“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 what I find in spiritualism; and it meets the wants of my soul.”

“What extraordinary heathenish ideas!” said Miss Phillips, who in her Derbyshire retreat had never heard anything of pantheism, or of this doctrine of metempsychosis as being entertained by sane Englishmen.  “If you have such notions, I do not wonder at your flying to anything; for my part, I have never been troubled with doubts.”

“The Bible is, I think, purposely indistinct on the subject of the future life,” said Elsie.  “Each soul imagines a heaven for itself, different in some degree from that of any other soul; but to me memory and identity are so necessary to the idea of continued existence that I cannot conceive of a heaven without it.”