On leaving, he received from the Head Master testimonials of the most flattering nature, speaking in high terms of the very rapid progress he had made in all departments of study, and also of the uniform excellence and correctness of his school conduct.

From Bedford, Stainton Moses went to Exeter College, Oxford, which he entered at the commencement of Michaelmas term, 1858. His college life was in every way as successful as his school life had been, and great hopes were formed by all connected with him that at the end of his Oxford career he would take the highest honours open to him. This, however, was not to be - overwork gradually told upon him, but he refused to rest or in any way relax his studies; and so, sad to relate, on the very day before commencement of his last examination his health gave way completely, and he broke down, absolutely worn out in mind and body. For some time he was very ill, but on regaining convalescence he was ordered abroad. He spent nearly a year travelling on the Continent with friends, and, with a view to complete restoration, he visited many different scenes and climates.

St Petersburg was the farthest limit of his wanderings, and on his return journey he lingered for six months at the old Greek Monastery of "Mount Athos."Curiosity apparently guided him thither, and his strong desire for rest and meditation doubtless impelled him to remain for so long a time in that remote, old-world spot. Many years afterwards he learned from Imperator , his controlling spirit, that he had been influenced even then by his unseen guides, who had impressed him to go to "Mount Athos" as part of his spiritual training.

At the age of 23, Stainton Moses returned to England and took his degree, leaving Oxford finally in the year 1863. Though much improved in health by his foreign travel, he was not yet strong; so, acting on the advice of his doctor, who insisted on a quiet rural life, he accepted a curacy at Maughold, near Ramsey, Isle of Man. Here he remained for nearly five years, and succeeded during that period in gaining the affection and esteem of all his parishioners. The Rector, a very old and infirm man, was practically unable to render any assistance in the work of the parish, so that the whole of the duties connected with the church and the district devolved upon Stainton Moses.

During his stay at Maughold, a severe epidemic of small-pox broke out in the village and surrounding neighborhood; and it was then that the utter fearlessness of his nature was strikingly manifested. There was no resident doctor in the district, but having at different times acquired some little knowledge of medicine, Stainton Moses was enabled to minister to a certain extent to the bodily necessities of his parishioners, as well as to their spiritual needs. Day and night he was in attendance at the bedside of some poor victim who was stricken by the fell disease; and in one or two cases when, after an unsuccessful struggle with the enemy, he had soothed the sufferers dying moments by his ministrations, he was compelled to combine the offices of priest and grave-digger, and conduct the interment with his own hands. Such was the panic, inspired by the fear of infection, that it was sometimes found impossible to induce men to dig graves for the dead bodies of the victims, or even to remove the coffins containing them.

But through all this terrible time Stainton Moses never flinched, and, notwithstanding the threefold nature of the duties thus compulsorily thrust upon him, he was fortunate in escaping the malady, and though he steadily remained at his post single-handed, from the commencement to the end of the outbreak, he was spared any uneasiness on the score of his own health. It may be readily imagined how greatly he endeared himself to all those around him by his courageous devotion and strong sense of duty during such an anxious and critical period; but the feelings which he inspired in his parishioners, and everyone with whom he came in contact at Maughold, will be best appreciated by a perusal of the address presented to him on relinquishing his curacy there.

It reads as follow: - "Rev. And Dear Sir, - We, the undersigned parishioners of Maughold, are much concerned to learn that it is your intention shortly to resign the position which you have for some years past so usefully and honourably occupied amongst us. We beg to assure you that your labours have been greatly appreciated in the parish. The longer we have known you, and the more we have seen of your work, the greater has our regard for you increased. The congregations at both the churches under your charge are very different in numbers to what they were some time ago. The schools have been better looked after; the aged and infirm have been visited and comforted; and the poor have been cheered and helped by your kindness and liberality. By your courteous demeanour, by your friendly intercourse, and by your attention to the duties of the parish generally, you have greatly endeared yourself to us all; and not least to our respected and venerable Vicar, whose hands we are well satisfied you have done all you possibly could to strengthen. We cannot but feel that your loss will be a very serious one to the parish, and we should be glad if you could see your way to remaining some time longer with us. By reconsidering your determination and consenting to remain, you would place us under a deep debt of gratitude and obligation."

