religious faith tends to increase the claimants on a man's loyalty; and no true claimant to loyalty and we fully allow the claim-comes so low down in the scale as a party does. No kind of valid claim is so much subject to revision from the side of considerations that spring from Christian ground. Christianity is, in reference to what many people call politics, a disturb ing element. The attitude which a profoundly Christian mind is apt to take toward party questions was well illustrated in all the political utterances of Mr. Maurice. He would always seek for the true principle at the root of any outgrowth of party feeling, would point out the distortion to which it was liable, and the failure which awaited it just so far as it admitted any influence from this distortion, and there he would stop. He never led his hearers to see that one side was right and the other wrong. And that is just what a politician has to see-a politician, that is to say, in this narrow sense of the word, which we are obliged to give in to, even while we protest against it.

However, in all this there is nothing specially characteristic of Christianity, except so far as Christianity has been the moral faith which men have felt most earnestly. All such faith originates sympathies and beliefs which tend to confuse and trouble party union. The very protest from which we have taken our text fully allows that Christians owe to Comtists a most valuable reminder of that side of their political duties, however we name it, by which party feeling is cast into the shade. No body of men have done more to uphold the claims on politicians of "morality touched with emotion" than the Positivists have; and if they have not had to meet the accusation of "humanitarianism, want of patriotism," and the like, it is only because it has not been felt worth while to make it. They have shown the truest patriotism in urging the duties of their country on those who represent its external action, and are as much bound to consider its duties as each one of us is to consider our own duties; but they have shown also exactly that interference of religious feeling with party feeling which provokes most hostility on the part of politicians. We

may call it religious feeling, since it is their religion, though its object is humanity; and we may call the feeling with which it interferes party feeling, though its object is a country; for patriotism sinks to the level of party feeling when our country is regarded as a corporate being with claims, and without duties. And if Christians had been as true to their creed as Positivists had been to theirs (they are no worse men, but the task has been more difficult), they would have been better politicians in the larger sense, and worse in the narrower sense. Humanity is not the object of their worship. But it is the object of sympathies touched with new life from their creed, and of duties taking a new sanction from the same source. Who can doubt, for instance, that if Christianity had been a living, predominant influence, the anti-slavery movement would have been a distinctly Church movement? And who doubts now, whatever be his political creed, that the abolition of slavery was a great political step, and that every one who helped it on was not only a better Christian, but a better politician a soldier fighting on the right side, even if you mean by the right side nothing but the side which is going to win? At the same time, it must have happened more than once that this question weakened a party, even when a party was working for good. Nothing in Macaulay's prosperous life is so interesting as the sacrifices which he made to his father's principles, but at the time it must have seemed to many, and, perhaps, sometimes even to himself, as if he were sacrificing not so much his interest to his duty, as his political feeling to his personal feeling. Yet now there is no act of his life which would be felt so conspicuously right, in a political sense, by every one.

There is no subject which more distinctly exhibits the difference between the amalgam of Christian belief with ecclesiastical feeling which represents Christianity to the world, and its true spirit, as the history of slavery does. We must confess that there have been men who would have laid down their lives to make other men Christians, and did all they could to keep them slaves ; perhaps this must be said, for instance, of Whitefield. Of course, the very motives

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which make men cowardly about giving offence and careful of preserving their influence take strength from sources that call themselves Christian. But there can be no doubt in an unprejudiced mind what has been the influence of Christianity on slavery. Ce n'est pas Spartacus qui a supprimé l'esclavage, c'est bien plutôt Blandine," says a historian whose testimony to anything Christian will not be received with suspicion-M. Renan. It is surprising that that tribute to the martyred slave-girl has not aroused more attention. it is a tribute not to this or that form of Christianity, but to the teaching of Jesus. He said, "Resist not evil.' We say,

