Modern Spiritualism.
by Uriah Smith.
PREFACE.
For nearly fifty years Spiritualism has been before the world. This surely is time enough to enable it to show its character by its fruits. "By their fruits ye shall know them," is a rule that admits of no exceptions. If evil fruits appear, the tree is corrupt.
Spiritualism has made unbounded promises of good. It has claimed to be the long-promised second coming of Christ; the opening of a new era among mankind; the rosy portal of a golden age, when all men should be reformed, evil disappear, and the renovation of society cause the hearts of men to leap for joy, and the earth to blossom as the rose.
Has it fulfilled all, or any, of these promises? If not, is it not a deception? and if a deception, considering its wide-spread influence, and the number of its adherents, is it not one of the most gigantic and appalling deceptions that has ever fallen upon Christendom? The Bible in the plainest terms, declares that in the last days malign influences will be let loose upon the world; false pretensions will be urged upon the minds of men; and deceptions, backed up by preternatural signs and wonders, will develop to such a degree of strength, that, if it were possible, they would deceive the very elect. Is it possible that Spiritualism may be the very development of evil, against which this warning is directed?
To investigate these questions, and to show by unimpeachable testimony, what Spiritualism is, and the place it holds among the psychological movements of the present day, is the object of these pages. Not a few books have been written against Spiritualism; but most of them endeavor to account for it on the ground of human jugglery and imposture, or on natural principles, the discovery of a new and heretofore occult force in nature, etc., from which great things may be expected in the future. But rarely has any one discussed it from the standpoint of prophecy, and the testimony of the Scriptures, the only point of view, as we believe, from which its true origin, nature, and tendency, can be ascertained.
Many features in the work of Spiritualism would seem to indicate that the source from which it springs is far from good; but it is based upon a church dogma, firmly established through all Christendom, which in many minds is of sufficient weight to overbalance considerations that would otherwise be considered ample grounds for shunning or renouncing it. It is therefore the more necessary that the reader, in examining this question, should let the bonds that have heretofore bound him to preconceived opinions, sit loose upon him, and that he should put himself in the mood of Dr. Channing when he said: "I must choose to receive the truth, no matter how it bears upon myself, and must follow it no matter where it leads, from what party it severs me, or to what party it allies." And he should remember also, as the eminent and pious Dr. Vinet once sagaciously observed, that "even now, after eighteen centuries of Christianity, we are very probably involved in some enormous error, of which Christianity will, in some future time, make us ashamed."
In view, therefore, of the importance of this question, and the tremendous issues that hang on the decisions we may make in these perilous times, we feel justified even in _adjuring_ the reader to canva.s.s this subject with an inflexible determination to learn the truth, and then to follow it wherever it may lead.
U. S.
_Battle Creek, Mich., 1897._
Chapter One.
OPENING THOUGHT.
What think ye? Whence is it-from heaven or of men? Such was the nature of the question addressed by our Saviour to the men of his time, concerning the baptism of John. It is the crucial question by which to test every system that comes to us in the garb of religion: Is it from heaven or of men? And if a true answer to the question can be found, it must determine our att.i.tude toward it; for if it is from heaven, it challenges at once our acceptance and profound regard, but if it is of men, sooner or later, in this world or in the world to come, it will be destroyed with all its followers; for our Saviour has declared that every plant which our heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up. Matt. 15:13.
To those who do not believe in any "heavenly Father," nor in "Christ the Saviour," nor in any "revealed word of G.o.d," we would say that these points will be a.s.sumed in this work rather than directly argued, though many incidental proofs will appear, to which we trust our friends will be pleased to give some consideration. But we address ourselves particularly to those who still have faith in G.o.d the Father of all; in his divine Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, through whose blood we have redemption; in the Bible as the inspired revelation of G.o.d"s will; and in the Holy Spirit as the enlightener of the mind, and the sanctifier of the soul. To all those to whom this position is common ground, the Bible will be the standard of authority, and the court of last appeal, in the study upon which we now enter.
