In another direction psychical research may stretch out a helping hand to reinvigorate the failing forces of religion. The structure of organized Christianity to-day exhibits all the signs of gradual but inevitable decay. Even of those who may be willing to render lip-service to the formulae of orthodoxy few ever enter a church or chapel. The forces of Christianity appear to exercise little control over domestic politics, and none at all over the international conduct of the nations, which so often displays a complete contempt for the precepts of either religion or morality. While the organized religion of Christ has still a message for the individual and can still guide His faithful followers in life and cheer them in the hour of death, the despairing cry of the Saxon chronicler might well be uttered over the masses of “Christian” mankind to-day: “Christ and His saints sleep.” Faced with such hard facts, thoughtful men are beginning to realize that some reconsideration and restatement of the Christian position is inevitable. In such enterprise valuable data would be provided by the results of scientific psychical research. One of our best known psychologists has indeed gone so far as to declare that no other power than psychic research can hope to arrest the advancing forces of materialism. The acceptance of the fact that communications and influences can reach us which are manifestly not the product of human minds nor conveyed through the ordinary channels of sense would stultify any _a priori_ denial of the possibility of that “spiritual communion” which is an essential feature of religion. In the second place, psychical research is, in the view of many, already able to endow with a measure of precision and certainty those vague and tremulous promises of a future life which are offered by the Churches. Owing to the rapid decay of religious forces in the western world this vital doctrine of a personal survival has for the vast majority even of so-called Christians lost any real significance. In answer to the query “Do you desire a future life whatever the conditions may be?” which appeared in a questionnaire circulated by the American Branch of the S. P. R. in 1900, “noes” numbered no less than 78 per cent. of the total replies received (3321)――many taking the form of “not at all,” “not in the least,” “never think about it.” And although the results of an investigation within such narrow limits cannot be regarded as decisive, it is probable that the note of scepticism or indifference which runs through the majority of the replies reflects to a large extent the attitude towards a personal survival adopted by the average man or woman of the present day.