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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



"Christian science" can find believers 

 shows that what is referred to in our 

 other editorial as the fancy of the mul- 

 titude for theories which save them 

 trouble and minister to their love of the 

 marvelous has not yet disappeared from 

 the world. The fascination for hold- 

 ing odd notions seems to be a weakness 

 of the human mind which is hard to 

 eradicate. Such beliefs have been pretty 

 well driven out of chemistry, physics, 

 zoology, and other fields of science 

 which can be searchingly investigated, 

 and they remain only in psychology and 

 medicine, dealing with the living human 

 organism, which can not be freely ex- 

 perimented upon. Human credulity has 

 been greatly lessened by the march of 

 scientific enlightenment, and what re- 

 mains has taken on a new form. In 

 earlier times it delighted in the super- 

 natural, now it revels in its own false 

 ideas of the natural. Then it trusted 

 the revelations of self-appointed proph- 

 ets, now it pins its faith to the slipshod 

 reasoning of sham investigators. Science 

 has done such wonderful things of late 

 that a certain class of people, including 

 many of excellent judgment in other 

 fields, has come to believe any marvels 

 put forth under its name. Hence we 

 have a modern class of mystery-mongers 

 which will flourish until the spread of 

 scientific culture has diffused the power 

 of discriminating between science and 

 base imitations of science. 



DR. ABBOTT'S DEFENSE OF TBE DEVIL- 

 THEORY. 



Keplying to our recent article on 

 "The Devil-Theory." Dr. Lyman Ab- 

 bott says that he objects to it because 

 it is " unscientific." "Will the reverend 

 doctor allow us to say that we object 

 to his article because it is evasive? It 

 is evasive, in the first place, because, 

 though he declares our position to be 

 unscientific, he does not attempt to show 

 in what way, but leaves his readers to 

 discover it for themselves, as he ex- 

 presses it, "between the lines." It is 



evasive, in the second place, because it 

 does not attempt to defend the particu- 

 lar version of the devil-theory put for- 

 ward by the doctor in his " Sunday aft- 

 ernoon " discourse and criticised by us ; 

 but, without a word of warning or 

 apology to the reader, cleverly switches 

 that version away and substitutes a com- 

 pletely different one. It will be remem- 

 bered that the view which Dr. Abbott 

 advocated, in the essay to which we re- 

 ferred, as being most in harmony both 

 with reason and with Scripture was that 

 the victims of devil possession were un- 

 happy creatures who, by a long course 

 of sin, had virtually lost control of them- 

 selves and were compelled to act as they 

 might be moved by the malign spirit or 

 spirits to whom they had " voluntarily " 

 surrendered themselves. We pointed 

 out that this was not in harmony with 

 Scripture, which nowhere dropped the 

 slightest hint that the possessed were 

 other than the involuntary and helpless 

 victims of their diabolical persecutors. 

 One would have expected some notice 

 by Dr. Abbott of this direct challenge of 

 the "Scriptural" character of his teach- 

 ing; but no, not one word have we on 

 this point in his last deliverance in the 

 " Christian Union." We are treated in- 

 stead to a reproduction of something 

 written by him twenty years ago, which, 

 as he says, expresses perfectly the opin- 

 ions he holds to-day. What, then, is the 

 drift of the resuscitated article? The 

 reader may judge by a few extracts: 



" It may be confidently asserted that, 

 if there are no cases of demonstrable 

 demoniacal possession in modern times, 

 there are mental phenomena which the 

 hypothesis of such possession better 

 solves than any other. What more rea- 

 sonable explanation has science to afford 

 of the case of that nurse who begged to 

 be dismissed from her mistress's service 

 because, in undressing the child whom 

 she devoutly loved, an almost irresisti- 

 ble passion seized her to tear it to pieces ; 

 or that young girl who, otherwise ex- 

 emplary, seemed to herself to be im- 



