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A THIRD ELEMENT EMERGES.

There is a manifest tendency, however, in the present age, to discredit the supernatural,* including, under that term, not only miracles and infallible revelation, but all ultramundane agencies of a spiritual character: and this sceptical element has rudely shaken both the plenary infallibility of Catholicism and the limited infallibility of Protestantism.

But the inroads of this rationalistic tendency are constantly repelled by a popular conviction, that to abandon infallibility is to surrender also all assurance of another and a better world. Thus, one of the most powerful of human instincts attracts and attaches millions to the infallible school.

So long as these were the only two elements engaged, there was, substantially, but a single alternative offered to the seeker after religious truth-the choice between infallibility (in one or other of its phases), on the one hand, and some one among the various.shades of Unbelief, on the other.

But within the last quarter of a century there has emerged to public view in distinct form, from that phenomenal field where Science has won all her victories, a third element; namely the belief in the epiphanies † of Spiritualism; in other words, in intermediate spiritual revealings, with no claim to infallibility save this, that they supply positive proof of a life to

come.

It is evident that if there be such proof to be found, outside of direct infallible revelation, and if that proof is derived from actual phenomena, then the belief in such phenomena, as it gradually spreads, will take a prominent place among religious

* This tendency is fully and ably illustrated in two modern works by LECKY: Rationalism in Europe (New York Ed. 1866); and European Morals (New York Ed. 1870).

This is one of those ecclesiastical terms which, through restricted usage, come to lose, for the careless reader, their original signification. Usually employed to designate the Church festival commemorating the Magian journey to Bethlehem, one almost forgets that the word, derived from epipharcia, means simply an appearance or phenomenon, and is strictly appropriate in designating spiritual manifestations.

RATIONALISM SHOULD ACCEPT SPIRITUALISM.

197

creeds. To deny that this belief is entitled to such a place is virtually to assert that it matters little whether man obtains positive assurance of a life beyond the grave or not.

Such a belief has the elements of a universal creed; or rather it is fitted to inspire into all creeds an active principle-a living spirit; while, at the same time, it effectually defeats the claim which any one Church may set up to sole religious authority in virtue of her possession of spiritual powers and gifts which, she asserts, are to be found nowhere save within her divinely-favored precincts.

Infallibility cannot object to such a belief that it neglects the one thing needful, or fails to bring immortality to light; for no religion professed by man can supply, as spiritual researches do, proofs patent to the senses, and potent to convert mere hope of another world into certainty of its existence.

Rationalism cannot object to it that it contravenes the doctrine of law; for its phenomena occur strictly under law: nor yet that it assumes the existence, in spiritual matters, of that direct agency of God which the naturalist finds nowhere in physical affairs; for its revealings come to man mediately only: nor yet that it is dogmatic, or exclusive, or intolerant, as Infallibility is; for its adherents adduce experimental evidence, open to all men and gleaned after the inductive method, for the faith that is in them: nor, in fine, that it ignores progress, as Infallibility does; seeing that it is ever freshly vivified and cheered by the ceaseless illumings of spiritual life.

Still less can the Bible student object that he finds no Scriptural warrant for such a belief. If there be one distinct promise made by Jesus to his followers, it is, that spiritual signs should follow those who believed in his words;* that they should do the works that he did, and greater works also; † that his apostles could not bear the whole truth, so that he had to leave many things unsaid; and that, after his death, that spirit which pervaded his life-the spirit of truth-should still bring

* Mark xvi. 17, 18; and other texts.

+ John xiv. 12.

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WHY CAME SPIRITUALISM SO LATE?

comfort, communicating with them, even to the end of the world; *mediately teaching them what he had left untaught. † So also Paul. Can injunction be more positive than his to seek after spiritual gifts? ↑

These are strong claims. Against them will, of course, be set up the popular objection to all things novel. Why now, at this age of the world? Why not sooner, long ago, centuries since? In reply one might suggest that the Atlantic has always been there, though thousands of years elapsed ere a Columbus adventured its passage. One might ask when the diurnal motion of the earth, when the circulation of the blood, when the fall of aërolites, was first accepted as truth by science. But I rest not the case in generalities like these. I believe that Spiritualism, in its present phase, could not have been the growth of an age much earlier than our own.

-In its present phase. In distorted form it has appeared, from time to time in past ages, to the terror and the unutterable suffering of the world. The holiest things are the most deadly when they are profaned.

