Mr. Hogarth's Will

by Catherine Helen Spence

"Of infinite value to me," said Mr. Dempster, "I have had my faith strengthened, and my sorrows comforted. We do want to know more of our departed friends—to have more assurance of their continued existence, and of their continued identity than we have without spiritualism. I always believed that nothing was lost in the divine economy; that as matter only decayed to give way to new powers of life, so spirit must only leave the material form it inhabits to be active in a new sphere, or to be merged in the One Infinite Intelligence. But this is merely an analogy—a strong one, but only an analogy, which cannot prove a fact."

"But, Mr. Dempster, I think we have quite sufficient grounds for believing in immortality from revelation. In scientific matters, I bow to Faraday, as I said before; in religious matters, I would not go any further than the Bible. But if that does not satisfy you, of course you must inquire of chairs and tables," said Miss Phillips, with a condescending irony, which she thought very cutting.

"The Bible is indistinct and indefinite as to the future state—so much so that theologians differ on the possibilities of recognition in heaven," said Mr. Dempster. "Now, eternal existence without complete identity is not to me desirable. That our beloved ones no longer have the warm personal interest in us which they felt in life—that they are perhaps merged in the perfection of God, or undergoing transmigration out of one form of intelligence to another, without any recollection of what happened in a former state, is not consoling to the yearning human heart that never can forget, and with all the sufferings which memory may bring, would not lose the saddest memory of love for worlds. This assurance of continued identity is what I find in spiritualism; and it meets the wants of my soul."

"What extraordinary heathenish ideas!" said Miss Phillips, who in her Derbyshire retreat had never heard anything of pantheism, or of this doctrine of metempsychosis as being entertained by sane Englishmen. "If you have such notions, I do not wonder at your flying to anything; for my part, I have never been troubled with doubts."

"The Bible is, I think, purposely indistinct on the subject of the future life," said Elsie. "Each soul imagines a heaven for itself, different in some degree from that of any other soul; but to me memory and identity are so necessary to the idea of continued existence that I cannot conceive of a heaven without it."

"I do not know," said Mr. Dempster, shaking his head. "Till I saw these wonderful manifestations, I had no clear or satisfactory feeling of it, and now I have. The evidence is first hand from the departed spirits themselves, and their revelations are consistent with our highest ideas of the goodness of God, and of the eternal nature of love."

"'That which is seen is not faith,' St. Paul says, and the very minuteness of your information would lead me to doubt its genuineness," said Francis. "I do not think it was intended that we should have such assurance; but that we should have a large faith in a God who will do well for us hereafter as he has done well for us here. But though I may not feel the need of such assurance, I do not deny that others may. There is much that is very remarkable about these spiritual manifestations;—whether it is mesmerism, or delusion, or positive fraud, I think it is a remarkable instance of the questioning spirit of the day, unsatisfied with old creeds and desirous of reconstructing some new belief."

"I should like you to come to a seance" said Mr. Dempster, glad to find some one who was disposed to inquire on the subject. He had only recently become a convert, and was very anxious to induce others to think with him. "I am quite sure that you will see something that will impress you with the reality of the manifestations."

"I should like to go too," said Mrs. Phillips.

"I certainly should not," said Harriett. "I think these things are quite wicked."