FIGHTING SPIRITUALISM.

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXI, Issue 19056, 8 July 1924, Page 7

FIGHTING SPIRITUALISM.

MAN WHO STOPPED THE RAIN. STRIKING INCIDENTS RECOUNTED SAN FRANCISCO, June 2. Australians and New Zealanders are better acquainted with the music-hall exploits of Harry Houdini, the worldfamous “Handcuff King,” than they are with the reputation of Dr. Walter Franklin Prince, but the latter, in the role of a leading figure in the ranks of the American Society for Physical Research, has just claimed attention of Americans in a somewhat stirring bout in the ancient New York Episcopal Church of St. Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie. Moses commanded the sun to stand still, but Harry Moudini, on one glorious night of his career, claims he did something equally wonderful. The magician stood on the chancel steps of St. Mark’s Church and told a congregation how one time he commanded it to rain —and it rained.

Houdini’s revelation came in a debate with Dr. Prince, and at the outset the magician said spiritualism was t hokum, and Dr. Prince declared it was legitimate and the argument eventually settled down to an exchange of personal experiences. Dr. Prince told how a medium once gave him the contents of a letter she had never seen, and which she held between her palms in broad daylight. She made exactly thirty-four true statements, said Dr. Prince, and a distinguished mathematician had calculated that the chance of her being able to do that by plain coincidence was one in 500,000,000,000,000. Nothing daunted, Houdini took the platform the same Sunday evening and 1 said, “How about that chap in Davenport, lowa, who was riding his bicycle : across a railway track when a train came along and cut off one of his legs? Just one year later, on the very same • day, the very same engine at the very same time and place ran over the very , same man, and cut of his other leg. How many chances are there for that to happen?” Bristling slightly, Dr. Prince fired his i second volley. Once there was a medium who sat down with a girl she had never seen before, and told all about her, making forty-eight statements, out of which were forty-seven , true. And the chance of her doing that, said Dr. Prince, without help from some spirit, as calculated by the same distinguished mathematician, was just one in a great many trillions. Houdini was plainly groggy this time, but doggedly he forced the fighting. “Why/’ he said, “one night I was visiting some people in Boston, and their little boy was sitting with me. ‘►Say, Mr Houdini, I wish you’d make it stop raining,’ he said. ‘Sure,’ I answered; and I stepped out on the porch and made a low bow and declaimed, “O, great magician of the skies, hold back the waters!’ So help me God, it stopped raining that very minute. But : that isn’t all. I went back in, and the kid was very much impressed at first and looked me all over thoughfully. ‘Hump,’ he said in a little while, 4 it would have stopped raining anyways. ’ ‘Oh,’ I said, ‘you think so, do you? Well, just watch.’ So I went back outdoors and I said, ‘Great magician of the skies, give us water for the trees and flowers to drink.’ And, snap, it began to rain almost before the words were out of my mouth.’ “Now how many chances do you think there would bo cf that ever happening?” It was with a disappointed afterthought that the magician closed. “Why,” he declared, “for twentyeight years now I’ve been making engagements with dying people, telling them where I’d meet them after they died, and agreeing on a code of raps and knocks. Do you think one ghost ever kept his appointment? Nary a one.” The above illustrates the manner in which the American churches have degenerated into conditions typifying theatres or even a comman circus, principally to attract worshippers (?) rather than on account of the religious character of the services.