ng as we do this mysterious nature,
throbbing with the attraction of the eternal sphere, who shall say that
it touches no spiritual confines,--that it has communion only with
the beings that we see? It is a dull atheism which repudiates all such
intimations as superstitious or absurd. To speak more distinctly, I
allude to the consoling thought which springs up almost intuitively,
that the departed may, at times, see us, and be present with us, though
we do not recognize them. For wise and good reasons, our senses may so
constrain us that we cannot perceive these spiritual beings. But the
same reasons do not exist to shut them from beholding and visiting us.
The most essential idea of the immortal state is that it yields certain
prerogatives which we cannot possess in our mortal condition. May it
not be, therefore, that while it is our lot to be restricted to sensuous
vision, and to behold only material forms, it is their privilege, having
received the spiritual sight, to see both spiritual and material things?

Nor need we imagine that immortality implies distance from us,--that
change of state requires any great change of place. Looking through
this earthly glass, we see but darkly; but when death shatters it we
may behold close around us the friends we have loved, and find their
spiritual peculiarity is not incompatible with such near residence.
The homes of departed spirits may be all around us,--these spirits
themselves may be ever hovering near, unseen in our blindness of the
senses. At all events, we deem it one of the grand distinctions of
spirit that it is not confined to one region of space, but may pass,
quick as its own intelligence, from sphere to sphere. And while I would
rebuke rash speculation, I would also rebuke the cold materialism which
unhesitatingly rejects an idea like this which I have now suggested.

I maintain, moreover, that such speculation is not all idle. It serves
to quicken within us the thought of how near the dead may be to us, to
purify that thought, and to breathe upon our fevered hearts a consoling
hope. And when I combine its intrinsic reasonableness with the spirit
and spiritualism of Christianity, and that intuitive suggestion which
springs up in so many souls, I can urge but faint objection to those
who entertain it, and would, if possible, share and diffuse the comfort
which it gives. Nearer, than, than we imagine--close as in mortal
contact, and more intimately--may be those who