Assume as a fact that a spirit, taking to itself the form of a man, had appeared to me, there at once grows out of that admission this other question: Why should so extraordinary a circumstance, such a miracle, in fact, have been developed? For what purpose was that spirit there? Denying, as I do, that it would have been a miracle, I take up the question and attempt my reply. In the first place, I am no sectarian; least of all am I a spiritualist; and if I am anything of a creed man,—which the Lord grant I am!—I am of a church that is founded on the system of marvels, as indeed, for that matter, are all churches, Christian or Pagan. The Saviour of mankind, let me with all reverence say, is admitted to have been duplex in character,—mortal for our sympathies, divine for our worship. If he suffered death,—which some doubt he did, but only the semblance of death,—his spirit was no more existent after his execution than before it, and consequently he had power to rise from the sepulchre where they had laid him and appear to the soldiers and to the holy women. That he did appear we have the evidence of the great apostles and the contemporary legends of the Roman narrators. Indeed, it is not only asserted that he was manifest after death, but that ghosts walked the streets of Jerusalem, and when the veil of the temple was rent, the graves gave up their dead. These were the phenomena of a sublime epoch,—an epoch that in the death of a God was grander and more inexplicable than the incident of the earth’s formation, and that of the stars and skies that are over it. All events have their purposes, and I can see the purpose here that should evoke these wonders. His mission had reached the point where the spiritual manifestations must overshadow the recollections of his corporeal existence, and prove to the world, by tangible exhibition, that beyond the grave there was a life. The Scriptures teem with the legends of spirits,—of ghosts, if you like that word better,—and men of all the known wisdom of those days believed in them, because they seemed to have seen them. Why should they have been prevalent then, and not now? Who can dare answer that question, or dare deny, with proof to back the denial, that such things never did exist, or, existing, appear to human vision? As well tell me that the same vegetables did not have life then as now, the same qualities of sand and superficial soil and rocks; and indeed have not certain plants, that were for centuries lost to human cultivation, been revived? Nothing is lost, nothing changes, though we call reproduction change, and flatter ourselves that we have spoken a great philosophy. Why is the world full of ghost-stories outside of the Scriptures? Because ghost-stories have been veritable facts,—these lay ghost-stories travelling alongside of the clerical ghost-stories of the Inspired Book, and substantiating to the common appreciation of all mankind the veritableness of the Bible.