“The Rev. G. H. St. John Mildmay stated that he had had two sittings with the defendant and was amazed that she could tell him names that he had written in a paper which was then folded up and held in her hand.... He was convinced that she was perfectly genuine. _Magistrate_: You have, I suppose, seen conjurors taking cards out of people’s hair and such things? (_Laughter_). _Witness_: There was nothing resembling that.” A subsequent reference by one of the witnesses to the possible influence of “lying spirits” was followed by this edifying dialogue: “_Mr. Barker_ (_prosecuting Counsel_): I object to such ridiculous questions. _Mr. Wild_ (_for the defence_) asked the magistrate to rule whether such a question was ridiculous. _The Magistrate_ (_with emphasis_): I certainly think it is ridiculous. Mr. Wild then said――with justice――that it was evidently waste of time to go on, and left the Court.” The antagonism of the Christian Churches, a _damnosa hereditas_ from the unspeakable records of past centuries, is now a waning force, chiefly confined to the ranks of what the late Dean Rashdall rather roughly called “the inferior clergy”. There are some exceptions. The distinguished Dean of St. Paul’s, a devoted student of the obsolete fantasies of Neoplatonic philosophy, seems quite unable to dissociate the serious study of psychic phenomena from the fraudulent banging of tambourines or the wearing of false wigs. He is ready to consider the unsupported assertions of Plotinus, that that third-century mystic on one occasion enjoyed some form of beatific vision in the “contemplation of the One”; but on the other hand the more recent and infinitely better supported testimony of a Lombroso, Crookes, or William James as to the occurrence of a psychical or clairvoyant phenomenon is contemptuously ignored. Now and again sincere representatives of medieval Christianity like Lord Hugh Cecil are to be found who ban the _séance_-room because they are convinced that clairvoyance is a form of necromancy and ‘controls’ like Mrs Piper’s “Phinuit” or Mrs Leonard’s “Feda” demoniacal agencies totally unfit for Christian intercourse. The more general and more enlightened attitude of at any rate the Anglican Church is embodied in the _Report_ of the bishops at the Lambeth Conference of 1920: “We say without hesitation that we welcome scientific investigation: we recognize the patience and the skill with which members of the Psychical Research Society examine the mass of evidence of all kinds submitted to them, and above all the unmistakable desire to safeguard the inquiry against illusion or fraud, to arrive at truths, and to interpret scientific facts correctly.”