Page:Saints or Spirits, Agnes Repplier, 1920.pdf/4

4 character. Granting the existence of a spirit world, it is necessary to be on our guard against the invasion of our will by a lower order of intelligence and morality."

This is a great deal for an ardent Spiritist to acknowledge. No such word of warning comes from Sir Oliver Lodge's lips; yet it represents the darker side of this strange substitute for Christian faith. Without venturing to speculate too luridly on the nature of supernatural visitants, it is folly to assume that—if such visitants exist—they are necessarily benignant, or that evil spirits will not cross the threshold when the door is opened. And we cannot protest too strongly against the subjection of the medium to influences of which she and her clients are necessarily ignorant. If she is what she claims to be, she voluntarily surrenders the control of faculties of which she is the proper and the sole guardian, which have been given her for her own direction, and which it is the instinct of every sane man and woman to protect from assault.

If it be the mitigation of grief which Spiritists seek in their efforts to communicate with the dead, they are easily comforted. Sir Oliver Lodge has assured us that the messages sent by soldiers killed in battle have proved consolatory to their families and friends. But beyond vague assurances of happiness, and occasional references to "carrying on," the soldier spirits, like all other spirits, cling tenaciously, and with what has been termed "maniacal energy," to the least significant recollections of their mortal lives. The wider outlook has been lost, the larger purposes forgotten; but a pocket knife mislaid in boyhood, or a slang phrase, common to thousands of other young men, lingers in their memories, and becomes the pivot of their laborious communications. The parent of a lad killed in action went, at Sir Oliver's suggestion, to a medium who spelled out the word U-L-L-O-E-R-B. It seemed meaningless to the mother; but the father deciphered it as "Ullo 'Erb!" familiar syllables heard often from his son's lips, and he was perfectly satisfied with the identification.

The painful lack of intelligence manifested by spirits, the puerility of their messages, and the apparent narrowness of their confines, are accounted for by the difficulty of intercourse, and by the number of middle men employed. The spirit communicates with the control, who communicates with the