In all public meetings and in seances where a medium is expected to give trance and inspirational addresses the platform is “supported” or the chair surrounded by sympathisers, whose presence is esteemed favourable to “good conditions”--a “nebulous term” better understood by Spiritualists than the public. When the address is, as is often the case, a miserable jumble of things inconsequential, old, experienced Spiritualists say it is owing “to bad conditions,” _i.e._, the influence of the audience on the speaker being conflicting and bad, hence the inconclusive rambling of the spirit’s oration. Whether this is the true explanation or not, whether the medium was really controlled or not, or the addresses successful or not, the fact remains that Spiritualists admit that the “message” is not only “seriously modified,” according to the channel (or medium) through whom it is given, but that it may be deflected and distorted by the influences of the audience to whom it is given. Whatever the real cause of the imperfect oratory, what is this but admitting _the thoughts transferred from the audience to the sensitive either make or mar the utterance_? If spirit utterance is thus influenced, it becomes a difficult matter to decide how much of the original message has reached us as intended, and how unwise it is for some to have their lives directed by such uncertain counsel. There are many persons so organised, that when they come in contact with Spiritualism, (not knowing anything about clairvoyance, psychometry, thought-transference, thought-reading, etc.) are so convinced by what they hear and see for the first time--so much out of the ordinary run of their experience--the only way they can account for the phenomena is, “that they must be the work of spirits, for no human being could tell what they knew, or what they wanted, save a spirit who could read their thoughts.” This is just where, I think, the error creeps in. Those very revelations which they in ignorance so readily attribute as only possible coming from disembodied spirits, may be and are in some instances quite possible to man, unaided by any such agency. Many years ago I sat with Mr. David Duguid, the Glasgow painting medium. I had a “direct spirit painting” done. It was a correct--as far as I can recollect--painting of a small farm-house and stead, in the North of Ireland, where I as a child had been sent for my health. Neither Mr. Duguid nor the control claimed to possess any actual knowledge of me, or of the circumstances of my childhood. When I had an opportunity of attending the seance in question, I wondered if such a scene could be painted, and my wonder was greater when it was done.