part in the war.[16] Another time “Sir Walter Scott” announced to Dr.

Hodgson that he had visited all the planets and could give information about Mars. “Asked if he had seen a planet further away than Saturn, the _soi-disant_ novelist answered, ‘Mercury.’” Julius Cæsar, Madame Guyon and George Eliot were personated, and George Eliot is reported as saying: “I hardly know as there is enough light to communicate,” and “do not know as I have ever seen a haunted house.” Mr. J. Arthur Hill says: “I am not convinced that the regular trance-controls are spirits at all.” His views on certain aspects of the problem may be gathered from the following passage: “At Spiritualist meetings a trance-control or inspirational speaker will sometimes hold forth with surprising fluency at incredible length. The secretary of the Spiritualists’ National Union once backed the late W. J. Colville to talk ‘till this time next week without intervals for meals,’ yet with a dullness and inanity that would drive any but a very tolerant audience mad. Spiritualists certainly have the virtue of patience.”[17] Mr. Hill thinks it probable that in many mediums there is a dissociation of consciousness, and no external spirit-agency at all. He warns Spiritualist societies against “encouraging the flow of platitudinous or almost meaningless verbiage which, whether it comes from a medium’s subliminal or from a discarnate spirit, can hardly be helpful to anybody, and must be very bad for the minds of most hearers.” He admits that in “at least some cases of trance-control there is no reason to believe the control to be other than a subliminal fraction of the automatist’s mind.” How can the impartial inquirer hope to discern the truth amid heaps of lies? The cheating medium could be detected and cast out; the “controls” are as irresponsible as the fairies of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Sir Oliver Lodge’s views on the “controls” are of extreme interest, though he is fully committed to the defence of Spiritualism. “The _dramatic semblance_ of the control,” he says, “is undoubtedly that of a separate person--a person asserted to be permanently existing on the other side, and to be occupied on that side in much the same functions as the medium is on this.” It is true, he admits, that in the case of some mediums “there are evanescent and absurd obtrusions every now and then, which cannot be seriously regarded. These have to be eliminated, and for anyone to treat them as real people would be ludicrous.”[18] The excuse given for their appearance is that the medium may be “overdone or tired.” Sir Oliver Lodge advises “sitters,” nevertheless, to “humour” the controls by “taking them at their face value.” With the utmost respect for so great a scientist, the task of discrimination, we may safely say, lies beyond the capacity of ordinary men and women. Sir Oliver Lodge thinks that “the more responsible kind of control is a real person,” and he has much to say of “the serious controls,” but he admits the occurrence of “mischievous and temporary impersonations.” The question may fairly be asked, Cannot the fourth personality in that strange group--composed of the inquirer on this side, the medium, the medium’s control, and the spirit communicator--speak directly from within the veil? Sir Oliver Lodge, while admitting that an exceptional more direct privilege is occasionally vouchsafed to persons in extreme sorrow, gives his answer, on the whole, in the negative. The normal process “involves the activity of several people,” and we conclude from his writings that he desires to uphold professional mediumship. FOOTNOTES: [9] At Denison House, Vauxhall Bridge Road, on June 11th, 1919. [10] “Raymond,” p. 86. [11] _ibid._, p. 357. [12] _ibid._, p. 235. [13] _ibid._, p. 166. [14] “Spiritualism,” p. 74. [15] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” p. 33. [16] _ibid._, p. 240. [17] “Spiritualism,” p. 172. [18] “Raymond,” p. 357. _Chapter V_ TABLE PHENOMENA Table-turning, as we meet it in literature, belongs to the older class of parlour games. Sir W. F. Barrett quotes the testimony of Delitzsch that it was practised in Jewish circles in the seventeenth century: “the table springs up even when laden with many hundred-weight.” Zebi, in 1615, defended the practice as not due to magic, but to the power of God, “for we sing to the table sacred psalms and songs, and it can be no devil’s work where God is remembered.” I Mrs. De Morgan, in that curious book, “From Matter to Spirit,” describes her experience in table-turning circles about the year 1853. The medium was Mrs. Hayden, whose séances in West London were attended by such men as Professor Huxley and Robert Chambers. Mrs. Hayden was an educated lady, the wife of W. R. Hayden, editor of the _Star-Spangled Banner_. Her rooms were crowded with visitors, at a minimum fee of half a guinea each, and her services were in great demand for evening parties and private sittings. According to Mrs. De Morgan, the circle gathered round an old Pembroke table. The illustrations in the book show a spirit appearing to a man and woman who are seated at a rather large round table. Very strange and absurd communications, as Mrs. De Morgan admitted, were given by table-tipping, “as, indeed, by all methods.” “I have seen instances,” she writes, “and been told of others, in