fact occurring in the spirit world, the Dives and Lazarus parable is no argument against communication from the dead. The great gulf is between good and bad spirits, not between the dead and the living. Nay, the parable is a confirmation rather than the opposite, for, Abraham having replied that it was impossible for Lazarus to cross to the spirit in pain, he would presumably have said the same, if it had been so, about Lazarus going to the five brothers on earth. His reply that it would be useless is a tacit affirmation that it was possible.

But, proceeding another step, there is another position held by orthodox Protestants, which is a strong one and worthy of careful consideration. Certainly there is some truth in it, though it need not shut us all off from psychical studies, nor, indeed, can it be definitely proved. But it ought to be weighed by all of us. It is well presented in a sermon by the Bishop of Oxford, reported in the Church Times of March 23rd, 1917.

Dr. Gore argues eloquently that it is healthier to believe in a future life because of our faith in God, than to rest such belief on piecemeal phenomena. The Jews were repeatedly warned against this latter way (here Dr. Gore quotes the inevitable Leviticus xix. 31), being "debarred from dealings with the dead and, for long years, from any revelation of life beyond the grave, in order that that belief when it came to them might grow out of their assured faith in God and not from any real or imaginary communications from the dead."

And we may admit, as already said, that for many people this is still a wise counsel. Those who can, on

any ground or none, believe that the Universe is friendly, that God is in His heaven and also in His world, which therefore must ultimately be all right-these people need not worry themselves with piecemeal proofs of survival, and their energies are therefore free for more secularly useful things. On the other hand, many good people are without this God-consciousness, and faith in the friendliness of the Universe is impossible for them without some objective evidence of personal survival. These people may be of a lower order of soul than those who are strong in faith. They may, or may not; it hardly seems to be a point on which any of us can dogmatise. But they are, nevertheless, good souls, and if they are not allowed to get back to a religious position by this particular way, they do not seem likely to get back at all; and it seems a cruel and unwise and indeed presumptuous thing to shut a door in their faces. There are many ways home to our Father, and we should beware how we ban a suffering fellow soul from return by the path which is to him the only one possible.

And, indeed, if he is correctly reported, it is not clear that Dr. Gore is quite consistent with himself; for, although gleams of immortality-belief certainly begin to show towards the end of Old Testament times, he admits that it was Christ's resurrection that gave the proof and the power to the new dispensation. "Not only the teaching, but even more, the actual resurrection of our Lord from the dead, raised it to a level of absolute certainty for the believer in Him." And the Bishop does not blame the Early Christians for being strengthened in their faith by, or basing their belief on -as indubitably in many cases it would be entirely

based on this objective resurrection. If then it was right for them to believe on the basis of things perceived by their senses-the material and phantasmal appearances of Jesus after His death,-it is difficult to see how it is wrong for people nowadays to base their belief on similarly objective evidence. Christ may have loved John the most, but He did not condemn Thomas, who believed on evidence shown.

If it is urged that that great Resurrection was a unique event-but all events are unique, for no two are identical-and that it sufficed for all time, there is, perhaps, no answer, as, indeed, there is no proof either way. But there are few now who would assert this. Most are agreed that God is not dead, that Revelation is still proceeding, that science and art and literature, and all interactions of Nature and man, are teaching us continually more and more of the Divine mind. Consequently this static conception of religion is no longer tenable. There was an advance nineteen hundred years ago; there have been many advances since-not, indeed, in the root-principles of love to God and man, which cannot be transcended, but in methods of applying that love and in showing our love of God by seeking more knowledge of His ways and His handiwork; and it is obscurantism, a sinning against the light, if we try to hold back the grand development of His self-revelation. Dr. Gore has well said, elsewhere, that "the Church in each age should be free to return upon its central creed, structure and worship, and without loss of continuity re-express its theological mind, as it has so often already done, in view of the

fresh developments of the intellectual, moral and social life of man." 1

In sum, then, we may perhaps say that though psychical phenomena have been and may continue to be for many the only way the only way back to religious faith-by proving the preamble of all religions, the existence of a spiritual world—it is nevertheless desirable to keep the phenomenal side in its proper place. It proves the preamble, supplies a base; but it is not itself religion. That is an inner thing, and concerns the state and attitude of the soul. Spiritualists would do well to ponder the utterances of such scholarly and tolerant critics as Dr. Gore. There is a possibility that they may learn from him to avert their own extinction as a sect by developing a greater spirit of worship in their services. Certain it is that if Spiritualism as a religion is to continue and extend, it must provide, as with many it does provide, for wider needs than those concerning only evidence of survival. Perhaps the solution may come by the churches accepting the essentials of Spiritualistic truth, which they had lost sight of and were no longer preaching. The existence of a separate sect to emphasise survival and communication may then become unnecessary.

1 "Dissertations," p. 213.

CHAPTER VI

FECHNER'S THEORY OF LIFE AFTER DEATH

ANY poets and philosophers have inclined to the

MAN

idea of a World-soul thinking in all of us rather than that of a lot of personal and everlasting souls. Perhaps the inclination is the result of a feeling that there is something comic, yet also unpleasant, in the thought of our present little selves enduring to all eternity. We feel that we should get very tired of our own company. We do not want to have John Smith eternally to struggle with, as Mrs. Stetson said. Accordingly we feel friendly to the pan-psychic idea. As Coleridge has it:

And what if all of animated nature

Be but organic harps divinely framed,
That tremble into thought as o'er them sweeps,
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,

At once the soul of each, and God of all?1

Leibnitz presents the same notion in his "Considérations sur la Doctrine d'un Esprit universel," and Robert Burns echoes Coleridge, in a letter to Mrs. Dunlop, as also does Fiona McLeod in "Amid the Uplands." The best modern philosophic presentation of pan-psychism is that of G. T. Fechner, who moreover provides for in1 "The Eolian Harp."