On1 hearing this account of what would vulgarly be called my conversion, many questions no doubt rise to your lips, and specially these two:-Did I truly ask and receive this answer from Any One -Divine Person or Power-out of myself; or was my consciousness of Another with me, and the answer I received, merely the result of the working of my own mind or brain? How long did this state of settled happiness and rest continue? As to this last, it belongs to the development of the sequel, and I need not touch it here; but your first question, would I could answer it! If I could only determine that, authoritatively, because from a clear perception and knowledge of the essential facts! For if the Ultimate Verities are in anything they are in such moments of life (though I do not say you need travel beyond the action of this pen for them); and oh, if a commissioned interpreter of them were only possible, just for the facts themselves—the what of the Great Unknown! Yet how should we get to believe him further than our own experiences will carry us? Be this as it may, my duty is to present the facts as they were given in my experience, but towards this, while I may not or cannot interpret their ultimate relations authoritatively, it becomes necessary to clear the case which I have presented from any probable misconceptions—to render it without prejudice from my own mind to yours.

If I was mistaken in anything it was not in this, that I was in my sober senses; as sane and whole-minded as I am at this moment. Of course you have only my evidence for this, as also for another belief which goes to the same purport, That not a soul about me knew what was going on within me, nor appeared to observe, nor, indeed, could have observed, anything unusual in my behaviour. Whatever I felt I kept to myself, wholly; and in my mental relation to the outward world, and action towards it, remained unchanged. From struggles in my room to doing whatever was necessary to be done in the house or out of it-such alternations were the everyday routine: I do not know that I gave an hour up to these feelings that should have been given otherwise, the two lives being blended as completely as in the nature of the case was possible, yet each having its distinct consciousness and its peculiar demands. Assuredly I knew in every

1 This and the succeeding paragraphs my friend has marked on the margin with a query as to whether they should be retained, leaving the decision to my judg ment, but, on re-reading, giving his own in the negative. I cannot say that I do not prefer a story without comment, yet I can hardly bring myself in this case to coincide with the desire for excision. Probably in another form of publication I should decide differently. For the readers of the Repository I retain them as suitable in themselves apart from any question of artistic demerit.

Moreover, if I was

iota of feeling and action what I was about. under any hallucination then, I am so still; not because of any beliefs which the two periods have, or may have, in common; but because I have never found reason to think that I, at any time, was in hallucination, though able to reflect on my whole life as one-have never consciously passed out of any such state, though the consciousness of any period never for a moment slept, and can now in its general outlines be recalled: because, therefore, that portion of my life is essentially on the same plane with this I now live-the whole being, to me and my sensations, homogeneous. Nor do I at all mean to give my denial of hallucination as an answer, overt or covert, to the former question whether my feelings were wholly subjective or had reference to an actual Existence in spiritual relation with mine; but if, on the one hand, I do not mean this, neither, on the other, can I suffer these experiences themselves to be assumed as the easy proofs of hallucination. If this is done, is not all knowledge foreclosed of other than the most superficial facts? By what right do we put the embargo of à priori assumptions upon our knowledge of the facts of sanity? We may certainly reach some strange results if by such a method we seek to measure the universe. The simple desire to vindicate my mental uprightness, and to record these experiences without prejudice to the facts, leads me here to say that, to me, there is nothing more unscientific than the complacent assumption of hallucination somewhere in minds otherwise sane, on the part of mental physiologists, when facts even seem to trench on certain of their recognised limits or but offer to push them further back. This, manifestly, is pure dogmatism, and none the less so for being profoundly unconscious of itself, but perhaps not quite unconscious of that other assumption from which it starts-that everybody is in peril of insanity but ourselves, because nobody is perfectly sane but those who are rational in our sense of the term. Though I, too, hold, by the canon that greater causes ought not to be assumed than will explain the effects, it is clear to me, that, to fall back on the argument of a partial insanity or hallucination in those who convey strange facts or report them when we are otherwise nonplussed in accounting for them, is not to explain the facts but to shirk them—to say, in effect, that they are wider than our system, and yet to make the pretence of wisdom the disguise of ignorance. Freedom for all facts from that fear to speak which the much assurance and hard-dealing of some modern men of science has engendered; no bad names thrown at sane men when our explanative vocabulary is

exhausted; and, above all, a wise reserve! for who knows what may lie behind this wonderful world's apparently abnormal facts? But that is a reflection and an attitude of which some narrowly logical minds, with their eager assumption of certain partial premisses from the standpoint of which the universe is to be seen, are totally incapable. Such an assumption, applying itself to certain facts, is too eager and betrays itself: there is an unseemly haste to explain in which dread lurks.

Coming to the experiences themselves I would present them also without prejudice. In the first place, I had not defined to myself the kind of answer I wanted nor the form or manner in which it should come; so that the direct effect, of whatever it was the result, was not the result of previous thought. Again, I had not consciously contributed in any way to the process of the change during the change itself, but was, in regard to the answering effects then and after, an entirely passive subject. I sought rest in God, and my seeking found ts fulfilment that is all I know about the matter or the means.

