“There burns an undying fire in the hearts of men. By that fire I live. By that I know the God of my Salvation. His will is Truth; His will is Service. He urges me to conflict, without consolations, without rewards. He takes and does not restore. He uses up and does not atone. He suffers—perhaps to triumph, and we must suffer and find our hope of triumph in Him. He will not let me shut my eyes to sorrow, failure, or perplexity. Though the universe torment and slay me, yet will I trust in Him. And if He also must die—Nevertheless I can do no more; I must serve Him....”
He ceased. For some moments no one spoke, silenced by his intensity.
“I don’t know how all this strikes you,” said Mr. Farr, turning suddenly upon Dr. Barrack.
“Well—it’s interestin’,” said Dr. Barrack, leaning forward upon his folded arms upon the table, and considering his words carefully.
“It’s interestin’,” he repeated. “I don’t know how far you want to hear what I think about it. I’m rather a downright person.”
Sir Eliphaz with great urbanity motioned him to speak on.
“There’s been, if you’ll forgive me, nonsense upon both sides.”
He turned to Sir Eliphaz. “This Spook stuff,” he said, and paused and compressed his lips and shook his head.
“I have given some little attention to the evidences in that matter. I’m something of a psychologist—a doctor has to be. Of course, Sir Eliphaz, you’re not responsible for all the nonsense you have been talking about sublimated bricks and spook dogs made of concentrated smell.”
Sir Eliphaz was convulsed. “Tut, tut!” he said. “But indeed—!”
“No offence, Sir Eliphaz! If you don’t want me to talk I won’t; but if you do, then I must say what I have in my mind. And as I say, I don’t hold you responsible for the things you have been saying. All this cheap medium stuff has been shot upon the world by Sir Oliver J. Lodge, handed out by him to people distraught with grief, in a great fat impressive-looking volume.... No end of them have tried their utmost to take it seriously.... It’s been a pitiful business.... I’ve no doubt the man is honest after his lights, but what lights they are! Obstinate credulity posing as liberalism. He takes every pretence and dodge of these mediums, he accepts their explanations, he edits their babble and rearranges it to make it seem striking. Look at his critical ability! Because many of the mediums are fairly respectable people who either make no money by their—revelations, or at most a very ordinary living—it’s a guinea a go, I believe, usually—he insists upon their honesty. That’s his key blunder. Any doctor could tell him, as I could have told him after my first year’s practice, that telling the truth is the very last triumph of the human mind. Hardly any of my patients tell the truth—ever. It isn’t only that they haven’t a tithe of the critical ability and detachment necessary, they haven’t any real desire to tell the truth. They want to produce effects. Human beings are artistic still; they aren’t beginning to be scientific. Either they minimize or they exaggerate. We all do. If I saw a cat run over outside and I came in here to tell you about it, I should certainly touch up the story, make it more dramatic, hurt the cat more, make the dray bigger and so on. I should want to justify my telling the story. Put a woman in that chair there, tell her to close her eyes and feel odd, and she’ll feel odd right enough; tell her to produce words and sentences that she finds in her head and she’ll produce them; give her half a hint that it comes from eastern Asia and the stuff will begin to correspond to her ideas of pigeon English. It isn’t that she is cunningly and elaborately deceiving you. It is that she wants to come up to your expectation. You are focussing your interest on her, and all human beings like to have interest focussed on them, so long as it isn’t too hostile. She’ll cling to that interest all she knows how. She’ll cling instinctively. Most of these mediums never held the attention of a roomful of people in their lives until they found out this way of doing it.... What can you expect?”