Here follow the signatures of the Rector and Churchwardens, also of fifty-four of the principal inhabitants of the district. Such a document, spontaneously presented, speaks for itself. However, in spite of the unanimous wish of the inhabitants that he should remain, Stainton Moses found that the work of looking after two parishes, practically single-handed, made too great demands upon his health, and so in the spring of 1868 he reluctantly relinquished his charge at Maughold, and accepted the curacy of St George's, Douglas, Isle of Man. Here he first met Dr and Mrs Stanhope Speer, and the acquaintance thus commenced soon ripened into an intimacy which was destined to exercise a very important influence upon the future of the three persons concerned.

Very soon after taking up his duties at St George's, Stainton Moses was laid up with a sharp attack of congestion of the liver, which confined him to his bed for some little time. Dr Speer attended him through this illness (although he had retired from active practice for some years), and was successful in effecting a complete cure. In September of 1869 Stainton Moses left Douglas, where he had made a great impression by his preaching and ministrations among the poor of the parish, and took up the post of locum tenens at Langton Maltravers, in Dorsetshire. Here he remained for two months, when he was transferred to a curacy in the diocese of Salisbury, the last ecclesiastical appointment he held.

At this time he was troubled by an affection of the throat, which rapidly became worse, and necessitated a complete rest, and the relinquishing of all public speaking and preaching. Acting, therefore, upon medical advice, Stainton Moses gave up his curacy, and came to London with the intention of turning his attention to tuition. This practically severed his connection with the Church. Had his health permitted him to follow his original career, he would no doubt have attained a distinguished position, as he was a powerful and original preacher, a successful organizer, and an earnest and efficient worker among the poor. On coming to London, Stainton Moses stayed with Dr and Mrs Speer for nearly a year, during which time he superintended privately the education of their son, the present writer.

About the close of 1870 or the beginning of 1871, he obtained the appointment of English Master in University College School, which position he held until 1889. Little need be said of his work there, further than that as long as his health permitted it was always done well. As one of the English masters in a great school, his opportunities of influencing the boys under his charge, in respect of literary taste and style, were considerable; and of those opportunities he made good use. Many will remember his excellent suggestions, and kindly criticisms of their essays.

A portion of his work consisted of preparing a class for the Matriculation of the University of London. The peculiarly crabbed philological and historical knowledge required for that examination was uncongenial to Stainton Moses's mind, as in literature he liked to have a free hand; yet the work was done, and done well, and during the years he spent at the school he embodied in a manuscript volume a vast number of valuable notes bearing upon this subject. Even more striking than his success as a master was the personal influence exercised by him over his pupils.

One of the peculiar institutions at University College School is that by which a certain number of boys are especially attached to certain senior masters, with whom they can take counsel and from whom they can seek advice in all matters pertaining to their well-being - moral, intellectual, and physical. Over the boys thus placed under his immediate care the strong personality of Stainton Moses had an enormous influence, often extending over a period long subsequent to their leaving school. Many a time in after life his advice has been sought by old pupils on important matters, and whenever he felt he could help them it was always a real pleasure to him to do so to the best of his ability.

His geniality, his knowledge of the world and of men, his invariable straightforwardness and kindness, all combined to strengthen the affectionate regard in which he was held by those boys who had the good fortune to be under his special supervision. On resigning his post through ill-health the Council of University College passed a resolution conveying to Stainton Moses their best thanks for his long and valuable service to the school, and a special letter of affectionate regret was also sent to him signed by twenty-eight of his colleagues.

