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THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES 
 
 IN THEIR 
 
 RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 
 
 FRANKLIN JOHNSON, D.D. 
 
 
 
 FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
 
 NEW YORK : 1887. LONDON : 
 
 18 and 20 Astor Place. 44 Fleet Street. 
 
 [All rights reserved.] 
 

 ■z* 
 
 ^\° 
 
 Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1887, 
 
 By FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I. PAGE 
 
 Introductory 5 
 
 II. 
 Materialism 11 
 
 III. 
 
 Superstition and Imposture 12 
 
 IV. 
 Clairvoyance ; Prophecy 14 
 
 V. 
 
 Monitions ; Apparitions of the Living ; Prophetic 
 Visions 35 
 
 VI. 
 Prayer 42 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Atmosphere op Assemblies 48 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Physical Manifestations in Revivals 50 
 
 IX. 
 Mind-Cure ; Prayer-Cure ; Faith-Cure 52 
 
 X. 
 Revelation and Inspiration 54 
 
 XI. 
 Mesmerism ; Demoniac Possession 56 
 
 XII. 
 Modern Demons 61 
 
 XIII. 
 Haunted Houses ; Demons 65 
 
 XIV. 
 Haunted Houses ; The History of Balaam 86 
 
 XV. 
 Retrospect and Prospect 89 
 
THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES 
 
 IN THEIR RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 It is now nearly forty years since Hugh Miller 
 sent forth to the Christian world the following 
 words : 
 
 " The clergy, as a class, suffer themselves to 
 linger far in the rear of an intelligent and accom- 
 plished laity, a full age behind the requirements of 
 the time. Let them not shut their eyes to the 
 danger which is obviously coming. The battle of 
 the Evidences will have as certainly to be fought on 
 the field of physical science as it was contested in 
 the last age on that of the metaphysics. And on 
 this new arena the combatants will have to employ 
 new weapons, which it will be the privilege of the 
 challenger to choose. The old, opposed to these, 
 
b THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES' II* THEIK 
 
 would prove but of little avail. In an age of mus- 
 kets and artillery the bows and arrows of an obso- 
 lete school of warfare would be found greatly less 
 than sufficient, in the field of battle, for purposes 
 either of assault or defence." 
 
 The prophecy w T as true ; the defenders of our re- 
 ligion were celebrating their victory over the scep- 
 tical students of mind ; but their joy was prema- 
 ture ; they had yet to meet the sceptical students of 
 matter. This second battle has been fought and 
 won, and its dying echoes still sound in our ears. 
 The seer who foretold it sought to arouse the lead- 
 ers of the Christian hosts and prepare them for the 
 coming conflict ; yet it may be said that they were 
 taken by surprise, and that, had they heeded his 
 warning in time, surveyed the field carefully, and 
 made a wise disposition of their forces, they might 
 have avoided many mistakes and much labor and 
 
 This glance at the past may teach us a lesson 
 for the future. It is probable that the enemy 
 is about to change his method of attack, and that, 
 if we wish not to be taken again at a disadvantage, 
 we must study his recent movements, ascertain what 
 they portend, stand ready to turn to the new quarter 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 7 
 
 from which he threatens to advance, meet him with 
 arms equal to his own, and maintain our ground not 
 only with courage, but also with vigilance and in- 
 telligence. In the past fifteen years the materialistic 
 interpretation of nature has made no progress ; on 
 the contrary, it has encountered numerous unex- 
 pected difficulties, and materialists have assumed a 
 less boastful tone. Materialism is no longer a nov- 
 elty to the world at large, and cultivated people in 
 general have ceased to think much of it, though it 
 is still a vast force within the limited circles of those 
 who make a specialty of the physical sciences. It 
 is no longer capable of serving the purpose of the 
 great enemy of God and man, and we may expect, 
 therefore, that, while he will not cast it aside, he 
 will assign to it a subordinate use, and invent some 
 other weapon of offence. 
 
 Possibly this may be found in the psychic studies 
 now engaging the attention of many distinguished 
 men. These studies are termed psychic in a modi- 
 tied sense : they pertain not to the ordinary opera- 
 tions of the mind, but to the unusual, such as 
 thought-transference, somnambulism, mesmerism, 
 clairvoyance, spiritualism, apparitions of the living, 
 haunted houses, ghosts, and the Buddhistic occult- 
 
8 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 ism. Many of the phenomena to be investigated 
 seem to lie in the dim borderland between the spirit 
 and the body, or, if there be no such neutral zone, 
 in the territory where they overlap and mingle, a 
 region hitherto occupied only by the savage hordes 
 of superstition, imposture, and quackery. 
 
 The studies have been carried on chiefly under 
 the direction of the British Society for Psychical 
 Research. This society was constituted in 1882, 
 under the presidency of Professor Henry Sidgwick, 
 of Trinity College, Cambridge. lie has recently 
 retired from the chair, and Professor Balfour 
 Stewart has been chosen his successor. At the end 
 of 1882 the society had 150 members ; at the end 
 of 1883, 288 ; at the end of 1884, 520 ; and in 
 April, 1885, 586. It is thus apparent that both in- 
 terest and confidence in its work are increasing. 
 The President, Professor Balfour Stewart, says in 
 his inaugural address, published a year ago : " Men 
 of the highest standing in all departments of knowl- 
 edge have consented to join our ranks." Among 
 the many distinguished members who are actively 
 engaged in the labors of the society the following 
 may be mentioned : the Bishop of Carlisle ; the 
 Bishop of Ripon ; the Dean of Lincoln ; Lord 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 9 
 
 Rayleigh, who has just retired from the chair of 
 Elementary Physics in Cambridge University ; 
 Henry Sidgwick, Professor of Moral Philosophy in 
 Cambridge University, and author of works on 
 political economy and the methods of ethics ; Mrs. 
 Sidgwick, wife of Professor Sidgwick, and sister of 
 the late Francis M. Balfour, the celebrated embry- 
 ologist, a lady of remarkable intelligence ; Balfour 
 Stewart, Professor of Physics in Owens College, 
 Manchester ; TV. F. Barrett, Professor of Physics 
 in the Royal College of Science, Dublin ; Edmund 
 Gurney, whose book on " The Power of Sound" 
 has given him a high rank among physicists ; 
 Hensley Wedgwood, the author of the " Etymo- 
 logical Dictionary ;" Arthur Balfour, M.P., the 
 author of " A Defence of Philosophic Doubt;" 
 St. George Lane Fox, an authority in mythology ; 
 Richard A. Hutton, the editor of the Spectator ; 
 Malcomb Gurney Guthrie, the critic of the philos- 
 ophy of Herbert Spencer ; TV. F. Myers, the 
 writer of essays and poems ; Dr. George TVyld, 
 President of the British Theosophical Society, and 
 Earl Russell, the grandson of the statesman. The 
 list of active members shows many other noted 
 names. The honorary members, who, though not 
 
10 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 actively engaged in the work of the society, consent 
 to support it with their influence, are J. C. Adams, 
 LL.D., F.R.S., Professor of Astronomy in Cam- 
 bridge University, and the discoverer, with Lever- 
 rier, of the planet Neptune ; William Crookes, 
 F.R.S., the physicist ; Alfred Eussel Wallace, the 
 naturalist ; the Right Hon. W. E. Gladstone, the 
 statesman ; Lord Tennyson, the poet ; John Rus- 
 kin, the art-critic, and G. F. Watts, R.A., the 
 painter. 
 
 These names are given here to show the reader 
 that the researches of the Psychical Society are pur- 
 sued in earnest, and by men of sober judgment, 
 above the suspicion of credulity or haste. 
 
 A similar society has been formed in this country ; 
 it is composed of promising materials ; but it is too 
 young as yet to report any very important results of 
 its labors. 
 
 These things render it probable that the new 
 psychic studies have come to stay for at least a gen- 
 eration, and that they will challenge the attention 
 of the most highly cultivated minds. If such shall 
 be the case, sceptics will not fail to use them for 
 the promotion of unbelief. It is evident that 
 Christian thinkers should not ignore them, but, on 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 11 
 
 the contrary, should engage in them heartily, and 
 in a judicial temper, eager only for the truth, and 
 confident that when found it will aid rather than 
 hinder the advancement of their holy religion. 
 
 The British society has collected a great mass of 
 facts ; it has already deduced from these a number 
 of important theories and a few still more important 
 conclusions ; and it is not too early to consider what 
 advantages the Church may fairly gain from its 
 labors, what use the sceptic will seek to make of 
 them, and how best to answer the arguments which 
 he will find in them. 
 
 II. 
 MATERIALISM. 
 
 We may account it a gain that the attention of 
 men of science is no longer directed exclusively to 
 matter, but is turned to the mind. We see what 
 we look at, and suffer it to shut other things from 
 our perception. To one who makes the sun-spots 
 his special study the light of the sun is important 
 chiefly as a means of exhibiting the darkness by 
 contrast. To one who makes the ant his special 
 
12 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IK THEIR 
 
 study this tiny creature appears a formidable rival 
 of man. So to one who makes matter his special 
 study the very mind with which he studies be- 
 comes an object of secondary importance, and he 
 may seek to interpret it as a mere phase of matter. 
 Those who believe in God and in the immortality 
 of the soul should be pleased with the evidence that 
 men of science are less exclusively devoted to the 
 study of matter, and are allowing the mind a share 
 of their researches, even though in its more unusual 
 manifestations ; for they should find in this fact 
 another evidence of the decay of materialism, and 
 a prophecy of its speedy disappearance from the 
 cultivated circles of society, assured that mind will 
 vindicate itself when it can secure fair and impar- 
 tial attention. 
 
 III. 
 
 SUPERSTITION AND IMPOSTURE. 
 
 The Christian may hope also that the scientific 
 study of such subjects as mesmerism, spiritualism, 
 and clairvoyance will dissipate much superstition 
 and prevent much imposture. Quacks and charla- 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 13 
 
 tans of every sort take advantage of mystery to 
 impose upon their dupes : in the infancy of astron- 
 omy the astrologer nourishes with his pretence of 
 reading the future ; and in the infancy of chemistry 
 the alchemist nourishes with his pretence of the 
 philosopher's stone and the elixir of life. So to- 
 day, in the infancy of our psychic studies, we have 
 a host of mediums, clairvoyants, mesmerizers, and 
 fortune-tellers, who claim to wield extraordinary, if 
 not supernatural powers, who batten upon ignorance 
 and credulity, and who wield an influence but little 
 favorable to the religious and moral improvement 
 of those who consult them and follow their counsels. 
 They live in a region of twilight, concerning which 
 the most intelligent know little more than the most 
 unlettered. Should the new psychic studies prove 
 that there is no clairvoyance, no mesmerism, no 
 basis of fact for spiritualism to rest upon except 
 tricks of legerdemain, millions of souls, now in ab- 
 ject bondage to superstition and irreligion, would 
 be released. But perhaps we are not to look for this 
 disproof ; the work already accomplished renders 
 it almost or quite certain that it will not be given us. 
 
 There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, 
 Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. 
 
