"People have laughed at 'table-turning;' but they will never laugh at the philosophy, the wisdom, the charity, which shine forth in the communications given by spirits of high degree. Physical manifestations are the vestibule of spiritism, intended to enable you, on entering it, to lay aside your prejudices, as you lay aside your cloak. I cannot insist too strongly upon the duty of making of your meetings a serious centre for the obtaining of instructions in regard to truth and duty. Let those who would obtain physical manifestations seek for them, but elsewhere; elsewhere let them see; elsewhere let them hear; but do you, here, seek after understanding and charity. What do you suppose you are, in the eyes of the higher spirits, when you have made a table turn or rise from the ground? Schoolboys. Does a man pass his time in going again over the A B C of his subject? But when we see you united in the desire to obtain instructive communications, we look upon you as men, and as men who are seriously in search of truth." "SAINT LOUIS"
(To the inquiry addressed by us to Saint Louis as to whether, by the above remarks, he intended to disparage physical manifestations, he replied: -)
"I could not intend to disparage physical manifestations, because they take place by God's permission and for a useful purpose; but, in saying that they are the vestibule of spiritism, I assign to them their true place, and acknowledge their special utility. I blame only those who make, of physical manifestations, an object of amusement and curiosity, an end rather than a means; and who fail to draw from them the moral teachings which they are intended to enforce. They may be said to stand in the same relation to the philosophy of spiritism that grammar does to literature; he who has advanced in the latter does not lose his time in studying over again the elements of the former."