Of his capacity for imparting his ideas to other I can speak from a personal experience extending over seven years, during which period our relations as master and pupil were continuous and unbroken. Nothing could have been kinder or more convincing than his method of imparting knowledge and information; nothing clearer or more helpful than his manner of explaining all difficulties; and no trouble was too great for him to take in smoothing away all obstacles to a clear understanding of the matter in hand. It was during Stainton Moses's visit to Dr Speer in 1870 that the subject of Spiritualism was first brought prominently before him. For some time he and Dr Speer had been in the habit of discussing various topics bearing upon religious belief. Both were gradually drifting into an unorthodox, almost agnostic, frame of mind, and both were becoming more and more dissatisfied with existing doctrines, and longing for absolute truth as regards the future life, and for some demonstration of the certainty of immortality.

To obtain any proof of such immortality founded upon a strictly scientific basis seemed impossible, and Dr Speer was rapidly becoming a materialist of the most hard-and- fast nature. A note received by him from Stainton Moses, together with a copy of W.R. Greg's Enigmas of Life, may prove interesting to those who would fain have some inkling of the inner working of these two friends' minds, at a time when the old faith had lost its hold upon them, and they were standing upon the brink of a newer Revelation : -

"My Dear Friend, - You and I have tackled some `Enigmas of Life' together, and if we have not always solved them, we have generally agreed in our opinion respecting them. I offer you the opinions of a great thinker, which will be, in their outcome, very similar to what we have thought out for ourselves. And if the half century, during which your life here has lasted, leaves much unknown, and much that even another such period will not unravel, I hope at least that during such part of it as we are here together we may continue to talk and speculate together. - Your sincere friend, W.S.M."

It will be interesting to note the circumstances under which, during this visit to Dr Speer, the subject of Spiritualism pressed itself upon Stainton Moses's attention. Mrs Speer had been confined to her room by illness for three weeks, during which period she had occupied herself in reading Dale Owen's The Debatable Land. It interested her much, and on being able to rejoin the family circle she asked Stainton Moses to read the book, and endeavour to discover whether there was any truth in the experiences therein narrated. Though at that time he took no interest in Spiritualism, regarding it merely as trickery and fraud, yet he promised Mrs Speer to go into the matter with the view of ascertaining whether there might be some germs of truth underlying the mass of jugglery and imposture; and so began those astounding experiences of his, which, commencing at the time, extended over a period of more than twenty years.

In those days, although dissatisfied with the cut-and-dried doctrines of the Church, and with the manner in which its teachings were expounded from the pulpit and elsewhere, Stainton Moses was, nevertheless, immensely interested in all religious subjects, and his reading of everything that bore upon them was enormous. No book, pamphlet, or magazine likely to throw any light upon the questions which perplexed him was overlooked, and even after intercourse with the unseen world had commenced he did not entirely give up his faith in the Church without an arduous and prolonged struggle. The reality of the struggle may be clearly discerned in the pages of Spirit Teachings, and in his other automatic writings; but when he had fully satisfied himself of the reality of those "Teachings," and of the truthfulness and integrity of his spirit- guides, his faith never faltered, and his zeal in the prosecution of the work entrusted to him never flagged. Previous to his own development as a medium, Stainton Moses had been present at various sittings with other mediums.

Mrs Speer having been so immensely impressed by her perusal of the Debatable Land, he determined to read it for himself, and in consequence became almost as anxious as she was for fuller information. This was the more curious as, only a month before, he had tried in vain to read Lord Adare's record of private seances with D.D. Home, but, as he said himself, it had absolutely no interest for him. His first noteworthy experiences were with Lottie Fowler, in the spring of 1872; and soon afterwards Dr Speer - although at that time regarding the whole subject of Spiritualism as "stuff and nonsense" - was persuaded to join him in a visit to the medium Williams. They went several times, and were soon convinced that there was some force outside the medium at work - in which conviction they were much strengthened by a remarkable seance held shortly afterwards in Dr Speer's house, when Williams was again the medium. About this time Stainton Moses's own mediumistic powers began to be developed.