A Manifestation of Power.
Spiritualism cannot be disposed of with a sneer. A toss of the head and a cry of "humbug," will not suffice to meet its claims and the testimony of careful, conservative men who have studied thoroughly into the genuineness of its manifestations, and have sought for the secret of its power, and have become satisfied as to the one, and been wholly baffled as to the other. That there have been abundant instances of attempted fraud, deception, jugglery, and imposition, is not to be denied. But this does not by any means set aside the fact that there have been manifestations of more than human power, the evidence for which has never been impeached.
The detection of a few sham mediums, who are trying to impose upon the credulity of the public, for money, may satisfy the careless and unthinking, that the whole affair is a humbug. Such will dismiss the matter from their minds, and depart, easier subjects to be captured by the movement when some manifestation appears for which they can find no explanation. But the more thoughtful and careful observers well know that the exposure of these mountebanks does not account for the numberless manifestations of power, and the steady current of phenomena, utterly inexplicable on any human hypothesis, which have attended the movement from the beginning.
The Philadelphia _North American_, of July 31, 1885, published a communication from Thomas R. Hazard, in which he says:-
"But Spiritualism, whatever may be thought of it, must be recognized as a fact. It is one of the characteristic intellectual or emotional phenomena of the times, and as such, it is deserving of a more serious examination than it has yet received. There are those who say it is all humbug, and that everything outside of the ordinary course which takes place at the so-called seances, is the direct result of fraudulent and deliberative imposture; in short, that every Spiritualist must be either a fool or a knave. The serious objection to this hypothesis is that the explanation is almost as difficult of belief as the occurrences which it explains. There must certainly be some Spiritualists who are both honest and intelligent; and if the manifestations at the seances were altogether and invariably fraudulent, surely the whole thing must have collapsed long before this; and the Seybert Commission, which finds it necessary to extend its investigations over an indefinite period, which will certainly not be less than a year, would have been able to sweep the delusion away in short order."
The phenomena are so well known, that it is unnecessary to recount them here. Among them may be mentioned such achievements as these: Various articles have been transported from place to place, without human hands, but by the agency of so-called spirits only; beautiful music has been produced independently of human agency, with and without the aid of visible instruments; many well-attested cases of healing have been presented; persons have been carried through the air by the spirits in the presence of many witnesses; tables have been suspended in the air with several persons upon them; purported spirits have presented themselves in bodily form and talked with an audible voice; and all this not once or twice merely, but times without number, as may be gathered from the records of Spiritualism, all through its history.
A few particular instances, as samples, it may be allowable to notice: Not many years since, Joseph Cook made his memorable tour around the world. In Europe he met the famous German philosopher, Professor Zollner. Mr.
Zollner had been carefully investigating the phenomena of Spiritualism, and a.s.sured Mr. Cook of the following occurrences as facts, under his own observation: Knots had been found tied in the middle of cords, by some invisible agency, while both ends were made securely fast, so that they could not be tampered with; messages were written between doubly and trebly sealed slates; coin had pa.s.sed through a table in a manner to ill.u.s.trate the suspension of the laws of impenetrability of matter; straps of leather were knotted under his own hand; the impression of two feet was given on sooted paper pasted inside of two sealed slates; whole and uninjured wooden rings were placed around the standard of a card table, over either end of which they could by no possibility be slipped; and finally the table itself, a heavy beechen structure, wholly disappeared, and then fell from the top of the room where Professor Zollner and his friends were sitting.
In further confirmation of the fact that real spiritualistic manifestations are no sleight-of-hand performances, we cite the case of Harry Kellar, a professional performer, as given in "Nineteenth Century Miracles," p. 213. The seance was held with the medium, Eglinton, in Calcutta, India, Jan. 25, 1882. He says:-
"It is needless to say that I went as a skeptic; but I must own that I have come away utterly unable to explain by any natural means the phenomena that I witnessed on Tuesday evening."
