resuming to have so much to
say while his cousin Jane was in the room.

"Now, as to table-turning, Mr. Dempster," said Harriett, who fancied
she saw Brandon's eyes directed to that side of the table a little too
often, "you will never convince me there is an atom of truth in it. I
am quite satisfied with Faraday's explanation. You may think you have
higher authority, but I bow to Faraday."

"Faraday's explanation is most insufficient and most unsatisfactory; it
cannot account for things I have seen with my own eyes," said Mr.
Dempster.

"But to what do all these manifestations tend?" asked Jane. "Of what
value are the revelations you receive from the so-called spiritual
world?"

"Of infinite value to me," said Mr. Dempster, "I have had my faith
strengthened, and my sorrows comforted. We do want to know more of our
departed friends--to have more assurance of their continued existence,
and of their continued identity than we have without spiritualism. I
always believed that nothing was lost in the divine economy; that as
matter only decayed to give way to new powers of life, so spirit must
only leave the material form it inhabits to be active in a new sphere,
or to be merged in the One Infinite Intelligence. But this is merely an
analogy--a strong one, but only an analogy, which cannot prove a fact."

"But, Mr. Dempster, I think we have quite sufficient grounds for
believing in immortality from revelation. In scientific matters, I bow
to Faraday, as I said before; in religious matters, I would not go any
further than the Bible. But if that does not satisfy you, of course you
must inquire of chairs and tables," said Miss Phillips, with a
condescending irony, which she thought very cutting.

"The Bible is indistinct and indefinite as to the future state--so much
so that theologians differ on the possibilities of recognition in
heaven," said Mr. Dempster. "Now, eternal existence without complete
identity is not to me desirable. That our beloved ones no longer have
the warm personal interest in us which they felt in life--that they are
perhaps merged in the perfection of God, or undergoing transmigration
out of one form of intelligence to another, without any recollection of
what happened in a former state, is not consoling to the yearning human
heart that never can forget, and with all the sufferings which memory
may bring, would not lose the saddest memory of love for worlds. This
assurance of continued identity is w