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Show STRANGE TACTS Psychological Phenomena Only in Death Soul Leaves Body Sir Robert Rob-ert Bruce's Experience Ordered to Steer to the Northwest Followed ! Instructions Mysterious Stranger Identified Explanation of Occult Phenomena. (Foreign Cor. of Intermountain Catholic.) Those of your readers who are following me into the regions of the occult will remember tat in my last correspondence I stated that where tht. living body is there also must be the soul. When the soui leaves the home given to it by God. decomposition enters. But in the case of the Captain's father, j ' ending my last week's correspondence, did the soul - I bring its body with it i Xo. certainly not, for when j the officer on board the homeward-bound ship saw the apparition of the living man, the Captain's father, the sick man, was in his bed and at no time was he left alone. "How then account for the 'double' on board the ship?" Well, before we begin the answer to this question, let us make reasonably sure that these ap- i paritions occur; in fact, let us be convincingly j sure and then we can enter with a satisfied mind f into the arcana the secrets of the very heart of j these wonderful facts. s "STEER TO THE XORTIIWEST." i Sir Robert Bruee, a member of the illustrious Scotch family of the same name, was first officer on board a ship plying between England aulAwr- . . ica. One day, as the ship was off the Banks of Newfoundland, while Bruce was figuring on som ? nautical problem, he thought lie saw the captain of s-. . the ship seated at his (Bruce's) desk. As it was unusual for the captain to enter without in some way announcing himself, Bruce was about to ad- ; dress him when, to his astonishment, he perceived : that the man, who eyed him rather closely, was a complete stranger to him. Bruce left the room without addressing the stranger and. meeting the captain on deck, said to him: "By the way, captain, who is this strange man you have on hoard and is now seated at my deskf "My dear Sir Robert," said the captain, looking ' searchingly into Bruce's eyes, "are you dreaming, or what's the matter with you '. There is no one on I board this ship unknown to you and me." "Come with me." said Bruce. Together they descended to Bruce's room, but no one sat at the desk or was in the room. "But I'll swear," exclaimed Sir Robert, "that a ! man sat here a few moments ago and was wnting on this slate." While he was speaking, the captain lifted the slate from the desk, read the writing on it and looked at Bruce, "Sir Robert, is this your writing?" handing the slate to Bruce. Sir Robert took the slate and read: "Steer to the northwest." Every one on board was questioned, and all de- : nied entering the room that day. Then the captain asked those who could write, to rewrite the sentence sen-tence on paper with a lead pencil. Xot one of the 1 copies resembled the writing on the slate. The captain took Bruce aside and said to him: ' "Let us steer to the northwest. Who knows what j - may happen?" Well, in three hours they sighted a waterlogged ship in the lee of a huge iceberg. She was homeward home-ward bound from Quebec and carried passengers who. with the crew, were taken off and brought on board Bruce's ship. As the rescued passengers, one by one. came aboard. Bruce touched one of them on I the shoulder and called him aside. -The man was j the stranger whom Bruce that morning saw writ- ! ing at his (Bruce's) desk. The captain now ap- j proached. led the man to his chart room and, in ' j the presence of the first officer, said to him: j "Will you write on this slate. 'Steer to the north- ! west?" I The man wrote. "Xow." said the captain, "ex- I amine the writing on this other ate." The man did so, and to his unutterable astonish- ment found the writings on the two slates to have ; f been executed by the same hand. i . I "It is very strange," said the man, "but I re- 1 ff member having fallen asleep a few hours before you ' hailed us and I dreamt that I was aboard a strange ; j Ph.jp this room and its furniture are familiar to j me." he interjected, "and when I awoke I sought our j captain and fold him of my dream." The captain of the Quebec boat meanwhile en- tered the chart-room. I "Yes," he interposed, "this gentleman told me of . , I (Continued on Page 5.) "" v " -; - -- - STRANGE FACTS. (Continued from page 1.) his dream; said we would be saved today, and described de-scribed your ship so accurately that when I came aboard I at once saw this was the boat he told me of." This puzzling case of the apparition of a living man, taken from the "Memoirs of Sir Robert Bruce," i.- given in detail by Robert D.V3 Owens in his "Footfalls on the Boundary of pother World." It was critically examined by ?.T. Pierart in "La Revue Spirite." by Des Mousseam in his treatise, "Les Hauts Phenomenes." by many other eminent searchers into the secrets of pneumatology and accepted ac-cepted by them as a possibility and a fact. Of course, you will understand, I left out of necessity in all the examples I have given in these letters many interesting details, for the exigencies of your space confine me to inexorable brevity. Accepting then, tln'3 apparation to Bruce to have happened, we are confronted with a few questions demanding an answer, or at least attention. We have already been told by St. Thomas, whose prodigious intellect approaches ap-proaches in its power of analysis angelic subtlety, that: "The soul cannot leave its body either in natural nat-ural ecstasy, nor in divine ecstasy, unless it be certain cer-tain that by divine permission nd by the will of God, the soul leaves the body to again return to it." The body from which the soul has departed is dead. Can the soul come back again to reanimate it? Such a miracle, if it occurred, would be at once a resurrection. To depart from the body and enter it again, as one goes out of and re-enters a house, would not the soul work a miracle, which Jesus Christ in His omnipotence performed but on one unique and portentous instance, when he came out victorious from the tomb? Can the soul in following the impulse of its proper faculties see into the future and act at great distances? It cannot. Can the fluid substances of the body elongate themselves, as it were, and carry ( " v 6 some of the faculties of the soul with them? Xo. Can the soul extend itself afar as, say, a ribbon of rubber, and regain its original place? Xo. How, then, explain apparitions of living men. clairvoyance, levitation, or the lifting of great weights by invisible hands, bilocation, aerial transportation trans-portation and similar wonders proved beyond the possibility of a doubt? We answer: xVll these objective and material phenomena are produced by angelic or diabolic spirits spir-its and so cunningly do evil spirits impose upon the human soul that St. John warns us all: "Xot to believe every spirit; but try the spirits whether they be of God." Xow I must apologize for inflicting in-flicting this long correspondence on your readers. I have led Lydia White to the door of spiritism a dangerous cult condemned by the Church of God and prohibited under grave penalties to her spiritual spirit-ual sons and daughters. OSWALD CRAWFORD. Tlaxcala, Mexico. |