ight: A Journal of Psychical, Occult, and Mystical Research. 'LIGHT! l\foRE LIGHT!'-Gocthe, 'WHATSOEvER DOTH MAK111 MANIFEST IS LIGHT.'-Paul. No. 1,586.-VOL. XXXI. [Registered as] SATURDAY, JUNE 3, 1911. [a Newspaper.] PRICE TWOPENCE. CONTENTS. think that, may be, after all, the whole thing is a fraud. Notes by tbe Way .............. 258 Life in This and Other Worltts. Must t.his go on for ever 7 • Dagmar' .............. - ...... 254 An Adclress by Mr. E. 1'}. L. S.A. N otlces •••.••••••..•• : ... 255 Fournier cl' Albe ............. 259 Heaven forefend ! For our own part, ·however, we The Hypotheses of 'Bilocat1on' Spiritualism : Its Message to Humnnity ................ 261 believe that even going round in a circle is better than Con~idered • . • . ............ 255 A S)liritual A wakening . 262 Mrs. Wriedtlnlondon .. ;··:····256 Spiritm~list Congrt ss at Copen- standing still. And, after all, the circle ultimately leads on •LIGHT• and Reincamat1omsts 256 hagen: .................. 262 The Unceasing Spiritual Out- Mr. Hereward Canington and to the spiral, and we get progression ! pouring ...................... 258 the Bangs Sisters ............ 263 Dr. J. M. Peebles contributes a long and inspiring NOTES BY THE WAY. message to the 'Banner of Life ' of April 29th last. The difficulty of affording 'proof ' of spirit presence to 'Marching on ; or Evening Musings while Crossing the others is clearly stated by Dr. A. J. Mel vor Tyndall, when Chasm of Eighty-nine Years and Looking to the Ninetieth · he says: 'I could present what I regard as proofs of the Milestone.,' is its exuberant title. It is a veritable continued individual existence of the soul after bodily 'Pilgrim's Song of Hope,' and so extensive in its range as death ad libit1tm. But just as no one can live another's to suggest the commingled inspirations of Walt Whitman, life, so no one can make his own proofs of this kind of Blake and Meleager. The Greek poet, indeed, is strongly knowledge answer the blindness of another.' He also gives reflected in the apostrophe to the 'spirit dove ' :- us the following incident, the authenticity of which, he Your white breast I festooned with rose buds and buttercups, ivy aud everlasting ; and upon your head I plac~d a crown. of says, was vouched for by the late Dr. Hodgson :- olive leaves. To your tiny feet I festooned•the v10let, the daisy A lady was walking down the darkened corridor of a hotel and the myrtle, arid under your snowy wings I folded geranium toward the elevator. She was unable to distinguish in the dim sprigs and flowering forget-me-nots. light the exact location of the shaft, and was startled to find her Noah's dove, truly, with·its single olive branch, could progress impeded by the figure of a man, with his arms extended across the space reserved for the elevator doorway. As the not brook comparison with such a bird ! We quote the elevator came up the shaft, an<J. the light in the car was reflected passage as an example of the youthful ardo.ur of our in the corridor, the figtire disappeared, and she saw that the gate 'grand old man,' who, in the course of his prean, renews of the sl1aft had been left open. Had the figure not stopped his vows of fidelity to Spiritualism, 'the living Logos, the her, she would have walked straight into the open gate, and been killed. holiest word, except God, in the English language.' Commenting on the above, Dr. Tyndall shrewdly remarks : 'If the woman's sub-conscious mind was at work, The Rev. C. H. Laws, the retiring President of the why did it precipitate the vision of the man barring her Methodist community in New Zealand, made the following momentous statement at the annual Methodist Conference progress, instead of the visual perception of the open shaft 1' This is a natural question, and one that cannot be answered held in Christchurch recently :- There are front-rank men among us who maintain that we on the materialistic hypothesis. have incontrovertible evidence of the persistence of the soul after death. Perhaps the greatest service that phenomenal Spirit­ We can only echo the old Scottish Dominie and say, ualism renders to humanity is to be found in the fact that 'Prodigious ! ' But, while it is gratifying to know that, it substantiates the religious belief that man survives after preaching the reality of a future life for generations, bodily death as an intelligent, moral and progressive being. the Methodist Church has begun to collect evidence on the Religion in the varied forms in which it has found ex­ point, the statement whets our curiosity. Who are these pression in the past has ever been the manifestation of 'front rank men,' and how and where did they gain their that intuitive consciousness, which is innate in us, of