Before me, as I write, are two spirit photographs which have gone at least part of the round of the Press, and confirmed the consoling belief in thousands of hearts. One is a photograph of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and behind him, peeping over his shoulder, is a strange form which has, he says, "a general but not very exact resemblance to my son." The other photograph is supplied by the Rev. W. Wynne. It bears the ghostly faces of Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone, with whom Mr. Wynne had been acquainted; and the text says that the plate was exposed for Mr. and Mrs. Wynne and received these ghostly imprints. Both these photographs came from "the Crewe Spiritual Circle," which has done so much in recent years to strengthen the faith. Let me first make a few general remarks on spirit photography. Everybody to-day has an elementary idea what taking a photograph means. A chemical mixture, rich in certain compounds of silver, is spread as a film over the glass plate which you buy at the stores. The rays of light--chiefly the ultra-violet or "actinic" rays--which come from the sun (or the electric lamp) are reflected by a body upon this plate, through the lenses of the camera, and form a picture of that body by fixing the chemicals on the plate. The lens is essential in order to concentrate the rays and give an image, instead of a mere flood of light. The object which reflects the light--whether it be the ordinary light or the actinic rays--must be material. Ether does not reflect light, for light is a movement of ether. Spiritualists have such vague ideas as to what can and cannot happen that they overlook these elementary details altogether. Sometimes they ask us to believe that a medium can get the head of a ghost on a plate, without a camera, by merely placing his or her hand on the packet containing the plate. Even if there were a materialized spirit present, it could make no _image_ on the plate unless the rays were properly concentrated through lenses. But the whole idea of spirits hovering about and making images on photographic plates because a man called a medium puts his hand on the camera is preposterous. That would be magic with a vengeance! Even if we suppose that the spirits have material bodies--ether bodies would not do--which reflect only the actinic rays, and so are not visible to the eye, the idea remains as absurd as ever. To say that the invisible material body of Mr. Gladstone (if anybody is inclined to believe in such a thing) only reflects the rays into the camera at Crewe when Mr. Hope and Mrs. Buxton, the mediums, put their hands on the camera, and do not reflect light at all unless these mediums touch the camera, is to utter an obvious absurdity. The ghosts are either material or they are not.