The statement of "communicators," who spoke through Mrs. Piper, as to what occurs on the physical side is that we all have bodies composed of "luminferous ether enclosed in our carnal bodies. The relation of Mrs. Piper's ethereal body to the ethereal world in which the "communicators" claim to dwell is such that a special store of peculiar energy is accumulated in connection with her organism, and this appeared to them as "light." Mrs. Piper's ethereal body was removed by them, and her ordinary body appeared as a shell filled with this light. Several communicators," often, were in contact with this "light" at the same time. And three separate "communicators " or "spirits " have been known to carry on conversations through Mrs. Piper at the same time, one "communicator" using her voice, another her right hand and still another her left hand. Upon the brightness of this "light," in Mrs. Piper, the communications depend. When she was in ill health the "light" was feeble and the communications were less coherent. As to the communications, "George Pelham " says: "You to us are more like we understand sleep to be. You look shut up as one in prison, and in order for us to get into communication with you we have to enter into your sphere, as one like yourself, asleep. This is just why we make mistakes, as you call them, or get confused and muddled, so to put it."

Dr. Hodgson declared Mrs. Piper's organism represented one end of a line, the other end of which is in the so-called spirit world. Or, if there is a recognizable possibility of this, it seems eminently desirable that we should try to find out what will improve the line and the transmitting and receiving apparatus, and if possible obtain knowledge concerning the methods to be used in making and improving other similar machines.

The whole question of psychical research has been so clouded by fraud on one side, and by sweeping prejudice on the other, that it is interesting to read what some famous men have thought about it.

Long before the Society for Psychical Research was organized, Immanuel Kant, recognizing the need of such a society said:

"At some future day it will be proved, I can not say when and where, that the human soul is, while in life, already in an uninterrupted communication with those living in another world; that the human soul can act upon those beings, and receive, in return, impressions of them without being conscious of it in the ordinary personality. It would be a blessing if the state of things in the other world, and the conditions under which an interchange of the two worlds may take place -perceived by us in speculative manner could not only be theoretically exhibited, but practically established by real and generally acknowledged facts, thus observed."

In 1885, during a conversation with the late F. W. H. Myers, Gladstone said, referring to the theory of communication between those in the seen and the unseen world: "It is the most important work which is being done in the world—by far the most important."

Professor Wm. Crookes, inventor of the radiometer, and the constructor of the vacuum tubes by means of which X-rays have been obtained, the discoverer of the sodium amalgamation process for separating gold and sliver from their ores, and who harnessed a sunbeam to a machine and made light itself guide a mill, whose vacuum tubes made possible the miracle of obtaining a perfect photograph of a man's spine while he was wearing his clothes and had not yet dispensed with his flesh, thirty-five years ago published, in the Quarterly Journal of Science, an article, setting forth his attitude as a scientific man, when confronted with the phenomena of spiritualism. He believed that the whole affair was a superstition, or at least, an unexplained trick. But, in 1874, in the same Journal, he embodied the chief results of his own inquiry, and staked his reputation upon a list of verified phenomena. And in 1894 he closed his address as president of the Psychical Research Society, by saying: "I venture to assert

that both in actual, careful record of new and important facts, and in suggestiveness, our society's work and publications will form no unworthy preface to a profounder science, both of man, of nature and of worlds not realized than this planet has yet known."

While the results of the work of the Society for Psychical Research have furnished new reasons for some men's believing in the immortality of the soul, the old reasons, on which the Christian faith has rested for more than nineteen centuries are still quite sufficient for most of us. But it illy becomes any one to sneer at those who present newer reasons which their scientific researches may seem to discover or suggest.

Communication with the dead is one of the oldest beliefs, and we are in hearty sympathy with the Society for Psychical Research, with the aims of those earnest men who, with more method than the earlier ages knew, are seeking to verify their faith.

To hold to the belief that in some way spirits of the dead communicate with the living, and to reach that conclusion not by faith, or philosophic deduction, but by rigid scientific proof, would, as has often been pointed out, be the instant death of materialistic philosophy, and it would be, at the same time, in the direct line with what the human heart craves and Christianity teaches.

Not a very large number of men, however, have yet reached such a conclusion. It may come. We thoroughly welcome the search for it. But, until it comes, the instinctive longing of the soul for its own immortality and the testimony of the Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, are the grounds of our belief.

PITTSBURG, PA.

V.

GHOSTS.

BY THE REV. D. B. LADY, D.D.

The word ghost is Anglo-Saxon. The original is g-a-s-t. The h is a modern and unnecessary insertion. At least, 80 the Century dictionary says; it means breath, spirit. The ghost is the incorporeal part of man. Giving up the ghost is one way of describing the act of dying. The word ghost is used more particularly, however, to designate the disembodied spirit.

"I thought that I had died in sleep

And was a blessed ghost."-COLERIDGE.

Human beings consist not only of bodies but of one or more finer substances of an immaterial character. There are those

who speak of the tripartite nature of man. Others speak of man merely as material and spiritual, as body and soul. And this way of speaking will serve the purposes of this paper.

When death comes the soul leaves the body. The bodily organization lapses. All bodily operations cease. The blood no longer circulates. No messages are carried from brain to organs. Energy, power and life have left the body. It no longer moves from place to place. The carbon, oxygen, hydrogen and nitrogen of which it is composed, separate, and are dispersed in the water, earth and air, and may be taken up into other organizations. The body no longer exists as a body.

But do the spiritual elements, assuming that the soul is made up of different immaterial elements as the body is of material elements, also separate, and seek other alliances and enter into other organisms? Or does the spiritual part of man continue to exist after death as an intelligent, self-conscious, self-directing individuality, apart from the body?

Does the soul live on, disconnected from the body with which it was connected for years, after this connection has been broken? If it does, this is the ghost, with which the present paper is concerned. And the universe must be full of ghosts. Our departed ancestors are ghosts. In a very short time we who are now alive and in the body, having laid aside the curtain and veil of the flesh, will be ghosts. "What are we now but ghosts, walking about in flesh and skin!”

From very ancient times men have believed in the continuance of existence after death. This is evident from the fact that the dead were often left in their dwelling places and at other times special structures were made for them, and that their weapons, utensils and ornaments were frequently placed by their side when they were buried and that food was offered to them from time to time. In the Nile valley bodies were embalmed, so that the soul might still retain its earthly enshrinement. In India, the doctrine of Metempsychosis prevailed. But finally the thought of the indestructible soul going from one body to another eternally became a burden too heavy to be borne. Buddhism offered relief in the doctrine that transmigration ceased in Nirvana, eternal rest, when the soul was resumed into the cause whence it emanated, never to depart from it again.

Prof. J. P. Mahaffy, speaking of the tombs discovered by Schlieman at Mycenæ, the royal city of Agamemnon, and the treasures they contained, says: "The only meaning such precious offerings to the dead can have is to express the belief that there is some continued existence for the dead . . . that it was a cause of satisfaction to the dead to have their most precious property buried with them. . . the contents of Schlieman's tombs prove the belief in the existence of man after death."

As the centuries passed men became more and more conscious of a faith in a future life. The arguments of Socrates and Plato for the immortality of the soul are well known. And there are perhaps more persons in this age who hope for,