14 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 But we are promised a solution of many riddles, the 
 reduction of a thousand marvels to the ordinary 
 plane of natural law, and this will be a good service, 
 which will deliver multitudes from delusion and 
 sin. The advantage will not be less than that 
 which was gained when astrology became astronomy 
 and alchemy chemistry. Indeed, it may be greater ; 
 for the superstitions of our time are more directly 
 hostile to Christianity than were those of astrology 
 and alchemy, which were cultivated in the bosom 
 of the Church, and not seldom by the pure and the 
 devout. 
 
 IV. 
 
 CLAIRVOYANCE ; PROPHECY. 
 
 The subject which the British Society has investi- 
 gated most thoroughly is the alleged transference of 
 thought from one mind to another without the 
 agency of external signs. The most common terms 
 to designate the process are mind-reading, thought- 
 transference, and telepathy. The experiments have 
 been numerous, and have been conducted with 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 15 
 
 many precautions to avoid error. They lead to two 
 conclusions : first, that the great majority of man- 
 kind have no power to interpret clearly the minds 
 of others except by the ordinary agencies of com- 
 munication ; and second, that a small percentage of 
 the human race, under favorable circumstances and 
 to a limited extent, can read the minds of others 
 without the ordinary agencies. Some of these few 
 possess the gift in a low and others in a higher de- 
 gree. The method of investigation usually era- 
 ployed is the following : the experimenter fixes his 
 mind intently upon some object or geometrical 
 figure, and the subject of the experiments, who is 
 called the percipient, guesses what it is, or attempts 
 to make a drawing of it. From a long series of 
 experiments, tested by the calculus of probabilities, 
 it is easy to determine whether the subject is a 
 mind-reader or not. A brief extract from the third 
 report of the committee on thought-transference 
 will illustrate the method pursued and the care 
 with which the investigation is conducted : 
 
 " The percipient, Mr. Smith, is seated blindfolded 
 at a table in our own room ; a paper and pencil are 
 within his reach ; and a member of the committee 
 is at his side. Another member of the committee 
 
16 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 leaves the room, and outside the closed door draws 
 some figure at random. Mr. Blackburn, who, so 
 far, has remained in the room with Mr. Smith, is 
 now called out, and the door closed ; the drawing 
 is then held before him for a few seconds, till its 
 impression is stamped upon his mind. Then, clos- 
 ing his eves, Mr. Blackburn is led back into the 
 room, and placed, standing or sitting, behind Mr. 
 Smith, at a distance of some two feet from him. A 
 brief period of intense mental concentration on Mr. 
 Blackburn's part now follows. Presently Mr. Smith 
 takes up the pencil, amid the unbroken and absolute 
 silence of all present, and attempts to reproduce on 
 paper the impression he has gained. He is allowed 
 to do as he pleases as regards the bandage round his 
 eyes ; sometimes he pulls it down before he begins to 
 draw ; but if the figures be not distinctly present to 
 his mind, he prefers to let it remain on, and draws 
 fragments of the figures as they are seen. During 
 all this time Mr. Blackburn's eyes are, generally, 
 firmly closed ; sometimes he requests us to bandage 
 his eyes tightly as an aid to concentration ; and ex- 
 cept when it is distinctly recorded, he has not touched 
 Mr. Smith, and has not gone in front of him, or in 
 any way within his possible field of vision, since he 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 
 
 17 
 
 re-entered the room. "When Mr. Smith has drawn 
 what he can, the original drawing, which has so 
 far remained outside the room, is brought in, 
 and compared with the reproduction. Both are 
 marked by the committee and put away in a secure 
 place." 
 
 To illustrate the surprising degree of accuracy 
 attained by some of the best percipients, several 
 tables like the following are published in the report : 
 
 Things 
 Chosen. 
 
 
 N 
 Rigt 
 
 00 
 
 o 
 
 o. 
 
 it on 
 
 DD 
 
 si 
 
 o.Sf 
 
 If First Guess 
 only is Counted, 
 the Result by Ex- 
 periment was 
 
 The Chance of Suc- 
 cess by Accident was 
 
 Cards 
 
 Nos. 10-100.. 
 
 Objects 
 
 Names 
 
 36 
 20 
 21 
 
 8 
 
 10 
 5 
 
 7 
 4 
 
 9 
 3 
 1 
 3 
 
 24 
 
 9 
 10 
 
 7 
 
 1 right guess in 3% 
 1 " " 4 
 1 " " 3 
 1 " " 2 
 
 1 right guess in 52. 
 1 " " 90. 
 1 " " 40 
 Something indefinitely 
 small. 
 
 Totals 
 
 85 
 
 26 
 
 16 
 
 50 
 
 
 The following specimens of figures thought of by 
 experimenters, and of their reproductions by per- 
 cipients, will serve still further to illustrate the sub. 
 ject, and to show on what cogent evidence the so- 
 ciety bases its conclusion that beyond question 
 some persons possess the power of mind-read- 
 ing : 
 
18 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
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20 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
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RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 21 
 
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22 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IH THEIR 
 
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 REPRODUCTION 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 23 
 
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24 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 Original dbawing. 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT, 25 
 
 ORIGINAL D8AW1NO. 
 
 Reproduction 
 
26 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 There is some evidence that many persons who 
 cannot be called mind-readers, and perhaps the 
 majority of our race, may be affected in a vague 
 manner by the thoughts and feelings of others, 
 specially if these are distinct or vehement. The 
 proof is presented in a report of experiments con- 
 ducted by the well-known French investigator, 
 M. Ch. Eichet, published in the .Revue Philoso- 
 phique for December, 1884, and discussed by Mr. 
 Edmund Gurney in the " Proceedings of the Soci- 
 ety for Psychical Research" of the same month and 
 year. The experiments were numerous and varied, 
 and but a single brief extract from the account of 
 Mr. Gurney can be given here ; but this is sufficient 
 to illustrate the method pursued and the results 
 obtained : 
 
 " A card being drawn at random out of a pack, 
 the ' agent ' fixed his attention on it, and the 
 ' percipient ' endeavored to name it. The novelty 
 of M. Ri chefs method was this : that though the 
 success, as judged by the results of any particular 
 series of trials, seemed slight, showing that he was 
 not experimenting with what we should consider 
 good subjects, he made the trials on a sufficiently 
 extended scale to bring out the fact that the guesses 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 2? 
 
 were on the whole, though not strikingly, above 
 the number that pure accident would account for, 
 and that their total was considerably above that 
 number. 
 
 " This observation involves a new and striking 
 application of the calculus of probabilities. M. 
 Richet takes advantage of the fact that, the larger 
 the number of trials made under conditions where 
 success is purely accidental, the more nearly will 
 the total number of successes attained conform to 
 the figure which the formula of probabilities gives. 
 For instance, if some one draws a card at random 
 out of a full pack, and before it has been looked at 
 by any one present, I make a guess at its suit, my 
 chance of being right is of course 1 in 4. Similar- 
 ly, if the process is repeated 52 times, the probable 
 number of successes, according to the strict calculus 
 of probabilities, is 13 ; in 520 trials the probable 
 number of successes is 130. Now, if we consider 
 only a short series of 52 guesses, I may be acci- 
 dentally right many more times than 13, or many 
 less times. But if the series be prolonged — if 520 
 guesses be allowed, instead of 52 — the actual num- 
 ber of successes will vary from the probable num- 
 ber within much smaller limits ; and if we suppose 
 
28 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 an infinite prolongation, the proportional diver- 
 gence between the actual and the probable number 
 will become infinitely small. This being so, it is 
 clear that if, in a very short series of trials, we find 
 a considerable difference between the actual num- 
 ber of successes and the probable number, there is 
 no reason for regarding this difference as anything 
 but purely accidental ; but if we find a similar 
 difference in a very long series, we are justified in 
 surmising that some condition beyond mere acci- 
 dent has been at work. If cards be drawn in suc- 
 cession from a pack, and I guess the suit rightly in 
 3 out of 4 trials, I shall be foolish to be surprised ; 
 but if I guess the suit rightly in 3000 out of 4000 
 trials, I shall be equally foolish not to be surprised. 
 " Now, M. Eichet continued his trials until he 
 had obtained a very large total ; and the results were 
 such at any rate as to suggest that accident had not 
 ruled undisturbed, that a guiding condition had 
 been introduced which affected in the right direc- 
 tion a certain small percentage of the guesses made. 
 That condition, if it existed, could be nothing else 
 than the fact that, prior to the guess being made, 
 a person in the neighborhood of the guesser had 
 concentrated his attention on the card drawn. 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 29 
 
 Hence the results, so far as they go, make for the 
 reality of the faculty of ' mental suggestion.' The 
 faculty, if present, was clearly very slightly devel- 
 oped, whence the necessity of experimenting on a 
 very large scale before its genuine influence on the 
 numbers could be even surmised. 
 
 " Out of 2927 trials at guessing the suit of a 
 card, drawn at random, and steadily looked at by 
 another person, the actual number of successes was 
 789 ; the probable number, had pure accident pre- 
 vailed, was 732. The total was made up of 39 
 series of different lengths, in which 11 persons took 
 part, M. Richet himself being in some cases the 
 guesser, and in others the person who looked at the 
 card. He observed that, when a large number of 
 trials were made at one sitting, the aptitude of both 
 persons concerned seemed to be affected ; it became 
 harder for the agent to visualize, and the proportion 
 of successes on the guesser' s part decreased. If we 
 agree to reject from the above total all the series 
 in which over 100 trials were made consecutively, 
 the numbers become more striking. Out of 1833 
 trials, we then get 510 successes, the probable num- 
 ber being only 458 ; that is to say, the actual num- 
 ber exceeds the probable number by about -jV- 
 
30 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 Some further experiments, where the particular 
 card, and not merely the suit, was to be guessed, 
 gave a number of successes slightly, but only slight- 
 ly, above the probable number. Out of 782 trials, 
 the actual number of successes was 17, while the 
 probable number was 15 ; and there was a similarly 
 slight excess over the probable number when only 
 the color of the card was to be guessed ; whence 
 M. Richet surmises that there may be a field of 
 choice too wide, and a field of choice too narrow, 
 for the influence of ' mental suggestion ' to have 
 effective play." 
 
 The results obtained by M. Richet become more 
 significant for us when we consider that the eleven 
 percipients engaged in the experiments were just 
 such persons as the investigator had about him, 
 none of whom possessed any special telepathic 
 powers. 
 
 Mind-reading is at least a branch, and may be 
 all, of what is known as clairvoyance. The society 
 has not experimented as yet sufficiently to determine 
 whether the same power may be employed in the 
 reading of matter, as well as mind ; that is, in view- 
 ing distant events and scenes, and in the diagnosis 
 of disease ; but still, we may say that the stories 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 31 
 
 heard in almost all social circles of the success of 
 clairvoyants in these directions are rendered more 
 probable by the establishment of the fact that some 
 persons possess the power to read the minds of 
 others. It may be that clairvoyance, freed from 
 imposture and from the pretence of spiritual com- 
 munications, and kept within due bounds of so- 
 briety, will prove a useful assistant to the physician 
 and the explorer. In any case, the experiments 
 should be carried much further, so that, if clairvoy- 
 ance is limited strictly to the realm of thought, the 
 world may know it, and may cease to believe in its 
 wider powers and its spiritualistic accessories, and so 
 that, if it is capable of a greater extension, its 
 exact laws and limitations may be discovered and 
 published, and its employment taken from the 
 hands of infidels, free-lovers, quacks and impos- 
 tors, and given to the Christian and the man of 
 science. 
 
