My brother: in the Law [this communication was addressed to an Israelite] revive thy memory! Saul came to the Pythoness of Endor, and begged her to raise the spirit of Samuel; and the spirit of Samuel appeared, announcing to the King the nation's destiny and his own. (1 Samuel xxviii.) "The spirit [wind] bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, nor whither it goeth: so is everyone that is born of the Spirit." (John iii. 8.) This New Testament text was the more remarkable because it was written in Latin. Here, therefore, are intelligible sentences and accurate quotations. Could blind chance have composed them? Without forgetting possible imposition, our hypotheses still await explication. Here are other specimens which demand a certain astuteness and decided mental struggle for their dictation. One paragraph begins thus: _Suov imrap enger_. The other: _Arevele suov neib_. It is necessary to spell these two phrases backward, commencing at the end. Here the hypothesis of mental suggestion becomes very complicated, as also the theory of environment, and would imply special adroitness in the medium. Someone asked: "Why have you dictated thus?" The power replied: "In order to give you marvellous and unexpected evidence." Here is another communication of a different kind, beginning, _Aimairs vn oo uu ssevt_. To the demand what this bizarre assemblage of letters signified, the answer came: "Read every alternate letter!" This arrangement brought out these four lines:-- Amis, nous vous aimons bien tous, Car vous etes bons et fideles. Soyez unis en Dieu; sur vous L'Esprit Saint etendra ses ailes. This stanza may be translated thus: You one and all, oh friends, we love, For you are good, and faithful tread. Be one in God; and then above The Holy Ghost his wings will spread. Surely this is sufficiently innocent of poetic pretension; but the mode of dictation was decidedly difficult. This somewhat reduced, as it seemed to us, the supposition of fraud, but did not altogether destroy it. A communication of a yet different kind is an imitation of Rabelais, which is not so badly done, but cannot be well translated into English, because of its grotesque and idiomatic character. As to the identity of spirits, even if it could be demonstrated that the preceding quotations emanated from disembodied minds, this would not be a sufficient reason for admitting that the signatures are not entirely apocryphal. 5