Speculations on Paul and his Master.—Arrival at Melbourne.—Attack in the Argus.—Partial press boycott.—Strength of the movement.—The Prince of Wales.—Victorian football.—Rescue Circle in Melbourne.—Burke and Wills' statue.—Success of the lectures.—Reception at the Auditorium.—Luncheon of the British Empire League.—Mr. Ryan's experience.—The Federal Government.—Mr. Hughes' personality.—The mediumship of Charles Bailey.—His alleged exposure.—His remarkable record.—A second sitting.—The Indian nest.—A remarkable lecture.— Arrival of Lord Forster.—The future of the Empire.—Kindness of Australians.—Prohibition.—Horse-racing.—Roman Catholic policy. One cannot help speculating about those great ones who first carried to the world the Christian revelation. What were their domestic ties! There is little said about them, but we should never have known that Peter had a wife were it not for a chance allusion to his mother-in-law, just as another chance allusion shows us that Jesus was one of a numerous family. One thing can safely be said of Paul, that he was either a bachelor or else was a domestic bully with a very submissive wife, or he would never have dared to express his well known views about women. As to his preaching, he had a genius for making a clear thing obscure, even as Jesus had a genius for There are some points about Paul's august Master which also help in a reconstruction of Himself and His surroundings. That His mother was opposed to His mission is, I think, very probable. Women are dubious about spiritual novelties, and one can well believe that her heart ached to see her noble elder son turn from the sure competence of His father's business at Nazareth to the precarious existence of a wandering preacher. This domestic opposition clouded Him as one can Of His own personality we know extraordinarily little, considering the supreme part that He played in the world. That He was a highly trained psychic, or as we should say, medium, is obvious to anyone who studies the miracles, and it is certainly not derogatory to say that they were done along the line of God's law rather than that they were inversions of it. I cannot doubt also that he chose his apostles for their psychic powers—if not, on what possible principle were they selected, since they were neither staunch nor learned? It is clear that Peter and James and John were the inner circle of psychics, since they were assembled both at the transfiguration and at the raising of Jairus' daughter. It is from unlearned open-air men who are near Nature that the highest psychic powers are obtained. It has been argued that the Christ was an Essene, but this seems hard to believe, as the Essenes were not only secluded from the world, but were certainly vegetarians and total abstainers, while Jesus was neither. On the other hand baptism was not a Jewish rite, and his undergoing it—if He did, indeed, undergo it—marks Him as belonging to Physically I picture the Christ as an extremely powerful man. I have known several famous healers and they were all men who looked as if they had redundant health and strength to give to others. His words to the sick woman, "Who has touched me? Much power" (dunamis is the word in the original Greek) "has gone out of me," show that His system depended upon His losing what He gave to others. Therefore He was a very strong man. The mere feat of carrying a wooden cross strong enough to bear a man from Jerusalem to Calvary, up a hill, is no light one. It is the details which convince me that the gospel narrative is correct and really represents an actual event. Take the incident during that sad journey of Simon of Cyrene having helped for a time with the cross. Why should anyone invent such a thing, putting an actual name to the person? It is touches of this kind which place the narrative But these be deep waters. Let me get back to my own humble experiences, these interpolated thoughts being but things which have been found upon the wayside of our journey. On reaching Melbourne we were greeted at the station by a few devoted souls who had waited for two trains before they found us. Covered with the flowers which they had brought we drove to Menzies Hotel, whence we moved a few days later to a flat in the Grand, where we were destined to spend five eventful weeks. We found the atmosphere and general psychic conditions of Melbourne by no means as pleasant or receptive as those of Adelaide, but this of course was very welcome as the greater the darkness the more need of the light. If Spiritualism had been a popular cult in Australia there would have been no object in my visit. I was welcome enough as an individual, but by no means so as an emissary, and both the Churches and the Materialists, in most unnatural combination, had done their best to make the soil stony There was another and more pleasing side to the local conditions, and that lay in the numbers who had already mastered the principles of Spiritualism, the richer classes as individuals, the poorer as organised churches. They were so numerous that when we received an address of welcome in the auditorium to which only Spiritualists were invited by ticket, the Hall, which holds two thousand, was easily filled. This would mean on the same scale that the Spiritualists of London could fill the Albert Hall several times over—as no doubt they could. Their numbers