blind and puerile credulity! If I am not at all times equally
penetrated by the great fact of man's conscious immortality, it is
because of my undesert. A way to _know_ of the doctrine has been
revealed: it is by doing the will of the Father: who of us has fulfilled
the condition? But I can meet you on lower ground, and declare, that,
according to our human observation, it is not well for man to _know_ the
destiny of his being in all its details until the trials and victories
of life have taught him to turn such knowledge to elevating use. It is
the deplorable sinfulness of our nature which seeks to obtain without
deserving, to possess the end and despise the appointed means."

Some reply would doubtless have been made to these pertinent
considerations, had not the confused tramp of a committee been heard at
the door. The professors of the "New Dispensation" had come to conduct
the Reverend Charles Clifton to their platform. The distinguished
convert shuddered, as if affected by some incorporeal presence, and
suffered himself to be led away.

"I can do nothing more," murmured Dr. Burge; "and why should I stay to
hear diluted rhetoric, or inflated commonplace, from lips which, however
unworthily, once proclaimed the simplicity of the gospel?"

"Because it is not well to prejudge what may offer some possible variety
in this credence," I ventured to suggest.

"You are right; we will stay."

A murmur of applause followed the appearance of Clifton upon the
platform,--yet it was only a murmur; for the flock, long pastured upon
delicate delusions, received as matter of course whatever shepherding
chance offered. Did not the face of the medium wear an expression of
earthly disappointment at this slender recognition? Could it be that
there was needed the hot-house heat of a carnal "success" to favor this
exquisite flowering of the spirit? Can we suppose that this whole matter
was no other than some Yankee patent to avoid the awful solitude in
which each human soul must enter into relations with the unseen?

Slowly and in dreamy heaviness the discourse began. The inspirational
claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's
cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as
the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at
work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer
abundance. The meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whe