enty-Five Years Of: Psychical W. J. Colville Twenty-Fiye Years of Psyghigal Experiences. W. J. COLVILLE. Lecture Delivered March 6th, 1902, Before London Spiritualist Alliance, in St. James's Hall, Piccadilly, E. Dawson Rogers, Esq., President of the Alliance in the Chair. Reprinted f?'om London '"''Light.'' BOSTON: Banner of Light Publishing Company y ^i\ ifiAp'OS Twenty-Five Years of Psychical Experiences. The twenty-fifth anniversary of my first introduction to public life having occurred on the 4th of this present month, I have been particularly requested to give some definite account of my connection with psychic problems during a quarter of a century. If I am to relate faith- fully, even in barest outline, my experiences with 'un- seen helpers,' I must go back to my very early childhood, when my 'mediumship' originally declared itself. I was practically an orphan from birth. My mother passed to spirit life in my infancy and my father was called by important business to travel in lands remote from Eng- land, where I was left in charge of a guardian. My childhood was singularly unchildlike, as I was separated from children altogether, and compelled to associate ex- clusively with persons of thoroughly mature age. How I first came to see my mother clairvoyantly I do not know, but I distinctly remember becoming vividly conscious at frequent intervals of the gentle, loving pres- ence of a beautiful young woman, who invariably ap- peared to my vision gracefully attired in light garments of singular beauty. The head of this charming lady was adorned with golden ringlets; her eyes were intensely blue; she was tall and of rather slender build, and man- ifested many attributes of almost ideal womanhood. I cannot recall to mind any occasion when this lady spoke to me as one ordinary human being on earth converses 4 TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OF with another, but I distinctly recollect that when I saw her most plainly and felt her presence most distinctly, I was intensely conscious of information flowing into me. I can only liken my experience to some memorable state- ments of Swedenborg concerning influx of knowledge into the interiors of human understanding. THE PROBLEM OF CLAIRVOYANCE. I should probably never in those early days have thought of such a problem as clairvoyance, had it not been for the surprising fact that what I saw perfectly other people did not see at all. I was first led to realize the unusual character of my vision when I mentioned the presence of the 'beautiful lady in white' to two persons who were with me when I saw her very distinctly, and they declared that we three were the only occupants of the apartment. The mystery of the fourth inmate was for me greatly intensified when it appeared to me that the other two persons, besides her and myself, could pass through her and she through them, while they appeared completely unconscious of each other's presence. An elderly lady with whom I was living, who was a devoted Churchwoman, summed up all e the work of God or Satan.' Though not many months over five years of age at the time to which I am now referring, I had already heard Satan called the 'father of lies' and had also been taught that truth belonged to God and came from heaven; so my youthful intellect was not per- turbed with dread of any power of darkness, as I found that all the information which flowed into me when this beautiful spiritual being manifested to me was correct in every particular. I was, therefore, quite content to believe, with simple faith supported by reasoning, that my dear mother was watching over me as a guardian spirit. I often heard of guardian angels, and I was sometimes taken to a children's service in a church where a favorite 'hymn before the catechising began with the following invocation: — 'Dear angel ever at my side'. How loving must thou : be . To leave thy home in heaven to guard A little child like me ' PSYCHICAL EXPERIENCES. 5 Instead of conjecturing angels as well-nigh incompre- hensible beings belonging to an order in the creation entirely different from ourselves, I rested satisfied with the simple, reasonable conviction that the messenger from unseen spheres who watched over