only the lapsus linguæ of a too fluent tongue.

Again she says: “Which of us would not lay down life itself to know that he had spoken yesterday with the darling of our souls dead years ago?” Not one of you! The expression is rather hysterical in its intensity. The majority of your ultra-sceptical class would not even spend a day or an hour in the pursuit, for you have neglected the opportunities which have been open to all the world. You might have held a pair of slates in your own hands, secured in any manner, with no pencil between them; might have heard the writing in progress, then opened them and recognized the message of your own darling—perhaps the handwriting also. Thousands of modest, honest seekers of truth have done these things. But the Pharisees who talk of heaven and then fly from its approach have “religiously shunned” them; that is the way they express it, and you are their apologist. But what is your apology?

You give a graphic description of a cheap style of dishonest mediumship with vulgar surroundings, in which, nevertheless, there are wonderful revelations, “the golden thread of a truth that is worth having,” and you suggest that the truth must now be “garnered” by a psychical research society, intimating that if they do not garner it, it will cease to be recognized as truth, and that the mediums must bring it all to them for sanction, or cease to be respected by honorable people. Was ever a more unfair and delusive statement made by a hired attorney? The grandeur of the theme has not inspired a spirit of fairness or justice. The question lies between the eternal and holy verities of spiritual science or religious science and the conscience of the inquirer. The poor, illiterate, and obscure people who exhibit for a living whatever capacity they may have, have nothing to do with it. Would our lady critic select a cheap sign painter to represent the beauty and glory of art, or the exhibitors of laughing gas to illustrate the science of Sir Humphrey Davy, or the performances of an illiterate quack to illustrate the dignity of the medical profession? Is our critic so profoundly ignorant of the progress of psychic science as to think such representations fair or allowable?

A science is represented by its leaders, its authors, its teachers, not its camp followers. Examine the writings of Alfred Russell Wallace, Professor Crookes of London, Epes Sargent, William Howitt, Professor Hare—of Swedenborg, Kerner, Ennemoser, Du Prel, Hellenbach, Fichte, Varley, Ashburner, Flammarion, Aksakoff, and a score of others of the highest rank, and criticize if you can the magnificent philosophy of these and of many an ancient writer. Consider the well attested facts and sublime religion that you will find in them, and observe that the facts are a hundred times better attested and a thousand times more critically observed than any of those upon which the world’s great religions rest, before which our critic reverently bows.

[Note.—Rev. Henry Ward Beecher is reported to have said in 1860: “The physiology, the anthropology of the Bible, is highly odic, and must be studied as such. As such it will be found to harmonize with the general principles of human experience in such matters in all ages. If a theory be adopted everywhere else but in the Bible, excluding spiritual intervention in toto, and accounting for everything physically, then will the covers of the Bible prove but pasteboard barriers. Such a theory will sweep its way through the Bible and its authority, and its inspirations will be annihilated. On the other hand, if the theory of spiritual intervention be accepted in the Bible, it cannot be shut up there, but must sweep its way through the wide domain of ‘popular superstitions,’ as they are called, separating the element of truth on which they are based, and asserting its own authoritative supremacy.”]

Then if you must for a partisan purpose ignore all this, and select obscure people to represent the other side of the question, it would be very easy to find mediumship of a pure and honorable character—mediums whom no one visits without carrying away a sweet, refining influence, a stronger faith, and a brighter realization of heavenly truths. And there are mediums, too, from whose lips distil a lofty eloquence and a remarkable wisdom upon any or all subjects proposed, with a flow of extemporaneous poetry or of heavenly music which has never been equaled under such circumstances by uninspired mortals.

But, forsooth, they must come to a psychic society that the world may learn from their papal infallibility if anything exists at all worthy of notice. This is indeed seriously proposed! Well, if a group of clergymen in synod assembled should summon all geologists and astronomers to come before them and show if there was anything in their scientific teachings, their heretical, astronomical, and geological doctrines, would any one have responded to the presumptuous demand? Would Airy, Lyell, Miller, Darwin, or the poorest country school master have taken any notice of such a demand?

The majority of the American Psychical Research Society know vastly less of psychic science than clergymen know of geology and astronomy. They have been not inquirers, but obstructionists, assailing those who dare to inquire, and the subject, as their friend says, has only lately encroached on their attention. The admirable scientific experiments of Professor Hare and Professor Crookes have long since settled the questions which they now propose to take up, and when, over forty years ago, I published in my Journal of Man the incontestable facts then established, and gave their rationale, the psychic researchers of to-day were as ignorant as sucking babes of the whole subject. This ignorance is the very raison d’etre of the society. They don’t know if there is anything to be discovered, and they propose to look out. Their failure so far is considered by Colonel Higginson a proof of their superior wisdom, which means that they are looking for a mare’s nest, and have shown their wisdom by not finding it!

Let those who are seeking to enter the freshman class in psychic science assume a little appearance of modesty, and not attempt to set themselves above the old graduates and professors of the university, at which they have heretofore been throwing stones like an unrestrained mob. This is plain speech, but it is just. Let them begin their operations by an act of justice—by building a monument to Professor Hare, the noblest of American scientists, and the object of their persecution.

“The time has come,” says our lady critic, “for mystery to work hand in hand with scientific study or to lay aside its claims to scientific respect.” Very true, very true, indeed, except your chronology; the time has long since gone by. Science has grappled with mystery long since. I can point out, if you wish to see it, the very anatomical structures, the special fibres in connection with which the spiritual phenomena are developed. The modus operandi is understood, and the facts have been known some thirty, some a hundred, some several thousand years. Among advanced thinkers psychic science is no more a debatable question than the rotundity of the earth or the principles of astronomy.

Finally, dear, eloquent lady, your exhortations in behalf of honesty are very admirable, indeed, and would be much more admirable if the exhortation itself were more fair and honest—if you did not seem to sprinkle the reproach of dishonesty over multitudes of honest people more gifted than yourself, with the power to find and clasp the holiest truths. If the inferior and less honorable class of mediums are now before the public, why is it? It is due solely, dear lady, to such people as yourself and your psychic society men,