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That is an unpractical, exaggerated doctrine; we must pare down its meaning to some much smaller, before we can make any use of it. M. Kenan says this was the teaching that put an end to slavery. A pagan hero refused to be butchered to make a Roman holiday," fired his oppressed brethren with the passion for liberty, and taught slaves to die in the strength of that passion. We cannot say that the genius and courage which it taxed the utmost strength of Rome to subdue did anything toward ending slavery. The quelled revolt of Spartacus riveted the chains of his brethren, sharpened the scourge under which they groaned, and hardened against them the heart of the most humane of the Romans. Then came a faith which appealed with special promise to the slave, which offered duties he could fulfil and rights that he could claim; he accepted it, he believed the words of Christ literally, he feared not them which could kill the body, and after that had no more they could do; he accepted death and torture at their hands with unresisting hope, and when the storm of persecution was past slavery had become impossible. Slaves had taught freemen how to die, they were enrolled among the saints, and it was impossible that humanity could continue to recognize a distinction which was thrown into the shade as much by common memories as by common hopes. We do not say that this is the way all historians would narrate the facts, but certainly the one from whom we have taken this view is not a prejudiced advocate of Christianity.

The records of history might be made to yield very different answers to our question, no doubt. The worst crimes it commemorates have been committed in the service of something that the criminals sincerely believed to be Christianity, and it is no unnatural inference to conclude that its teachings were not intended to be applied to the region where they were capable of so hideous a distortion. At times every Christian student of history must have felt an enormous relief in turning from modern to ancient history, and escaping from the atmosphere of something which calls itself by the name of his faith, but which must have seemed to him more nearly a complete antithesis to everything to which his faith bears witness than any kind of belief and feeling that was in the world before it existed. And then, of course, it is easy to go on to the wish that men should live politically as they did live before it existed, that the whole world of political relation should remain as untouched by the aims associated with Christianity as is the life of the men one reads of in Thucydides. At times, indeed, it appears as if this aim were to be realized in our day. We do not believe it can be realized in any day. But what we may say decidedly is that it will be something new in the world if it ever does come to pass that Christianity gives no color to political life. History shows us an endless complexity of alliance between Christian feeling and that against which Christian feeling should be a perpetual struggle; but the modern idea of private life regulated by one code, and public by another-this, whatever else there is to be said for it, is not a conception that can be illustrated from the life of the past. History may help us to understand how it arose. The Church was born in a age when civil virtue was as impossible as to an individual is filial piety in old age. It became the rival, not the ally, of a life which was younger than itself. A national life grew up beneath its shelter, and was not easily recognized as its equal. Yet it is the most theological of all poets, and the one in whom the spirit of the Middle Ages is most completely expressed, who gives a most emphatic sanction to the belief that these powers are equals. No ideal of life is more political than Dan

te's. The Emperor and the Pope are correlative authorities, performing functions equally sacred, alike agents in giving Christendom a unity which in this mediæval ideal it was to possess in a much higher degree than our modern thinkers dare to dream of. From this point of view, the modern condition of a congeries of States struggling through some vague conceptions of international law to attain a certain approximation to the organic unity which was, according to the earlier view, to be something coherent and definite, would appear an enormous retrogression, a process the very reverse of Evolution. It may be

said that this ideal was never realized; nevertheless, it remains an important fact that it existed. The religious con• ception of European civilization was a far more organic thing than is that of our secular age. And whether or not any one can hope for the return of any similar ideal, whether or not we may believe that faith shall ever again be a bond of national union, we must surely allow that in this function it has no obvious rival; and that the unity of Christendom, if it is not to be achieved by Christian faith, seems likely, from all we can see, to remain a mere dream.— Spectator.

