rained; his attitude was bold and self-reliant. After four months
in the "spirit world" he is positively trembling and drivelling! It is
enough to make the rugged Iconoclast turn in his grave. Messrs. Gray and
Reedman may rely upon it that Charles Bradlaugh is _not_ able to enter
No. 139 Pershore-road, Birmingham; if he were, he would descend in swift
wrath upon his silly traducers, who have put their own inanity into
his mouth, making the great, virile Atheist talk like a little, flabby
Spiritualist after an orgie of ginger-beer.

Anyone may see at a glance that the style of this message, from
beginning to end, is not Charles Brad-laugh's. _Whose_ style it is we
cannot say. We do not pretend to fathom the arcana of Spiritualism. It
may be Mr. Reedmam's, it may be another's. If it be Mr. Reedman's,
he must have been guilty of fraud or the victim of deception. Three
distinct hypotheses are possible. Either someone else produced or
concocted the message while he was in a foolish trance, or he wrote it
himself consciously, or he had been thinking of Charles Bradlaugh before
falling into the foolish trance and the message was due to unconscious
cerebration.

We forbear to analyse this wretched stuff, though we might show its
intrinsic absurdity and self-contradiction. One monstrous piece of
folly bestrides the rest like a colossus--"Your humble friend Charles
Bradlaugh." Shade of Uriah Heep! Charles Bradlaugh the "_humble_ friend"
of the illustrious Gray and Reedman! Think of it, Lord Halsbury; think
of it, Lord Randolph Churchill. The giant who fought you, and beat you,
in the law courts and in Parliament; the man whose face was a challenge;
the man who had the pride, without the malignity, of Lucifer; this
very man crawls into a Birmingham house, uninvited and unexpected,
and announces himself as the "_humble_ friend" of some pudding-headed
people, engaged in a fatuous occupation that makes one blush for one's
species.

Surely if Charles Bradlaugh's ghost is knocking about this planet,
having a mission to undo the work of his lifetime in the flesh, it
should begin the task in London. It was at the Hall of Science that
Charles Bradlaugh achieved his greatest triumphs as a public teacher,
and it is there that he should first attempt to undo his work, to
unteach his teaching, to disabuse the minds of his dupes. Of course we
shall be told that he must communicate through "mediums," and that the
medium must be "controlled"