our of Jacob's opponent; yet, further, to the speech, in
the language of raps, of spiritual beings, whose discourses, in point of
coherence and value, are far inferior to that of Balaam's humble but
sagacious steed. I have not the smallest doubt that, if these were
persecuting times, there is many a worthy "spiritualist" who would
cheerfully go to the stake in support of his pneumatological faith; and
furnish evidence, after Paley's own heart, in proof of the truth of his
doctrines. Not a few modern divines, doubtless struck by the
impossibility of refusing the spiritualist evidence, if the
ecclesiastical evidence is accepted, and deprived of any _a priori_
objection by their implicit belief in Christian Demonology, show
themselves ready to take poor Sludge seriously, and to believe that he
is possessed by other devils than those of need, greed, and vainglory.

Under these, circumstances, it was to be expected, though it is none the
less interesting to note the fact, that the arguments of the latest
school of "spiritualists" present a wonderful family likeness to those
which adorn the subtle disquisitions of the advocate of ecclesiastical
miracles of forty years ago. It is unfortunate for the "spiritualists"
that, over and over again, celebrated and trusted media, who really, in
some respects, call to mind the Montanist[65] and gnostic seers of the
second century, are either proved in courts of law to be fraudulent
impostors; or, in sheer weariness, as it would seem, of the honest dupes
who swear by them, spontaneously confess their long-continued
iniquities, as the Fox women did the other day in New York.[66] But,
whenever a catastrophe of this kind takes place, the believers are no
wise dismayed by it. They freely admit that not only the media, but the
spirits whom they summon, are sadly apt to lose sight of the elementary
principles of right and wrong; and they triumphantly ask: How does the
occurrence of occasional impostures disprove the genuine manifestations
(that is to say, all those which have not yet been proved to be
impostures or delusions)? And, in this, they unconsciously plagiarise
from the churchman, who just as freely admits that many ecclesiastical
miracles may have been forged; and asks, with calm contempt, not only of
legal proofs, but of common-sense probability, Why does it follow that
none are to be supposed genuine? I must say, however, that the
spiritualists, so far as I know, do not venture to o