THE greater number of ghost stories --perhaps nearly the whole of them-are generally disbelieved in the nineteenth century. Few persons will dispute the propriety and justice of this result. Many of the stories represent the ghosts as beings of so foolish and unmeaning a character, that respect for the spirits of the departed almost enforces unbelief. Many have been explained by physical and even commonplace and vulgar causes such as rats, starlings, and even mischievous boys and girls, or wicked people who have some purpose to gain by deluding their neighbors into belief in a supernatural visitation. Falsehood, imagination, exaggeration, and that peculiar process of evolution or growth which goes on when a story passes from mouth to mouth-vires acquirit eundo-accounts for a large portion. And, lastly, there are many stories which would be remarkable if they could be substantiated, but which it is impossible to lay hold of in their original form, and the basis of which, therefore, it is impossible to estimate as to its reality or unreality.

The most sceptical person, however, will allow that there are to be found in the midst of the rabble and mob of ghost stories certain narratives of a very respectable and even solemn aspect, which it is not easy entirely to put on one side as manifestly fictitious, and which certainly do not seem to be chargeable with

obviously puerile or anile absurdity. There is, for example, a remarkable class of stories depending upon one alleged fact-namely, the appearance of a person deceased, nearly at the moment of decease, to some other person to whom the deceased has been known in life. These stories may be described as well-nigh legion; there are several which may be mentioned as even deserving the epithet of classical; and they seem to be occurring in this rationalistic nineteenth century as frequently as in the less enlightened centuries which have preceded it. Whatever else may be said of stories of this class, at least it cannot and must not be said that they are so absurd and childish that they are unworthy of the slightest consideration on the part of sensible and thoughtful

men.

Reflection upon this class of story has led me to some speculative thoughts of a partly physical and partly spiritual kind, which, I think, may possibly be interesting; possibly, also, useful and suggestive, and which therefore I have written down, and now submit to the consideration of the candid and thoughtful reader.

It will, however, make my paper more readable, and therefore will assist the purpose which I have in view, if I introduce the subject by telling a story of the kind above indicated, which was lately told in my presence by the person

concerned-which has, I believe, not been in print before, and which will bring vividly before the reader's mind the kind of apparition, or alleged apparition, upon which I desire in this paper chiefly to fix his thoughts.

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A Cambridge student, my informant, had arranged, some years ago, with a fellow student that they should together in Cambridge at a certain time for the purpose of reading. A short time before going up to keep his appointment my informant was in the South of England. Waking in the night he saw, as he imagined, his friend sitting at the foot of his bed. He was surprised by the sight, the more so as his friend was dripping with water he spoke, but the apparition, for so it seems to have been, only shook its head and disappeared. This appearance of the absent friend occurred twice during the night. Information was soon received that, shortly before the time of the apparition being seen by the young student, his friend had been drowned while bathing.

This story has the typical features of a whole class. The essential characteristic is the recognition, after physical dissolution, of a deceased person, by one who has known him in his lifetime, in the form which distinguished him while a member of the living human family. Stories of this class contain, in a simple, humble, prosaic form, the features of Shakespeare's magnificent poetical creation in Hamlet." It will be remembered how, in this case, the poet lays stress upon the identity of appearance between the deceased king and the ghost:

Now let me pass from the spiritual to the physical, and endeavor to expound some notions concerning real vision and supposed vision of objects, which may be useful in helping us to form something like a rationale of such apparitions as those of which I have been speaking.

Most persons, in these days of science and science-gossip, I suppose, know something of the manner in which vision is produced, so far at least as the process can be known. It will be necessary, however, for my purpose briefly to describe the process.

When an object is placed before the eye, the light emanating from each point of the object falls upon the eye, and having passed through the several lenses and humors of which the eye is composed, is made to converge upon a point in the screen or retina which constitutes the hinder portion of the eye; and so a picture is formed upon the retina, much in the same way as in the photographer's camera-obscura. In fact, the eye may be described with some advantage, and without much error, as being a living camera-obscura. The retina is in reality the expanded extremity of the optic nerve, which communicates with the brain; our object, therefore, by means of the machinery of the eye, is placed in immediate communication with the brain; every wave of light from each point of the object produces a vibration on the retina, and so presumably on the brain. After this our physical investigation comes to an end-the vibrations of light from our visible object are lost in mystery. It is no exaggeration to say that we know nothing more than men knew centuries ago. A man says, “I see a ship;" and he tells the truth, but how he sees it neither he nor any one else can tell. You track the ship to its picture on the retina, but there you must leave it even if you say that you can connect it with the brain, you have still an infinite gap between the impression on the brain and the result expressed by the words I see."