which long incongruous strings of names and titles have been spelt out, such as Richard Cœur de Lion, Pythagoras, Byron, Cheops, and Mr. Fauntleroy, the list, perhaps, ending with T. Browne or J. Smith. The givers of these names seem to delight only in buffoonery and abuse; and, perhaps, after playing absurd and mischievous tricks for days or even weeks, will seem to come in a body, giving all their names, with the information that they are come to say good-bye for ever.” Phenomena not unlike the “exuberant” table activities at Mariemont, as described in “Raymond,” were familiar over half a century ago to the sitters with Mrs. Hayden. Mrs. De Morgan tells of a case in which the watchers were directed by raps to join hands and stand up round the table without touching it. They stood patiently for a quarter of an hour, and just as one or two of the party talked of sitting down, the old table “moved entirely by itself as we surrounded and followed it with our hands joined, went towards the gentleman out of the circle, and literally pushed him up to the back of the sofa, till he called out ‘Hold, enough!’” Robert Chambers, who was a close examiner of the table phenomena of his day, formed an opinion which would be accepted, as we shall show, by thoughtful writers of our own time who are on other grounds believers in Spiritualism. “I am satisfied,” Robert Chambers wrote in _Chambers’s Journal_, “that the phenomena are natural, but to take them in I think we shall have to widen somewhat our ideas of the extent and character of what is natural.” In 1853 a committee of British medical men held an investigation on table-turning. They decided that the table-motion was due to muscular action, mostly exercised unconsciously. Faraday, as Mr. Podmore shows in “Modern Spiritualism,” was able to prove that the table movements were due to muscular action, exercised in most cases without the consciousness or volition of the sitters. Table-turning, in the remoter towns and villages of Europe, was a favourite drawing-room amusement as late as 1876. II Sir Oliver Lodge, in his deeply interesting address to the Dublin section of the Society for Psychical Research,[19] delivered more than ten years ago, spoke wise words on the physical phenomena of the séance. “There is but little doubt in my mind,” he says, “that such movements do take place; I have had personal experience of them. Nevertheless they are not yet really established as facts, and if they were there would still be a question whether these movements are due to some independent intelligent agency, or whether, as is most likely, they are an extension of the ordinary power of the organism through which they are produced.” Sir Oliver Lodge, eleven years ago, took practically the same view as Robert Chambers in 1853. “I can move this tumbler with my hand,” he said, “but the question remains whether I can move the same tumbler at a distance of a couple of feet from my hand without actually touching it. Note that there is nothing inconceivable about this. The boundary of an organism, as of everything else, is more or less arbitrary; we know that in a sense a vortex ring exists, not only where it is seen, but at some distance also, and that the influence of every atom extends throughout the visible universe. And so, perhaps, on analogous lines, we may look for some explanation of these curious occurrences which will not take them altogether beyond the reach of more ordinary experience.” III We have given the opinion of scientific men in 1853 and in 1908 with regard to the phenomena of table-turning. Spiritualists to-day are much interested in the experiments of a distinguished Belfast scientist, Dr. W. J. Crawford, with the Goligher family, whose table experiments have satisfied him that “the invisible operators” are “the spirits of human beings who have passed into the beyond.” Sir William Barrett, who has personally watched the Belfast experiments, suggests that “many of the physical manifestations witnessed in a Spiritualistic séance are the product of human-like, but not really human, intelligences. Good or bad dæmonia they may be; elementals some have called them, which aggregate round the medium--drawn from that particular plane of mental and moral development in the unseen which corresponds to the mental and moral plane of the medium.” Sir Oliver Lodge, in a recent article,[20] speaks of “many grades of development” in the other world, “some lower than humanity.” Mr. Arthur E. Waite, writing more than twenty years ago on Spiritualistic phenomena, set forth the theory of the Kabalists that “shells and elementals,” the “low life deeps of the world of souls,” might exercise a baneful influence on humanity. “The revelations of the unseen world which have come to us through Spiritualism,” he says, “can have come only from the dregs and lees of the unseen, or, as I should prefer to put it, from the roots and the rudiments of that house which, however, on account of those rudiments, may not be less the House of God.” Scientific students of to-day seem divided between two theories as they examine the table phenomena. These are ascribed (1) to supernormal and little understood powers of the human personality, or (2) to the intervention of irresponsible and, it may be, sub-human intelligences. Readers of “Raymond” will remember Sir Oliver Lodge’s