It is unnecessary to give a detailed description of that development, as a full and exhaustive account may be found in Mrs Speer's "Records," which have lately appeared in Light; but I think that some of my own recollections of the seances, at which I had the privilege of being present during the last two years of Stainton's Moses's active mediumship, may be of some interest. At any rate they will place on record the impressions of another witness, and may possibly be of service as bearing additional testimony to the wonderful powers of the medium, and the absolute reality of the phenomena given through him. It is important to note that at these seances no less than ten different kinds of manifestations took place, with more or less frequency.

On occasions when there were fewer varieties we were usually told that the conditions were not good. When they were favourable the manifestations were more numerous, the raps more distinct, the lights brighter, and the musical sounds clearer. During the time of Stainton Moses's active mediumship, he was often busily engaged in assisting in the formation of various societies, whose primary object was the investigation of Spiritualism and other occult, though kindred, subjects. He took part in the establishment of the British National Association of Spiritualists in 1873. He was also connected with the Psychological Society of Great Britain, which was inaugurated in April 1875, and of the Council of that Society he was one of the original members.

In 1882 Stainton Moses took an active interest in the formation of the Society for Psychical Research; and in 1884 he established "The London Spiritualist Alliance," and became its first President, which post he filled up to the time of his death. For the last few years of his life, he added to his other duties the editorship of Light, and though his active mediumship, as regards physical phenomena, had then almost entirely ceased, yet his power of automatic writing remained with him to the end. For the last three or four years of his life he suffered from failing health, and many successive attacks of influenza gradually undermined a constitution which had never been conspicuously robust. Though he gradually became worse, he was never supposed to be in any real danger, and when the end came, on September 5th, 1892, it was a terrible shock to all those who knew him, and who realised what a loss to themselves personally, and to the cause of Spiritualism generally, his death would prove.

Apart from Spiritualism, Stainton Moses possessed in his own character a rare combination of remarkable qualities, not often met with in the same individual. He had the keenest sense of justice and equity, his judgment was invariably sound and discreet, and in addition to all this, no man ever possessed a kinder heart or livelier sympathies, or was more ready to assist with counsel or advice those who came to him for either. Notwithstanding his varied spiritual experiences, unique in themselves, he was never puffed up by them in the smallest degree, and though impatient of mere frivolous or ignorant opposition, he would never refuse to join issue in friendly argument with any opponent - however much beneath his attention. In these various encounters, Stainton Moses's clear understanding and extremely logical habits of mind enabled him to score heavily and with decisive effect off those antagonists who sometimes had the temerity to attack him with very little reason and still less knowledge.

His crushing rejoinder to Dr. Carpenter, who some eighteen or twenty years ago lectured at the London Institution on the "Fallacies of Modern Spiritualism," will probably be still remembered by a good many people as a striking instance of logical reasoning and effective sarcasm, which, significantly enough, was never answered. Considering the then unpopular nature of the subject which he had unmistakably made his own, and of the conclusions which he deduced from a close and systematic study of the same, it is a matter to be wondered at that he was not more often attacked by narrow-minded religious bigots, pseudo-scientists, and superficial penny-a-liners. But however this may be, the fact remains that with a few insignificant exceptions he was not so attacked; when he was, his power of showing up the weakness of his opponent's case and ignorance of the matters on which he presumed to dogmatise was only equalled by the polite ridicule and quiet satire which he was always ready to bring to bear upon the author of any unprovoked piece of aggressive meddling.

It was a noteworthy feature about Stainton Moses, that in spite of his being compulsorily drawn in many ways into a conspicuously public position, no man ever hated publicity more than he did. Retiring and modest by nature, he detested the making of speeches, delivering of addresses, presiding over meetings, and other similar functions for which the singularity of his own powers and the extent of his knowledge naturally marked him out as being eminently fitted. Though richly endowed with gifts sufficient to stamp him in any age as a leader of men, his own inclinations would, had he been untrammeled by force of circumstances, have led him to prefer a life of studious ease and unostentatious retirement. But this was not to be; so he trod his allotted path with zeal, courage, and discretion; did his duty with an utter abnegation of self; and died at his post in the prime of manhood, carrying with him to the grave the affectionate regard and esteem of hundreds who will cherish the memory of his friendship as one of their most precious legacies.