I
(1) They note, in the first place, that the challenge comes in language of insult from some of their deadliest foes.
That well-known Spiritualist teacher, Professor James H. Hyslop, Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, denounced the Church for its “fatal genius in allying itself with decadent causes.” “The self-confidence of science,” he wrote, “is directly proportioned to the despair of religion. The ministry do not know what creed is safe to believe or assert, and the churches have become social clubs, and talk about the poor as an excuse for an existence that, so far as social efficiency is concerned, can as well be supplied by literature and art.” Enemies of the Church, who view with contempt her action throughout the Christian ages, are among the very people who are urging her ministers to become Spiritualists.
(2) Christian ministers have not the training, capacity, or experience requisite for the detection of conjuring tricks, which may account for the phenomena in a séance.
We may quote these propositions formulated by the late Mr. Frank Podmore in his “Studies in Psychical Research:”
(a) “The conditions under which the phenomena generally occur—conditions for the most part suggested and continually enforced by the medium—are such as to facilitate fraud and to render its detection difficult.
(b) “Almost all the phenomena are known to have been produced under similar conditions by mechanical means.
(c) “Almost every professional medium has been detected in producing results by trickery.
(d) “There are cases on record in which private persons, with no obvious pecuniary or social advantage to secure, have been detected in trickery.
(e) “The conditions of emotional excitement in which investigators have for the most part approached the subject … are calculated seriously to interfere with cold and dispassionate observation.”
The above passage is none the less impressive because it was written more than twenty years ago. The task of examination belongs to those who, while fully acquainted with the records of the past, possess the knowledge and trained powers of observation which such investigations require.