difficult, but throws an air of absurdity and improbability on the whole subject, furnishes a very strong argument in favor of the persuasion that this notion has been founded on experience, and is not the result of either fancy or gratuitous invention. The idea of spirits appearing like angels, with wings, &c., seems to be drawn from these relations in the Bible, when messengers were sent from God to man; but those departed spirits are not angels, though probably destined in the course of ages to become so: in the meantime, their moral state continues as when they quitted the body, and their memories and affections are with the earth—and so, earthly they appear, more or less. We meet with some instances in which bright spirits have been seen—protecting spirits, for example, who have shaken off their earth entirely, clinging to it yet but by some holy affection or mission of mercy—and these appear, not with wings, which whenever seen are merely symbolical, for we can not imagine they are necessary to the motion of a spirit, but clothed in robes of light. Such appearances, however, seem much more rare than the others. It will seem to many persons very inconsistent with their ideas of the dignity of a spirit that they should appear and act in the manner I have described, and shall describe further; and I have heard it objected that we can not suppose God would permit the dead to return merely to frighten the living, and that it is showing him little reverence to imagine he would suffer them to come on such trifling errands, or demean themselves in so undignified a fashion. But God permits men of all degrees of wickedness, and of every kind of absurdity, to exist, and to harass and disturb the earth, while they expose themselves to its obloquy or its ridicule.