were in a sense an embarrassment, as I always had the fear that I was addressing the faithful instead of those whom I had come so far to instruct. On the whole their quality and organisation were disappointing. They had a splendid spiritual paper in their midst, the Harbinger of Light, which has run for fifty years, and is most ably edited by Mr. Britton However, I seem to have got to some of my final conclusions at Melbourne before I have begun our actual experience there. We found the place still full of rumours and talk about the recent visit of the Prince of Wales, who seems to have a perfect genius for making himself popular and beloved. May he remain unspoiled and retain the fresh kindliness of his youth. His success is due not to any ordered rule of conduct but to a perfectly natural courtesy which is his essential self and needs no effort. Our waiter at the hotel who had waited upon him remarked: "God never made anything nearer to Nature than that boy. He spoke to me as he might have spoken to the Governor." It was a fine tribute, and characteristic of the humbler classes in this country, who have a vigour of speech and an independence of view which is very refreshing. Once as I passed a public house, a broken old fellow who had been leaning against the wall with a short pipe in his mouth, stepped forward to me and said: "I am One of my first afternoons in Melbourne was spent in seeing the final tie of the Victorian football cup. I have played both Rugby and Soccer, and I have seen the American game at its best, but I consider that the Victorian system has some points which make it the best of all—certainly from the spectacular point of view. There is no off-side, and you get a free kick if you catch the ball. Otherwise you can run as in ordinary Rugby, though there is a law about bouncing the ball as you run, which might, as it seemed to me, be cut out without harming the game. This bouncing rule was put in by Mr. Harrison who drew up the original rules, for the chivalrous reason that he was himself the fastest runner in the Colony, and he did not wish to give himself any advantage. There is not so much man-handling in the Victorian game, and to that extent it is less dramatic, but it is extraordinarily open and fast, with none of the packed scrums which become so wearisome, and with linesmen who throw in the ball the instant it goes out. There were several points in which the players seemed better than our best—one was the accurate passing by low drop kicking, very much quicker and faster than a pass by hand. Another was the great accuracy of the place kicking and of the screw kicking when a runner would kick at right angles to his course. There I began at once to endeavour to find out the conditions of local Spiritualism, and had a long conversation with Mr. Tozer, the chairman of the movement, a slow-talking, steady-eyed man, of the type that gets a grip and does not easily let go. After explaining the general situation, which needs some explanation as it is full of currents and cross-currents caused by individual schisms and secessions, he told me in his gentle, earnest way some of his own experiences in his home circle which corroborate much which I have heard elsewhere. He has run a rescue circle for the instruction of the lower spirits who are so material that they can be reached more easily by humanity than by the higher angels. The details he gave me were almost the same as those given by Mr. MacFarlane of Southsea who had a similar circle of which Mr. Tozer had certainly never heard. A wise spirit control dominates the proceedings. The medium goes into trance. The spirit control then explains what it is about to do, and who the spirit is who is about to be reformed. The next scene is often very violent, the medium having to be held down and using rough language. This comes from some low spirit who has suddenly found this means Then comes the work of regeneration. They are reasoned with and consoled. Gradually they become more gentle. Finally, they accept the fact that they are spirits, that their condition is their own making, and that by aspiration and repentance they can win their way to the light. When one has found the path and has returned thanks for it, another case is treated. As a rule these errant souls are unknown to fame. Often they are clergymen whose bigotry has hindered development. Occasionally some great sinner of the past may come into view. I have before me a written lament professing to come from Alva, the bigoted governor of the Lowlands. It is gruesome enough. "Picture to yourself the hell I was in. Blood, blood everywhere, corpses on all sides, gashed, maimed, mutilated, quivering with agony and bleeding at every pore! At the same time thousands of voices were raised in bitter reproaches, in curses and execrations! Imagine the appalling spectacle of this multitude of the dead and dying, fresh from the flames, from the sword, the rack, the torture chambers and the gibbet; and the pandemonium of voices shrieking out the most terrible maledictions! Imagine never being able to get away from these Sometimes in Mr. Tozer's circle the souls of ancient clerics who have slumbered long show their first signs of resuscitation, still bearing their old-world intolerance with them. The spirit control purports to be a well-educated Chinaman, whose presence and