t; he belonged to the small,
very strict sect of Associate Presbyterians and refused to join the
United Presbyterian Church in 1858. He was extremely rigid in religious
matters. When he caused his son James to be educated, he hoped the
latter would become a minister, though he left him free choice. When he
saw his son modify his religious beliefs he was very much pained. By
degrees, however, he became resigned. It is easy to understand from all
this that religious preoccupations were in the foreground in his mind.
He often talked of religion to his family, he read the Bible and
numerous commentaries on it, and sometimes, rather than allow his family
to go to the church of a less orthodox sect, he himself preached to them
at home. Consequently, if he had not alluded to his former religious
life during the sittings, the omission might have caused a grave doubt
of his identity. But this is not the case; he constantly alludes to his
ancient religious ideas.

At one of the first sittings he says, for example, "Do you remember what
my feeling was about this life? Well, I was not so far wrong after all.
I felt sure that there would be some knowledge of this life but you
were doubtful, remember you had your own ideas, which were only yours,
James."

This last phrase, "You have your own ideas," Professor Hyslop remarks,
had been often repeated to him by his father in his lifetime. "He meant
that I was the only one of his children who was sceptical, and this was
true." Robert Hyslop's former religious ideas were the cause of a
strange incident. One day Dr Hodgson said to him, "Mr Hyslop, you ought
to look for my father and make friends with him. He had religious ideas
like yours. I think you would understand each other very well, and I
should be pleased." At a following sitting the communicator said to Dr
Hodgson, "I have met your father; we talked, and we liked each other
very much, but he was not very orthodox when he was alive." Dr Hodgson's
father was really a Wesleyan--that is to say, he belonged to a very
liberal sect. But in another place Robert Hyslop adds, "Orthodoxy does
not matter here; I should have changed my mind about many things if I
had known." In another sitting he says to his son, alluding to the
telepathic hypothesis, "Let that thought theory alone. I made theories
all my life, and what good did it do me? It only filled my mind with
doubts." In short, it appears that Robert Hyslop, the rigid Calvinist,
has g