ain, sickness,
sorrow, and to a lesser degree with sin. How they do this remains to be
seen, but the force of their appeal depends upon the fact that a very
considerable and constantly growing number of people believe that they
have really done it. Such cults as these have also found a place for the
New Testament tradition of healing; they have also appealed strongly to
those who seek a natural or a pseudo-natural explanation for the
miraculous elements in religion generally. They have been expectedly
reinforced by the feeling for the Bible which strongly persists among
those who are not able to find in the inherited Protestant position that
real help in the Bible which they had been taught they should there
find, and who are not, on the other hand, sufficiently acquainted with
the newer interpretations of it to find therein a resolution for their
doubts and a vital support for their faith. Finally, Christian Science
and kindred cults offer a demonstration of the reality of religion in
health and happiness, and generally, in a very tangible way of living.
Here, then, is the first region in which we find a point of departure
for modern religious cults and movements.

Spiritualism organizes itself around another center. Religion generally
demands and offers a faith in immortality. We are not concerned here
with the grounds which various religions have supplied for this faith
or the arguments by which they have supported it. Generally speaking,
any religion loses ground as it fails to convince its adherents of
immortality, or justify their longings therefor. Any religion supplying
clear and indisputable proof of immortality will command a strong
following and any seeming demonstration of immortality not particularly
associated with this or that religious form will organize about itself a
group of followers who will naturally give up pretty much everything
else and center their entire interests upon the methods by which
immortality is thus supposed to be demonstrated. Now modern Spiritualism
comes in just here. It professes to offer a sure proof of immortality to
an age which is just scientific enough to demand something corresponding
to scientific proof for the support of its faith and not scientific
enough to accept all the implications of science, or to submit to its
discipline. Theosophy and kindred cults are generally a quest for
deliverance along other than accepted Christian lines; they substitute
self-redemption for