FOOTNOTES:
[40] “Raymond,” p. 121.
[41] “Raymond,” p. 349.
[42] In an article entitled “Personal Appearance of the Departed,” Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, May, 1919.
[43] Journal, May, 1919, p. 28.
Chapter X
THE CHURCHES AND THE SÉANCE
The late Dr. Amory Bradford, one of the most eminent leaders of American Congregationalism, caused something of a sensation eleven years ago when he urged the students of Hackney College, Hampstead, to occupy themselves with psychical matters. Not a few of the younger Congregational ministers can recall that strange hour in the library when Dr. Bradford seemed to challenge the Churches with the names of Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, and Dr. Russel Wallace. “These learned scientists,” he argued, “are trying to lift the fringe of the dark veil, and you young ministers ought to show an equal eagerness.” In the American Churches, he said, people were asking their pastors: “Cannot you reveal to us the secret of the world beyond the grave? Our scientific men are occupied with psychical research; what are you ministers doing? Ought not every divinity student to have his attention directed early to these occult mysteries which laymen are discussing in the privacy of their own homes?” As the audience streamed into the lobbies, it was admitted that no more surprising address had been delivered of late years in a London theological college. When the twilight of the June evening enwrapped the departing company, many must have been wondering, with Dr. Garvie, how the students were to find time for such highly-specialised and laborious researches as those conducted by the Psychical Society.
The Principals of our theological institutions are level-headed men, and they did not see their way to provide a dark-room for the séance, as hotels supply a dark-room for the amateur photographer. The Churches have rejected the proposal that they should enter into competition with the experts on whom it falls to investigate the phenomena of Spiritualism. Is their refusal based on cowardice? Very far from it. Sir Walter Scott, in “The Monastery,” has shown us once for all how a great Christian, before the dawn of modern science, met the onset of what seemed to him a supernatural being. When the Monk Eustace was challenged by the White Lady in the Vale of Glendearg, he answered in words which Christian teachers would use to-day, were a similar demand made upon them:
“In the name of My Master,” said the astonished monk, “that name before which all things created tremble, I conjure thee to say what thou art that hauntest me thus.… At the crook of the glen? I could have desired to avoid a second meeting, but I am on the service of the Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against me.”
On negative and on positive grounds the Churches decline to lift the gauntlet thrown down to them by Spiritualism.