AN EVIL SPIRIT

Waikato Times, Volume 126, Issue 21043, 20 February 1940, Page 16

AN EVIL SPIRIT

DESCRIPTION OF HITLER OPINION BY LONDON DEAN (By Air Mail) LONDON, Jan. 18 The Dean of St. Paul’s, Dr W. R. Matthews, said that he was “inclined to think” that Hitler is an evil spirit in contact with a malignant power which reinforces his natural gifts and drives him to destroy. The Dean did not use those words, for he was addressing the Society for Psychical Research and Religion.” But he was no less emphatic. There were, he said, mystical states which wore morally and spiritually evil. He went on: Unification of Purpose “There are persons who have what we can only call ‘spiritual power,’ who are apparently in contact with some source of energy which reinforces'their natural endowments, and gives them a unification of purpose which makes them most formidable. “But these persons are often evil and their mystical experience is a heightening of their will and their capacity for destruction. “In other words, I believe in the word ‘demonic.’” The Dean raised his eyes from his manuscript for a moment, and gave his hearers a keen glance over the top of his spectacles as he added in deliberate tones: “We should not have to look very far for an example of a mystic of this type, or for the evidence of his power for evil.” There was a chorus of “hear, hear!” pirit..-?as ns Pksavide HadlZ obC Faith in Survival Dr. Matthews went on to discuss the question of the survival of the actual personality of a human being after death. He said he was in sympathy with the theory. Christian thinkers of many schools would say that the continuance just as it was of human personality was not necessarily good news: It might very well be bad news. “The records of psychical research are full of deceit, fraud, and illusion,” said the Dean. “But when one has discounted all this there remains a residuum of established facts which, prima facie, suggests the hypothesis of survival.”