The fact is that in vision we have a demonstrable transition from the physical to the spiritual; how the transition takes place it baffles our intellect and our imagination even to guess, but that there is such a transition no one can doubt. The electric telegraph conveys its vibra

tions along the wires and affects the receiving instrument (whatever it may be) at the other end of the wire, but you need your receiving clerk to interpret the vibrations and make intelligible the message conveyed. And there is quite as definite a transformation and transition in the case of sight, when the visual message from an external object has been received by the brain; the brain is the receiving instrument, the receiving clerk is the mind of man.

This being so, is it not at least conceivable that, as the object moves the visual machinery of the eye, and this machinery moves the mind, so if the mind be directly moved (supposing for a moment that this is possible), the result may be the movement of the visual machinery, or at all events the production of the impression that it has been so moved? *

To illustrate my meaning, take the case of the ringing of a bell. The pull ing of the bell-rope causes the bell to give forth a sound; if you hear that sound, you conclude that the rope has been pulled; and if the bell should, in reality, have been rung by some one who had immediate access to it, you would still, in default of other knowledge, conclude, though erroneously, that the sound arose from the pulling of the

rope.

Now let it be supposed, for argument's sake, that the mind can be acted upon otherwise than through the senses. The senses, as we all know, are the ordinary avenues to the mind, especially the two highest of the senses-namely, seeing and hearing; still it does not seem unreasonable to suppose that there may be other avenues. If man has a spiritual nature which is embodied in a fleshly tenement which is at least a reasonable supposition, and corresponds almost to a human instinct and if there be spiritual beings which are not so embodied, then it would seem not unreasonable to suppose that those spiritual beings should be able to hold converse

*The distinction between ordinary vision and the reverse process suggested in the text may be represented thus

Ordinary process.
Sight-Brain-effect-Knowledge.
Extraordinary process.
Knowledge-Brain-effect-Sight.

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with the spiritual part of men without the use of those avenues which the senses supply, and which are the only means whereby one material being can communicate with another. To take the highest example of all it seems reasonable to suppose that God can, and does, communicate directly with the spirit of man. Certainly this is assumed in Holy Scripture, and it is difficult to conceive of any form of religion in which the possibility of commerce between the Spirit of God and the spirit of man does not constitute an important element. The notion of actions being inspired by God, or of communications which may properly be expressed by the phrase "God said," or Thus saith the Lord," does not, to say the very least, strike the mind as an impossible or even as a strange notion. On the other hand, the difficulty is rather to conceive of God as a spiritual being, to whose will and power the being of mankind is due, without recognizing, as a first principle, the possibility of communication between God and that part of man which may be said to be most akin to Himself.

Let us go a step further. Is it not conceivable that the spiritual part of man, when set free from the burden of the flesh," may (under conditions which we, of course, are not in a position to determine) have communication with the spiritual part of another man who still lives in the body? I do not at all say that we could anticipate by the power of reason that this would be so; but I can see nothing unreasonable in supposing it possible, and if phenomena should be in favor of the hypothesis, I think the hypothesis could not be set aside by any à priori considerations. The only thing really postulated by the supposition is the double being of man, material and spiritual, which almost every one concedes, and which many consider to be self-evident. I conclude, therefore, that the supposition of some kind of intercourse taking place between the spirit of one departed and the spirit of a living man is not absolutely absurd and incredible.

But if this be so, we arrive at a case similar to that of the bell being rung without any pull upon the rope. In other words, may it not be, that a communication made directly by one spirit to