“One of the principal difficulties in the way of admitting an element of super-normality--whether telepathy, clairvoyance or communication from the dead”--remarks Mr. Hill,[8] “is the unknown reach of subliminal memory.... Great care is necessary as to what we say to sensitives who are helping us in experimentation, also close knowledge of their lives, their reading, their associations, in order to estimate the probability or improbability of this or that piece of knowledge ever having reached them through normal channels.” He advises inquirers to err on the safe side, setting aside as non-evidential anything that the sensitive may reasonably be supposed to have ever known. (4) Sir Oliver Lodge regards the medium as “a delicate piece of apparatus, wherewith we are making an investigation.” “The medium is an instrument whose ways and idiosyncrasies must be learnt, and to an extent humoured, just as one studies and humours the ways of some much less delicate piece of physical apparatus turned out by a skilled instrument maker.” These words of Sir Oliver Lodge raise a serious question. Do our investigators care enough about the moral and physical injury which the “sensitive” may suffer under the trance condition? Sir William Barrett notes that D. D. Home suffered severely after a long series of séances. According to the testimony of Sir W. Crookes, he lay pale, speechless and almost fainting on the floor, “showing what a drain on his vital powers was caused by the evolution of the ‘psychic force.’” The Rev. Walter Wynn, in “Rupert Lives!” says of a medium that it took nearly ten minutes for him to pass under control “after many strange bodily contortions which are not pleasant to witness, but are quite natural if we are to assume that a discarnate spirit controls his body.” Prostration occurred, as the New Testament records, when our Lord cast a spirit out of some poor human frame. The liberated were restored by Him to normal health and vigour. St. Mark’s words are in strange contrast to the recurrent trance experiences of modern mediumship. “And the spirit cried, and rent him sore, and came out of him, and he was as one dead, insomuch that many said, He is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.” Would He not lift up and restore and revitalise those who at the séance seem to ignorant onlookers to be invaded by some alien personality? FOOTNOTES: [3] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” p. 124 (1918). [4] _ibid._ [5] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” p. 257 (1918). [6] May 10th, 1919. [7] In the Introduction to Mr. Hill’s book entitled “Spiritualism, its History, Phenomena, and Doctrine” (Cassell). [8] “Spiritualism,” pp. 127, 128. _Chapter IV_ THE MEDIUM’S “CONTROL”