“’How mighty are the Kingdoms of the Air!  How vast they are—­how densely populated—­how glorious are their destinies—­how all-powerful and wise are their inhabitants!  They possess everlasting health and beauty—­their movements are music—­their glances are light—­they cannot err in their laws or judgments, for their existence is love.  Thrones, principalities, and powers are among them, yet all are equal.  Each one has a different duty to perform, yet all their labours are lofty.  But what a fate is ours on this low earth!  For, from the cradle to the grave, we are watched by these spiritual spectators—­watched with unflinching interest, unhesitating regard.  O Angelic Spirits, what is there in the poor and shabby spectacle of human life to attract your mighty Intelligences?  Sorrow, sin, pride, shame, ambition, failure, obstinacy, ignorance, selfishness, forgetfulness—­enough to make ye veil your radiant faces in unpierceable clouds to hide forever the sight of so much crime and misery.  Yet if there be the faintest, feeblest effort in our souls to answer to the call of your voices, to rise above the earth by force of the same will that pervades your destinies, how the sound of great rejoicing permeates those wide continents ye inhabit, like a wave of thunderous music; and ye are glad, Blessed Spirits!—­glad with a gladness beyond that of your own lives, to feel and to know that some vestige, however fragile, is spared from the general wreck of selfish and unbelieving Humanity.  Truly we work under the shadow of a “cloud of Witnesses.”  Disperse, disperse, O dense yet brilliant multitudes! turn away from me your burning, truthful, immutable eyes, filled with that look of divine, perpetual regret and pity!  Lo, how unworthy am I to behold your glory! and yet I must see and know and love you all, while the mad blind world rushes on to its own destruction, and none can avert its doom.’”

Here Amy threw down the book with a sort of contempt, and said to me: 

“If you are going to muddle your mind with the ravings of a lunatic, you are not what I took you for.  Why, it’s regular spiritualism!  Kingdoms of the air indeed!  And his cloud of witnesses!  Rubbish!”

“He quotes the cloud of witnesses from St. Paul,” I remarked.

“More shame for him!” replied my friend, with the usual inconsistent indignation that good Protestants invariably display when their pet corn, the Bible, is accidentally trodden on.  “It has been very well said that the devil can quote Scripture, and this musician (a good job he is dead, I’m sure) is perfectly blasphemous to quote the Testament in support of his ridiculous ideas!  St. Paul did not mean by ‘a cloud of witnesses,’ a lot of ‘air multitudes’ and ’burning, immutable eyes,’ and all that nonsense.”

“Well, what did he mean?” I gently persisted.

“Oh, he meant—­why, you know very well what he meant,” said Amy, in a tone of reproachful solemnity.  “And I wonder at your asking me such a question!  Surely you know your Bible, and you must be aware that St. Paul could never have approved of spiritualism.”