ar as I have looked into Spiritualism, it seems to me
only to have proved that, if any communication has ever been made from
beyond the gate of death--and even such supposed phenomena are
inextricably intertwined with quackeries and deceits--it is an abnormal
and not a normal thing. The scientific evidence for the continuance of
personal identity is nil; the only hope lies in the earnest desire of
the hungering heart.

The spirit cries out that it dare not, it cannot cease to be. It cannot
bear the thought of all the energy and activity of life proceeding in
its accustomed course, deeds being done, words being uttered, the
problems which the mind pondered being solved, the hopes which the
heart cherished being realised--"and I not there." It is a ghastly
obsession to think of all the things that one has loved best--quiet
work, the sunset on familiar fields, well-known rooms, dear books,
happy talk, fireside intercourse--and one's own place vacant, one's
possessions dispersed among careless hands, eye and ear and voice
sealed and dumb. And yet how strange it is that we should feel thus
about the future, experience this dumb resentment at the thought that
there should be a future in which one may bear no part, while we
acquiesce so serenely in claiming no share in the great past of the
world that enacted itself before we came into being. It never occurs to
us to feel wronged because we had no conscious outlook upon the things
that have been; why should we feel so unjustly used because our outlook
may be closed upon the things that shall be hereafter? Why should we
feel that the future somehow belongs to us, while we have no claim upon
the past? It is a strange and bewildering mystery; but the fact that
the whole of our nature cries out against extinction is the strongest
argument that we shall yet be, for why put so intensely strong an
instinct in the heart unless it is meant to be somehow satisfied?

Only one thought, and that a stern one, can help us--and that is the
certainty that we are in stronger hands than our own. The sense of
free-will, the consciousness of the possibility of effort, blinds us to
this; we tend to mistake the ebullience of temperament for the
deliberate choice of the will. Yet have we any choice at all? Science
says no; while the mind, with no less instinctive certainty, cries out
that we have a choice. Yet take some sharp crisis of life--say an
overwhelming temptation. If we resist it, what is i