The New Revelation | Page 6

the
time, I think now that it was a rough approximation to the truth. These
were my first steps in Spiritualism. I was still a sceptic, but at least I
was an inquirer, and when I heard some old-fashioned critic saying that
there was nothing to explain, and that it was all fraud, or that a conjuror
was needed to show it up, I knew at least that that was all nonsense. It
is true that my own evidence up to then was not enough to convince me,
but my reading, which was continuous, showed me how deeply other
men had gone into it, and I recognised that the testimony was so strong
that no other religious movement in the world could put forward
anything to compare with it. That did not prove it to be true, but at least
it proved that it must be treated with respect and could not be brushed
aside. Take a single incident of what Wallace has truly called a modern
miracle. I choose it because it is the most incredible. I allude to the
assertion that D. D. Home--who, by the way, was not, as is usually
supposed, a paid adventurer, but was the nephew of the Earl of
Home--the assertion, I say, that he floated out of one window and into
another at the height of seventy feet above the ground. I could not
believe it. And yet, when I knew that the fact was attested by three
eye-witnesses, who were Lord Dunraven, Lord Lindsay, and Captain
Wynne, all men of honour and repute, who were willing afterwards to
take their oath upon it, I could not but admit that the evidence for this
was more direct than for any of those far-off events which the whole
world has agreed to accept as true.

I still continued during these years to hold table seances, which
sometimes gave no results, sometimes trivial ones, and sometimes
rather surprising ones. I have still the notes of these sittings, and I
extract here the results of one which were definite, and which were so
unlike any conceptions which I held of life beyond the grave that they
amused rather than edified me at the time. I find now, however, that
they agree very closely, with the revelations in Raymond and in other
later accounts, so that I view them with different eyes. I am aware that
all these accounts of life beyond the grave differ in detail--I suppose
any of our accounts of the present life would differ in detail--but in the
main there is a very great resemblance, which in this instance was very
far from the conception either of myself or of either of the two ladies
who made up the circle. Two communicators sent messages, the first of
whom spelt out as a name "Dorothy Postlethwaite," a name unknown to
any of us. She said she died at Melbourne five years before, at the age
of sixteen, that she was now happy, that she had work to do, and that
she had been at the same school as one of the ladies. On my asking that
lady to raise her hands and give a succession of names, the table tilted
at the correct name of the head mistress of the school. This seemed in
the nature of a test. She went on to say that the sphere she inhabited
was all round the earth; that she knew about the planets; that Mars was
inhabited by a race more advanced than us, and that the canals were
artificial; there was no bodily pain in her sphere, but there could be
mental anxiety; they were governed; they took nourishment; she had
been a Catholic and was still a Catholic, but had not fared better than
the Protestants; there were Buddhists and Mohammedans in her sphere,
but all fared alike; she had never seen Christ and knew no more about
Him than on earth, but believed in His influence; spirits prayed and
they died in their new sphere before entering another; they had
pleasures--music was among them. It was a place of light and of
laughter. She added that they had no rich or poor, and that the general
conditions were far happier than on earth.
This lady bade us good-night, and immediately the table was seized by
a much more robust influence, which dashed it about very violently. In
answer to my questions it claimed to be the spirit of one whom I will
call Dodd, who was a famous cricketer, and with whom I had some
serious conversation in Cairo before he went up the Nile, where he met

his death in the Dongolese Expedition. We have now, I may remark,
come to the year 1896 in my experiences. Dodd was not known to
either lady.