reference to the difficulties of “table-sittings.” Various passages show that he himself has been greatly puzzled. Accounts of sittings at “Mariemont,” Sir Oliver Lodge’s home, tell of obstreperous doings on the part of the tables. Two got broken, and “a stronger and heavier round table with four legs was obtained, and employed only for this purpose.” In one of the séances with “Feda,” the alleged spirit of Raymond referred through the “control” to table-doings at Mariemont. “Other spirits get in, not bad spirits, but ones that like to feel they are helping. The peculiar manifestations are not him, and it only confuses him terribly. Part of it was him, but when the table was careering about it was not him at all. He started it, but something comes along stronger than himself, and he loses the control.”[21] In a later sitting with the same medium and control we find the sentence (supposed to come from Raymond), “The Indians have got through their hanky-panky.” The reference was understood by his brother to mean “playing with the table in a way beyond his control.”[22] Mr. J. Arthur Hill has some sensible remarks on the general subject of table phenomena. “There seems no particular point,” he says, “in physical phenomena alone, except as providing a problem for the physicist and psychical researcher. A table or other object may move in some inexplicable way, but that is no proof of ‘spirits’; the energy is supplied from physical matter--mainly the medium’s and sitters’ bodies, apparently--and it is only through evidential messages conveyed by the phenomena that spirit agency can reasonably be inferred.” Mr. Hill disapproves of “private circles,” except when held for investigation by qualified persons. Table phenomena, of whatever kind, afford no proof that discarnate human spirits are seeking to communicate with friends on earth. We close this chapter with the words of Camille Flammarion, the French astronomer, whose name is so highly honoured in Spiritualistic circles:-- “The physical phenomena ... do not prove the existence of spirits, and may possibly be explained without them ... that is, by unknown forces, emanating from the experimenters, and especially from the mediums.” FOOTNOTES: [19] Fully reported in the Journal of the S.P.R. for December, 1908. [20] _Weekly Dispatch_, May 18th, 1919. [21] “Raymond,” pp. 182, 183. [22] _ibid._, p. 273, and _see also_ pp. 276-277 for table phenomena. _Chapter VI_ AUTOMATIC WRITING The Society for Psychical Research has for many years given close attention to the subject of automatic writing. This has been defined as “the faculty possessed by certain people of holding a pencil over a sheet of paper and writing coherent and intelligible sentences without any conscious volition.” Sometimes the medium sits entranced with averted face, and the circle looks on while “the moving finger writes.” The script, in most cases, purports to emanate from a human being who has passed into the Unseen. I STAINTON MOSES The most remarkable automatist of the Victorian period was the Rev. William Stainton Moses (“M.A., Oxon”), whose “Spirit Teachings” are still widely read, and whose character was regarded with admiration by men like F. W. H. Myers and Sir W. F. Barrett. Mr. Moses, who was a clergyman of the Church of England, and a master at University College School, revealed to a curious world the existence of a group of “spirits,” who concealed their identity, for the most part, under such pseudonyms as “Imperator,” “Rector,” “Mentor,” and “Doctor.” It has often been pointed out that the messages of “Imperator,” who was a spirit of a highly didactic and clerical turn of mind, were very much what the curate William Stainton Moses might have written of his own volition. Their main purpose appears to have been the inculcation of Broad Church theology. Mr. Podmore considered that Stainton Moses was “perhaps the most remarkable private medium of the last generation,” but of his trance utterances this critic said: “They contain no evidence of supernormal faculty.” Mr. Arthur E. Waite, in a passage on automatic script, refers to “that dark border-line of mystery where deception and self-deception meet and join hands.” “It is, indeed, open to question,” he says, “whether under some aspects ‘the spirit teachings,’ for example, obtained through the mediumship of the Rev. Stainton Moses are not, on the whole, more hopeless than the quality of the trance address delivered in a back street on a Saturday night before a circle of mechanics, for the simple reason that from the normal gifts of the medium we had fair reason to look for better.” The revelations conveyed through “Spirit Teachings” suggest to this experienced occultist that “if the dead have spoken at any time since the beginning of the Rochester knockings they have said nothing to arrest our attention or to warrant a continued communication.” Mr. Podmore, in “Modern Spiritualism,” mentions that “Imperator” and his associates were supposed to represent personages of some importance on earth. Their real names were revealed by Stainton Moses to one or two friends. After the migration of these “controls” to Mrs. Piper, “they more than once professed, as a proof of identity, to give their names, but their guesses have been incorrect.” Mr. Podmore thought that the clue to the enigma of Stainton Moses’ life “must be sought in the annals of morbid psychology.” In justice to the medium it should be added that, while working as a curate in the Isle of Man, he showed remarkable courage and zeal during an outbreak of smallpox, helping to nurse sick and bury the dead. In the various positions he held as parish clergyman and schoolmaster he was liked and respected by all. The physical phenomena of his mediumship were always said to be secondary; his own wish was to emphasise the religious teaching he promulgated through automatic writing. Spiritualists of to-day reject entirely the notion that the phenomena associated with Stainton Moses were produced by fraud, but as Mr. Hill says, “Whether they were due to spirits is another question, not to be finally settled until we know the extent of our subliminal self’s hidden powers.” II If doubts are felt by Spiritualists themselves with regard to the origin of such a standard work as “Spirit Teachings,” can we wonder that all but the most credulous reject great masses of ordinary automatic writing and concentrate their attention on a possibly valuable “residuum”? As Sir William Barrett recognises, the automatist, even when absolutely above suspicion, may unconsciously guide the pencil or the indicator of the “ouija board.” May not the explanation of surprising communications, when such occur, be found in “thought-transference from those who are sitting with the medium, or telepathy from other living persons who may know some of the facts that are automatically written?”[23] Sir William Barrett asks the question, though he does not consider that an affirmative answer covers the facts. Honest-minded Spiritualists are groping after a natural explanation of the phenomena. The best of them, we are sure, would agree with Dr. Barnes that automatic writing, taken as a whole, has no evidential value in favour of the theory that it is possible to communicate with the dead. As the “table phenomena” point to dimly realised extensions of man’s physical powers, so the unexplained facts of automatic writing find their probable explanation in thought-transference, or in that mysterious realm where experts talk of “the dissociation of the personality.” Mr. Gerald Balfour, whose writings on Psychical Research deserve the closest and most attentive study, discussed in the _Hibbert Journal_ ten years ago the problem of dissociation, “whereby an element of the normal self may be supposed to become in a lesser or greater degree divided off from that self, and to acquire, for the time being, a certain measure of independence.” “It would appear to be with this secondary self (or selves, if there be more than one of them) that we have to reckon in dealing with the facts of automatism rather than with the normal self: a deduction drawn from the consciousness or unconsciousness of the latter may be altogether inapplicable to the former. How ready these second selves are to act a part, and how cleverly they often do so, the experience of hypnotism is there to show.” III “Nearly every woman,” writes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in “The New Revelation,” “is an undeveloped medium. Let her try her own powers of automatic writing.” Doctors have cried out against this dangerous advice given by one of the medical fraternity, and we have not found it supported by any leading authority in the ranks of Spiritualism. We are able to state, on excellent authority, that the late Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace strongly deprecated any similar attempts by amateurs. In private conversation he used to tell of a man who, having practised automatic writing, became absolutely incapable of writing the simplest note without his hand being used by other agencies. He was not able to hinder this by his own will, and in order to effect a cure he was obliged to abstain for years from using a pencil at all. Dr. Russel Wallace had a strong belief in the existence and activity of malignant low-grade spirits who seek to gain control over men. Sir William Barrett, in a very grave passage, discourages “young persons and those who have little to interest their time and thoughts” from “making any experiments in this perplexing region.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has never known “a blasphemous, an unkind, or an obscene message” to be transmitted ostensibly from the other side. Sir W. F. Barrett has been less fortunate in his experience. “It not infrequently happens,” writes this great authority, “as some friends of mine found, that after some interesting and veridical messages and answers to questions had been given, mischievous and deceptive communications took place, interspersed with profane and occasionally obscene language. How far the sitters’ subliminal self is responsible for this, it is difficult to say; they were naturally disquieted and alarmed, as the ideas and words were wholly foreign to their thoughts, and they threw up the whole matter in disgust.”