56 A. T. SCHOFIELD, M.D., ON SCIENCE AND TtlE UNSEEN WORLD. 



Prebendaries supports me in this view of the passage, which is 

 so often wrongly supposed to supplant medical care. 



4. Possession. — I am personally fully convinced from personal 

 experience that certain cases in our various asylums, and seen 

 by me in private practice, of mania or frenzy, cannot be 

 scientifically accounted for, without adDiitting the possibility 

 of the possession of a human body by a spirit other than his 

 own. I aiii quite aware this is a highly questionable statement 

 to make, but I feel sure that any trained thinkers who have had 

 my experience would find a difficulty in coming to any other 

 conclusion. 



What I refer to are no ordinary cases of lunacy or mania, 

 but sudden possessions of quiet Christian ladies with a raging 

 spirit of outrageous blasphemies and obscenities, and especially 

 a mad hatred of God, that all disappears when the attack is 

 over. I can recall several such cases which to me seem con- 

 clusive of the possibility I have suggested. 



5. Miracles. — The difficulty here is to define what we mean, 

 but it seems to me that whatever definition we may attach 

 to the word, we must reverse the dictum given in Robert 

 Elsmere as an unanswerable argument that " miracles do not 

 occur " by saying that " they do." "W hatever is meant by a 

 miracle, scientists are clear they occur. One and all, for 

 instance are constantly speaking of the miracle of radium. 

 Professor Boys uses this expression to describe its powers and 

 the way it transcends all known laws. Lord Kelvin also said 

 the same. 



But every day the power we call vital, suspends, alters, and 

 modifies well-known laws of nature. Man with his reason and 

 vital Ibrce can prevent N^ewton's apple from falling to the 

 ground by catching it in his hand ; nay, can actually make it rise 

 in the air higher than the tree on which it grew, by a force 

 that reverses the law of gravitation. And there still remains 

 the unanswerable question of how the apple, or if you like the 

 €oconut, weighing many pounds, climbed up into the air 

 against all laws of gravitation and got into the trees at all. 



We read of the miracle of floating iron in the Old Testament, 

 but though this may not be paralleled by floating ironclads, it 

 is by the mere fact that anyone can hold up an axehead in the 

 water. In the story the arm that held it was invisible and 

 Divine, with us it is visible and human, but the reversal of the 

 natural law is the same. 



In the story the power is supernatural, and hence we call it 

 a miracle; in the illustration the same phenojnena occurs, but 



