so speculated. Did they but know enough of spirit-teaching to be aware of the influence that acts upon them, they would be far nearer the truth than those who have fancied that their Bible contains a complete and infallible Revelation, to which nothing will ever be added, and from which no scrap may ever be removed as useless. It is not necessary for practical purposes in your life on earth to speculate on the exact correlation between man's mental action and God's revelation. You may easily bewilder yourself by vain attempts to separate the inseparable and to define the indefinable. Sufficient that we tell you that spirit-preparation precedes your knowledge, and enables the progressive mind to evolve for itself higher views of truth, those very views being not the less the very voice of the messenger of truth. And so revelation is correlative with man's needs. It is to us curious how perpetually man seeks to define his own part in our work. What if we use the readiest means to our hand, and instead of keeping to the sterile work of acting without human agency, influence the mind and mold the thoughts of those whom we influence? Is that a less noble and profitable work than producing some curious phenomenal action apart from human means—as the juggler who astonishes and amuses by apparently inexplicable tricks? We have done enough to show an independent action. Cease to tie down our work by confining it to so narrow a groove and learn to receive the impressions which we can convey to the mind, and which will be all the more vivid because we find material stored up there. You need not fear that we shall find there anything which will supersede the necessity for our teaching. Scarcely. But I want to keep my own individuality out of the question. And, on wider grounds, many great thinkers have doubted the possibility of Divine revelation at all. They argue that man cannot receive what he cannot understand, and that no external revelation can make a home in his mind which he could not have evolved for himself. They are answered in what has been already written. You will see as time goes on how wrong is such conclusion. We do but protest against the mechanical nature of the work to which you would condemn us. Even when you imagine your own mind to be most assuredly acting you err, for there is no such thing with you as independent action. You have always been guided and influenced by us.
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