[24] Sir Oliver Lodge, in “Raymond” (p. 225), warns his readers against the misapplication of psychic power. His paragraph headed “Warning” gleams like a sea-light over sunken rocks. It was with a deep sense of responsibility, we may be sure, and with a consciousness of surrounding danger, that the world-famed scientist wrote these words: “Self-control is more important than any other form of control, and whoever possesses the power of receiving communications in any form should see to it that he remains master of the situation. To give up your own judgment and depend solely on adventitious aid is a grave blunder, and may in the long run have disastrous consequences. Moderation and common sense are required in those who try to utilise powers which neither they nor any fully understand, and a dominating occupation in mundane affairs is a wholesome safeguard.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we believe, stands alone among leading Spiritualistic teachers in his advice that all and sundry should practise planchette-writing. “Such practices,” as Dr. Barnes remarks, “do little harm to men and women whose minds are healthy; but there is a danger that through them persons whose minds are unstable may develop fixed illusions.”[25] FOOTNOTES: [23] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” pp. 162, 163. [24] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” p. 322. [25] “Spiritualism and the Christian Faith,” p. 47. _Chapter VII_ IS THERE DANGER FROM THE OTHER SIDE? Canon Barnes, in his excellent pamphlet, “Spiritualism and the Christian Faith,” warns the clergy against a line of opposing argument which would commit them to an acceptance of the mediæval system of demonology. We can confirm the testimony of Dr. Barnes that it is not uncommon to hear in Christian pulpits an admission that the medium can receive communications from another world, and to find this admission coupled with the suggestion that these communications are sent by evil spirits. We entirely agree with Dr. Barnes that the worst way of attacking Spiritualism is to admit its fundamental claim that communication with “spirits” can be set up, and then to assert that the “spirits” with whom intercourse is established are evil. “Such teaching attempts to combat Spiritualism by a revived belief in demonology.” The “danger from the other side” is of a different and more subtle nature. “No one at the present day,” writes Mr. Arthur E. Waite, “would desire to submit that a Spiritualist who receives at a séance that which, so far as his knowledge extends, is satisfactory evidence that he is holding some kind of communication with, let us suppose, a departed relative, is in reality being imposed upon by any satanic intelligence according to the conventional view; but it remains that he is assuming throughout the good faith of the other side of life, and that it is incapable of utilising particular means of knowledge in an unscrupulous way.” Trustworthy teachers of Spiritualism do not, in their own investigations, “assume the good faith of the other side of life.” The most serious warnings as to possible dangers to the inquirer come from men of high character and responsible position, who accept the tenets of Spiritualism. I The Church has taught in every age that man’s soul is engaged in warfare with unseen powers. St. Paul’s words in Ephesians vi. 11, 12, are impressively rendered by Dr. Moffatt: “Put on God’s armour so as to be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil. For we have to struggle not with blood and flesh, but with the Angelic Rulers, the Angelic Authorities, the potentates of the dark present, the spirit-forces of evil in the heavenly sphere.” There is no stranger, more disputed, passage in Dante’s “Purgatorio” than that in which the poet represents the evil serpent seeking to gain access to the penitents on the lower slopes of the Mount. Sinless they are, but they have not reached the terraces of suffering; they are waiting, pale and humble, for permission to move upward at daybreak, and they sing the compline hymn. Guardian angels come at once to the defence of those whose rest in the flowery dell is disturbed by thoughts of the adversary. These angels, as Maria Rossetti says, are “green-winged and robed for hope, golden-haired and radiant-visaged for glory, with fiery swords against the lurking serpent, with blunted swords towards the reposing elect, falcons to watch, falcons to fly, moved swifter than seen to move.” Those penitents of Dante’s “Dell of Princes” would have echoed the words with which John Bunyan closed the first part of the “Pilgrim’s Progress”: “I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of destruction.” Would they not, as the dawn-light guided them upward to St. Peter’s gate, have warned Christian souls on earth against any tampering with “spirit-forces of evil”? “Principalities and powers, Mustering their unseen array, Wait for thy unguarded hours; Watch and pray.” II Mental and moral wreckage may be the fate of those who surrender the will in a vain attempt to lift the curtain of unseen realms. It was an ancient belief that evil spirits could not obtain a footing in any house unless the inmate gave them a deliberate invitation to enter. “Reverend father,” says Magdalen in “The Abbot,” “hast thou never heard that there are spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when once admitted, which yet cannot enter the house unless they are invited, nay, dragged, over the threshold?” We remember how Coleridge uses the same superstition in the mysterious fragment, “Christabel”: “The lady sank, belike thro’ pain. And Christabel with might and main Lifted her up, a weary weight, Over the threshold of the