"I have just found in a second-hand bookstore your two volumes of Conversations on the Gospels, and have read them with benefit and delight. Nowhere have I seen the Gospels so spiritualized, so rationalized, Platonized. The _naïveté_ aside, it seems the product of a company of idealists. Is it possible that common human nature in children, thrown upon its own resources, can exhibit such intelligence, or instinct, if you please to call it so? Were these children taken as they came, or were they selected, culled?" They came from families occupying various social advantages, and were a fair average of children thus born and bred. I give a sample of one of the conversations as reported from their lips at the time. Their ages were from six to twelve years. CONVERSATION ON WORSHIP. Mr. Alcott read (having previously read the beginning) the remainder of the Conversation of Jesus with the woman of Samaria (John iv. 16-30),-- 16. Jesus saith unto her, Go call thy husband, and come hither. 17. The woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said unto her, Thou hast well said I have no husband: 18. For thou hast had five husbands, and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly. 19. The woman said unto him, Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet. 20. Our fathers worshipped in this mountain; and ye say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship. 21. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, believe me, the hour cometh when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. 22. Ye worship ye know not what: we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews. 23. But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth: for the father seeketh such to worship him. 24. God _is_ a Spirit: and they that worship him must worship _him_ in spirit and in truth. 25. The woman saith unto him, I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ; when he is come, he will tell us all things. 26. Jesus saith unto her, I that speak unto thee am _he_. 27. And upon this came his disciples, and marvelled that he talked with the woman: yet no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her? 28. The woman then left her water-pot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, 29. Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ? 30. Then they went out of the city, and came unto him. Before he had time to ask the usual question,-- SAMUEL T. (_spoke_). I was most interested in this verse: "He that drinks of this water shall thirst again, but he that drinks of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst." He means by this, that those who heard what he taught, and did it, should live always, should never die, their spirits should never die. MR. ALCOTT. Can spirits die? SAMUEL T. For a spirit to die is to leave off being good.