 The spiritualist has long maintained that the 
 prophets of Israel were nothing more than clairvoy- 
 ants. Should it be proved that clairvoyancy exists, 
 in the broader sense of the word, we shall hear many 
 persons of a much higher grade express the same 
 opinion. It is worth while, therefore, to consider 
 
32 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 what answer the Christian should give. On the 
 one hand, he should point out the fact that the He- 
 brew prophet was no mere reader of the thoughts 
 of other men and of distant or concealed objects 
 and actions, lie was sometimes this, as the modern 
 clairvoyant professes to be ; but he was distin- 
 guished from the clairvoyant, first, by his accurate 
 and large vision of the future, including the rise 
 and fall of cities and empires, the coming of the 
 Messiah, and the general progress of the human 
 race ; and second, by his lofty moral and religious 
 tone, which made him a reformer, a preacher of 
 righteousness. But, on the other hand, the Chris- 
 tian should cheerfully admit that the prophet may 
 have possessed, as the basis of his gifts, the clairvoy- 
 ant faculty ; that the true prophet may have been 
 called of God partly because he possessed this fac- 
 ulty ; that the schools in which the young prophets 
 seem to have been trained, as well as other provi- 
 dences attending their development, may have been 
 agencies for the education, the enlargement, and 
 the regulation of this faculty ; and that God may 
 have made use of it in commissioning His mes- 
 sengers to His people and in communicating His 
 mind to the world, as our Lord took the few loaves 
 
relation to christian thought. 33 
 
 and fishes and blessed them when He would feed 
 the thousands by miracle, thus uniting the natural 
 and the supernatural in one work, since both pro- 
 ceed from His hands and are brethren of the same 
 household. Indeed, it cannot be denied that the 
 early forms of prophecy in Israel, after Moses, look 
 somewhat like a purified and ennobled clairvoyance. 
 When Saul went hunting for his father's asses, and 
 failed to find them, his servant advised him to con- 
 sult Samuel, the man of God. Then the two spoke 
 together as to what sort of present, out of their 
 scanty store, they should take to him as his re- 
 ward, and finally hit upon " the fourth part of a 
 shekel of silver" as a sufficient payment. The in- 
 spired author of this record adds to it the following 
 most curious antiquarian note : " Beforetime in 
 Israel, when a man went to enquire of God, thus 
 he said : Come and let us go to the Seer : for he 
 that is now called a Prophet was beforetime called 
 a Seer." The name of " seer," in significance so 
 similar to our word clairvoyant, appears from the 
 whole passage to have been given to him who bore 
 it on account of his ability to see things not visible 
 to ordinary persons, and he afterward acquired the 
 higher titles of "prophet" and >; man of God" 
 
34 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 because it was perceived that lie was something 
 more than a seer. The ordinary perplexities of 
 life, like a journey in search of lost cattle, were 
 submitted to him, and he was paid for his advice. 
 Even as late as the time of Elisha the custom of 
 paying the prophet for his services was maintained ; 
 for when Benhadad was sick he said to Hazael, 
 " Take a present in thine hand, and go meet the 
 man of God, and enquire of Jehovah by him, say- 
 ing, Shall I recover of this sickness V ' Some proph- 
 ets seem to have received fuller and more precise 
 revelations than others, Elijah and Elisha having 
 been distinguished in this respect from " the sons 
 of the prophets,'' or learners in the prophetic 
 schools, mentioned in connection with them ; and 
 may it not be that the difference was one of nature 
 as well as of grace, and that these, having had a larger 
 capacity as seers than the others, could be employed 
 by God for the communication of His will, as the 
 others could not, unless they had been first created 
 over again, and changed in the very structure of 
 their being ? Moreover, the faintings, the fallings, 
 the trances of some of the prophets have their 
 analogies among the clairvoyants of our times. In 
 short, should strict investigation show that there is 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 35 
 
 such a thing as clairvoyancy, I, for one, should 
 have no objection to the view that God took this 
 power of the soul, in many instances, and made use 
 of it as a channel for the communication of His will 
 to His people. 
 
 y. 
 
 MONITIONS; APPARITIONS OF THE LIVING; 
 PROPHETIC VISIONS. 
 
 Having established beyond controversy, as they 
 suppose, the fact that some persons have the power, 
 under favorable conditions, to read the minds of 
 certain others, the members of the British Psychical 
 Society have sought to use this truth as an expla- 
 nation of various mysteries, and specially of moni- 
 tions of danger and death. In the " Memoir of 
 Francis Wayland," by his sons, there are the fol- 
 lowing anecdotes of his mother : 
 
 " One or two circumstances in the life of Mrs. 
 Wayland were sufficiently remarkable to merit re- 
 cital. No explanation of them is attempted. At 
 the time of their removal to America it was the 
 
36 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 design of Mr. Wayland and his wife to return in a 
 few years, and visit the relatives whom they had 
 left behind, specially the mother of Mrs. Wayland. 
 This purpose they often spoke of to each other. 
 But one morning, after they had been some years 
 in this country, she said to him, on waking, ' I do 
 not wish to return to England. My mother is 
 dead.' No previous intimation of her ill-health had 
 been received. He, unknown to her, made a minute 
 of the time of her declaration ; and a subsequent 
 arrival brought the news of the event, which had 
 occurred at about the time at which her mind was 
 thus impressed. 
 
 " When her son, the subject of this memoir, was 
 expected home from New York, after attending 
 medical lectures there during the winter of 1814-'15, 
 Mrs. Wayland, who was sitting with her husband, 
 suddenly walked the room in great agitation, saying, 
 * Pray for my son ; Francis is in danger.' So 
 urgent was her request that her husband joined her 
 in prayer for his deliverance from peril. At the 
 expected time he returned. His mother at once 
 asked, ' What has taken place ? ' It appeared that, 
 while coming up the North River on a sloop, he 
 had fallen overboard, and the sloop had passed over 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 37 
 
 him. He was an athletic swimmer, and readily 
 kept himself afloat till he could be rescued. Was it 
 the unspeakable power of a mother's love that im- 
 parted a vision more than natural V ' — Foot-note, 
 Yol. L, p. 20. 
 
 More than a hundred instances similar to this have 
 been collected by the society ; they come for the 
 most part from persons now living and of the high- 
 est character for veracity ; and the witnesses have 
 been cross-examined with care. In a majority of 
 cases the person who receives the monition is a 
 near friend or relative of the one who is in danger 
 or death. The explanation favored by the society 
 is this. In the most successful experiments in mind- 
 reading the experimenter fixes his thought intently 
 upon the image to be transferred to the percipient, 
 for the result depends not altogether upon the clair- 
 voyant powers of the latter, but also in some degree 
 upon the force and clearness of thought of the 
 former. The person who, like the mother of Way- 
 land, receives the monition of danger or death, is a 
 mind-reader ; and the person who is in danger or 
 death thinks with agony of the endeared one, who 
 therefore receives a strong and disturbing impres- 
 sion of the event, but knows not whence it comes. 
 
38 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IK THEIR 
 
 So far as the mind-reading ability of the person re- 
 ceiving the monition is concerned, the explanation 
 is probably correct ; but I doubt whether persons 
 in great danger or at the moment of death usually 
 think with special vividness of their relatives and 
 friends, since, if the mind is not so far enfeebled 
 that it cannot think strongly of any object, it is apt 
 to turn to the danger, and to think exclusively of 
 that. Is it not possible that affection and much 
 friendly intercourse of themselves establish specially 
 sympathetic relations between two persons, so that 
 one may at times receive some monition of the dan- 
 ger of the other, whether that other thinks strongly 
 of the person who receives the monition or not ? 
 
 The monition sometimes takes an outward form, 
 and presents itself as a vision, perhaps of sleep, 
 perhaps of the waking state. Not infrequently the 
 endangered or dying person is heard calling, though 
 hundreds of miles distant. In the majority of 
 these instances the person who appears in the vision, 
 or who calls, is found to have died about the time 
 of the occurrence, and hence the superstitious sup- 
 pose that the spirit of the dead person was permit- 
 ted to show itself, or to make itself heard, after its 
 departure from the body and before its final depart- 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 39 
 
 lire from the earth. The majority of those who 
 report these apparitions and voices are the reverse 
 of ghost-seers ; in general each of them lias but one 
 solitary instance of the kind to relate, and holds no 
 theory in regard to it. The society has attempted 
 to work out the hypothesis that the apparition is 
 seen or the voice heard just before death, instead of 
 just after it, as the ignorant believe. The person 
 who has the apparition or hears the voice is a mind- 
 reader, and also an endeared friend or relative of 
 the dying person, who, finding himself in imminent 
 peril and about to die, thinks of the other with such 
 unutterable agony and longing as to transfer his 
 image, or the sound of his voice, to the mind of the 
 other. That the impression takes an external form 
 is explained very simply. The nerves of sensation 
 may be disturbed and set in action by external ob- 
 jects ; but they may also be disturbed and set in 
 action by internal forces, by states of the mind. 
 For example, the face may be excited at a particular 
 point by the sensation of tickling, if touched lightly 
 with a straw or a feather ; but one may also create 
 in some point of his face the sensation of tickling 
 merely by fixing his attention upon it and willing it 
 to feel the sensation. So the optic nerve may be 
 
40 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 excited to action, in which it has the sensation of 
 seeing, by external objects ; but it may be excited 
 to the same activity, and with the same result, by 
 great agitation of the mind. In the latter case it 
 will have the sensation of seeing the object thought 
 of, and will represent it to the brain as an external 
 thing. Thus the accusing thoughts of Macbeth 
 stimulate his optic nerves so that they present to 
 him the image of a dagger in the air. In short, 
 the optic nerve, when stimulated to action, whether 
 by objects without, or by some intense agitation of 
 the brain with which it is connected, sees, or reports 
 that it sees, since vision is its chief function. Let 
 us suppose now that the suffering man imprints his 
 agony upon the brain of the percipient : then the 
 alarm and agitation of the percipient may excite the 
 optic nerve and give it the impression of seeing the 
 person whose agony has aroused it. Is he sick ? 
 Then it may see him in a reclining posture, and 
 thin and pallid. Is he drowning ? Then it may 
 see him dripping with water. Is he wounded in 
 battle ? Then it may see him covered with 
 blood. 
 
 The same thing may be said of the other senses, 
 as the hearing, the smell, the taste, the touch ; 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 41 
 
 though, as they are less acute, they may be less 
 often disturbed by strong mental excitements. 
 
