Thus it is throughout the Bible. Paul had visions of the third Heavens. Christ descended into Hades, and rose again; but he has told us nothing of the state or doings of departed spirits. Where the sacred penmen draw back, and scarce afford a hint, except as to the certainty of retribution in another world, modern mystics, modern impostors have given us volumes. Fools rashly venture in Where angels dare not tread. And so, too, in respect to death itself. The impostor Davis profanely assumes to describe the process of the elimination of the spirit from the struggling body, and some have pronounced the unfeeling caricature worthy of the genius of Dante or of Milton. But with what solemn reserve does the Scripture cast a vail over this dread event, and reveal to us only its moral consequences. It is a going down into a "Valley of Shadows," and all that the believer is allowed to know of it is, that in that Valley there is one to take him by the hand, one who will walk with him through its darkness, and "whose rod and staff shall comfort him" through all that dreary way. To this correspond the terms expressive of the idea in primitive languages. It is a going into _Hades_, the _Invisible_, the _Unknown_, not in the sense of any doubt, implied as to the real existence of a spirit world (for men have never been without a distinct belief in this, as matter of fact), but unknown as to its physical states and modes of being. In the Hebrew it is _Beth Olam_, the _Hidden House_ (imperfectly rendered _the long home_, Eccles. xii.), where "the souls of the dead take no part in things that are done beneath the sun." The living go to them, but they come not back any more to us. And what right-feeling heart would have it otherwise. They are Not dead, but parted from their house of clay. They still dwell, too, in our memories; they are enshrined in our hearts. Who would not trust them to the Scripture promises of rest and peace, rather than imagine them as subject to the unrest, and sharing in the agitating and tumultuous scenes of this pseudo-spiritualism. The believer in rappings charges his opponent with a Sadducean lack of faith. But we would take issue with him on the term. The naturalistic spirit-hunter is a stranger to the idea. With him it is only the sensualism and sensual scenes of this earth carried into a supposed spiritual world. It is a faith which has no trust, no patient waiting. It is not "the evidence of things unseen." It is not "the substance of things hoped for." It is rank materialism, after all. It is, moreover, _essentially_ irreligious. As far as it extends, it threatens, to an awful degree, to de-religionize the human soul--not only to take away all true spirituality of view, but to render men incapable of those ideas, on which alone a right religious belief can be founded.