"Finally, my young brother, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as your labor is not in vain in the Lord.

Yours, faithfully,

EPHRAIM STEARNS."

CHAPTER III.

TALK WITH A SPIRITUALIST.

ISRAEL showed the letter of his former guardian to Thomaston, who read it with a look which signified half compassion, half contempt.

"The old gentleman," said he, indifferently, "has not kept pace with the progress of the enlightened world. The sense he has is not ventilated in God's free air. His ideas of the devil are worthy of the Salem witchcraft. They make me think of the girl in France whose case is detailed by Dr. Picknell. She, by an old woman's advice, drank water saturated with the earth of two priests' graves, believing thereby to insure to herself a great spiritual reward. She got only the larvae of beetles, and twelve days after, a green insect flew out of her mouth."

"You talk like a man of charity, a many-sided mind, delivered from the self-hood or the Ichheit, as the Germans call it," said Israel.

"But I cannot help commiserating such ignorance," responded Thomaston, "whether it appears in an old man or a young girl.”

"has

"This man whom you despise," said Israel, the works of all the German and French rationalists, the English infidels, and the American transcenden

talists in his library. He is as familiar with them as with - I was about to say his Bible. He reads easily and speaks fluently the ancient and modern languages. With several eminent Germans he has sat under their vine and fig-tree, and held long discourse upon the subjects on which they have treated in their books. I think that we, who have hardly shaken the dews of college walls from our sapling branches, can ill afford to rattle defiance at the ignorance of the sturdy old oak with an experience gathered from the centuries.”

"I beg pardon of the venerable shade, but I hope he will remember that the world revolves on its axis, even though he survives all change and chance in unparalleled dignity," retorted Thomaston; "I believe what our American philosopher says: 'Wherever a man comes there comes revolution. The old is for slaves.'"

"Truth is eternal," answered Israel; "hence as good at the beginning as at the end. Truth is God. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. The old ex cathedra uttered to the first family-child: 'If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door,' is just as plain and true to-day as it was then. Cain was one of your men. He thought for himself, independent of God. He was jealous of Abel, whose sacrifice found more favor than his own. He did not see any use in atoning blood, when the earth was full of inexhaustible resources for 'self-adjustment,' which he could secure by his own hand. Then came a revolution. He struck Abel out of sight. This man thought his brother's work meet for slaves, not for himself. He made a

mistake. The revolution was in himself; not in the earth, nor in the Everlasting God. The blood of his brother cried from the very ground beneath him. As well might he have made a shield and carried it between him and the morning star, announcing afterwards that such star was no more. How petty is such a design! how infinitely small its attempt at execution! As though a man could strike out Christ and his revealed word!"

"Such talk is but fustian aston.

"Perhaps it is," answered Israel calmly; "but my theme is worthy of a better advocate, and yet it has no need of any human voice to be uplifted in its behalf. Perfect in itself, it requires no imperfection to consummate its mission. But setting aside all abstract argument, let us look at the practical bearings of the two schemes the Gospel plan and the self-hood; the Christ and the Man. What countries have been civilized, what neighborhoods elevated, blessed and truly enriched, or what poor, down-trodden heart permanently refreshed and comforted by such words as have been left on record by Bahrdt, Loeffler, Lessing, Reimarus, Paulus, Strauss, Renan, Herbert, Collins, Tindal, Blount, Shaftesbury, Voltaire, and Paine? Souls have been made giddy with a presentiment of emancipation from the old. They have been stultified with their own divine. They have dreamed of drinking the nectar of Olympus from the muddy ponds of their own hearts. They have grasped diamonds in fire-flies, and seen angels in rotten wood. They have lived charmed lives. But which of them all has died

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a charmed death? Which of them all, in the face of the inevitable event which was about to carry them into the visible presence of the great God, could rapturously say, with the apostle, For I am now ready to be offered, and the time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith. Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give me at that day; and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing'?"

"But what has all this to do with modern Spiritualism?" asked Thomaston, after an embarrassing pause. "Very much," answered Israel; "from what I gather out of the papers and books which I have had from you, upon this subject, I understand that this thing, Spiritualism, is only a new phase or demonstration of an infidelity which has run through all the ages since the beginning; nature and the self-hood against the law and God—against revelation and the Christ. These new supernatural sights and sounds are only a recasting of the old characters, and a revamping of the old stage-machinery. Every quarter of an age must have its spiritual sensation."

"That is to say, you think it all trick and humbug - of a piece with the Salem witchcraft?" pursued Thomaston.

"By no means. The trick and humbug are not with the machinery, (that works fairly in most cases; no doubt there are some counterfeits,) but they belong to the underlying principle from which this operation springs- the invisible law. Neither was the Salem