“And does construct nothing,” retorted Fellowes.

“Very true,” said Harrington, “and therein keeps its word; which is more, I fear, than can be said with your more ambitious spiritualists, who profess to construct, and do not.”

“But you must give the school of spiritualism time:  it is only just born.  You seem to me to be confounding the school of the old, dry, logical deism with the young, fresh, vigorous, earnest school’ which appeals to ‘insight’ and ‘intuition.’”

“No,” said Harrington, “I think I do not confound.  The first and the best of our English deists derived his system as immediately from intuitions as Mr. Parker or you.  You know how it sped—­or, if you do not, you may easily discover—­with his successors:  they continually disputed about it, curtailed it, added to it, altered it, agreed in nothing but the author’s rejection of Christianity, and forgot more and more the decency of his style.  So will it be with your Mr. Newman and his successors.  They will acquiesce in his rejection Christianity; depend upon it, in nothing more.  He may get his admirers to abandon the Bible, but they will have naught to do with the ’loves, and joys, and sorrows, and raptures, which he describes in the ‘Soul’; they would just as soon read the ‘Canticles.’”

“I really cannot admit,” said Fellowes, “that we modern spiritualists are to be confounded with Lord Herbert.”

“Not confounded with him, certainly,” replied Harrington, “but identified with him you may be; except to be sure, that he was convinced of the immortality of man as one of the few articles of all religion; while many of you deny, or doubt it.  The doctrines—­”

“Call them sentiments, rather; I like that term better.”

“O, certainly, if you prefer it; only be pleased to observe that a sentiment felt is a fact, and a fact is a truth, and a truth may surely be expressed in a proposition.  That is all I am anxious about at present.  If so far, at least, we may not patch up the divorce which Mr. Newman has pronounced between the ’intellect and the ‘soul,’ it is of no use for us to talk about the matter.  I say that Lord Herbert’s articles—­”

“There again, ‘articles,’” said Fellowes; “I hate the word; I could almost imagine that you were going to recite the formidable Thirty-nine.”

“Rather, from your outcry, one would suppose I was about to inflict the forty save one:  but do not be alarmed.  The articles neither of Lord Herbert’s creed nor of your own, I suspect, are thirty-nine, or any thing like it.  The catalogue will be soon exhausted.”

“Here again, ‘creed’:  I detest the word.  We have no creed.  Your very language chills me.  It reminds me of the dry orthodoxy of the ‘letter,’ ‘logical processes,’ ‘intellectual propositions,’ and so forth.  Speak of ‘spiritual truths’ and ‘sentiments,’ which are the product of immediate ‘insight,’ of ‘an insight into God,’ a ’spontaneous impression on the gazing soul,’ to adopt Mr. Newman’s beautiful expressions, and I shall understand you.”