 Such is the theory. It is not free from serious 
 difficulties, the chief of which is the admitted fact 
 that the apparition is sometimes seen or the voice 
 heard after the death of the individual, instead of 
 before. To account for this we have the additional 
 theory of delayed telepathic communications. 
 " There is some reason to think," Mrs. Sidgwick 
 writes, " that a telepathic impression may remain 
 latent for a time, and force itself into consciousness 
 only when quiet, or solitude, or some other con- 
 dition favorable to its development, intervenes." 
 
 If the power of reading minds extends thus to 
 monitions of danger and death, and to apparitions 
 and calls of those who are in great peril or at the 
 point of death, it may cast a certain light upon the 
 visions and voices of Holy Scripture, which were so 
 often the means of divine revelation. According 
 to this view, the thoughts suggested by the Holy 
 Spirit were imprinted upon the mind of the prophet 
 so strongly that they took an external form through 
 the agitation of- the nerves of sight or hearing. 
 There is a certain gain for the devout Christian in 
 this view : the agency of God remains as evident, 
 
42 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IJST THEIR 
 
 and the meaning of the vision He created remains 
 as clear, while some light is cast upon the process 
 of His work, and the student of His ways is moved 
 to exclaim, with the ecstasy of Kepler : " O God, 
 I think Thy thoughts over after Thee !" It is as if 
 we could trace His very footsteps as He comes to 
 His servants the prophets, and reveals His will 
 through them by means of symbolic shadows which 
 He gave them to behold and to interpret. 
 
 What I have here said refers strictly to prophetic 
 visions, and not at all to those revelations of reali- 
 ties which the prophets sometimes received. The 
 appearance of Moses and Elijah to Peter, James 
 and John at the Transfiguration, and the appear- 
 ance of Christ to Saul of Tarsus on the way to 
 Damascus, were not visions. 
 
 VI. 
 
 PRAYER. 
 
 The instances of such monitions, apparitions and 
 voices as I have mentioned are so numerous, so well 
 authenticated, and so uniformly connected with the 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 43 
 
 danger or the death of the person brought before 
 the percipient in this manner, that no doubt can re- 
 main either of their frequent occurrence or of their 
 general character. It follows that when one fixes 
 his mind intently upon another, and specially when 
 he is moved to do this by strong agony, he may 
 create in the mind of the other a vivid thought or 
 perhaps image of himself, attended by a tempest of 
 emotion. It is probable that we may go further, 
 and say that his mental state may be reflected in 
 some soul of which he is not thinking at the time, 
 but to which he is bound by ties of affection and 
 sympathy. Such an effect will not be usual, but it 
 will often be produced. 
 
 It has long been said by sceptics that prayer can- 
 not accomplish anything, since the infinite God, if 
 there be a God, will not change His eternal pur- 
 poses in deference to the cries of His finite creat- 
 ures ; or, to use the language of another school, since 
 the laws of nature are unchangeable. To this objec- 
 tion many cogent replies have been made, and among 
 them appears the suggestion of Chalmers that prayer 
 may itself be a cause in the order of nature capable of 
 producing such effects as we desire. This is proved 
 by the new psychic studies to be to a certain extent 
 
44 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 true : intense and agonizing attention fixed upon 
 another may disturb that other mightily, may change 
 the currents of thought and feeling within him, and 
 may suggest our wishes to him. But fervent prayer 
 for another is such intense and agonizing attention 
 fixed upon the other ; and those anecdotes so often 
 heard among Christians, of ardent supplications for 
 an absent person being followed immediately by 
 strange and solemn impressions seizing upon his 
 soul, may have in part a natural explanation. We 
 would not be justified in placing prayer among the 
 stronger physical causes ; but it may well be placed 
 in the category of the strongest psychical causes. 
 Regeneration, the radical change of the nature, is 
 the work of God alone, in answer to the prayer of 
 the Church and of the penitent sinner ; but, while 
 prayer cannot of itself do anything to effect this 
 great revolution, it may, in a natural manner, im- 
 plant in the impenitent soul a new thought of God, 
 of duty, of heaven, of hell, or of a pious mother ; 
 it may lead him to pause and consider ; it may even 
 kindle within him a temporary longing for better 
 things. It may thus induce him to open the door 
 of his heart, when the Holy Spirit will enter in and 
 accomplish His saving work. Christians should be 
 
RELATION" TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 45 
 
 encouraged by this discovery to pray for their fel- 
 low-men, to pray always, and to pray with fervor. 
 
 It seems to be assumed by the experimenters of 
 the British Psychic Society that a percipient will 
 be more apt to succeed in guessing an object or a 
 geometrical figure when a number of persons fix 
 their minds on it than when but one does so. At 
 least, it is very common for a company of them to 
 unite in the experiment with the percipient. I do 
 not know that there is any positive proof of the 
 theory, but it is a natural inference from known 
 facts. If one mind, by fastening its attention upon 
 an object, can set in motion mystic forces capable 
 of affecting another mind, two persons uniting in 
 the effort ought to produce a greater effect, since 
 they constitute a greater cause. The forces, what- 
 ever they may be, ought to prove strong in propor- 
 tion to the number of persons laboring to set them 
 in operation for a given purpose, as the current of 
 electricity is strong in proportion to the number of 
 batteries used to produce it. 
 
 Our Lord has made special promises to those who 
 unite in prayer, and the history of the world is full 
 of testimony that He is faithful to these gracious 
 engagements. It is a rule to which there are but 
 
46 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 few exceptions that, wheii a considerable part of any 
 church is aroused to united and importunate prayer 
 for the ungodly, a revival follows. Perhaps the 
 promises and their fulfilment have a basis in the 
 nature of things, since the union of souls in earnest 
 petitions for the lost may set in action forces which 
 disturb the lost and transfer to them something of 
 the anxiety which is felt on their behalf by their 
 Christian friends. Perhaps they are often induced 
 thus to open their hearts to the Holy Spirit, who, 
 finding them willing, enters in and accomplishes 
 His mighty work of regeneration. We have thus a 
 double encouragement to unite in prayer : first, the 
 promises of God, and second, the nature of things 
 as He has created them to fulfil His purposes of love 
 and mercy. 
 
 It will be objected that prayer is reduced thus to 
 a mere natural agency. Not so. It is found to 
 be a natural agency, but not a mere natural agency. 
 The moral and spiritual character of the mind- 
 reader is not essentially changed by those who 
 move him temporarily with their thoughts ; he re- 
 mains the same that he was before. Hence the 
 radical revolution that we know as regeneration 
 cannot be produced by the wishes of Christians, 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 47 
 
 however earnest they may be. Their thoughts and 
 emotions may be expressed by outward signs, as 
 words, gestures and tears, in which case, though 
 they cannot regenerate the soul of the ungodly, 
 they may move it, and dispose it to seek regener- 
 ation. Or again, their thoughts and emotions may 
 be of use in setting in operation mystic forces that 
 shall arrest the ungodly and arouse him to feeling, 
 and so dispose him to seek regeneration. But this 
 is all which man can do by any means at his dis- 
 posal : God accomplishes the rest. We do not 
 doubt that our agony for impenitent souls is a real 
 means of their saltation when it is expressed in 
 ordinary ways, by words, and gestures, and tears. 
 So, also, we may hold that our agony for souls is a 
 real means of their salvation when it moves them 
 by telepathic processes, without prejudice to the 
 doctrine of the Holy Spirit. We do not doubt that 
 God often uses natural agencies in answering prayer, 
 such, for example, as our own zeal and benevolence 
 awakened by our own prayers : why, therefore, 
 should we hesitate to recognize as a means by which 
 prayer is answered one more natural agency than 
 we have before thought of ? Thus, while no theo- 
 retical difficulty is created by the suggestion that 
 
48 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 prayer, and specially united prayer, may be in itself 
 a real cause adequate to produce important effects 
 upon the minds of men, great encouragement may 
 be found in it. 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE ATMOSPHERE OF ASSEMBLIES. 
 
 The minister accustomed to revivals will remem- 
 ber that he has sometimes found an assembly, when 
 he has entered it, pervaded by what has seemed to 
 him a spiritual atmosphere, that he has then felt 
 assured of a favorable issue of the meeting, and 
 that his confidence has almost always been justified 
 by the result. He will remember the opposite ex- 
 perience of a chilling atmosphere and a spiritless 
 service in which little apparent advance was made. 
 He perceives these different conditions by an im- 
 mediate intuition, before anything is said to reveal 
 them. Moreover, the spiritual atmosphere of an 
 assembly is often changed by the coming in of new 
 elements : an assembly in the beginning warm and 
 enthusiastic may be chilled by the entrance of a 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 49 
 
 large number of the indifferent or the hostile, 
 though they conduct themselves with entire pro- 
 priety ; as an assembly in the beginning cold and 
 dreary may be rilled with sweet, constraining power 
 by the entrance of a large number of devout and 
 prayerful persons. Sometimes the entrance of one 
 person of either class, if he be of a large and com- 
 manding nature, may effect a great change in the 
 atmosphere of the place. The leader of a meeting 
 which seems chilly and constrained may bring into 
 it a spring-tide of melting influences by his own im- 
 portunate prayers lifted to heaven in silence, and 
 also by exhorting the Christians present to engage 
 in special prayers for the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit. In such assemblies, where sharp and earnest 
 appeals are made to the impenitent, it is as if there 
 were a warfare of souls beneath the surface, the 
 saints contending in silence with the impenitent sin- 
 ners. Perhaps these things may be explained in 
 part by telepathy. Here we see how important it 
 is that Christians should unite in attending the ser- 
 vices of the Church, and in prayer for the preacher 
 and for those to whom he brings his holy message. 
 
50 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 VIII. 
 
 PHYSICAL MANIFESTATIONS IN REVIVALS. 
 
 The majority of our modern revivals are as quiet 
 and orderly as the usual Sabbath service. But in 
 former days revivals were often attended with vio- 
 lent physical manifestations. Under Wesley faint- 
 ings, fallings and convulsions were common. The 
 early Methodist camp-meetings were wild scenes. 
 In our Western States an affection commonly 
 called " the jerks" attended them, and in clearing 
 the space in the woods to be occupied by the peo- 
 ple, the stumps of the smaller trees were left high, so 
 that any one seized with this singular malady might 
 hold on to them, and thus to a certain extent miti- 
 gate the severity of his convulsions. The great 
 revival in Ireland, which occurred within our own 
 memory, was attended with many such physical 
 effects. At the first thought we are disposed to 
 say that these disturbances were produced by the 
 high religious enthusiasm of those who exhibited 
 them ; but it is easy to show the contrary, for the 
 religious enthusiast was usually exempt, while those 
 who came to gaze in curiosity or to mock in enmity 
 
RELATION" TO CHRISTIAN" THOUGHT. 51 
 
 were the most frequent victims. It is no longer 
 difficult to find a plausible explanation of these 
 things : vast numbers of Christians came together, 
 and their thoughts and prayers concerned the in- 
 different and the hostile almost wholly. If the 
 drowning man, by the intense agony with which he 
 thinks of his distant wife, can sometimes communi- 
 cate to her his own feeling of alarm, cause her to 
 suppose that she hears his voice, or present to her a 
 vision of his person in dripping garments, it should 
 not seem incredible that the overwhelming emotions 
 once indulged by Christians in seasons of special 
 religious interest should have produced some start- 
 ling physical effect through those for whom they 
 labored and prayed. E"o doubt these physical dis- 
 turbances were often mistaken for the special work 
 of the Holy Spirit, and for regeneration, and were 
 thus the means of bringing into the churches some 
 unconverted persons ; but possibly we have gone 
 to the opposite extreme, and by our endeavors to 
 extrude all deep emotions from our modern revi- 
 vals have sacrificed a valuable element of genuine 
 religions power. 
 
