Mr. Stainton Moses was born in Lincolnshire in 1839. He studied at Oxford, and was ordained as a clergyman of the Church of England. After a few years of active life as a parish clergyman, he was offered a Mastership in University College School, London, which post he held until about three years before his death, which took place in 1892. As to the "fundamental questions of sanity and probity," Mr. Myers says: "Neither I myself, nor, so far as I know, any person acquainted with Mr. Moses, has ever entertained any doubt."[42] Mr. Charles C. Massey says: "However perplexed for an explanation, the crassest prejudice has recoiled from ever suggesting a doubt of the truth and honesty of Stainton Moses."[43] Mr. H. J. Hood, barrister-at-law, who knew him for many years, writes: "I believe that he was wholly incapable of deceit."[44] The principal published works of Mr. Stainton Moses are--"Researches in Spiritualism," issued in _Human Nature_, a periodical now extinct; "Spirit Identity" (1879), recently republished; "Spirit Teachings" (1883), of which a new edition has lately appeared with a biography by Mr. Charles Speer (son of Dr. S. T. Speer). Mr. Stainton Moses was also Editor of _Light_ during its earlier years. It has seemed important, in view of what is to follow, that the reader should be in possession of this somewhat explicit account of Mr. Stainton Moses, his life, his work, and his intimate friends. Having briefly treated of these external matters in the first of his two articles in the _Proceedings of the S.P.R._, Mr. Myers goes on to say:-- "But now our narrative must pass at a bound from the commonplace and the credible to bewildering and inconceivable things. With the even tenour of this straightforward and reputable life was inwoven a chain of mysteries which, as I have before said, in whatever way soever they be explained, make that life one of the most extraordinary which our century has seen. For Stainton Moses' true history lies, not in the everyday events thus far recorded, but in that series of physical manifestations which began in 1872, and lasted for some eight years, and that series of automatic writings and trance-utterances which began in 1873, received a record for some ten years, and did not, as is believed, cease altogether until the earthly end was near."[45] THE PHYSICAL PHENOMENA.