popular, and so ingenuously miscalled mysticism; the dull worthless dross of Mr. McCabe’s superstitious materialism; the feverish panicky special pleading of the convinced Spiritists. Here, too, we have much that directly bears out our present contention, the medical evidence of such names as Sir Bryan Donkin; Dr. W. H. Stoddart, who treats of “The Danger to Mental Sanity”; with Dr. Bernard Hollander on “The Peril of Spirits”; and Dr. A. T. Schofield on “The Spiritist Epidemic.” Thus Dr. Stoddart writes: “In some cases the spiritualistic hallucinations so dominate the whole mental life that the condition amounts to insanity; and I can confirm Sir Bryan Donkin’s statement that spiritualistic inquiries tend to induce insanity.”[93] Dr. Hollander is even more emphatic: “The practice is a dangerous one. Persons become intoxicated with spirits of that nature as others do with spirits of another kind. And similarly, as not all persons who take alcohol get drunk, so not all spiritualists show the effects of their indulgences.... But that is no proof against the harmful nature of these practices, and, as a mental specialist, I confess I have seen victims of both, and that the one addicted to material spirits is the easier to treat.”[94] Spiritism, Dr. Schofield points out, “has been known to Christians for 2000 years. Any benefit derived therefrom is more than neutralized by the very doubtful surroundings and character of the supposed revelation (I say ‘supposed’ because it has been known so long). If, however, it must be coupled with the dangers, horrors, and frauds that so often in modern Spiritism accompany the knowledge of the unseen, we are almost as well without it, at any rate from such a source.... There can be no doubt the epidemic will eventually subside, but before it does, the vast mischief of a spiritual tidal wave of very doubtful origin will be most disastrously done, and thousands of unstable souls will be wrecked in spirit, if not in mind and body as well.... To class it as a religion is an insult to the faith of Christ.”[95]