Thus much was amazing and satisfactory; but when Peek analyzed it all in thought, he found that no sufficient proof of identification had been given. A "power," able to probe his own mind, might get from it all that was spoken relative to the individual claiming identity; might even know how to imitate that individual's handwriting. Peek concluded that one must be himself in a spiritual state in order to identify a spirit. The so-called “communications " he found, for the most part, monotonous. They were, some of them, above Corinna's capacity, but not above his own. Erroneous answers were not unfrequently given, especially in reply to questions upon matters of worldly concern. He was repeatedly told of places where he

could find silver and gold, and never truly.

He concluded that to surrender one's faith implicitly to the word of a spirit out of the flesh, either on moral or on secular questions, was about as unwise as it would be to give one's self up to the control of a spirit in the flesh, a mere mortal like himself. He was satisfied by his experience that it was not in the power of spirits to impair his own freedom of will and independence of thought, so long as he exercised them manfully. And this assurance was to his mind not only a guaranty of his own spiritual relationship, but it pointed to a supreme, omniscient. Spirit, the gracious Father of all. If the words that came through Corinna had proved, in every instance, infallible, what would Peek have become but a passive, unreasoning recipient, as sluggish in thought as Corinna herself!

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We have said that the "communications were generally on a level with Peek's own mind. There was once an exception. Said a very learned spirit (learned, as to him it seemed) one night, speaking through Corinna :

"Attend, even if you do not understand all that I may utter. The great purpose of creation is to exercise and develop independent, individual thought, and through that, a will in harmony with the Supreme Wisdom. Men are subjected to the discipline of the earth-sphere, not to be happy there, but to qualify themselves for happiness, to deserve happiness.

"What would all created wonders be without thought to appreciate and admire them? Study is worship. Admiration is worship. Of what account would be the starry heavens, if

there were not mind to study and to wonder at creation, and thus to fit itself for adoration of the Creator?

"My friend Lessing, when he was on your earth, once said, that, if God would give him truth, he would decline the gift, and prefer the labor of seeking it for himself. But most men are mentally so inert, they would rather believe than examine; and so they flatter themselves that their loose, unreasoning acquiescence is a saving belief. Pernicious error! All the mistakes and transgressions of men arise either from feeble, imperfect thinking, or from not thinking at all.

"The heart is much, is principal; but men must not hope to rise until they do their own thinking. They cannot think by proxy. They must exercise the mind on all that pertains to their moral and mental growth. You may perhaps sometimes wish that you too, like this poor, torpid, parasitical creature, Corinna, might be a medium for outside spirits to influence and speak through. But beware! You know not what you wish. Learn to prize your individuality. The wisdom Corinna may utter does not become hers by appropriation. In her mind it falls on barren soil.

"We all are more or less mediums; but the innocent man is he who resists and overcomes temptation, not he who never felt its power; and the wise man is he who, at once recipient and repellent, seeks to appropriate and assimilate with his being whatever of good he can get from all the instrumentalities of nature, divine and human, angelic and demoniac.”

Peek derived an indefinable but awakening impression from these words, and asked, "Is the Bible true?"

The reply was: "It is true only to him who construes it aright. If you find in it the justification of American slavery, then to you it is not true. All the theologies which would impose, as essentials of faith, speculative dogmas or historical declarations which do not pertain to the practice of the highest human morality and goodness, as taught in the words and the example of Christ, are, in this respect at least, irreverent, mischievous, and untrue."

"How do I know," asked Peek, "that you are not a devil? "I am aware of no way," was the reply, "by which, in your present state, you can know absolutely that I am not a devil,

even Beelzebub, the prince of devils. Each man's measure of truth must be the reason God has given him. But of this you may rest assured: it is a great point gained to be able to believe really even in a devil. Given a devil, you will one day work yourself so far into the light as to believe in an angel.” "Is there a God?" asked the slave.

"God is," said the spirit, " and says to thee, as once to Pascal, Be consoled! Chou wouldst not seek me, if thou hadst not found me.””

These were almost the only words Peek ever received through Corinna that struck him by their superiority to what he himself could have imagined; and he was impressed by them accordingly. Though they were above his comprehension at the moment, he thought he might grow up to them, and he caused them to be repeated slowly while he wrote them down.

Corinna died, and Peek kept on thinking.

What rapture in thought now! What a new meaning in life! What a new universe for the heart was there in love! Henceforth the burden and the mystery of "all this unintelligible world" was lightened if not dissolved; for death was but the step to a higher plane of life. The old, trite emblem of the chrysalis was no mere barren fancy. Continuous life was now to his mind a certainty; arrived at, too, by the deductions of experience, sense, and reason, as well as intimated by the eager thirst of the heart.

