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ng as we do this mysterious nature, throbbing with the attraction of the eternal sphere, who shall say that it touches no spiritual confines,--that it has communion only with the beings that we see? It is a dull atheism which repudiates all such intimations as superstitious or absurd. To speak more distinctly, I allude to the consoling thought which springs up almost intuitively, that the departed may, at times, see us, and be present with us, though we do not recognize them. For wise and good reasons, our senses may so constrain us that we cannot perceive these spiritual beings. But the same reasons do not exist to shut them from beholding and visiting us. The most essential idea of the immortal state is that it yields certain prerogatives which we cannot possess in our mortal condition. May it not be, therefore, that while it is our lot to be restricted to sensuous vision, and to behold only material forms, it is their privilege, having received the spiritual sight, to see both spiritual and material things? Nor need we imagine that immortality implies distance from us,--that change of state requires any great change of place. Looking through this earthly glass, we see but darkly; but when death shatters it we may behold close around us the friends we have loved, and find their spiritual peculiarity is not incompatible with such near residence. The homes of departed spirits may be all around us,--these spirits themselves may be ever hovering near, unseen in our blindness of the senses. At all events, we deem it one of the grand distinctions of spirit that it is not confined to one region of space, but may pass, quick as its own intelligence, from sphere to sphere. And while I would rebuke rash speculation, I would also rebuke the cold materialism which unhesitatingly rejects an idea like this which I have now suggested. I maintain, moreover, that such speculation is not all idle. It serves to quicken within us the thought of how near the dead may be to us, to purify that thought, and to breathe upon our fevered hearts a consoling hope. And when I combine its intrinsic reasonableness with the spirit and spiritualism of Christianity, and that intuitive suggestion which springs up in so many souls, I can urge but faint objection to those who entertain it, and would, if possible, share and diffuse the comfort which it gives. Nearer, than, than we imagine--close as in mortal contact, and more intimately--may be those who
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