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case of the mechanical frog and of the lamp-black, it was, as so often
happens, the "exposers" who were in the wrong and not the unfortunate
medium.
A more serious charge against him was made by Archdeacon Colley, who
declared * that at the house of Mr. Owen Harries, where Eglinton was
giving a seance, he discovered in the medium's portmanteau some muslin
and a beard, with which portions of drapery and hair cut from alleged
materialized figures corresponded. Mrs. Sidgwick, in her article in the
S.P.R. journal, reproduced Archdeacon Colley's charges, and Eglinton, in
his general reply to her, contents himself with a flat denial, remarking
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that he was absent in South Africa when the charges were published and
did not see them until years after.
* MEDIUM AND DAYBREAK, 1878, pp. 698, 730. THE SPIRITUALIST,
1879, Vol. XIV, pp. 83, 135. 1886, p. 324.
Discussing this incident, LIGHT in a leading article says that the
charges in question were fully investigated by the Council of the British
National Association of Spiritualists and dismissed on the ground that
the Council could by no means get direct evidence from the accusers. It
goes on:
Mrs. Sidgwick has suppressed very material facts in her quotation as
printed in the JOURNAL. In the first place the alleged circumstances
occurred two years previous to the letter in which the accuser made his
charge, during which time he made no public move in the matter, and only
did so at all in consequence of personal pique against the Council of the
late B.N.A.S. In the second place, the suppressed portions of the letter
quoted by Mrs. Sidgwick bear upon their face the mark of utter
worthlessness. We affirm that no one accustomed to examine and weigh
evidence in a scientific manner would have accorded to the correspondence
the slightest serious attention without the clearest corroborative
testimony.
None the less, it must be admitted that when so whole-hearted a
Spiritualist as Archdeacon Colley makes so definite a charge, it becomes
a grave matter which cannot be lightly dismissed. There is always the
possibility that a great medium, finding his powers deserting him-as such
powers do-should resort to fraud in order to fill up the gap until they
return. Home has narrated how his power was suddenly taken from him for a
year and then returned in full plenitude. When a medium lives on his work
such a hiatus must be a serious matter and tempt him to fraud. However
that may have been in this particular instance, it is certain, as has
surely been shown in these pages, that there is a mass of evidence as to
the reality of the powers of Eglinton which cannot possibly be shaken.
Among other witnesses to his powers is Kellar, the famous conjurer, who
admitted, as many other conjurers have done, that psychic phenomena far
transcend the powers of the juggler.
There is no writer who has left his mark upon the religious side of
Spiritualism so strongly as the Reverend W. Stainton Moses. His inspired
writings confirmed what had already been accepted, and defined much which
was nebulous. He is generally accepted by Spiritualists as being the best
modern exponent of their views. They do not, however, regard him as final
or infallible, and in posthumous utterances which bear good evidence of
being veridical, he has himself declared that his enlarged experience has
modified his views upon certain points. This is the inevitable result of
the new life to each of us. These religious views will be treated in the
separate chapter which deals with the religion of Spiritualists.
Besides being a religious teacher of an inspired type, Stainton Moses was
a strong medium, so that he was one of the few men who could follow the
apostolic precept and demonstrate not only by words but also by power. In
this short account it is the physical side which we must emphasize.
Stainton Moses was born in Lincolnshire on November 5, 1839, and was
educated at Bedford Grammar School and Exeter College, Oxford. He turned
his thoughts towards the ministry, and after some years' service as a
curate in the Isle of Man and elsewhere he became a master at University
College School. It is remarkable that in the course of his wanderjahre he
visited the monastery of Mount Athos, and spent six months there-a rare
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experience for an English Protestant. He was assured later that this
marked the birth of his psychic career.
Whilst Stainton Moses was a curate he had an opportunity of showing his
bravery and sense of duty. A severe epidemic of smallpox broke out in the
parish which was without a resident doctor. His biographer says: "Day and
night he was in attendance at the bedside of some poor victim who was
stricken by the fell disease, and sometimes after he had soothed the
sufferer's dying moments by his ministrations he was compelled to combine
the offices of priest and gravedigger and conduct the interment with his
own hands." It is no wonder that when he left he received a strongly
worded testimonial from the inhabitants, which may be summed up in the
one sentence, "The longer we have known you and the more we have seen of
your work, the greater has our regard for you increased."
It was in 1872 that his attention was drawn to Spiritualism through
seances with Williams and Miss Lottie Fowler. Before long he found that
he himself possessed the gift of mediumship to a very unusual extent. At
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