"Ye cannot bear them now." In these words we may find the clue to the late appearance of modern Spiritualism. Certain debasing superstitions had to disappear before the world was worthy of it. The letter, which killeth, had itself to die, and the spirit which giveth life had to replace it, before the wiser and the better portion of those who have gone before us could find such sympathy as would attract them to earth, and meet such reception here as would justify their efforts to enlighten us.

Take a notable example of the letter which killeth: the old belief in the personal existence of a Great Spirit of Evil,

* Matthew xxviii. 20.

† John xvi. 12, 13. If any one objects to the words used above— mediately teaching them "-let him refer to the text, where he will find the remarkable expression: "he shall not speak of himself, but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak."-v. 13.

+1 Corinthians xii. 31, and xiv. 1, 2.

EFFECT OF BELIEF IN THE DEVIL.

199

roaming the world in search of whom he might devour; the earliest and crudest of the various human fantasies that have been suggested by the perception of evil in the world, coupled with a desire to explain the cause of its existence. In the exordium to that sublimest among ancient Oriental fragments of philosophy, the Book of Job, occurs a brief narrative which modern critics begin to treat as mere allegory. Not so the theological mind of past times. To our ancestors, if they accepted the Bible at all, it was literal truth. They believed that Satan, just returned from going to and fro on the earth, presented himself one day, among the Sons of God, to the Lord; and that, being allowed after some conversation with the Almighty, to afflict Job, he destroyed that good man's substance and slew his children. They believed that, on another day, the Devil, again by God's permission, "smote Job with sore boils" from head to foot.

So, in the New Testament also. The belief of the orthodox, even to-day, is that the Devil, taking Jesus up, set him, first on a pinnacle of the temple, then on an exceeding high mountain whence all the kingdoms of the earth may be seen; there seeking worship from him: while less literal Christians regard this as a parable only, informing us that Christ was tempted as we are, yet without sin.

Now, so long as a belief in a personal devil pervaded Christendom, spiritual agency assumed forms that were hideous in proportion to the hideousness of the belief that engendered them. Faith which, in its purity, has power to remove mountains, can also, in its perversion, pile them up, Pelion upon Ossa. In spiritual matters, to a certain extent, we receive what we expect sympathy being a ruling element. Whether we fearfully deprecate, or recklessly invoke, a Spirit of Evil, spirits of truth will not answer to our call. They have still enough of human nature about them to decline communication with those who take them for devils.

In ages of the world when the popular mind was imbued with the notion that there exists around us a hierarchy of

200

POSSESSION IN JESUS' DAY.

malign intelligences, headed by the Prince of the Air, whose agency, tolerated by God, is unceasingly exercised to instigate man to evil, and that these are the only disembodied beings with whom man is permitted to commune, the portals of the Spiritual seldom opened except to give exit to frightful errors and delusions. In those days that subtle power (dunamis was the Evangelists' term for such), corresponding doubtless, in a measure, to Reichenbach's sensitivity* and now spoken of among us as mediumship, rarely gave birth save to monstrosities, such as are usually known under the names of Sorcery and Witchcraft: superstitions only the more dangerous and horrible because there was a small amount of reality underlying the terrible phantom-shapes they assumed.

There was, in Jesus' day and long before, as there still is, a certain spiritual condition which may be termed possession. It was a disease usually induced, in some sensitive organizations, by deluding opinions or impotence of will; its slender basis of reality being a mental influence usurped by departed spirits of a degraded order, while its vast medieval superstructure was reared by imagination running wild under the terrors of a pernicious faith. This disease was aggravated by harshness, diffused by persecution, intensified by torturings. It could be cured, like other phases of lunacy, only by charitable judgment, and gentle firmness; but believers in remedies

* For a new occasion I originate a new word. By sensitivity I designate that gift or faculty possessed by Reichenbach's Sensitives, and to which, elsewhere in this volume, I have alluded. A careful perusal of the German naturalist's works on this subject, namely Untersuchungen über die Dynamide, Brunswick, 1850, and Der Sensitive Mensch, Stuttgart and Tübingen, 1854, has convinced me that he has fully made out both the existence of a new power or faculty possessed by a certain portion of mankind, and the importance of studying it. The former of these works has been translated into English by Dr. Ashburner (London, 1850). Reichenbach's works, though they created, at the time they appeared, considerable excitement throughout Germany, and some stir among us, have never attracted the attention which they deserve, and which, some day, they will obtain.