the doing so easy, though with only the senses we had
before it would have been next to impossible.

"At this moment snow is falling on the Callisto; but this you could not
know by seeing, and scarcely any degree of evolution could develop your
sight sufficiently, unassisted by death. With your instruments,
however, you could already perceive it, notwithstanding the intervening
rocks.

"Your research on earth is the best and most thorough in the history of
the race; and could we but give you suggestions as to the direction in
which to push it, the difference between yourselves and angels might be
but little more than that between the number and intensity of the
senses and the composition of the body. By the combination of natural
laws you have rid yourselves of the impediment of material weight, and
can roam through space like spirits, or as Columbus, by virtue of the
confidence that came with the discovery of the mariner's compass,
roamed upon and explored the sea. You have made a good beginning, and
were not your lives so short, and their requirements so peremptory, you
might visit the distant stars.

"I will show you the working of evolution. Life sleeps in minerals,
dreams in plants, and wakes in you. The rock worn by frost and age
crumbles to earth and soil. This enters the substance of the
primordial plant, which, slowly rising; produces the animal germ.
After that the way is clear, and man is evolved from protoplasm through
the vertebrate and the ape. Here we have the epitome of the struggle
for life in the ages past, and the analogue of the journey in the years
to come. Does not the Almighty Himself make this clear where He says
through his servant Isaiah, 'Behold of these stones will I raise up
children'?--and the name Adam means red earth. God, having brought man
so far, will not let evolution cease, and the next stage of life must
be the spiritual."

"Can you tell us anything," asked Ayrault, "concerning the bodies that
those surviving the final judgment will receive?"

"Notwithstanding the unfolding of knowledge that has come to us here,"
replied the spirit, "there are still some subjects concerning which we
must look for information to the inspired writers in the Bible, and
every gain or discovery goes to prove their veracity. We know that
there are celestial bodies and bodies terrestrial, and that the
spiritual bodies we shall receive in the resurrection will have power
and will be inco