The spirit-rapper; an autobiography
invasion, demonic possession, and obsession, are no fables, but facts
not to be denied, though each particular case must stand on its own
merits, and be received or rejected according to the evidence. In
general I am slow to believe this or that particular case is diabolic,
and I require clear and irrefragable proof, strong and perfectly
reliable testimony.
“The criteria of demonic invasion or obsession, as laid down by the
Christian church, for the guidance of exorcists, are seven:
1. Power of knowing the unexpressed thoughts of others.
2. Understanding of unknown languages.
3. Power of speaking unknown or foreign languages.
4. Knowledge of future events.
5. Knowledge of things passing in distant places.
6. Exhibition of superior physical strength.
7. Suspension of the body in the air during a considerable time.
“Now I find all these in the recent spirit-manifestations, clearly and
distinctly testified to by such occular witnesses as Dr. Dexter, Judge
Edmands, and the Hon. N. P. Talmadge, not to mention any others. The
Spiritualists or Spiritists do not deny, they assert that the
manifestations they witness are strictly analogous to the class of facts
which have been always regarded as Satanic. At first, the spirits
communicated by rapping and moving furniture. But now, besides rapping
mediums, there are writing mediums, seeing mediums, and speaking
mediums. In these last three cases they admit the fact of spiritual
invasion, and even call it possession. In the case of the speaking
medium particularly, I find it contended that the spirit takes
possession of the medium, generally a woman, maltreats her at times,
throws her down, gives her convulsions, and forces her to do things
which she is unwilling to do, and compels her organs to utter words to
which she has the greatest repugnance.
“Hear Judge Edmands. ‘I have frequently known mental questions answered,
that is, questions merely framed in the mind of the interrogator, and
not revealed by him or known to others. Preparatory to meeting a circle,
I have sat down alone in my room, and carefully prepared a series of
questions to be propounded, and I have been surprised to find my
questions answered, and in the precise order in which I wrote them,
without my even taking my memorandum out of my pocket, and when I knew
not a person present even knew that I had prepared questions, much less
what they were. My most secret thoughts, those which I never uttered to
mortal man or woman, have been freely spoken to, as if I had uttered
them. Purposes which I have privately entertained have been publicly
revealed, and I have once and again been admonished that my every
thought was known to, and could be disclosed by, the intelligence which
was thus manifesting itself.
“‘I have heard the mediums use Greek, Latin, Spanish, and French, when I
knew that they had no knowledge of any language but their own; and it is
a fact that can be attested by many, that often there has been speaking
and writing in foreign languages and unknown tongues by those who were
unacquainted with either.’
“Dr. Dexter is explicit to the same purpose. I need not multiply
citations. The books of the spiritualists are full of instances in
point. And as it is clear, from the phenomena presented, that the
superhuman intelligence and power manifested are not Divine, I can, as a
rational man, only conclude that they are Satanic. I believe the persons
engaged in the unhallowed intercourse are, to a great extent, in good
faith, and have no suspicion that they are really dealing with devils.”
“I believe you are right,” said I. “One thing is certain, that even in
mesmerizing, there is always an implicit mental evocation, and without
it, I venture to say, no one was ever able to exhibit the mesmeric
phenomena. The effort of the will which the mesmerizer makes, whether he
uses passes or not, is at bottom an evocation, a calling up of the
mesmeric spirit; and he who set the spirits a rapping, you may be sure,
had made a virtual, if not an explicit, a tacit, if not an express
compact with the devil. But there is one thing farther I would have you
explain, that is, the connection of spirit-manifestations with so-called
animal magnetism.”
“That is a great subject, and would lead me too far for my time and for
your strength. There are different spirits that besiege us or invade us,
but those that usually do so probably, after the language of St. Paul,
swarm in the air, and inhabit what the ancients called Ether. Many of
the fathers, and some later doctors of the Church have believed that
they are created with and inhabit fine ethereal bodies. However this may
be, they no doubt, in their operation, assume such bodies, and
consequently find their operations facilitated by a subtile material
medium, such as the mesmeric fluid. Hence I do not regard mesmerism
itself as Satanic, but as facilitating demonic invasion.
“There is also in man what the ancients called the _umbra_, the shade,
which is not the soul, nor the body in its mere outward sense. It is, as
it were, the interior lining of the body, capable, to a certain extent,
of being detached from it, without however losing its relation to it.
Hence the phenomena of bi-location, so frequently noticed in the annals
of sorcery or witchcraft, can be conceived as possible. The body lies in
a trance, and the soul with its _umbra_ is able to carry on, by the
assistance of the demon, its deviltry, even at a distance; and the
wounds given to the shade will reappear on the body, as has been often
observed.
“But you must excuse me from entering further into this intricate and
mysterious subject. Many ingenious theories have been devised, but I
wish to deal as little with them as possible. There is a laudable
curiosity, there is also an unlawful curiosity, and there is a science
which is not desirable. I have been obliged, in the way of my calling,
to study it; but I never touch it, without regretting its necessity.
