"For no one can believe that Mr. A. could appear to his wife, after he was dead, unless God sent him; and if God sent him, no one can doubt the truth of his testimony. No one can well conceive of any motive Mrs. A. could have in giving this account, unless she fully believed it. Her daughter also was able to corroborate the account in some degree, by saying that she heard her mother conversing in the bedroom, but heard no other voice; and she interrogated her on the subject when she came out, by asking with whom she had been talking, &c. But surprised on being informed that it was with her father, and supposing, as she naturally would, that her mother had been talking in her sleep, she requested her to say nothing about what she had either seen or heard, saying, that no one would believe her if she did. But Mrs. A. was able to convince her daughter that she had not been asleep, by telling her of persons who had gone by her window during the time; one man in a soldier's dress, and another driving a yoke of oxen. I state these things from memory only, for I have not seen the account since soon after it was published, or at least within three or four years, that I now recollect; yet I believe I could state the whole of it nearly verbatim as it was published. Now I do not believe that Mrs. A. ever designed to state, or that she now has the least idea that she has stated any thing incorrect on this subject. And yet after all, I doubt of its reality! "Such is my incredulity; and I see no way to avoid it. If it be a fault in me, may God forgive it; though I am wholly unconscious of it's being one. "When one of two things presented to the mind must be true, and the truth of one absolutely excludes the truth of the other, a rational man will always believe that which to his own understanding is the most probable. Concerning therefore the account given by Mrs. A. it stands, in my mind thus: either it is all a reality, i. e. that her husband did absolutely appear to her; that he did give her the account which she has stated; and that that account is in fact true; or else, it was nothing more than the power of imagination, which a certain train of ideas and reflections had produced in her mind, which, like a kind of reverie, seemed to her like a reality. And although I should not have made the same conclusion once, yet from my present knowledge of human nature, together with my own experience, I do not hesitate to reject the former idea, and believe the latter. If in judging thus, I do injustice either to Mrs. A. or to the truth of God, I can only ask forgiveness of a wrong, which, in truth, is by no means intended. But in justice to my own understanding I could not state differently, if I knew this would be the last sentence I should ever write.