 The strange and infective influence of the con- 
 vulsionaries of the Middle Ages, so like the physi- 
 
52 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN" THEIR 
 
 cal influence which once attended revivals, is to be 
 explained in the same manner. 
 
 IX. 
 
 MIND-CURE; PRAYER- CURE ; FAITH-CURE. 
 
 Our discussion shows us that there maybe a basis 
 in nature for the so-called mind-cure, prayer-cure 
 and faith-cure, all of which have large features in 
 common. If I lix my mind earnestly upon a per- 
 son, I may succeed in disturbing his mind by the 
 mere exercise of my own ; I may move his brain ; 
 I may affect his nervous system ; and hence, by 
 directing my attention to some particular part of 
 his body which is diseased, I may possibly excite 
 it to healthy action or may turn to it currents of 
 vital and healing force. Thus much is possible. 
 But this method of cure, if successful at all, since 
 its operation is directly upon the brain and nerves, 
 would achieve its chief triumphs in nervous diseases, 
 as, in fact, it seems to do. Moreover, as the proc- 
 esses of telepathy, and the monitions of the endan- 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 53 
 
 gered and the dying, are fitful and uncertain, de- 
 pending upon many obscure conditions, so we might 
 expect to find this process of healing, as in fact we 
 do. Hence those who would make it a substitute for 
 the ordinary care of the physician commit a crime 
 against human life. But it may prove a valuable 
 addition to the science of healing, and the physician 
 should not despise it as unworthy of his attention. 
 The friends of the sick should be encouraged to pray 
 fervently for them, knowing that God will be 
 moved by their wishes, and will so order His prov- 
 idences as to fulfil their petitions, if this is best, 
 and also that they themselves, by the very earnest- 
 ness and determination of their souls, may contrib- 
 ute to the cure. 
 
 Still further. When God determines to heal the 
 sick by a direct interference for their benefit, it 
 may be that He operates through the same law that 
 the mind-curer uses. If so, He employs natural 
 law in effecting the recovery, instead of violating 
 it ; and thus we remove the common objection of 
 the sceptic to the doctrine that He raises up the sick 
 in answer to our prayers. We are brought thus to 
 the exhilarating conception that in praying for the 
 sick we are working " together with God," and in 
 
54 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 the exact manner in which He works ; and also 
 that He, in answering our petitions, honors us by 
 associating us with Him in the very process of ac- 
 complishing the gracious deed. 
 
 REVELATION AND INSPIRATION. 
 
 It is often asked how God could reveal Himself 
 immediately to the souls of holy men, and how He 
 could inspire them with His thoughts, unless by 
 such a violation of natural law as would amount to 
 their recreation, their transformation into unhuman 
 or superhuman beings. For is not each soul en- 
 closed within walls which can be entered only 
 through the gates of the five senses ? Is it possible 
 for God, unless He change its nature, to reach it in 
 any other way than the ordinary avenues of ap- 
 proach open to all comers ? Must not He draw near 
 it, if at all, by means of external nature, which 
 shows His power, His wisdom, and to a certain ex- 
 tent His kindness ? Is not the doctrine of the di- 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 55 
 
 rect inbreathing of His thought disproved, since 
 man has no capacity to receive thought in this man- 
 ner ? The new psychic studies tend to remove the 
 difficulty, by showing that there are persons capable 
 by nature of receiving thought in this very way. 
 The majority of men have little of such capacity ; 
 and we may see in this fact a reason why God does 
 not communicate His truth immediately to all who 
 seek it in sincerity ; the mass of them are not fitted 
 by the nature with which He has endowed them to 
 receive His thoughts by direct impression, and 
 therefore He will proceed upon a different plan, un- 
 less He determine to alter their nature by a creative 
 act. A few men out of the whole race have the ca- 
 pacity to receive His thought by direct impression, 
 and He will select from these such as are most per- 
 fectly fitted for the purpose, and will inspire them 
 and commission them to make known His truth to 
 the world. Thus one great objection to the doctrine 
 of inspiration is removed, and the limitation of in- 
 spiration to a few is explained, while also a flood of 
 light is cast on the process of inspiration. Further- 
 more, as there are persons who can take into their 
 minds a specially clear and accurate transcript of 
 the thoughts of others, it is no longer difficult to 
 
56 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN" THEIR 
 
 see how men were made capable of infallible inspi- 
 ration, through whose agency we possess the very 
 truth, with no admixture of error. The .illustra- 
 tion becomes yet more valuable when we consider 
 that in telepathy of all degrees of clearness and ac- 
 curacy, even the highest, the percipient is in the 
 full possession of his consciousness, exercises his 
 will freely, and is in an active rather than a passive 
 state. 
 
 XL 
 
 MESMERISM; DEMONIAC POSSESSION. 
 
 The researches of the British society emphasize 
 in the strongest manner the reality of mesmerism. 
 Before the formation of the society mesmerism 
 had already been lifted to a respectable position 
 among men of science by the experiments of Braid 
 and Carpenter ; but the society has made it a sub- 
 ject of interest to the whole world, and has cleared 
 away some of the errors into which Braid and Car- 
 penter fell in their discussion of it. Carpenter re- 
 duced mesmerism to the mere expectant attention 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 57 
 
 of the subject, and denied that the silent will of the 
 operator fixed upon the subject had any influence 
 upon the result. Ten men are told to look stead- 
 fastly at a coin, or at the metallic ferule of a walk- 
 ing-stick, and are made to believe that in a few 
 minutes they will sink to sleep. The object at 
 which they gaze is sufficiently bright to aid them in 
 fastening their vision upon it, and their minds are 
 thus withdrawn from surrounding objects and re- 
 leased from ordinary distractions. At the same 
 time, they fully expect to slumber. The result is 
 that the more yielding and facile among them are 
 soon found to be in a strange sleep, as they had 
 anticipated. Were there no operator, and did the 
 ten men agree among themselves to go through the 
 process, and did they expect to fall asleep as the 
 result of it, the same persons would actually fall 
 asleep. There is no special unexplained influence 
 of one mind upon another, but only the influence 
 of the mind upon itself : the slumber is produced 
 solely by monotonous attention to one object, with 
 the expectancy of slumber. Such in substance is 
 the teaching of Carpenter, upon which he insists in 
 the strongest manner. But the researches of the 
 British Psychical Society decidedly discredit it, and 
 
58 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 show beyond a doubt that, while some may be able 
 to throw themselves into the mesmeric state by 
 their own will, or by their expectant attention, the 
 majority of subjects must be assisted to enter it by 
 the will of another, to which they yield themselves. 
 When the subject is once thoroughly immersed in 
 the mesmeric sleep, can the operator control him 
 by a thought, a silent determination that he must 
 act in particular ways, or must the operator resort 
 to external indications of his will, as words, or sig- 
 nificant gestures, or touches of the phrenological 
 bumps which are supposed by the subject to be 
 connected with various traits of character and to 
 dictate certain kinds of words and deeds ? I am 
 told that the member of the American society who 
 has studied mesmerism most carefully has achieved 
 no success in his efforts to control his subjects by 
 the unexpressed fiat of his will, but is obliged to 
 give them some indication of his wishes through the 
 ordinary channels of communication between men. 
 Braid and Carpenter maintain that this is always 
 necessary. But the committee of the British so- 
 ciety to which this branch of study was assigned re- 
 port that they get the clearest evidence in certain 
 cases of the power of the operator to control his 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 59 
 
 subjects without the use of signs. They refer to 
 instances of the closest mental connection between 
 the subject and the operator, in which the subject 
 feels the mental states of the operator as if they 
 were his own, and obeys the will of the operator as 
 if it were his own. If the operator is pinched in 
 the arm, or the leg, or the hand, the subject com- 
 plains of pain in his arm, or leg, or hand, and at 
 length grows angry. By a silent determination of 
 the operator the tongue of the subject is paralyzed, 
 so that he cannot speak, or is loosed and set in 
 motion. Not all subjects enter into this state of 
 absolute possession by the operator ; perhaps few 
 do so ; but there seems to be no doubt that some 
 are found so susceptible to the mesmeric influence, 
 whatever this may be, that they may be led to such 
 a temporary surrender of their own powers to an- 
 other as renders them obedient to the slightest be- 
 hest of the mind to which they have submitted 
 themselves, even when no external sign conveys it 
 to them. The negative results of some experiments 
 cannot in the least invalidate the positive results of 
 others : the failure of Kane to find any traces of 
 Sir John Franklin does not discredit the success of 
 M-Clintock. 
 
60 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 We do not know as yet just what physiological 
 processes mesmerism involves. The British society 
 is inclined to regard telepathy and mesmerism as 
 essentially the same, to see in telepathy the incipi- 
 ent form of mesmerism, and in mesmerism the ex- 
 treme form of telepathy, The view will probably 
 not prevail, for it is encumbered with formidable 
 difficulties, the chief of which is the fact that the 
 telepathic percipient is in no sense under the con- 
 trol of the operator, preserves his full self-con- 
 sciousness, is in an active state of mind, and is as 
 free from all symptoms of mesmeric slumber as is 
 the operator himself. 
 
 But be this as it may, every thoughtful Christian 
 must be struck with the analogies between mesmer- 
 ism and the demoniac possessions of the New Tes- 
 tament. If spirits in the flesh can gain almost com- 
 plete possession of others, why may not spirits out 
 of the flesh ? Henceforth the anecdotes of demoniac 
 possession found in the Holy Scriptures must not 
 be denied on the ground that such possession is im- 
 possible ; for it is found to be quite in accordance 
 with the processes of nature which may be observed 
 at any time, if a little care be taken. 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 61 
 
 XII. 
 
 MODERN DEMONS. 
 
 The subject of spiritualism has not yet been fully 
 investigated by either the British or the American 
 society, and some years must probably pass before 
 any definite conclusion with reference to it can be 
 reached. Many of its marvels are now known to 
 be mere tricks of persons interested in making 
 money. It is generally admitted, however, that 
 there are others which cannot be explained in this 
 convenient way ; and it must remain for the pres- 
 ent an open question whether spiritualism does not 
 present to us on a broad scale a revival of demonism. 
 That many of its spirits, whether they are in the 
 flesh or without, are "unclean spirits" is abun- 
 dantly proved by the antipathy manifested in its 
 " messages" to our holy religion, and by the disas- 
 trous moral results to which it leads many of its 
 devotees. 
 
