The Rev. T. L. Williams, Vicar of Porthleven, in The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, July, 1885, gives his personal experience: “On an occasion when I was absent from home, my wife awoke one morning, and to her surprise and alarm saw me standing by the bedside looking at her. In her fright she covered her face with the bed clothes, and when she ventured to look again the appearance was gone. On another occasion, when I was not absent from home, my wife saw me, as she supposed, coming from church in surplice and stole. I came a little way, she says, and turned round the corner of the building, where she lost sight of me. I was at the time in the church in my place in the choir, where she was much surprised to see me on entering the building.... My daughter has often told me, and now repeats the story, that she was passing my study door, which was ajar, and looked in to see if I was there. She saw me in my chair, and as she caught sight of me, I stretched out my arms, and drew my hands across my eyes, a familiar gesture of mine. I was in the village at the time. Now, nothing occurred at or about the times of these appearances to give any meaning to them.” He adds: “A good many years ago there was a devout young woman living in my parish, who used to spend much of her spare time in church in meditation and prayer. She used to assert that she frequently saw me standing at the altar when I certainly was not there in the body.” Mr. Williams must have been a man peculiarly endowed with psychic force to thus impress himself.
The following is from the pen of the gifted Mary Howitt, and not only gives a remarkable fact, but her explanation of the same: “I conducted Mrs. Nenner through a room which contained some ancient furniture and a quantity of valuable old china. This china had been left in our care by a friend during his lengthened absence abroad. His thoughts from his place of sojourn at the antipodes constantly reverted to these heirlooms.
“‘Who are these six gentlemen, evidently brothers, sitting where the old china is?’ asked Mrs. Nenner, when we had passed through the room.
“‘There was no one there at all,’ I said, much surprised.
“‘Then,’ said she, ‘I must have seen six brother spirits. There they were sitting; tall, fair men, light haired, all strikingly alike, all the same age. They must be brothers!’
“I recognized in her description the owner of the china. Before Mrs. Nenner left, we showed her a portrait of the owner of the china, our friend on the other side of the world. She at once said, ‘Oh, that is one of the six brothers!’ In some mysterious manner the intensity of thought fixed by the possessor of the china upon his possessions—we knew that his thoughts constantly reverted to them—had been able to manifest itself to the sight in the form of the man himself, but multiplied into six forms. It should be observed that this gentleman was of what now we should term a ‘mediumistic’ temperament. It is possible, that being at the antipodes, he might be, at the time his multiplied form was beheld, asleep—it being night there when it is day with us—and that his thoughts might have, in a dream, revisited England.”
Since civilization began, mankind have held certain stones and metals as precious, and attributed rare qualities to charms, relics and amulets. We may indulge our mirth over the miraculous qualities ascribed to the bones of martyrs and the teeth of saints, a bit of wood from the true cross; but casting aside the rubbish gathered by imposture and credulity, we discover a great truth. Precious stones and metals have become so because of the subtile power of their emanations. In a true relic the sensitive perceives the full expression of the original owner’s life, and feels it reproduced in him. As the phonograph treasures up the tone, the accent, the quality of the voice, and the thought of the speaker, so the relic preserves and constantly gives forth the character of the one it represents.
Shrines and holy places have cause for being regarded as sacred, and their preservation in purity for the one and only purpose is correct in science. The church devoted to the worship of Jehovah holds its devotees with the invisible bonds reaching out from the walls forged from the psycho-aura of all preceding worshippers. That the members hold their houses exclusively for certain uses may be the result of superstition, but they are right in thus doing. A church building given over during the week to shows and entertainments, and nightly filled with the class such would draw, would become so saturated with worldly influences as to be unfit for the promulgation of the highest religious thought on Sunday. Both audience and minister would feel the depressing effect, and religious zeal would reach zero.
How strong and enduring the impress stamped on a relic or jewel may be, is shown in the following story told of Robert Browning by Mr. Knowles (Spectator, Jan. 30, 1869): “Mr. Robert Browning tells me that when he was in Florence some years since, an Italian nobleman (Count Ginnasi) was brought to his house. The Count professed to have great mesmeric powers, and declared in reply to Mr. Browning’s avowed skepticism, he would convince him of his powers. He then asked Mr. Browning whether he had anything about him then and there, which he could hand him, and which was in anyway a memento or relic. It so happened by curious accident, that Mr. Browning was wearing under his coat sleeves some gold wrist studs to his shirt, which he had quite recently taken into wear in absence of his ordinary wrist-buttons. He had never before worn them in Florence, or elsewhere, and found them in an old drawer where they had lain forgotten for years. One of these he took out and handed to the Count, who held it in his hand awhile and then said as if much impressed, ‘There is something here which cries out in my ear, Murder! murder!’
“And truly,” said Mr. Browning, “these studs were taken from the dead body of a great uncle of mine, who was violently killed on his estate in St. Kitts nearly eighty years ago. They were produced in court as proofs that robbery had not been the object of the strangler, which was effected by his own slaves. They were taken out of the night-gown in which he died and given to me.”