I so well knew, as the signal
for a surrender of my will. I had come rather unwillingly, for I was
getting heartily tired of the business, and longed to shake off my habit
of (spiritual) intoxication, which no longer possessed any attraction,
since I had been allowed to visit Agnes as an accepted lover. In fact, I
continued to hold my place in the circle principally for the sake of
satisfying myself with regard to the real nature and causes of the
phenomena. On this night, something in Mr. Stilton's face arrested my
attention, and a rapid inspiration flashed through my mind. "Suppose," I
thought, "I allow the usual effect to be produced, yet reverse the
character of its operation? I am convinced that he has been directing
the current of my thought according to his will; let me now render
myself so thoroughly passive, that my mind, like a mirror, shall reflect
what passes through his, retaining nothing of my own except the simple
consciousness of what I am doing." Perhaps this was exactly what he
desired. He sat, bending forward a little over the table, his square
jaws firmly set, his eyes hidden beneath their heavy brows, and every
long, wiry hair on his head in its proper place. I fixed my eyes upon
him, threw my mind into a state of perfect receptivity, and waited.

It was not long before I felt his approach. Shadow after shadow flitted
across the still mirror of my inward sense. Whether the thoughts took
words in his brain or in mine,--whether I first caught his disjointed
musings, and, by their utterance reacting upon him, gave system and
development to _his_ thoughts,--I cannot tell. But this I know: what I
said came wholly from him,--not from the slandered spirits of the dead,
not from the vagaries of my own imagination, but from _him_. "Listen to
me!" I said. "In the flesh I was a martyr to the Truth, and I am
permitted to communicate only with those whom the Truth has made free.
You are the heralds of the great day; you have climbed from sphere to
sphere, until now you stand near the fountains of light. But it is not
enough that you see: your lives must reflect the light. The inward
vision is for you, but the outward manifestation thereof is for the
souls of others. Fulfil the harmonies in the flesh. Be the living music,
not the silent instruments."

There was more, much more of this,--a plenitude of eloquent sound, which
seems to embody sublime ideas, but which, carefully examined, contains
no more palpable s