80. Studying metaphysical works as a part of my education, I took great interest in the theory of moral sentiments, and published essays on topics of that nature in the “Portfolio;” but previously, I wrote my “Memoir on the Blowpipe.” In 1810, my “Brief View of the Policy and Resources of the United States” was published, in which it was first truly advanced that credit is money.
81. Subsequently, more than a hundred publications were made by me, for the most part on chemistry and electricity, yet always intermingled with political, moral, and financial essays.
82. I am now, more than ever, a theologian; and my first publications touching that subject date after the attainment of threescore and ten.
83. But theology and religion were subjects always near to my heart; and were accompanied by the pain arising from the discordancy of my opinions with those entertained by much-loved relatives and friends.
84. I do not understand how any man of common sense can conceive that theological, metaphysical, or experimental science can be the separate object of contemplation; or that the share that either may occupy at any age, to the exclusion of the others, will not depend on exterior contingencies.
85. I became a believer in God solely from my intuitive perception of the existence of a governing reason. Of course, all things were to be ascribed to that reason ultimately, but proximately to the very laws which this author considers as the object or basis of positive science.
86. He holds that our inquiries should be bounded by the inscrutability of the well-ascertained physical properties and laws of matter. Coinciding, practically, with Comte until lately, I held that inquiry should be bounded by the inscrutability of the Divine Lawgiver, to whom these laws owed existence. But Spiritualism has opened an avenue to inquiry beyond the boundary thus practically admitted no less by myself than by Comte. Other inscrutable laws and phenomena have to be recognised within a region for the existence of which Comte, in denying spiritual agency, allows no room.
87. Though, practically, this field of inquiry was shut out from me as well as from Comte, theoretically, it was not excluded by my philosophy. Although in ascribing the universe to mind, the unity of its design and harmony of its phenomena led to the inference that it must be due to one supreme mind, there was still room for the coexistence of any number of degrees of subordinate mental agency, between that supreme mind and man.
88. Beside those antagonists to Spiritualism, who would set aside the evidence of persons living at the present time and who are known to be truthful, by the evidence of others who lived some thousand years since, spiritualists are assailed by such as admit their facts, but explain them differently. Thus the Roman Catholic Church has admitted the manifestations to indicate an invisible physical and rational power which cannot be attributed to human agency. But instead of ascribing them to spirits, good or bad, of mortals who have passed the portal of death, they consider them the work of Old Nick.
89. If this personage ever did influence the acts of any sect, manifestly it must have been in those instances in which alleged religious error has been made the ground for persecution, from the time of the extirpation and spoliation of the Midianites, Canaanites, and others, down to that of the extirpation of the Albigenses, the auto da fé, inquisition, massacre of St. Bartholomew, fires of Smithfield, roasting of Servetus, and the persecution of the Quakers and witches.