air of authority annoy the ecclesiastics greatly. The petrified mind leads to a long period of insensibility which means loss of ground and of time in the journey towards happiness. I was present at the return of one alleged Anglican Bishop of the eighteenth century, who spoke with great intolerance. When asked if he had seen the Christ he answered that he had not and that he could not understand it. When asked if he still considered the Christ to be God he threw up his hand and shouted violently, "Stop! That is blasphemy!" The Chinese control said, "He stupid man. Let him wait. He learn better"—and removed him. He was succeeded by a very noisy and bigoted Puritan divine who declared that no one but devils would come to a sÉance. On being asked whether that meant that he was himself a devil he became so abusive that the Chinaman once more had to intervene. I quote all this as a curious sidelight into some developments of the subject which are familiar enough to students, but not to the general public. Melbourne is a remarkable city, far more solid and old-established than the European visitor would expect. We spent some days in exploring it. There are few cities which have the same natural advantages, for it is near the sea, with many charming watering places close at hand, while inland it has some beautiful hills for the week-end villas of the citizens. Edinburgh is the nearest analogy which I can recall. Parks and gardens are beautiful, but, as in most British cities, the public statues are more solid than impressive. The best of them, that to Burke and Wills, the heroic explorers, has no name upon it to signify who the two figures are, so that they mean nothing at all to the casual observer, in spite of some excellent bas-reliefs, round the base, which show the triumphant start and the terrible end of that tragic but successful journey, which first penetrated the Continent from south to north. Before our departure I appealed in the press to have this omission rectified and it was, I believe, done. Photo: Stirling, Melbourne. See page 97. Mr. Smythe, my agent, had been unfortunate in being unable to secure one of the very few large halls in Melbourne, so we had to confine ourselves to the Playhouse which has only seating On October 14th the Spiritualists filled the Auditorium and had a special service of welcome for ourselves. When I went down to it in the tram, the conductor, unaware of my identity, said, when I asked to be put down at the Auditorium, "It's no use, sir; it's jam full an hour ago." "The Pilgrims," as they called us, were in special seats, the seven of us all in a line upon the right of the chair. Many kind things were said, and I replied as best I might. The children will carry the remembrance of that warm-hearted reception through their lives, and they are not likely to forget how they staggered home, laden with the flowers which were literally heaped upon them. The British Empire League also entertained my wife and myself to lunch, a very select company assembling who packed the room. Sir Joseph Cook, Federal Chancellor of the Exchequer, made a pleasant speech, recalling our adventures upon the Somme, when he had his baptism of fire. In my reply I pulled the leg of my audience with some success, for I wound up by saying, very solemnly, that I was something greater than Governments and the master of Cabinet Ministers. Mr. Thomas Ryan, a very genial and capable member of the State Legislature, took the chair at this function. He had no particular psychic knowledge, but he was deeply impressed by an experience in London in the presence of that remarkable little lady, Miss Scatcherd. Mr. Ryan had said that he wanted some evidence before he could accept psychic philosophy, upon which Miss Scatcherd said: "There is a spirit beside you now. He conveys to me that his name is Roberts. He says he is worried in his mind because the home which you prepared for his widow has not been legally made over to her." All this applied to a matter in Adelaide. In that city, according to Mr. Ryan, a sÉance was held that night, Mr. Victor Cromer being the medium, at which a message came through from Roberts saying that he was now easy in his mind as he had managed to convey his trouble to Mr. Ryan who could set it right. When these psychic laws are understood the dead as well as the living will be relieved from a load of unnecessary care; but how can these laws be ignored or pooh-poohed in the face of such instances as this which I have quoted? They are so numerous now that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that every circle of human beings which meets can supply one. Mr. Hughes was good enough to ask me to meet the members of the Federal Government at lunch, and the experience was an interesting one, for here round one small table were those who were shaping the course of this young giant among the nations. They struck me as a practical hard-worked rough-and-ready lot of men. Mr. Hughes dominated the conversation, which necessarily becomes one-sided as he is very deaf, though his opponents say that he has an extraordinary knack of hearing what he is not meant to hear. He told us a series of anecdotes of his stormy political youth with a great deal of vivacity, the whole company listening in silence. He is a hard, wiry man, with a high-nosed Red Indian face, and a good