 While spiritualism, as a whole, has not been 
 studied exhaustively by either of the societies, that 
 part of it which is known by the name of " plan- 
 chette" has received much attention, and has been 
 
62 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 made the subject of two elaborate papers by Mr. 
 F. W. H. Myers, entitled " Automatic Writing," 
 and published in the proceedings of the British 
 society. The title indicates the opinion of the 
 author ; he holds that there is nothing more in the 
 writing of planchette than, first, the unconscious 
 action of the mind of the person whose hand is in 
 contact with the table, and, second, the unconscious 
 action of the minds of the spectators upon the mind 
 of the writer, affecting it by the telepathic process. 
 The explanation which he attempts is cumbrous 
 and labored to the last degree, and will hardly 
 satisfy the unprejudiced reader. Nor does it satisfy 
 its author, who near the close of his work makes 
 room for the spiritualistic hypothesis of the inter- 
 vention of the dead in the writing of planchette. I 
 wish to point out the evidence of demoniac agency, 
 which it seems to me he has furnished unwittingly. 
 One of the principal experimenters with planchette, 
 whose testimony Mr. Myers cites at length, is the 
 Rev. P. H. Newnham, A 7 icar of Maker, Daven- 
 port, England. Near the end of the report which 
 this gentleman makes of the experiments with 
 planchette conducted by his wife and himself, he 
 says : "It is impossible for me to close this paper 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 63 
 
 without again very urgently calling attention to 
 what I have termed the low ' moral ' character of 
 the reacting intelligence. We are all familiar with, 
 this phenomenon in the average experience of so- 
 called ' spiritual controls, ' but in these cases the 
 ' controlled ' medium is more or less hypnotic and 
 unconscious. And I think that the recurrence of 
 the same phenomenon in the case of a person in 
 perfect health, and in the enjoyment of perfect 
 consciousness, is worthy of very serious considera- 
 tion." The person referred to is his wife, who was 
 the operator of the planchette-table. Going back 
 to the body of his report, we find instances of this 
 low moral tone, on one of which he comments as 
 follows : " In these last answers we see a new moral 
 element introduced. There is evasion or subter- 
 fuge, of a more or less ingenious kind, and totally 
 foreign to the whole character and natural disposi- 
 tion of the operator. ' ' Again he points out ' ' a 
 similar attempt at deliberate invention, rather than 
 plead guilty to total ignorance." In yet another 
 place he speaks of " a total indifference to truth for 
 its own sake, coupled with what looks like a morbid 
 dread of seeming to be ignorant of the reply to the 
 question." Mr. Myers himself says : " There is 
 
(34 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 another peculiarity of the early stages of automatic 
 writing which it has somewhat embarrassed spirit- 
 ualists to explain. ' Planchette,' automatists often 
 testify, l is sadly given to swear.' Especially when 
 the hand is exhausted by a long and somewhat bar- 
 ren effort, the word ' devil ' will sometimes be writ- 
 ten over and over again, with an energy which 
 shocks the unsuspecting writer." The low moral 
 tone of the intelligence which governs planchette is 
 proved first by a childish vanity which cannot bear 
 to admit that it is ignorant of anything, and which 
 reminds us of the " pride" supposed by many in- 
 terpreters of the Scriptures to have been "the 
 snare of the devil," which led to his fall ; secondly, 
 by foolish and conscienceless falsehood, proceeding 
 from spirits who have studied diligently in the 
 school of " the father of lies," whether they are in 
 the flesh or not ; and, thirdly, by profane language. 
 Where the operator and the spectators are persons 
 of ordinary decency and truthfulness, the effort to 
 trace such utterances to them seems to me neces- 
 sarily futile. The supposition of demoniac agency 
 is the most natural that we can entertain. If the 
 intelligence appears to be weak and foolish as it is 
 wicked, this is but another respect in which it re- 
 
RELATION" TO CHRISTIAN THOCJGHT. 65 
 
 sembles the demons of the New Testament, whose 
 mental power is always of a very low kind. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 HAUNTED HOUSES; DEMONS. 
 
 In the beginning of its labors the British Society 
 for Psychical Research manifested a tendency to 
 explain everything which it investigated as a case 
 of mind-reading. This is seen in its treatment of 
 apparitions ; its theory in the beginning was that 
 they proceed uniformly from the living. Its in- 
 vestigations of haunted houses, however, brought 
 before it a mass of facts which could not be 
 accounted for in this manner. The society has 
 collected an immense number of narratives of 
 events which believers in ghosts " would be 
 apt to refer to the agency of deceased human 
 beings." Of these, there are three hundred and 
 seventy which seem to deserve special consider- 
 ation. The great majority of this group may be 
 passed by as not absolutely convincing. But Mrs. 
 
66 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIE 
 
 Sidgwick, the wife of the late President of the 
 society, who writes the very able review of the 
 evidence, and may be supposed to represent the 
 opinions of her husband, considers eighteen of these 
 narratives as sufficient to prove the existence of 
 haunted houses. After stating and discussing them 
 at length, she expresses her conclusion as follows : 
 " I can only say that, having made every effort, as 
 my paper will, I hope, have shown, to exercise a 
 reasonable scepticism, I yet do not feel equal to 
 the degree of unbelief in human testimony neces- 
 sary to avoid accepting, at least provisionally, the 
 conclusion that there are, in a certain sense, haunted 
 houses ; that is, that there are houses in which sim- 
 ilar quasi-human apparitions have occurred at differ- 
 ent times to different inhabitants, under circum- 
 stances which exclude the hypothesis of suggestion 
 or expectation." 
 
 The following extract from the. report of the 
 committee on haunted houses will be sufficient to 
 illustrate the great care with which the enquiry is 
 conducted : 
 
 " It seems desirable that we should explain 
 clearly the standard that we adopt in estimating the 
 claims of any narrative to be included in our list. 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 67 
 
 In the first place, we of course begin by tracing 
 every story to its fountain-head. But we do not 
 consider that every first-hand narration of the ap- 
 pearance of a ghost, even from a thoroughly trust- 
 worthy narrator, gives us adequate reason for at- 
 tempting further investigation. On the contrary, 
 our general principle is that the unsupported evi- 
 dence of a single witness does not constitute sufii- 
 cient ground for accepting an apparition as having 
 a prima facie claim to objective reality. To dis- 
 tinguish any apparition from an ordinary hallucina- 
 tion, such as those recorded by Abercrombie, Brew- 
 ster, Carpenter, and others, it must receive some 
 independent evidence to corroborate it. And this 
 corroboration may be of two kinds : we may have 
 the consentient testimony of several witnesses ; or 
 there may be some point of external agreement and 
 coincidence, unknown, as such, to the seer at the 
 time, as, for example, the periodic appearance on a 
 particular anniversary, or the recognition of a 
 peculiar dress, to give to the vision an objective 
 foundation. As regards the first of these two cases, 
 there is a distinction to be drawn which is of the 
 greatest importance, though commonly neglected. 
 It may often happen that several persons misinter- 
 
C8 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 pret the same phenomenon in the same manner, ex- 
 emplifying what is called ' collective delusion.' 
 But neither science nor the common experience 
 of life has produced, any undoubted cases anal- 
 ogous to what, in this department, has been 
 designated ' collective hallucination,' that is, the 
 observation and identical description by several 
 persons of an appearance having no basis in real- 
 ity." 
 
 Did my space permit, I should introduce here 
 the narratives on which Mrs. Sidgwick bases her 
 conviction that there are haunted houses. Instead 
 of these, I shall cite an instance of the same kind 
 from the writings of Rev. John Wesley, the founder 
 of the Methodist societies. His statement, which 
 I reproduce in full from the u Memoirs of the 
 Wesley Family," by Dr. Adam Clarke, the com- 
 mentator, has become a classic in the discussion of 
 the subject, and is referred to by all his biographers 
 of any note as of the highest importance. In the 
 volume from which I quote it, as also in Southey's 
 ''Life of Wesley," it is accompanied by the 
 corroborative statements of numerous other wit- 
 nesses, chiefly the members of his father's house- 
 hold. 
 
RELATION - TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 69 
 
 Narrative drawn up by Mr. John Wesley, and pub- 
 lished by him in the Arminian Magazine. 
 
 " When I was very young I heard several letters 
 read, wrote to my elder brother by my father, giv- 
 ing an account of strange disturbances which were 
 in his house at Epworth, in Lincolnshire. 
 
 " When I went down thither, in the year 1720, 
 1 carefully inquired into the particulars. I spoke 
 to each of the persons who were then in the house, 
 and took down what each could testify of his or 
 her own knowledge, the sum of which was this : 
 
 " On December 2d, 1716, while Robert Brown, 
 my father's servant, was sitting with one of the 
 maids, a little before ten at night, in the dining- 
 room which opened into the garden, they both heard 
 one knocking at the door. Robert rose and opened 
 it, but could see nobody. Quickly it knocked 
 again, and groaned. 'It is Mr. Turpine,' said 
 Robert ; ' he has the stone, and uses to groan so.' 
 He opened the door again twice or thrice, the knock- 
 ing being twice or thrice repeated ; but still seeing 
 nothing, and being a little startled, they rose and 
 went up to bed. When Robert came to the top of 
 the garret stairs he saw a hand-mill, which was at 
 
70 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 a little distance, whirled about very swiftly. "When 
 lie related this, he said, ' Nought vexed me but 
 that it was empty. I thought, if it had but been 
 full of malt, he might have ground his heart out 
 for me. ' When he was in bed he heard as it were 
 the gobbling of a turkey-cock close to the bedside, 
 and soon after the sound as of one stumbling over 
 his shoes and boots, but there were none there ; he 
 had left them below. The next day he and the 
 maid related these things to the other maid, who 
 laughed heartily, and said, ' What a couple of fools 
 are you ! I defy anything to fright me.' After 
 churning in the evening she put the butter in the 
 tray, and had no sooner carried it into the dairy 
 than she heard a knocking on the shelf where sev- 
 eral puncheons of milk stood, first above the shelf, 
 then below. She took the candle, and searched 
 both above and below ; but, being able to find noth- 
 ing, threw down butter, tray, and all, and ran away 
 for her life. The next evening, between five and 
 six o'clock, my sister Molly, then about twenty 
 years of age, sitting in the dining-room reading, 
 heard as if it were the door that led into the hall 
 open, and a person walking in, that seemed to have 
 on a silk night-gown, rustling and trailing. It 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 71 
 
 seemed to walk round her, then to the door, then 
 round again ; but she could see nothing. She 
 thought, ' It signifies nothing to run away ; for, 
 whatever it is, it can run faster than me.' So she 
 rose, put her book under her arm, and walked 
 slowly away. After supper she was sitting with her 
 sister Sukey (about a year older than her) in one of 
 the chambers, and telling her what had happened ; 
 she made quite light of it, telling her, ' I wonder 
 you are so easily frightened ; I would fain see what 
 would fright me.' Presently a knocking began 
 under the table. She took the candle and looked, 
 but could find nothing. Then the iron casement 
 began to clatter, and the lid of a warming-pan. 
 Next the latch of the door moved up and down 
 without ceasing. She started up, leaped into the 
 bed without undressing, pulled the bedclothes 
 over her head, and never ventured to look up till 
 next morning. A night or two after my sister 
 Hetty, a year younger than my sister Molly, was 
 waiting, as usual, between nine and ten, to take 
 away my father's candle, when she heard one com- 
 ing down the garret stairs, walking slowly by her, 
 then going down the best stairs, then up the back 
 stairs, and up the garret stairs ; and at every step 
 
72 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 it seemed the house shook from top to bottom. 
 Just then my father knocked. She went in, took 
 his candle, and got to bed as fast as possible. In 
 the morning she told this to my eldest sister, who 
 told her, l You know I believe none of these things ; 
 pray let me take away the candle to-night, and I 
 will find out the trick.' She accordingly took my 
 sister Hetty's place, and had no sooner taken away 
 the candle than she heard a noise below. She 
 hastened down-stairs to the hall, where the noise 
 was, but it was then in the kitchen. She ran into 
 the kitchen, where it was drumming on the inside 
 of the screen. When she went round it was drum- 
 ming on the outside, and so always on the side op- 
 posite to her. Then she heard a knocking at the 
 back kitchen door. She ran to it, unlocked it 
 softly, and when the knocking was repeated sud- 
 denly opened it, but nothing was to be seen. As 
 soon as she had shut it the knocking began again. 
 She opened it again, but could see nothing. When 
 she went to shut the door, it was violently thrust 
 against her ; she let it fly open, bat nothing ap- 
 peared. She went again to shut it, and it was 
 again thrust against her ; but she put her knee and 
 her shoulder to the door, forced it to, and turned 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 73 
 
 the key. Then the knocking began again ; but she 
 let it go on, and went up to bed. However, from 
 that time she was thoroughly convinced that there 
 was no imposture in the affair. 
 
