that the sense of the miraculous fades away in the progress of what arrogates to itself the name of Rationalism.  This is one of the delusive results of introducing generalization into historical disquisitions.  History deals with man.  Man is always the same.  The race consists, not of an aggregation, but of individuals, in all ages, never moulded or melted into classes.  Each individual has ever retained his distinctness from every other.  There has been the same infinite variety in every period, in every race, in every nation.  Society, philosophy, custom, can no more obliterate these varieties than they can bring the countenances and features of men into uniformity.  Diversity everywhere alike prevails.  The particular forms and shapes in which the sense of the miraculous may express itself have passed and will pass away in the progress of civilization.  But the sense itself remains; just as particular costumes and fashions of garment pass away, while the human form, its front erect and its vision towards the heavens, remains.  The sense of the miraculous remains with Protestants as much as with Catholics, with Churchmen as much as with Puritans, with those who reject all creeds, equally with those whose creeds are the longest and the oldest.  In our day, it must have been generally noticed, that the wonders of what imagines itself to be Spiritualism are rather more accredited by persons who aspire to the character of rationalists than by those who hold on tenaciously to the old landmarks of Orthodoxy.

The truth is, that the sense of the miraculous has not declined, and never can.  It will grow deeper and stronger with the progress of true intelligence.  As long as man thinks, he will feel that he is himself a perpetual miracle.  The more he thinks, the more will he feel it.  The mind which can wander into the deepest depths of the starry heavens, and feel itself to be there; which, pondering over the printed page, lives in the most distant past, communes with sages of hoar antiquity, with prophets and apostles, joins the disciples as they walk with the risen Lord to Emmaus, or mingles in the throng that listen to Paul at Mars’ Hill,—­knows itself to be beyond the power of space or time, and greater than material things.  It knows not what it shall be; but it feels that it is something above the present and visible.  It realizes the spiritual world, and will do so more and more, the higher its culture, the greater its freedom, and the wider its view of the material nature by which it is environed, while in this transitory stage of its history.

The lesson of our story will be found not to discard spiritual things, but to teach us, while in the flesh, not to attempt to break through present limitations, not to seek to know more than has been made known of the unseen and invisible, but to keep the inquiries of our minds and the action of society within the bounds of knowledge now attainable, and extend our curious researches and speculations only as far as we can here have solid ground to stand upon.