IX AGNOSTICISM AND CHRISTIANITY 341 



expected, though it is none the less interesting to 

 note the fact, that the arguments of the latest 

 school of " spiritualists " present a wonderful 

 family likeness to those which adorn the subtle 

 disquisitions of the advocate of ecclesiastical 

 miracles of forty years ago. It is unfortunate for 

 the " spiritualists " that, over and over again, cele- 

 brated and trusted media, who really, in some 

 respects, call to mind the Montanist 1 and gnostic 

 seers of the second century, are either proved in 

 courts of law to be fraudulent impostors ; or, in 

 sheer weariness, as it would seem, of the honest 

 dupes who swear by them, spontaneously confess 

 their long-continued iniquities, as the Fox women 

 did the other day in New York. 2 But, whenever 

 a catastrophe of this kind takes place, the believers 

 are no wise dismayed by it. They freely admit 

 that not only the media, but the spirits whom they 

 summon, are sadly apt to lose sight of the elemen- 

 tary principles of right and wrong ; and they 

 triumphantly ask : How does the occurrence of 



1 Consider Tertullian's "sister" ("hodie apud nos"), who 

 conversed with angels, saw and heard mysteries, knew men's 

 thoughts, and prescribed medicine for their bodies (De Anima, 

 cap. 9). Tertullian tells us that this woman saw the soul as 

 corporeal, and described its colour and shape. The "infidel" 

 will probably be unable to refrain from insulting the memory 

 of the ecstatic saint by the remark, that Tertullian's known 

 views about the corporeality of the soul may have had some- 

 thing to do with the remarkable perceptive powers of the 

 Montanist medium, in whose revelations of the spiritual world he 

 took such profound interest. 



2 See the New York World for Sunday, 21st October, 1888 ; 

 and the Report of the Seybcrt Commission^ Philadelphia, 1887. 



