THEOPHOBIA: ITS NEMESIS 51 



thinks that as we have taken a huge and lamentable 

 step backwards in civilisation, we need not be 

 surprised that we should also have receded in 

 the direction of those primitive instincts to which 

 he calls attention. This process had, however, 

 begun long before the war. 



The late Dr. Ryder, Provost of the Birmingham 

 Oratory, was a very shrewd observer of public 

 affairs and a very close and dear friend of the 

 present writer. It must be more than twenty 

 years ago since he remarked to me that he 

 thought that materialism had shot its bolt and 

 that the coming danger to religion was spiritual- 

 ism, a subject on which, if I remember right, 

 he had written more than one paper. I asked 

 him what led him to that conclusion, and his 

 reply was to ask me whether I had not noticed 

 the great increase in number of the items in 

 second-hand book catalogues a form of litera- 

 ture to which we were both much addicted 

 under the heading " OCCULT." Since the war, 

 however, there can be no doubt about the fact that 

 spiritualism has made great strides. A thousand 

 pieces of evidence prove it. Look, for example, at 

 the enormous vogue of Raymond, a book of which 

 I say nothing, out of personal regard for its 

 author and genuine respect for his honesty and 

 fearlessness. But I return to Sir Arthur Doyle's 

 book, and we find him assuring us that he is 

 personally " in touch with thirteen mothers who 

 are in correspondence with their dead sons," and 

 adds that in only one of these cases was the in- 

 dividual concerned with psychic matters before 



