolated
and irregular outburst. On the one hand, you had a material,
earth-bound spirit of a low order of development which needed a
physical medium in order to be able to indicate its presence. On
the other, you had that rare thing, a good physical medium.
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