gate; Then the lady rose again, And moved as she were not in pain.” “It is prudent,” says Camille Flammarion, “not to give oneself exclusively to occult subjects, for one might soon lose the independence of mind necessary to form an impartial judgment.” III Impressive warnings as to possible dangers from the other side have come from leading spiritualists who have not separated themselves from the Christian faith. It will not be the fault of Sir William Barrett if foolish and credulous séance-haunters get into deep waters. In the latest edition of his standard book he reprints, with slight modification, an often cited passage which he wrote more than ten years ago. “Certainly,” he says, “the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, points to a race of spiritual creatures, not made of flesh and blood, inhabiting the air around us, and able injuriously to affect mankind. Good as well as mischievous agencies doubtless exist in the unseen; this, of course, is equally true if the phenomena are due to those who have once lived on the earth. ‘There are as great fools in the spirit world as there ever were in this,’ as Henry More said over 200 years ago. In any case, granting the existence of a spiritual world, it is necessary to be on our guard against the invasion of our will by a lower order of intelligence and morality.” It is the danger to the will, fully recognised and acknowledged, which leads Sir Oliver Lodge and others to press on students of Spiritualism the need for a primary absorption in worldly affairs. Camille Flammarion, the chief French authority, urges the same view. “There are foods and drinks,” he says, “which it is most wholesome to take only in small quantities.” After a lifetime devoted to the study of mediumship, this brilliant Frenchman thought that three principles only were established: (1) The soul exists as a real entity independent of the body. (2) It is endowed with faculties still unknown to science. (3) It is able to act at a distance without the intervention of the senses. IV Passing, then, from the first part of our subject, we may summarise as follows:-- (1) The past of Spiritualism is deeply tainted with fraud, and the present is “clouded with a doubt.” There may have been unconscious cheating, but there has been much deliberate roguery. (2) Even where fraud seems to be eliminated, it is probable that the unexplained phenomena of mediumship will become clear as a wider knowledge is gained of man’s physical and mental powers. “I hold,” says Dr. Barnes, “that all the well-attested evidence, on which the theory of spirit-communication is based, will ultimately be explained by a fuller knowledge of the interchange of consciousness between living persons.” (3) We reject the crude theory that mediumistic phenomena are caused by diabolic intervention. (4) We believe that mental and moral ruin may result from “borderland” studies, because in these the personality is peculiarly liable to the loss of will-power and self-control. “We shall do well to keep the doors of the soul shut until we can open them to God.” _Chapter VIII_ SPIRITUALISM AND CHRISTIANITY Spiritualism, a recent writer[26] says, is more and more proving itself a rival to Christianity. Its votaries cease, almost invariably, to be Christians in any traditional sense of the word. It grips the mind of “dabblers” with an extraordinary fascination, and “seems to demand a self-surrender as great as that which Christianity itself involves, a surrender of the whole personality.” We propose to ask in this chapter, “What is the attitude of Spiritualist teachers towards the Christian faith?” An exceptional position, let us remark at the outset, is occupied by two of the leaders, Sir W. F. Barrett and Sir Oliver Lodge. The former regards the evidence afforded at the séance as “a handmaid to faith,” and warns beginners “against making a religion of Spiritualism.”[27] Sir Oliver Lodge, as we know from his writings, has a sincere reverence for the Person of our Lord. He is convinced that grades of being exist, not only lower in the scale than man, but higher also, grades of every order of magnitude from zero to infinity. Among these lofty beings “is One on whom the right instinct of Christianity has always lavished heartfelt reverence and devotion. Those who think that the day of the Messiah is over are strangely mistaken; it has hardly begun.... Whatever the Churches may do, I believe that the call of Christ himself will be heard and attended to, by a large part of humanity in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth.... My own time down here is getting short; it matters little; but I dare not go till I have borne this testimony to the grace and truth which emanate from that divine Being.”[28] There is something characteristic in the question asked by the bereaved father at an “automatic” séance reported in “Raymond”: “O. J. L.: Before you go, Raymond, I want to ask a serious question. Have you been let to see Christ?” “Father, I shall see him presently. It is not time yet.” Intercourse with the departed means for Sir Oliver Lodge “nothing less than the possibility some day of a glance or a word of approval from the eternal Christ.” I A different world opens upon us as we examine the general literature of Spiritualism. Its “Seven Principles” have been set forth as follows:[29]