"An advice so contrary to the spirit of the age! why, it is the last to be expected."
"Perhaps so; but listen: That mind is not matter, your experience proves, as does that of most people. What mind is, perhaps we do not know; but that mind acts upon mind, irrespective of space and obstacles, we feel. Listen! you know my family; a family less superstitious scarcely exists. We are too much wedded to cause and effect lightly to believe. My grandfather was as little credulous as my father. Now hear what happened to him. He had a brother to whom he was fondly attached, and by whom he was as fondly loved. Their correspondence was constant. That brother went to India, as an officer. One night about twelve o'clock, as my grandfather was going to sleep, having sat up later than usual, the curtains at the foot of the bed were with drawn, and his brother, pale, but in full regimentals, appeared and said, 'Good-by, Frank.' My grandfather related the circumstance at breakfast next morning, and noted it down in writing, being confident that he was not asleep. After due time the Indian mail arrived, giving an account of the brother's death on the field of battle at the exact hour and day specified. Ere his spirit winged its flight, we know not whither, it had communicated with the being it loved best on earth."
Frederic turned pale. "What do you infer from this?" he asked.
"Simply this," returned Eugene; "that 'there are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,' and this influence of mind on mind is one of them. If the Supreme Ruler have made a law that man, to be assisted by him, must pray to him, must put himself in communication with him, who are we that we should refuse the means? If you fear the evil spirit in a man, try if there be no good spirit capable of protecting you. The universal testimony of mankind is in favor of supernatural agencies. We should ponder well ere we throw from us such aid."
Frederic smiled, and rose to take his leave. Advice so different from what he had expected was scarcely likely to be well received. He had no answer ready, so he left the narrow-minded religionist to his own crude fancies.
And Eugene closed the oaken door, and returned, and for the first time of his life knelt down to beseech light from the Author of light—light to guide him through these wearisome shoals of doubt and darkness—light to show him something more than how to render matter subservient to animal comfort—light to enlighten the [{51}] inward feeling. Good and evil, what are they? Mind and matter—which is the true reality? What are we to live for—the animal life, or the spiritual? And is the purely spiritual distinct from the purely intellectual as well as from the animal? Is there a soul, the functions of which are different, distinct, from those of the body, and to the knowledge of which mere intellect cannot arrive? What is nature? What is revelation? How do they act upon each other? What is the office, what the aim of each? Revolving these themes, it was deep in the night ere the young man sought his couch.
TO BE CONTINUED.
ORIGINAL.
INDEPENDENCE OF THE CHURCH.
Our age is more sentimental than intellectual, more philanthropic than Christian, more material than spiritual. It may and no doubt does cherish and seek to realize, with such wisdom as it has, many humane and just sentiments, but it retains less Christian thought than it pretends, and has hardly any conception of catholic principles. It studies chiefly phenomena, physical or psychical, and as these are all individual, particular, manifold, variable, and transitory, it fails to recognize any reality that is universal, invariable, and permanent, superior to the vicissitudes of time and place, always and everywhere one and the same. It is so intent on the sensible that it denies or forgets the spiritual, and so engrossed with the creature that it loses sight of the creator.