He then describes the particulars of the seance. An intelligence, purporting to be the spirit of one Geary, gave a communication. Mr. Kellar did not recognize the name nor recall the man. The message was repeated, with the added circ.u.mstances of the time and particulars of a previous meeting, when Mr. Kellar recalled the events, and, much to his surprise, the whole matter came clearly to his recollection. He then adds:-
"I still remain a skeptic as regards Spiritualism, but I repeat my inability to explain or account for what must have been an intelligent force which produced the writing on the slate, which, if my senses are to be relied on, was in no way the result of trickery or sleight-of-hand."
Another instance from "Home Circle," p. 25, is that of Mr. Bellachini, also a professional conjuror, of Berlin, Germany. His interview was with the celebrated medium, Mr. Slade. From his testimony we quote the following:-
"I have not, in the smallest degree, found anything to be produced by prestidigitative manifestations or mechanical apparatus; and any explanation of the experiments which took place under the circ.u.mstances and conditions then obtaining, by any reference to prestidigitation, is _absolutely impossible_. I declare, moreover, the published opinions of laymen as to the "How" of this subject, to be premature, and according to my views and experience, false and one-sided."-_Dated, Berlin, Dec. 6, 1877._
When professional conjurors bear such testimony as this, while it does not prove Spiritualism to be what it claims to be, it does disprove the humbug theory.
In addition to this, it appears that two propositions, one of $2000, and the other of $5000, have been offered to the one who claimed to be able to duplicate all the manifestations of Spiritualism, to duplicate two well-authenticated tests; but the challenge has never been accepted, nor the reward claimed. See _Religio-Philosophical Journal_, of Jan. 15, 1881, and January, 1883.
A writer in the _Spiritual Clarion_, in an article on "The Millennium of Spiritualism," bears the following testimony in regard to the power and strength of the movement:-
"This revelation has been with a power, a might, that if divested of its almost universal benevolence, had been a terror to the very soul; the hair of the very bravest had stood on end, and his chilled blood had crept back upon his heart, at the sights and sounds of its inexplicable phenomena. It comes with foretokening and warning. It has been, from the very first, its own best prophet, and step by step, it has foretold the progress it would make. It comes, too, most triumphant. No faith before it ever took such a victorious stand in its very infancy. It has swept like a hurricane of fire through the land, compelling faith from the baffled scoffer, and the most determined doubter."
Dr. W. F. Barrett, Professor of Experimental Physics in the Royal College of Dublin, says:-
"It is well known to those who have made the phenomena of Spiritualism the subject of prolonged and careful inquiry, in the spirit of exact and unimpa.s.sioned scientific research, that beneath a repellent ma.s.s of imposture and delusion there remain certain inexplicable and startling facts which science can neither explain away nor deny."-_"__Automatic, or Spirit, Writing,__"__ p.
11 (1896)._
In the _Arena_ of November, 1892, p. 688, Mr. M. J. Savage, the noted Unitarian minister of Boston, says:-
"Next comes what are ordinarily cla.s.sed together as "mediumistic phenomena." The most important of these are psychometry, "vision"
of "spirit" forms, claimed communications by means of rappings, table movements, automatic writing, independent writing, trance speaking, etc. With them also ought to be noted what are generally called physical phenomena, though in most cases, since they are intelligibly directed, the use of the word "physical," without this qualification, might be misleading. These physical phenomena include such facts as the movement of material objects by other than the ordinary muscular force, the making objects heavier or lighter when tested by the scales, the playing on musical instruments by some invisible power, etc.... Now all of these referred to (with the exception of independent writing, and materialization) I know to be genuine. I do not at all mean by this that I know that the "spiritualistic" interpretation of them is the true one. I mean only that they are genuine phenomena; that they have occurred; that they are not tricks or the result of fraud."
In the _Forum_ of December, 1889, p. 455, the same writer describes his experience at the house of a friend with whom he had been acquainted eight or ten years. When about to depart, he thought he would try an experiment.
He says:-