the evidence 1 We do not forget, by the way, that John Wesley supreme value of life-of its permanency and its intimate had certain psychic experiences, from whieh his modern relation to Infinite Life. Because we are spiritual beings followers have been inclined to avert their gaze. this religious instinct is natural and is never wholly absent. The more we learn to trust to reason, the more surely we Lecturing in Australia on 'The State after Death,' t~e realise the reasonableness of all that is, the more fully thfa Bishop of Auckland is reported to have said that 'Men religious consciousn~ss will find expression, especially when after wrestling with the problem and longing for the light its affirmation of human deathlessness finds confirmation, of God upon it, still remained baffled.' This seems a dis­ as it is doing, in the increasing frequency and evidential tinctly depressing commentary on certain admonitions clearness of spirit manifestations. which should be familiar to the Bishop : ' Ask and it shall be given you; seek and ye shall find ; knock and it shall 'The Progressive Thinker' (as befits its title) is justly be opened unto you.' Really, the condition of the Church incensed against those unprogressive thinkers who pursue as regards our subject reminds us of the blind folk in the ' mill horse round ' of test-seeking. Says our con­ Maeterlinck's play who, having lost their way, call out temporary:- vaaue and misleading directions to each other. And yet, What kind of mentality is that manifested by a seeker after with all its irony, the situation has its compensations. It truth by means of tests who, getting a .most convincing one yesterday, must liave an equally convincing one to-day, and is when men are frank enough to admit their ignorance again to-morrow, or else be inclined to reconsider his belief, and that they are in the best condition to receive knowledge. 254 LIGHT. [June 3, 1911. The April number of the 'Message of Life' (New being friends of the person to whom the inquiry referred. Zealand) contains a pregnant little article l1y 'C. N. R.' The answer was significant, 'Ob, they are only friendly entitled, ' Is Spiritualism in Danger 1' The writer deals when they are drinking together.' reassuringly with some anxious inquiries as to whether But the psychical laws of association will in the end the 'swirling eddies' of the time may not overwhelm prove too strong to be affected by such artificial solvents. Spiritualism, and expresses complete confidence in the future of the movement :- To my thinking all these disturbing influences are but 1 DUGMAR.' pointers to a crucial stage of mental and spiritual evolution which is near at hand. Emerson says : ' Our faith comes in moments ; our vice is habitual.' Hence when men's minds are This is the name of the heroine of an ancient Egyptian quickened their vices show out more glaringly. This is the story which was written automatically by a pencil held explanation of the present exceptional unrest in the social,· very loosely in the hand of the medium, Mrs. Colson. This political, commercial, military and religions spheres. It also shows why the present-day crimes are so numerous and so lady is Scotch, and declares her complete ignorance of all shockingly cruel. Abnormal conditions of human life always Egyptian lore ; she is also unacquainted with history in precede great onward movements. That such a movement is general ; she has never been able to read much, being very now approaching I am convinced. This is why I have no fear short-sighted, and ont of the world of literature altogether. for the future of Spiritualism. She lives at Mexico, where 'Dugmar' was published by This is well put, for it takes account of the fact that it the Mexican Occult Society in 1908. She has lived in is the growth of the moral consciousness of the race that Florida and Singapore. throws present-day evils into such high relief. What have During the past fourteen years the book has been been pithily termed the 'growing pains ' of humanity are written out seven times, as the narrative was too chaotic noticeably acute just now, and the fact is significant and crude for publication at first, but no changes have been of much. allowed, except under the direction of the spirit author, and these have consisted solely of taking out superfluous 'Thinking for Results' is one of the latest of the many words and sometimes slightly changing the construction of books devoted to the subject of thought as a means of a sentence. attaining ' health, power and prosperity.' It is from the When I first read the story it struck me that the pen of Mr. Christian D. Larson (L. N. Fowler & Co., names given were of a very ancient Egyptian type, namely, London).