 " The next morning my sister, telling my mother 
 what had happened, she said, ' If I hear anything 
 myself, I shall know how to judge. ' Soon after 
 she begged her to come into the nursery. She did, 
 and heard in the corner of the room as it were the 
 violent rocking of a cradle, but no cradle had been 
 there for some years. She was convinced it was 
 preternatural, and earnestly prayed it might not 
 disturb her in her own chamber at the hours of re- 
 tirement, and it never did. She now thought it 
 was proper to tell my father. But he was ex- 
 tremely angry, and said, ' Sukey, I am ashamed of 
 yon. These boys and girls frighten one another, 
 but you are a woman of sense, and should know 
 better. Let me hear of it no more.' 
 
 " At six in the evening he had family prayers, 
 as usual. When he began the prayer for the king 
 a knocking began all round the room, and a thun- 
 dering knock attended the Amen. The same was 
 heard from this time every morning and evening 
 while the prayer for the king was repeated. As 
 
74 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 both my father and mother are now at rest, and 
 incapable of being pained thereby, I think it my 
 duty to furnish the serious reader with a key to this 
 circumstance. 
 
 " The year before King William died my father 
 observed my mother did not say Amen to the 
 prayer for the king. She said she could not, for 
 she did not believe the Prince of Orange was king. 
 He vowed he never would cohabit with her till she 
 did. He then took his horse and rode away ; nor 
 did she hear anything of him for a twelvemonth. 
 He then came back, and lived with her as before. 
 But I fear his vow was not forgotten before God. 
 
 " Being informed that Mr. Hoole, the Vicar of 
 Haxey (an eminently pious and sensible man), 
 could give me some further information, I walked 
 over to him. He said, ' Robert Brown came over 
 to me, and told me your father desired my com- 
 pany. When I came he gave an account of all 
 that had happened, particularly the knocking dur- 
 ing family prayer. But that evening, to my great 
 satisfaction, we had no knocking at all. But be- 
 tween nine and ten a servant came in, and said, 
 " Old Jeffrey is coming (that was the name of one 
 that died in the house), for I hear the signal." 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOCGHT. 75 
 
 This, they informed me, was heard every night 
 about a quarter before ten. It was toward the top 
 of the house on the outside, at the north-east cor- 
 ner, resembling the loud creaking of a saw, or 
 rather that of a windmill when the body of it is 
 turned about in order to shift the sails to the wind. 
 We then heard a knocking over our heads ; and 
 Mr. Wesley, catching up a candle, said, " Come, 
 sir, now you shall hear for yourself." We went up 
 stairs, he with much hope, and I (to say the truth) 
 with much fear. When we came into the nursery 
 it was knocking in the next room ; when we were 
 there it was knocking in the nursery. And there 
 it continued to knock, though we came in, particu- 
 larly at the head of the bed (which was of wood), 
 in which Miss Hetty and two of her younger sisters 
 lay. Mr. Wesley, observing that they were much 
 affected, though asleep, sweating, and trembling 
 exceedingly, was very angry ; and pulling out a 
 pistol, was going to fire at the place from which 
 the sounds came. But I catched him by the arm, 
 and said, " Sir, you are convinced this is something 
 preternatural. If so, you cannot hurt it, but you 
 give it power to hurt you. " He then went close to 
 the place, and said, sternly, " Thou deaf and dumb 
 
76 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 devil, why dost thou fright these children, that 
 cannot answer for themselves ? Come to me in my 
 study, that am a man !" Instantly it knocked his 
 knock (the particular knock which he always used 
 at the gate), as if it would shiver the board in 
 pieces, and we heard nothing more that night.' 
 
 "Till this time my father had never heard the 
 least disturbances in his study. But the next even- 
 ing, as he attempted to go into his study (of which 
 none had any key but himself), when he opened 
 the door it was thrust back with such violence as 
 had like to have thrown him down. However, he 
 thrust the door open and went in. Presently there 
 was knocking, first on one side, then on the other ; 
 and, after a time, in the next room, where my sister 
 [Nancy was. He went into that room, and, the 
 noise continuing, adjured it to speak ; but in vain- 
 He then said, ' These spirits love darkness ; put 
 out the candle, and perhaps it will speak.' She 
 did so, and he repeated his adjuration ; but still 
 there was only knocking, and no articulate sound. 
 Upon this he said, ' Xancy, two Christians are an 
 overmatch for the devil. Go all of you down- 
 stairs ; it may be when I am alone he will have 
 courage to speak.' When she was gone a thought 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 77 
 
 came in, and he said, ' If thou art the spirit of my 
 son Samuel, pray knock three knocks, and no 
 more.' Immediately all was silence, and there 
 was no more knocking all that night. I asked my 
 sister Nancy, then about fifteen years old, whether 
 she was not afraid when my father used that ad- 
 juration ? She answered she was sadly afraid it 
 would speak when she put out the candle, but she 
 was not at all afraid in the daytime, when it walked 
 after her as she swept the chambers, and seemed 
 to sweep after her ; only she thought it might 
 have done it for her, and saved her the trouble. 
 By this time all my sisters were so accustomed to 
 these noises that they gave them little disturbance. 
 A gentle tapping at their bed-head usually began 
 between nine and ten at night. Then they com- 
 monly said to each other, ' Jeffrey is coming ; it is 
 time to go to sleep.' And if they heard a noise in 
 the day, and said to my younger sister, ' Hark, 
 Kezzy, Jeffrey is knocking above,' she would run 
 up-stairs, and pursue it from room to room, saying 
 she desired no better diversion. 
 
 " A few nights after, my father and mother were 
 just gone to bed, and the candle was not taken 
 away, when they heard three blows, and a second, 
 
78 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN" THEIR 
 
 and a third three, as it were with a large oaken 
 staff, struck upon a chest which stood by the bed- 
 side. My father immediately arose, put on his 
 night-gown, and, hearing great noises below, took 
 the candle, and went down ; my mother walked by 
 his side. As they went down the broad stairs they 
 heard as if a vessel full of silver was poured upon 
 my mother's breast, and ran jingling down to her 
 feet. Quickly after there was a sound as if a 
 large iron ball was thrown among many bottles 
 under the stairs, but nothing was hurt. Soon after 
 our large mastiff dog came and ran to shelter him- 
 self between them. While the disturbances con- 
 tinued he used to bark and leap, and snap on one 
 side and the other, and that frequently before any 
 person in the room heard any noise at all. But 
 after two or three days he used to tremble, and 
 creep away before the noise began. And by this 
 the family knew it was at hand, nor did the ob- 
 servation ever fail. A little before my father and 
 mother came into the hall it seemed as if a very 
 large coal was violently thrown upon the floor, and 
 dashed all in pieces, but nothing was seen. My 
 father then cried out, ' Sukey, did you not hear ? 
 All the pewter is thrown about the kitchen.' But 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 79 
 
 when they looked all the pewter stood in its place. 
 There then was a loud knocking at the back door. 
 My father opened it, but saw nothing. It was then 
 at the foredoor. He opened that, but it was still 
 lost labor. After opening first the one, then the 
 other, several times, he turned, and went up to 
 bed. But the noises were so violent all over the 
 house that he could not sleep till four in the morn- 
 ing. 
 
 " Several gentlemen and clergymen now ear- 
 nestly advised my father to quit the house. But he 
 constantly answered, 'No; let the devil flee from 
 me ; I will never flee from the devil.' But he 
 wrote to my eldest brother at London to come 
 down. He was preparing so to do, when another 
 letter came, informing him the disturbances were 
 over, after they had continued (the latter part of 
 the time day and night) from the second of Decem- 
 ber to the end of January." 
 
 Still more remarkable were the disturbances 
 which occurred in the house of Rev. Eliakim 
 Phelps, D.D., at Stratford, Conn. He was the 
 father of Eev. Austin Phelps, D.D., for so many 
 years the distinguished Professor of Homiletics at 
 Andover, Mass., and the author of numerous well- 
 
80 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 known works of instruction and devotion. The nar- 
 rative is too long for use in these pages ; but the 
 reader will find it in a volume entitled " Spiritual 
 Manifestations," by Rev. Charles Beecher, as well 
 as in a variety of other publications dealing with 
 the same subject. The events are characterized 
 thus by Dr. Austin Phelps in his recent book, " My 
 Portfolio," at page 15 : 
 
 " It was after his retirement from public life 
 that he became interested in spiritualism. It would 
 be more truthful to say that it became interested iu 
 him ; for it came upon him without his seeking, 
 suddenly invading his household, and making a 
 pandemonium of it for seven months, and then de- 
 parting as suddenly as it came. The phenomena 
 resembled those which for many years afflicted the 
 Wesley family, and those which at one time at- 
 tended the person of Oberlin. They were an al- 
 most literal repetition of some of the records left 
 by Cotton Mather. Had my father lived in 1650, 
 instead of 1850, he and his family would have lived 
 in history with the victims on Tower Hill in Salem. 
 That the facts were real, a thousand witnesses testi- 
 fied. An eminent judge in the State of New York 
 said that he had pronounced sentence of death on 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 81 
 
 many a criminal on a tithe of the evidence which 
 supported these facts. That they were inexplicable 
 by any known principles of science was equally 
 clear to all who saw and heard them who were 
 qualified to judge. Experts in science went to 
 Stratford in triumphant expectation, and came away 
 in dogged silence, convinced of nothing, yet solving 
 nothing. If modern science had nothing to show 
 more worthy of respect than its solutions of spirit- 
 ualism, alchemy would be its equal, and astrology 
 infinitely its superior. It will never do to confine 
 a delusion so seductive to the ignorant and so wel- 
 come to the sceptic to the limbo of ' an if,' and 
 leave it there. 
 
