912 A. The following account of Dr. John L. Nevius's book on Demon Possession and Allied Themes (2nd Edition. Fleming H. Revell Co., Chicago, New York, Toronto, 1896) is taken from a review by Professor W. Romaine Newbold in Proceedings S.P.R., vol. xiii. p. 602.

Dr. Nevius was for forty years a missionary in China. Early in his ministry he found that demon possession is a common occurrence among the Chinese, and although he was able to observe in person one case only, he succeeded in collecting a large amount of information about the phenomena and the construction put upon them by the natives. This material forms the basis of his book.

A few illustrations will serve to give a conception of its general character. The second case is that of a mountaineer, Kwo by name, who gives an account of his own experiences. He had been arranging for the household worship of the Goddess Wang-Muniang, when one night he dreamed that the goddess appeared to him and announced that she had taken up her abode in his house. This was followed after the lapse of a few days by a feeling of restlessness coupled with an irrational impulse to gamble; his mind became confused, memory was impaired. He was then seized by an epileptiform attack, to which succeeded mania with homicidal impulses. The "demon" proclaimed its presence, demanded worship. Upon compliance with its demands it departed. For some months the "demon" reappeared at intervals, promised to heal disease. Kwo notes that "many diseases were not under its control, and it seemed as if it could perfectly cure only such as were inflicted by spirits" - a significant remark. When the sufferer became a Christian, the "demon" disappeared, saying " This is no place for me".

Case 3 is narrated by a native Christian. He described the patient as "sitting up, her eyes closed, with a fluttering motion of the eyelids, her countenance like one weeping and the fingers of both hands tightly clenched. She would allow no one to straighten her closed fingers. I then, hardly expecting an answer, as the woman had hitherto been speechless, said to the demon: 'Have you no fear of God? Why do you come here to afflict this woman?' To this I received instantly the following reply: 'God and Christ will not interfere. I have been here seven or eight years; and I claim this as my resting-place. You cannot get rid of me.'" This patient was relieved by prayer.

In several instances the "demon" claims identity with the spirit of some deceased human being. Thus in case 24 a bride on her wedding night was seized by what purported to be the spirit of a girl to whom her husband had been engaged, and who had drowned herself on account of the ill-treatment of her future mother-in-law. In other cases the "demon" claims to be one of the lower animals - e.g. in one which occurred in Japan (page 105) it professed itself a fox.

The entire collection gives a most interesting glimpse of Chinese spiritism. We find the cult of spirits a recognised institution. "Physical phenomena" are alleged to be matters of daily occurrence. Every village has its "medium." The "developing seance" has its counterpart (page 67). The medium sometimes goes into "quiet trance," and sometimes communication with the unseen world is effected by means of an instrument essentially identical with plan-chette (pages 48, 69).

Evidence of this sort is not without its value as going to show that spiritism is a growth indigenous to many countries, that it is a plausible interpretation of phenomena which occur spontaneously among all races, and is not merely a mass of imposture based upon the "Rochester knockings" and peculiar to the last half of the nineteenth century. But if one asks what Dr. Nevius has done towards vindicating the popular interpretation of these phenomena, the reply cannot but be unfavourable.

Every page bears witness to the author's desire to be exact in description, unbiassed in interpretation, and just in criticism; it is rather his misfortune than his fault that he has fallen so far short of the mark in all three respects. Practically all his material rests upon the evidence of native - Chinese or Mongolian - witnesses. All are fully convinced of the diabolical origin of the phenomena, and Dr. Nevius himself takes the same view, so that we can scarcely accept the accounts as literally true and uncoloured by preconceptions. Such evidence can scarcely do more than supply illustrations of facts already independently established.

Of alleged supernormal phenomena the book is almost barren. One case of a "Poltergeist" rests solely upon the evidence of Mongolians, whom the missionary transmitting the account stigmatises as "so imbued, one and all, with the spirit of lying that I have found it useless to repeat what the most respectable say." In a few other cases it is claimed that the demoniac was possessed of supernormal knowledge and of the gift of healing, but no definite facts are given.