The process by which he made the phenomena he had witnessed conduce to this conclusion was briefly this. An invisible, intelligent force had lifted heavy articles before his eyes, played on musical instruments, written sentences, and spoken words. This force claimed to be a human spirit in a human form, of tissues too fine to be visible to our grosser senses. It could pass, like heat and electricity, through what might seem material impediments. It had a plastic power to reincarnate itself at will, and imitate human forms and colors, under certain circumstances, and it gave partial proof of this by showing a hand, an arm, or a foot undistinguishable from one of flesh and blood. On one occasion the human form entire had been displayed, been touched, and had then dissolved into invisibility and intangibility before him.

Now he must either take the word of this intelligent "force," that it was an independent spiritual entity, or he must account for its acts by some other supposition. The "force,” in its communications to his mind, had shown it was not infallible; it had erred in some of its predictions, although in others it had been wonderfully correct. If its explanation of itself was untrue,if no outside intelligent force were operating, the other supposition was, that the phenomena were a proceeding either from himself, the spectator, or from Corinna. And here, without knowing it, Peek found himself speculating on the theory of Count Gasparin,* who has had the candor to brave the laugh of modern science (a very different thing from scientia) by recounting as facts what Professor Faraday and our Cambridge savans denounce as impositions or delusions.

Peek was therefore reduced to these two explanations: either the "force" was a spirit (call it, if you please, an outside power), as it claimed to be, or it was a faculty unconsciously exerted by the mortals present. In either case, it supplied an assurance of spirit and immortality; for it might fairly be presumed that such wonderful powers would not be wrapt up in the human organism except for a purpose; and that purpose, what could it be but the future development of those powers under suitable conditions? So either of Peek's hypotheses led to the same precious and ineffable conviction of continuous life, the soul's immortality!

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On one occasion a Northern Professor, who had given his days to the positive sciences, and who believed in matter and motion, and nothing else, passed a week, while visiting the South for his health, with his old friend and classmate, Mr. Barnwell; and Peek overheard the following conversation.

"How do you get rid of all this testimony on the subject?" asked Mr. Barnwell.

"That a

"Stuff and nonsense!" exclaimed the Professor. poor benighted nigger should believe this trash is n't surprising. That poets, like Willis and Mrs. Browning, should give in to it may be tolerated, for they are privileged. In them the imaginative faculty is irregularly developed. But that sane and

* Author of "The Uprising of a Great People," "America before Europe," &c.; also of two large volumes on Modern Spiritualism.

intelligent white men like Edmonds, and Tallmadge, and Bowditch, and Brownson, and Bishop Clark of Rhode Island, and Howitt, and Chambers, and Coleman, and Dr. Gray, and Wilkinson, and Mountford, and Robert Dale Owen, should gravely swallow these idiotic stories, is lamentable indeed. The spectacle becomes humiliating, and I sigh, 'Poor human nature!""

"But Peek is far from being a benighted nigger," replied Barnwell; "he can read and write as well as you can; he is the best shot in the county; he is a good mechanic; for a time he waited on one of the great jugglers at the St. Charles; he can explain or cleverly imitate all the tricks of all the conjurers; he is not a man to be humbugged, especially by a poor sick girl in a hut with no cellar, no apparatus, no rooms where any coadjutor could hide. It has been the greatest puzzle of life to know how to explain Peek's stories.”

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“Half that is extraordinary in them," said the Professor, "is probably a lie, and the other half is delusion. Not one man in fifty is competent to test such occurrences. Men's senses have

not been scientifically trained; their love of the marvellous blinds them to the simplest solutions of a mystery. How to observe is one of the most difficult of arts; and one must undergo rigid scientific culture in the practical branches before he can observe properly."

"Under your theory, Professor, ninety-eight men out of every hundred ought to be excluded as witnesses from our courts of justice. It strikes me that a fellow like Peek with his senses always in good working trim, who never misses his aim, who can hit a mark by moonlight at forty paces, and shoot a bird on the wing in bright noonday, who can detect a tread or a flutter of wings when to your ear all is silence is as competent to see straight and judge of sights and sounds as any blinkard from a college, even though he wear spectacles and call himself professor of mathematics. Remember, Peek is not a superstitious nigger. He will feel personally obliged to any ghost who will show himself. He shrinks from no haunted room, no solitude, no darkness."

"Truly, Horace, you speak as if you half believed these absurdities."