Mediums are the priests of the Spiritualist religion. They are the indispensable channels of communication with the other world. They have, not by anointing, but by birthright, the magical character which fits them alone to perform the miracles of the new revelation. From them alone, and through them alone, can one learn the conditions under which manifestations may be expected. Were they to form a union or go on strike, the life of the new religion would be more completely suspended than the life of any other religion. They control the entire output of evidence. They guard the gates of the beyond. They are the priests of the new religion. Now it will not be seriously disputed that during the last three quarters of the century these mediums or priests have perpetrated more fraud than was ever attributed to any priesthood before. A few weeks ago Spiritualists held a meeting in commemoration of the "seventy-second anniversary" of the birth of their religion. That takes us back to 1848, the year in which Mrs. Fish, as I will tell later, astutely turned into a profitable concern the power of her younger sisters to rap out "spirit" communications with the joints of their toes. There have been some quaint beginnings of religions, but the formation of that fraudulent little American family-syndicate in 1848 is surely the strangest that ever got "commemoration" in the annals of religion. And from that day until ours there is hardly a single prominent medium who has not been convicted of fraud. Any person who cares to run over Mr. Podmore's history of the movement will see this. There is hardly a medium named in the nineteenth century who does not eventually disappear in an odour of sulphur. Podmore was one of the best-informed and most conscientious non-Spiritualists who ever wrote on Spiritualism. If one prefers the verdict of the French astronomer Flammarion, who believes that mediums do possess abnormal powers and has studied them for nearly sixty years, this is what he says:-- It is the same with all mediums, male and female. I believe I have had nearly all of them, from various parts of the world, at my house during the last forty years. One may lay it down as a principle that all professional mediums cheat, but they do not cheat always.[1] If you are inclined to think that this applies only to professional mediums, whose need of money drives them into trickery, listen to this further verdict, which M. Flammarion says he could support by "hundreds of instances":-- I have seen unpaid mediums, men and women of the world, cheat without the least scruple, out of sheer vanity, or from a still less creditable motive--the love of deceiving. Spiritualist séances have led to very useful and pleasant acquaintanceships, and to more than one marriage. You must distrust both classes [paid and unpaid].[2]