Spare me. The knowledge that cannot enlighten, that cannot aid virtue,
and only leads astray, should never be sought.”
CHAPTER XXII.
SUPERSTITION.
I had, almost from the first, suspected Mr. Merton’s conclusion, and
should never for a moment have doubted it, had I not grown up in the
disbelief of evil spirits. Science, or what passes for science, had long
denied all supernatural and all superhuman intervention in the affairs
of mankind; and I, like the majority of my contemporaries, had grown up
a complete Epicurean. There was, perhaps, a God who had created the
world, but having created it, and impressed upon it certain fixed and
invariable laws, he left it to take care of itself. I denied his
providence, or, what is the same thing, resolved it into the uniform and
inflexible laws of nature, and like my friends of the French Eclectic
school, saw the Divine intervention only in the necessary and immutable
elements of human history. God was for me simply Fate, Invincible
Necessity, and therefore no free person, no object of reverence, love,
or worship.
Having excluded Providence, I necessarily rejected the ministry of
angels. I resolved all nature into a collection of forces operative by
intrinsic and necessary laws. Man is one of these forces, neither the
strongest nor the weakest. In his own intrinsic strength he is not much,
but by placing himself in a right position with regard to the other
forces of nature, he may make them work in him and for him, and thus
increase his strength by the whole of theirs, as the millwright makes
use of the force of the stream to turn his mill, the inventor of the
magnetic telegraph of the lightning to convey his messages, or as the
sailor avails himself of the wind to propel his ship.
Belief in the free or voluntary intervention of the Divinity in human
affairs, I had been taught by received science to regard as
superstition. Religion, Christian or Mahometan, Jewish or Pagan,
inasmuch as it always presupposes the supernatural, or the intervention
of God _extra naturam_, or otherwise than in and through the laws of
nature, was superstition. The ministry of angels was superstition. The
assertion of Satanic interposition was, beyond all doubt, superstition.
The facts which had led to the supposition of Divine providence, and of
the ministry of good and evil angels, were, no doubt, real; but ignorant
of the laws of nature, men had misinterpreted them, and assigned them
causes which are unreal. All religion has, I said, its origin in
ignorance, and necessarily recedes as science advances. Hence I felt
that it would be only a proof of my ignorance and superstition to
ascribe the mysterious phenomena to any spiritual or supernatural
agency.
Even after the explanations of Mr. Merton, and after my reason was
silenced, I was unwilling to abandon my prejudices, and accept his
conclusion. What, should I, in this nineteenth century, in this age of
genuine science, which has done so much to roll back the clouds and
dissipate the darkness which enveloped past ages, consent to adopt the
vulgar belief of the sixteenth century, when men were but just escaping
from the thraldom of Romanism—of the thirteenth century, when they were
but just beginning to emerge from barbarism—of the first century, when
still buried in the night of heathenism? My pride of science, my pride
of intellect, revolted at the thought. What ridicule would not be
showered upon me by the wits and free-thinkers of the age, should it be
known, or even suspected!
I hesitated long, for I saw at once, that if I admitted the existence
and influence of Satan, I must go farther, and concede the Christian
mysteries. I must abandon liberal Christianity, deny the supposed
progress of recent times in religious notions, and return to
old-fashioned orthodoxy. Perhaps I should find it necessary to go even
further back than the orthodoxy of my own country. This was no pleasant
thought. To unlearn all I had learned, to regard all my most cherished
convictions as so many delusions, to become in reality as a little
child, and to commence life anew, as Jesus Christ taught we must do, if
we would enter into the kingdom of heaven, was too humiliating to be
contemplated with pleasure even on my dying bed, and when the world was
fast disappearing from my view. What would have been the result of my
internal struggle, if I had been left wholly to myself, I will not
pretend to say. But I was not so left. Mr. Merton was with me almost
daily, and seemed always to read my thoughts before I expressed them,
and to comprehend my difficulties.
“Your great mistake,” said he to me one day, when the subject came up,
“is in supposing that religion is the offspring of ignorance, and stands
opposed to science. Your assumption that man began in ignorance, and has
attained to science only by long and patient research and laborious
experiment, is at best gratuitous. Some things, of course, have been
acquired only in process of time. Man has made progress in the knowledge
of all that which he himself has done, or has suffered; but nothing
requires you to assume that his progress in knowledge is any thing more
than progress in the knowledge of his own doing and suffering. It is not
likely that Adam knew the history of the battle of Pharsalia, of
Hastings, Bovines, or Waterloo; it is not probable that he was
acquainted with the steam-engine, the cotton-gin, the spinning-jenny,
the power-loom, or the lightning telegraph. But he may have received
from his Maker, as religion teaches, a knowledge of the nature and
causes of things, and of his moral relations and duties, equal to that
possessed by the most enlightened of his posterity.