 " To my father, the whole thing was a visita- 
 tion from God. He bowed to the affliction in sor- 
 row and in prayer. Re never gave credence to it 
 as a revelation of religious truth for an hour. The 
 only point in which it affected his interpretation of 
 the Scriptures was that of the biblical demonology. 
 "When science failed to give him an explanation 
 which deserved respect, he fell back upon the his- 
 toric faith of the Christian Church in the personal- 
 ity and activity of angels, good and evil. He held 
 the scriptural demonology as a tentative explana- 
 
82 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 tion of spiritualism until science could f urnisli some- 
 thing better." 
 
 Let us now return to the work of the British 
 society. Mrs. Sidgwick does not regard it as proved 
 that the phantasms associated with haunted houses 
 proceed from spirits of the dead, or indeed from 
 any kind of spirits. She considers it possible that 
 one person has an hallucination, in which what he 
 supposes to be a ghost appears to him, and that he 
 propagates to other minds, by an unconscious tele- 
 pathic process, by a sort of mental infection, the 
 impression made upon his own ; which would ac- 
 count for the fact that the same figure is seen by 
 various observers. Or again, she suggests as pos- 
 sibly true the theory that there may be some occult 
 quality in the house itself which causes those who 
 inhabit it to see human forms and hear mysterious 
 sounds. It must be confessed that it is not easy to 
 accept either of these explanations after reading the 
 narratives which Mrs. Sidgwick gives. 
 
 But when we turn to the popular theory that the 
 phantasms are the appearances of the dead, we are 
 confronted with an enormous difficulty, which Mrs. 
 Sidgwick states as follows : " There is a total ab- 
 sence of any apparent object or intelligent action on 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 83 
 
 the part of the ghost. If its visits have an object, 
 it entirely fails to explain it. It does not commu- 
 nicate important facts. It does not point out lost 
 wills or hidden treasure. It does not even speak." 
 The difficulty is even greater than it is here 
 represented to be, for the ghost usually acts in a 
 manner indicating insanity or idiocy. In one nar- 
 rative it is a tall man dressed in a frock coat, who 
 comes into a particular chamber every night and 
 stands gazing down upon the occupant of the bed. 
 In another narrative it is a tall man with a very 
 pale face and dark hair and mustache ; the expres- 
 sion of his countenance is sorrowful ; sometimes he 
 is seen peeping around the side of an open door- 
 way ; sometimes he steals up behind the lady of the 
 house, and slaps her familiarly on the back ; and 
 sometimes he is heard saying in a tone of deep 
 grief, " I can't find it." In another narrative the 
 ghost is a woman dressed as a housemaid, who is 
 usually seen as she is in the act of turning around 
 corners and going to the door when the bell rings, 
 and is heard in a particular dressing-room industri- 
 ously moving the furniture, though no change is 
 effected in the arrangement of the various articles. 
 In another narrative, whose scene is India, the 
 
84 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 ghost is a woman dressed in the costume of the 
 natives, haunting the sleeping- rooms on one par- 
 ticular side of the house, and always vanishing 
 when addressed or pursued. In another narrative 
 the ghost is a woman dressed in the garb of a 
 widow, and always holding a handkerchief to her 
 forehead and weeping, sometimes audibly. In one 
 case the ghost spends the night in digging, so that 
 the sound of its mattock or its spade is very dis- 
 tinct, though the earth is not disturbed ; in another 
 it employs itself in making the night hideous with 
 the crash of breaking glass or pottery ; in another 
 it displays a fondness for heat, standing near the 
 fireplace or the stove, but vanishing when ad- 
 dressed. In short, not a single ghost of all that are 
 brought before us in this collection of narratives 
 seems to have any purpose, to act in a rational man- 
 ner, to accomplish anything. Put these ghosts to- 
 gether in a building ; let them exhibit the human 
 form and act as they do in these narratives ; then 
 introduce a physician to the company, and ask him 
 to give his opinion of it. He will say that he is 
 in an asylum for the insane and idiotic, some of 
 whom are so violent and uproarious as to make it a 
 bedlam. This is one evidence of the truth of the 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 85 
 
 narratives which we ought not to overlook : were 
 they the inventions of ingenious men, or were even 
 a part of them made for the occasion, they would 
 not exhibit such uniform consistency of aimlessness 
 and unreason. 
 
 My conclusion is this. If we regard these ap- 
 paritions as real beings, we must suppose either that 
 insanity and idiocy are carried beyond the grave, 
 and are granted the exclusive privilege of remain- 
 ing upon the earth and haunting the houses of its 
 inhabitants, making it a vast asylum for the disem- 
 bodied insane, or else that the phantoms are not of 
 the human race. Now, the demons of the New 
 Testament never appear in forms other than those 
 of the victims whom they possess ; yet they are 
 sometimes associated with the insanity of their vic- 
 tims, with epilepsy, and with deafness and dumb- 
 ness. When driven out of a human victim, whom 
 they have rendered insane, they commit an insane 
 action in the swine, driving the hapless animals into 
 the lake, and impelling them to drown themselves. 
 The conduct of the ghosts to which Mrs. Sidgwick 
 introduces us resembles that of these demons much 
 more than that of ordinary men and women. While 
 I express this opinion, I do not wish to be under- 
 
86 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 stood as supposing that the evidence for it is very 
 cogent ; I only wish to say that if obliged to choose 
 between the theory that the ghost is a disembodied 
 human spirit and the theory that it is a demon, I 
 should feel compelled to the latter. The whole sub- 
 ject is greatly in need of further investigation. 
 
 XIY. 
 
 HAUNTED HOUSES; THE HISTORY OF 
 BALAAM. 
 
 When Balaam started on his mission of evil to 
 the land of Moab, the beast on which he rode saw 
 the angel of Jehovah thrice before its master be- 
 came aware of the celestial spirit. I have been re- 
 minded of this several times in reading Mrs. Sidg- 
 wick's paper on ghosts. "We have," she says, 
 " several accounts of horses being frightened in 
 places supposed to be haunted, where their riders 
 or drivers see nothing." We must not attach too 
 much importance to such statements, for, as she 
 adds, " horses are nervous animals, and it is diffi- 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOUGHT. 87 
 
 cult to exhaust the possible causes of their alarm. " 
 But there are accounts of a kindred nature touching 
 the experiences of human beings, as, for instance, 
 the following : " Once Mrs. Townsend was greatly 
 startled by a tremendous crash, which Mr. Town- 
 send did not hear at all. ' ' Again : ' ' Sometimes 
 two or three people heard the noises, or were woke 
 up by them. At other times only one person would 
 hear them. On one New Year's Eve, when Miss 
 
 T and !N were alone in the house, N 
 
 came up from the kitchen to the dining-room, where 
 
 Miss T was sitting, to see what was the matter. 
 
 He had heard loud noises, as of furniture being 
 
 dragged about in the dining-room. Miss T 
 
 had heard nothing, and the house seemed perfectly 
 
 quiet. On another occasion Miss T heard the 
 
 same noise, as of furniture being moved, etc., in 
 the room above hers, which was occupied by her 
 
 brother, Mr. T . She went up to see what was 
 
 the matter, and knocked at his door, but he was 
 fast asleep." The query is suggested by such 
 statements whether it is one of the distinguishing 
 capacities of spirits to reveal themselves to certain 
 individuals in a company, while remaining concealed 
 from others. There seems to be the best evidence 
 
88 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 that animals as well as men may become aware of 
 these phantasms and noises, and be alarmed by 
 them. Take the following as a specimen of it : "I 
 was awoke by the dog barking about twelve 
 o'clock. The barking stopped, but I heard what 
 sounded like steps down-stairs. Yery soon the old 
 noises began in our little library : jumping about, 
 the window rattling, the whole place shaking, till 
 my windows rattled, too. The dog whined inces- 
 santly, and the banging and jumping seemed to 
 grow more and more boisterous. I got up and made 
 some noise with the furniture in my room, lighted 
 my candles, and went into the landing to listen if 
 there were noises in the other part of the house ; 
 but all was perfectly quiet there, though in the lit- 
 tle room down-stairs the dog seemed to grow more 
 and more distressed, and the noises continued more 
 violently than ever. I listened to them till three 
 o'clock, and as there seemed no chance of their 
 stopping, I left my room and passed the rest of the 
 night at Helen's. The dog evidently was still 
 afraid of the room when the morning came. I 
 called to him to go into it with me, and he crouched 
 down with his tail between his legs, and seemed to 
 fear entering it." 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN THOTGHT. 89 
 
 XV. 
 
 RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 
 
 We have now followed the steps of the Society 
 for Psychical Research through almost the whole 
 field of its investigations ; we have reached the end 
 of our journey ; and it may be well to turn hack, 
 look over the way we have come, and consider how 
 much of it lies on sure and safe ground, and how 
 much along the dizzy and perilous verge of conjec- 
 ture. 1. We may place mind-reading among the 
 assured facts of science, though in its clearer forms 
 it is seldom met with. 2. The existence of mes- 
 merism cannot be disputed, and henceforth only its 
 nature, its limitations, and its practical uses will be 
 debated by its students. 3. It must be admitted 
 that persons who are in danger or are about to die 
 sometimes transmit to their friends and relatives, 
 though separated from them by great distances, 
 their apparitions and their voices. 
 
 Among the subjects still left in a state of uncer- 
 tainty, we may place clairvoyance, in the broader 
 sense of the word, and haunted houses. 
 
 The Christian has no reason to regret the work 
 
90 THE NEW PSYCHIC STUDIES IN THEIR 
 
 already done by the Psychical Society, or to fear 
 that which is to follow ; on the contrary, he may 
 hope to learn much that shall tend to confute infi- 
 delity, to break the bonds of superstition, to check 
 vice and crime, and to illustrate the teachings of 
 his holy religion. The so-called " ghosts," which 
 have been the subjects of patient investigation, may 
 be but the figments of the imagination ; but if 
 they have any substantial existence, they exhibit 
 few attributes of humanity except the outward 
 form ; and we might admit the truth of all the nar- 
 ratives collected by the society without abandoning 
 the ordinary view that the realm of the dead is 
 
 " The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
 No traveller returns." 
 
 Much remains to be done in all the departments 
 of investigation brought before us in these pages, 
 and there are other departments scarcely touched 
 as yet, as clairvoyance, spiritualism, and the Bud- 
 dhistic occultism. In pursuing his researches in 
 these regions, the devout enquirer walks through 
 such a murky atmosphere and meets so many dim 
 and evil shapes, that he must often recoil from the 
 task, as did Dante on his pilgrimage through 
 hell : 
 
RELATION TO CHRISTIAN" THOUGHT. 91 
 
 " I felt my hair stand all on end already 
 With terror, and stood backwardly intent." 
 
 But as the journey of the poet led him to Paradise, 
 so the studies into which the Society for Psychical 
 Research would conduct us can issue only in the 
 higher regions of truth, of faith, of reverence, and 
 of virtue. 
 
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