At the outset, we must take exception to Mr. Boyd’s three systems. I very much question whether there is more than _one_ system, and I am convinced that physical and mental are one and the same. And I would go so far as to say, that the disastrous mistakes that have been made in the past, and which are still in operation to-day in the treatment of one large section of sick people, viz. the insane, largely owe their origin to this arbitrary division. And, by a curious irony, the branch of medical science where there is the most marked predominance of materialism is this very department of mental diseases. This is all the more curious when we reflect, what occult influences have been, in all ages, supposed to work upon the insane. The obnoxious word ‘lunatic’ is a proof of this. The moon was by some supposed to have a deleterious effect on the intellect; insane persons were spoken of as ‘moonstruck’; the periodicity of the mental attacks was also supposed to have some relation to the lunar interval. Indeed, the whole subject of insanity bristles with occult and mysterious theories. The really hopeful treatment of insanity began when it--a mental disease--was treated, not by mental, but by physical methods, and the more mental and physical are taken together as one and the same, the more rational and productive of good, in the best sense, is our treatment likely to be. Indeed, the whole indivisibility of the three systems is nowhere so well shown as in the arbitrary division of Religious Insanity. Surely if we try to turn the minds of the sufferers from any considerations of religion, by removing their Bibles, by preventing them from any religious discussion, or from taking part in any religious ceremonies, we are helping to keep up the evil. People, as we put it, become insane on religious matters, not only because they have been dwelling on the subject unduly, but because it is naturally of the greatest importance, and absorbs more attention than probably anything else in the world. Now, as the more purely physical, as distinguished from the more or less occult methods of regarding the insane, has become the more enlightened and modern view of the subject, so has the spiritual method of dealing with it come into prominence. Spiritual ministrations to the insane may be thought to be useless, or, at any rate, to be fraught with little practical utility. Comparatively recently a man who had charge of a country parish was appointed chaplain to Broadmoor, which is the asylum for insane criminals. A friend, on being told of the appointment, said to him, ‘Why, whatever will you say to them? You can only talk to them of their sins.’ ‘Talk to them of their sins!’ he said; ‘I shall never mention them.[10] I shall talk to them of Hope.’ [10] ‘The Society of the Crown of Our Lord’ was formed for the purpose of supplying spiritual ministrations to the insane.