The Wanderings of a Spiritualist

I was welcomed to Australia by a hospitable letter from the Premier, Mr. / Hughes, who assured me that he would do what he could to make our visit / a pleasant one, and added, "I hope you will see Australia as it is, for / I want you to tell the world about us. We are a very young country, we / have a very big and very rich heritage, and the great war has made us / realise that we are Australians, proud to belong to the Empire, but / proud too of our own country."

Apart from Mr. Hughes's kind message, my chief welcome to the new land / came from Sydney, and took the queer form of two independant challenges / to public debate, one from the Christian Evidence Society, and the other / from the local leader of the materialists. As the two positions are / mutually destructive, one felt inclined to tell them to fight it out / between themselves and that I would fight the winner. The Christian / Evidence Society, is, of course, out of the question, since they regard / a text as an argument, which I can only accept with many qualifications, / so that there is no common basis. The materialist is a more worthy / antagonist, for though he is often as bigotted and inaccessible to / reason as the worst type of Christian, there is always a leaven of / honest, open-minded doubters on whom a debate might make an impression. / A debate with them, as I experienced when I met Mr. MacCabe, can only / follow one line, they quoting all the real or alleged scandals which / have ever been connected with the lowest forms of mediumship, and / claiming that the whole cult is comprised therein, to which you counter / with your own personal experiences, and with the evidence of the cloud / of witnesses who have found the deepest comfort and enlarged knowledge. / It is like two boxers each hitting the air, and both returning to their / respective corners amid the plaudits of their backers, while the general / public is none the better.