deal of healthy devilry in his composition—a great force for good during the war. After lunch he conducted me through the library, and coming to a portrait of Clemenceau he cried: "That's the man I learned to admire in Europe." Then, turning to one of Wilson, he added, "And that's the man I learned to dislike." He added a number of instances of Wilson's ignorance of actual conditions, and of his ungenial coldness of heart. "If he had not been so wrapped in himself, and if he had taken Lodge or some other Republican with him, all could have easily been arranged." I feel that I am not indiscreet in repeating this, for Hughes is not a man who conceals his opinions from the world. I have been interested in the medium Bailey, who was said to have been exposed in France in 1910. The curious will find the alleged exposure Reading the alleged exposure, one is struck, as so often in such cases, with its unsatisfactory nature. There is the difficulty of the language and the money. There is the disappearance of the third bird and the cage. Above all, how did the birds get into the carefully-guarded seance room, especially as Bailey was put in a bag during the proceedings? The committee say the bag may not have been efficient, but they also state that Bailey desired the control to be made more effective. Altogether it is a puzzling case. On my applying to Bailey himself for information, he declared roundly that he had been the victim of a theological plot with suborned evidence. The only slight support which I can find for that view is that there was a Rev. Doctor among his accusers. I was told independently that Professor Reichel, before his death in 1918, came also to the conclusion that there had been a plot. But in any case most of us will agree with Mr. Stanford, Bailey's Australian patron, that the committee would have been wise to say nothing, continue the sittings, and use their knowledge to get at some more complete conclusion. With such a record one had to be on one's guard with Mr. Bailey. I had a sitting in my room at the hotel to which I invited ten guests, but the results were not impressive. We saw so-called spirit hands, which were faintly luminous, but I was not allowed to grasp them, and they were never further from the medium than he could I have been reading Bailey's record, however, and I cannot doubt that he has been a great apport medium. The results were far above all possible fraud, both in the conditions and in the articles brought into the room by spirit power. For example, I have a detailed account published by Dr. C. W. McCarthy, of Sydney, under the title, "Rigid Tests of the Occult." During these tests Bailey was sealed up in a bag, and in one case was inside a cage of mosquito curtain. The door and windows were secured and the fire-place blocked. The sitters were all personal friends, but they mutually searched each other. The medium was stripped naked before the sÉance. Under these stringent conditions during a series of six sittings 138 articles were brought into the room, which included eighty-seven ancient coins (mostly of Ptolemy), eight live birds, eighteen precious stones of modest value and varied character, two live turtles, seven inscribed Babylonian tablets, one Egyptian ScarabÆus, an Arabic newspaper, My second sitting with Bailey was more successful than the first. On his arrival I and others searched him and satisfied ourselves he carried nothing upon him. I then suddenly switched out all the lights, for it seemed to me that the luminous hands of the first sitting might be the result of phosphorised oil put on before the meeting and only visible in complete darkness, so that it could defy all search. I was wrong, however, for there was no luminosity at all. We then placed Mr. Bailey in the corner of the room, lowered the lights without turning them out, and waited. Almost at once he breathed very heavily, as one in trance, and soon said something in a foreign tongue which was unintelligible to me. One of our friends, Mr. Cochrane, recognised it as Indian, and at once answered, a few sentences being interchanged. In English the voice then said that he was a Hindoo control who was used to bring apports for the medium, and that he would, he hoped, be able to bring one for us. "Here it is," he said a moment later, and the medium's hand was extended with something in it. The light was turned full on and we found it was a very perfect bird's nest, beautifully constructed of "Where did it come from?" I asked. "From India." "What bird is it?" "They call it the jungle sparrow." The nest remained in my possession, and I spent a morning with Mr. Chubb, of the local museum, to ascertain if it was really the nest of such a bird. It seemed too small for an Indian sparrow, and yet we could not match either nest or egg among the Australian types. Some of Mr. Bailey's other nests and eggs have been actually identified. Surely it is a fair argument that while it is conceivable that such birds might be imported and purchased here, it is really an insult to one's reason to suppose that nests with fresh eggs in them could also be in the market. Therefore I can only support the far more extended experience and elaborate tests of Dr. McCarthy of Sydney, and affirm that I believe Mr. Charles It is only right to state that when I returned to London I took one of Bailey's Assyrian