“I see,” said Fellowes, “you are profoundly prejudiced against the spiritualists.”

“I believe not,” said Harrington; “the worst I wish them is that they may be honest men, and appear what they really are.”

“I suppose next,” exclaimed the other, “you will attribute to the modern spiritualists the scurrility of the elder deists,—­of Woolston, Tindal, and Collins?”

“No,” said Harrington, “I answer no; nor do I (remember) compare Lord Herbert in these respects with his successors.  He was an amiable enthusiast; in many respects resembling Mr. Newman himself.  Do you remember, by the way, how that most reasonable rejecter of all ‘external’ revelation prayed that he might be directed by Heaven whether he should publish or not publish his ‘book’? about which, if Heaven was very solicitous, this world has since been very indifferent.  Having distinctly heard ‘a sound as of thunder,’ on a very ‘calm and serene day,’ he immediately received it as a preternatural answer to prayer, and an indubitable sign of Heaven’s concurrence’.”

“No such taint of superstition, however, will be found clinging to Mr. Newman.  He has most thoroughly abjured all notion of an external revelation; nay, he denies the possibility of a ’book-revelation of spiritual and moral truth’; and I am confident that his dilemma on that point is unassailable.”

“Be it so,” answered Harrington; “you will readily suppose I am not inclined to contest that point very vigorously; yet I confess that, as usual, my inveterate scepticism leaves me in some doubts.  Will you assist me in resolving them?—­but not to-night; let us have a little more talk about old college days,—­or what say you to a game at chess?” ____

July 4.  I thought this day would have passed off entirely without polemics; but I was mistaken.  In the evening Harrington, after a very cheerful morning, relapsed into one of his pensive moods.  Conversation flagged; at last I heard Fellowes say, “I have this advantage of you, my friend, that my sentiments have, at all events, produced that peace of which you are in quest, and which your countenance at times too plainly declares you not to possess.  If you had it, you would not take so gloomy a view of things.  Like him from whom I have derived some of my sentiments, I have found that they tend to make me a happier man.  The Christian, like yourself, looks upon every thing with a jaundiced or distorted eye, and is apt to underrate the claims and pleasures of this present scene of our existence.  I can truly say that I now enter into them much more keenly than I could when I was an orthodox Christian.  I can say with Mr. Newman, I now, with deliberate approval, ‘love the world and the things of the world.’  The New Testament, as Mr. Newman says, bids us watch perpetually, not knowing whether the Lord will return at cock-crowing or midday; ’that the only thing worth spending one’s energies on, is the forwarding of men’s salvation.’  Now I must say with him, that, while I believed this, I acted an eccentric and unprofitable part.”