Spiritualism Challenges Bible Authority

As the nineteenth century progressed and the age of rationalism opened up, these long cherished beliefs were subjected to intellectual enquiry and scientific testing. Only those things that attracted concrete proof passed these tests. The belief that death is simply the gateway to a new but different conscious experience was a theory that could not be reproduced in the laboratory. Where was the evidence that man's essential being survived death? It only existed by virtue of the authority claimed by the church.