rling; the sympathy of Christ is always with you, and every
effort you make is heaping up treasure for you in Heaven."

We fancy we have heard those "wonderful words" before. For all their
wonderfulness, ghosts are seldom original. Mrs. Booth-Tucker reminds
us of the gushing lady novelist, who describes her hero as divinely
handsome and miraculously clever, but when she opens his mouth, makes
him talk like a jackass.

"General" Booth's daughter does not see that she found words for her
mother's ghost. She is not so sharp as Dr. Johnson, who carried on a
discussion with an adversary in a dream, and got the worst of it. For a
time he felt humiliated, but he recovered his pride on reflecting that
he had provided the other fellow with arguments.

When Mrs. Booth-Tucker tells that "the radiance of her face spoke to
me," we can easily understand the subjective nature of her "vision," and
as readily dispense with a budget of those "wonderful words."

Nor are we singular in incredulity. Mr. Stead cannot put his tongue
in his cheek at a member of the Booth family, but the _Christian
Commonwealth_ says "the story is both improbable and absurd," and adds,
"it is just such fanaticism as this that brings religion into contempt
with many educated people." Our pious contemporary, like any wretched
materialist, declares that many persons have seen ghosts "when under the
influence of fever or in a low state of health."

All this is sensible enough, and in a Christian journal very edifying.
But if our pious contemporary only applied this criticism backwards,
what havoc it would make with the records of early Christianity! Mrs.
Booth-Tucker is not in all points like Mary Magdalene, but she resembles
her in fervor of disposition. Out of Mary Magdalene we are told that
Jesus cast "seven devils," which implies, rationalistically, that
she was strongly hysterical. She was more likely to be a victim of
"fanaticism" than Mrs. Booth-Tucker. Yet the ghost story of Mrs. Booth's
daughter is discredited, and even stigmatised as discreditable, while
the brain-sick fancies of Mary Magdalene are treated as accurate
history. She was at the bottom of the Jerusalem ghost story, and her
evidence is regarded as unimpeachable. So much do circumstances alter
cases!

Our pious contemporary regards all modern ghosts as "fever dreams." So
do we, and we regard all ancient ghosts in the same light The
difference between ancient and modern superstition is onl