friend he commanded the confidence and esteem of all his intimates."
May it not be that the phenomena recorded by the author of the Clementine Homilies are essentially the same in kind as those referred to above in the case of the Rev. Stainton Moses?
St. Augustine, considering the possibility of occult sex relations between earthly women and beings from the unseen world, remarks:
"The Scriptures plainly aver that the angels have appeared both in visible and palpable figures. And seeing it is so general a report, and so many aver it either from their own experience or from others, that are of indubitable honesty and credit, that the sy Ivans and fauns, commonly called incubi, have often injured women, and that certain devils from the Gauls call "Duses," do continually practice this *****, and tempt others to it, which is affirmed by such persons, and with such confidence, that it were impudence to deny it. I dare not venture to determine anything here; whether the devils being embodied in air (for the air being violently moved is to be felt) can suffer this lust, or move it so as the women with whom they commix, may feel it; yet do I firmly believe that God's angels could never fall so at that time."
St. Augustine's City of God, XV., 23.
Notice the perplexity of St. Augustine as a logician. He cannot deny that occult sex relations exist on the Borderland, the testimony to this is too wide spread and of too reliable a character. But, (we can imagine him saying) how reconcile these phenomena with the belief that the inhabitants of the world beyond the grave are immaterial, vapory, mist-like beings?
How can such a hazy, ethereal creature as a ghost produce objective sensations of touch upon an earthly being? And if possible as he ingeniously supposes, by such means as air becomes perceptible to us when violently put in motion how reconcile such phenomena with the belief that sex is impure, and that it does not exist in the world beyond the
