Modern Spiritism. By J. Godfrey Raupert. (Sands and Co. 5s.)—The
author of this very earnest and interesting book, who claims to have carried on a systematic study of the modern spiritistic movement for a number of years, has been prompted to write it because he thinks that, on the one hand, that movement is untenable, and, on the other, that it "is increasingly affecting all classes and conditions of society, and is beginning to under- mine the religious belief and convictions of serious-minded but not very accurately informed persons." The book deserves the most careful reading by all who are in any way interested in the various phenomena of spiritism, because Mr. Raupert is less con- cerned in denying these than in showing that the movement itself is altogether antagonistic to Christianity. Even were the work of no value otherwise, it would be of especial importance from the scientific standpoint, because it marshals in a thoroughly business- like fashion the evidence both for and against the truth of spiritism. In this respect no text-buok that has recently been published is of greater interest. Among the points on which Mr. Raupert lays stress, from the mental and moral rather than from the purely religions point of view, is the circumstance that the habitual cultivation of mind-passivity may in the course of time become a source of the greatest possible mental and moral danger, and it is not at all improbable that "the cause of many of those more obscure mental aberrations and delusions which have so often puzzled psychologists and helped to fill our asylums must be sought in this direction."
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