With a voice distinct from that of the living, so that none of you can perceive the least manifestation of breathing, this personal form tells you not to be afraid--that nothing will hurt you--to stand as near as you please, and handle him that you may know whether or not he is flesh and bones. You comply with the request, and find no material substance. Now what would be your conclusion? Would you feel sure that these matters were all the effect of your own fancy and that of others? Can you produce a single instance out of all history, in which so many persons were thus impressed, while in reality they saw and heard nothing? But suppose further, that this Spectre informs you of events which you cannot possibly know by other means, what then would be the inference? “I make a distinction, says Doctor Johnson, between what a man may experience by the mere strength of his imagination, and what imagination cannot possibly produce.” Thus, suppose I should think I saw a form and heard a voice cry, “Johnson, you are very wicked--and unless you repent, you will certainly be punished;” my own unworthiness is so deeply impressed on my mind, that I might imagine I thus saw and heard, and therefore I should not believe that an external communication had been made to me. But if a form should appear and a voice should tell me that a particular man had died at a particular hour--a fact which I had no apprehension of, nor any means of knowing, and this fact, with all its circumstances, should afterwards be unquestionably proved; I should in that case be persuaded that I had supernatural intelligence imparted to me. By this it appears, that had Doctor Johnson been an eye and ear witness of only a small part of what is now to be related, he would have believed that he had seen the form and heard the language of a Spectre. “He had a very philosophical mind, says Mr. Boswell, and such a rational respect for testimony, as to make him submit his understanding to what was authentically proved, though he could not comprehend why it was so.”[9] And the same will be the disposition of every pious and reasonable mind. But if you reject the evidence of experience, the evidence of substantial testimony and the evidence of predictions, where are you? On the billows of scepticism, without a helm, and your lee shore is infidelity. It is frequently asserted, and that by multitudes, that the true origin of the following letters is a gross artifice. ASSERTED I say: for that is all. Twenty-six years’ time they have had to look round, search and prove that they are not mistaken. And for this purpose, means and pains have not been wanting. Nothing however has yet transpired to make good the assertion; but remarkable events have disproved it.