tablets to the British Museum and that it was pronounced to be a forgery. Upon further inquiry it proved that these forgeries are made by certain Jews in a suburb of Bagdad—and, so far as is known, only there. Therefore the matter is not much further advanced. To the transporting agency it is at least possible that the forgery, steeped in recent human magnetism, is more capable of being handled than the original taken from a mound. Bailey has produced at least a hundred of these things, and no Custom House officer has deposed how they could have entered the country. On the other hand, Bailey told me clearly that the tablets had been passed by the British Museum, so that I fear that I cannot acquit him of tampering with truth—and just there lies the great difficulty of deciding upon his case. But one has always to remember that physical mediumship has no connection one way or the other with personal character, any more than the gift of poetry. To return to this particular sÉance, it was unequal. We had luminous hands, but they were again within reach of the cabinet in which the medium was seated. We had also a long address from Dr. Whitcombe, the learned control, in which he discoursed like an absolute master upon Assyrian and Roman antiquities and psychic science. It was really an amazing address, and if Bailey were the author of it I should hail him as a I fear that my psychic experiences are pushing my travels into the background, but I warned the One asks oneself what will be the end of this system of little viceroys in each State and a big viceroy in the Capital—however capable and excellent in themselves such viceroys may be. The smaller courts are, I understand, already doomed, and rightly so, since there is no need for them and nothing like them elsewhere. There is no possible purpose that they serve save to impose a nominal check, which is never used, Personally, I have no fear of Britain's power being weakened by a separation of her dominions. Close allies which were independent might be a greater source of moral strength than actual dependencies. When the sons leave the father's house and rule their own homes, becoming fathers in turn, the old man is not weakened thereby. Certainly I desire no such change, but if it came I would bear it with philosophy. I hope that the era of great military crises is for ever past, but, if it should recur, I am sure that the point of view would be the same, and that the starry Union Jack of the great Australian nation would still fly beside the old flag which was its model. If one took a Machiavelian view of British interests one would say that to retain a colony the surest way is not to remove any danger which may threaten her. We conquered Canada from the French, removing in successive campaigns the danger from the north and from the west which threatened our American colonies. When we had expended our blood and money to that end, so that the colonies had nothing to fear, they took the first opportunity to force an unnecessary quarrel and to leave us. So I have fears for South Africa now that the German menace has been removed. Australia is, I think, loyal to the core, and yet self-interest is with every nation the basis of all policy, and so long as the British fleet can But so long as the British Empire lasts Australia is safe, and in twenty years' time her own enlarged population will probably make her safe without help from anyone. But her empty places are a danger. History abhors a vacuum and finds some one to fill it up. I have never yet understood why the Commonwealth has not made a serious effort to attract to the northern territories those Italians who are flooding the Argentine. It is great blood and no race is the poorer for it—the blood of ancient Rome. They are used to semitropical heat and to hard work in bad conditions if there be only hope ahead. Perhaps the policy of the future may turn in that direction. If that one weak spot be guarded then it seems to me We like the people here very much more than we had expected to, for one hears in England exaggerated stories of their democratic bearing. When democracy takes the form of equality one can get along with it, but when it becomes rude and aggressive one would avoid it. Here one finds a very pleasing good fellowship which no one would object to. Again and again we have met with little acts of kindness from people in shops or in the street, which were not personal to ourselves, but part of their normal good manners. If you ask the way or any other information, strangers will take trouble to put you right. They are kindly, domestic and straight in speech and in dealings. Materialism and want of vision in the broader affairs of life seem to be the national weakness, but that may be only a passing phase, for when a nation has such a gigantic material proposition as this continent to handle it is natural that their thoughts should run on the wool and the The other curse of the country, which is a real drag upon its progress, is the eternal horse-racing. It goes on all the year round, though it has its more virulent bouts, as for example during our visit to this town when the Derby, the Melbourne Cup, and Oaks succeeded each other. They call it sport, but I fear that in that case I am no sportsman. I would as soon call the roulette-table a sport. The whole population is unsettled |