It

is open of course to say that my determination to have an answer contributed to the answer's coming; that the brain was thus unconsciously preparing itself for some abnormal action; and that the bright light and other effects were purely nervous phenomena. I do not say it was not so, for I know nothing about it, and therein these theorists are wiser than I am; but I would point out that it would be a mistake on either side to suppose cerebral action unnecessary to the result; that the assumption of unconscious cerebral self-action merely is gratuitous gratuitous, if for no other reason, yet for this very simple one, that the facts are unknown; that this theory is manifestly insufficient, inasmuch as between the determination to have, and the actual possession, there lies a hiatus uncovered, professedly uncovered, by it in the very statement of the explanation it attempts to tell us merely that the facts were unconsciously produced is to tell us only what we know already, but under that cloud-word "unconsciously," to slip in these others, "by the brain alone," is, with one breath, to confess an uncoverable hiatus, and with the next to assume that we have covered it-if we do not know what was done in that interval, how do we know that the brain was competent to do it? and that, lastly, over against this theory, and equally in harmony with the facts, stands the Scripture reading "The Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force;" "if any man be in Christ he is a new creature-a new creation: old things are passed away;

behold, all things are become new ;" and if this reading of such an experience be supposed equally applicable on either theory, there is yet again this distinction to be noted, that, in the one case, the "Heaven" so "taken" is a purely subjective state, and, in the other, it is a subjective state having definite relation to an objective spiritual reality.

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In yet another direction have these experiences to be poised from misconstructive dipping. Do they not go to support that creed, and, by consequence, that school of Christianity, in which technical “ version" is the indispensable condition of salvation here and hereafter? Here the correct statement would seem to be that an experience which is the occasional accompaniment of certain conditions is not thereby proved to be even the result of them, much less the result of them exclusively that an experience of peace should occasionally coexist with "orthodox" religious teaching does by no means prove that teaching to be the cause of that experience, much less the exclusive cause. That such peace of mind should come with technical" conversion" is only to say that that is one way in which it may come : to assume that because it does so come that is the only way in which it can come is to put a fraction for the whole, and a sect for the Kingdom of God. Surely that is but one form of the divine-human attainment in rest which is truly as wide and inclusive as the degrees of latitude. But what fallacy more natural for simple souls, and for some souls not at all simple, who have experienced "good" under certain forms of belief, than that of claiming the merit of the truth and the whole truth for what has always been to them a coexistent with, if not an integer of, their conscious relation to God? Do they not know that these beliefs are true? Have they not the witness in themselves? May not even the philosophical among them claim such experiences as a scientific verification of their special doctrines? The question never troubles them whether the experience always accompanies such conceptions, or, if it does, they put the failure down to some personal shortcoming; nor whether such mental states are not equally attainable by others who repudiate wholly the very ideas to which they attribute their experience. But it is not the function of happiness to be logically consistent; nor, in practice, is it found a property of "evangelical" happiness in particular to improve our natural human deficiencies in this respect. The opinions I held, such as they were, or rather, which existed in my mind, were an accompanim snt of my experience, then, but cannot honestly be said to have been its cause.

The excuse for those who interpret otherwise is this, Who among us is able not to see the balance dip as states and affections have predetermined?

Had, then, the theological opinions taught me no distinct place in my experience? I think that by the conception they gave me of God and of a hereafter, they stung me by pain into the urgency of fear, doing me therein a mortal spiritual injury. Thus the parentage of spiritual fear and pain and inhuman misery occasional to the regenerating soul is easily traceable to the false presentation of a partial truth, under whatsoever miserable form. But does it therefore follow that the possession of spiritual truth is an impossibility? Surely he in whom such revulsion from falsity creates only a sceptical discarding of all religion puts himself as much beyond the pale of the great human brotherhood as he who claims the undivided supremacy in spiritual right and truth for that form of faith by which he thinks he saves his soul from damnation.

THE WISDOM OF THE SERPENT.

TRADITIONALLY and spiritually, as well as physically, the serpent is generally regarded as the enemy of mankind. As our enemy it is frequently spoken of both in our Bible and in the mythologies of ancient nations. In the Word the serpent represents the sensual nature of man; and they are called serpents who reason from sensual knowledge concerning the mysteries of faith. To the question, Did the Hindoos, Chinese, and Egyptians know this meaning? we cannot say for certain. That it was regarded by them as man's chief enemy is easy to prove. In the Puranas or Old Legends of India it is recorded: "The inferior spirits, who ever since creation have been multiply. ing themselves almost to infinity, did not at first enjoy the privilege of immortality. After numberless efforts to procure it, they had recourse to a tree which grew in Paradise, and by eating its fruit they became immortal. A serpent called Chien, appointed to guard the Tree of Life, was so exasperated by their proceedings, that he poured out a great quantity of poison. The whole earth felt the terrible effects of it; and not one mortal would have escaped had not the god Chiven taken pity on the human race, revealed himself under the shape of a man, and swallowed the poison." In India at the present time this tradition is commemorated by representations of a serpent, a tree, and a human figure eating the fruit.