e
pleasure of Heaven, for aught that we know to the contrary, be permitted
or ordained to mingle amongst those who yet remain in the body. The
abstract possibility of apparitions must be admitted by every one who
believes in a Deity, and His superintending omnipotence. But imagination
is apt to intrude its explanations and inferences founded on inadequate
evidence. Sometimes our violent and inordinate passions, originating in
sorrow for our friends, remorse for our crimes, our eagerness of
patriotism, or our deep sense of devotion--these or other violent
excitements of a moral character, in the visions of night, or the rapt
ecstasy of the day, persuade us that we witness, with our eyes and ears,
an actual instance of that supernatural communication, the possibility
of which cannot be denied. At other times the corporeal organs impose
upon the mind, while the eye and the ear, diseased, deranged, or misled,
convey false impressions to the patient. Very often both the mental
delusion and the physical deception exist at the same time, and men's
belief of the phenomena presented to them, however erroneously, by the
senses, is the firmer and more readily granted, that the physical
impression corresponded with the mental excitement.

So many causes acting thus upon each other in various degrees, or
sometimes separately, it must happen early in the infancy of every
society that there should occur many apparently well-authenticated
instances of supernatural intercourse, satisfactory enough to
authenticate peculiar examples of the general proposition which is
impressed upon us by belief of the immortality of the soul. These
examples of undeniable apparitions (for they are apprehended to be
incontrovertible), fall like the seed of the husbandman into fertile and
prepared soil, and are usually followed by a plentiful crop of
superstitious figments, which derive their sources from circumstances
and enactments in sacred and profane history, hastily adopted, and
perverted from their genuine reading. This shall be the subject of my
next letter.

LETTER II.

Consequences of the Fall on the Communication between Man and the
Spiritual World--Effects of the Flood--Wizards of Pharaoh--Text in
Exodus against Witches--The word _Witch_ is by some said to mean
merely Poisoner--Or if in the Holy Text it also means a Divineress,
she must, at any rate, have been a Character very different to be
identified with it-