"Now, dear Dr. Miles, do tell me," cried Isabella Slingsby with a gay laugh, "whether some of the learned do not believe in them too. If it were put as a serious question to the Rev. Dr. Miles himself, whether he had not a little quiet belief at the bottom of his heart in the appearance of ghosts, what would he answer?"
"That he had never seen one, my dear," replied the clergyman, with a good-humoured smile, "but at the same time I must say that a belief in the occasional appearance of the spirits of the dead for particular purposes, is a part of our religion. I have no idea of a man calling himself a Christian and taking what parts of the Bible he likes, and rejecting or explaining away the rest. The fact of the re-appearance of dead people on this earth is more than once mentioned in Scripture, and therefore I believe that it has taken place. The purposes for which it was permitted in all the instances there noticed, were great and momentous, and it may very possibly be that since the Advent of Our Saviour, no such deviations from usual laws have been requisite. Of that, however, I can be no judge; but at all events my own reason tells me, that it is not probable a spirit should be allowed to revisit the glimpses of the moon for the purpose of making an old woman say her prayers, or frightening a village girl into fits."
"You are speaking alone of the apparition of the spirits of the dead," said Beauchamp, "did you ever hear of the appearance of the spirits of the living?"
"Not without their bodies, surely!" said Miss Clifford.
"Oh yes, my dear Mary," answered Dr. Miles, "such things are recorded, I can assure you, ay, and upon testimony so strong that is impossible to doubt that the witnesses believed what they related, whether the apparition was a delusion of their own fancy or not--indeed it is scarcely possible to suppose that it was a delusion, for in several instances the thing, whatever it was, made itself visible to several persons at once, and they all precisely agreed in the description of it."
"One of the most curious occurrences of the kind that ever I heard of," said Beauchamp, "was told me by a German gentleman to whom it happened. It was the case of a man seeing his own spirit, and although we are continually told we ought to know ourselves, few men have ever had such an opportunity of doing so as this gentleman."