SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878] FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1893.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume XV, Issue 4353, 24 February 1893, Page 2

SECOND EDITION Wairarapa Daily Times. [ESTABLISHED 1878]

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 1893.

Beino the extended tiiib of the Wairarapa Daily, with which it is TDANTiOATi

The mysterious Milner Stephen is again in Now Zealand with bis magnetised oils and flannels, and of course people are beginning c'l! now to laugh at him. Nine persons out often solve all royste:y with respect to bis cures by at once proclaiming him a quack, This is an exceedingly oasy and oxpeduious method of resolving n difficulty, but it is scarcely so intelligent a process as trying to define the measure of quackery in which the hero of magnetised materials indulges, We have bad occasion to observe a very considerable measure of quackery or pretence in other persons, there is probably n little in all and it is as true to call all men quacks as it is to say with Solcrnon that all men are liars. When Milner Stephen spenta few days in Masterton some six or seven years ago we watched bim rather closely to ascertain what his powers were and how far thpy were genuine. We came to the conclusion that he did exercise a power, whioh was very frequently an uncertain power, but we were impressed with the idea that be had firm faith himself in this special power and was somewhat a slave to it, He had, as was wjII known, at an advanced age given up high' social rank, assured means and a luxurious home, to wander about the world as a laughing stock to the public On what theory can such a str,.nge proceeding be accounted for ? The explanation, we believe, lies in the somewhat obi sctire phenomena of spiritualism, In America and elsewhere are to be found on record parallel cases'of men who profess to bo aided and often absolutely controlled by what is termed {Spiritual Guides, Opinions vary much as to even the existence of influences of this kind, but evidences of them are fairly plentiful in 'all countries and in all ages, Not very long ago a Bober- minded Presbyterian minister in the Masterton Presbyterian Church lectured to prove the existence of tb'se spirits and their interference with mundane affairs, but he pronounced them to be evil and warned people against having anything to do with them. Other people hold that iheßo spirits are of all kinds, some good and some evil, and if Mr Milner Stephen possesses familiars of this kind, he would probably claim that they belong to the former category, We are not in a position to say that he does claim to be a medium of suob agencies] but the parallel between him and certain advanced American Spiritualists, who attempt similar phenomena, is very close, and it teems to us the most returnable explanation of the Milner Stephen mystery* Without some hypothesis of this character, we should be apt to deem him either an unmitigated fool) or an unmitigated rpgue.

We are not prepared to believe that bis so-called oures are us effioacious ns he deems them to be, or that there is anything supernatural about them; but\we consider that he does exercise a healing power within cer.ain narrow limits, and that this power is one that will some day be naiionally explained by soientißts as quite within the scope of natural law. Till then, its manifestation! are unlikely to meeo with general acceptance.