“I concede it. But I do not rely on his word alone. I examine the spirit, and I conclude he is identically Franklin only when I find that he has that intimate acquaintance with the earthly life of Franklin which I should expect to find in case he really were Franklin.” “But that intimate acquaintance does not establish the identity, unless you know beforehand that the spirit could not have it, unless he were Franklin. The spirits, I find by consulting your book, have told you the most secret things of your own past life, and secrets which could by no human means be known to any one but yourself. Yet the spirit who knew these secrets was not yourself, but an intelligence distinct from you. Now, if the spirit could show himself thus intimately acquainted with your earthly life without being you, why might he not be intimately acquainted with Franklin’s earthly life without being Franklin?” “That is a point of view under which I have not considered the question. But, nevertheless, I have subjected the spirits to severe tests, and compelled them to confirm what they say by extraordinary visible manifestations.” “But the difficulty I find is, that there is nothing in those manifestations that necessarily establishes the identity pretended; for they do not necessarily establish the credibility of the power exhibiting them, as you yourself allow, when you acknowledge that the spirits are untruthful, and not unfrequently lie to you. Miracles accredit the miracle-worker, establish his credibility, only when they are such as can be performed only by the finger of God. If they are such as can be performed by a created power, without special Divine intervention, or such as might be performed by a lying spirit, they prove nothing as to the credibility of their author. A messenger, or a person claiming to be a messenger from God, performs a miracle which can be performed only by the hand of God, and thus establishes his credibility, because he proves by the miracle that God is with him, vouches for what he says; and God, we know, can neither deceive nor be deceived, and therefore will not endorse a deceiver. But prodigies, though superhuman, which do not transcend the powers of created intelligence, do not accredit the agent who performs them, certainly not when it is conceded the agent can, and in many cases does, lie and deceive. I must think, my dear Judge, that you have been hasty in concluding the identity pretended. All you can conclude, from the phenomena in the case, is, that there is present a superhuman spirit, personating or pretending to be Bacon, Franklin, Penn, Swedenborg, or some other well known person who has lived in the flesh, and is able to speak and act in the character assumed.” “My attention, I grant, has not been so specially turned to the question of identity of the spirit with the individual personated, as it has been to establishing the reality of the spiritual presence,” said the Judge.