The spirit-rapper; an autobiography

and miserable. The way of wisdom is to let them alone, turn your back on them, and never suffer your mind or imagination to run on them.” “It is worthy of remark, that the men who declaim the most against superstition are unbelievers in Christianity, and who, under pretext of making war on superstition, attack religion itself. And yet the Church has always forbidden all superstitious practices, and she commands her children to have no dealings with the devil, to forbear all resort to fortune-tellers or divination, and to pay no attention to dreams, omens, &c. Of course all such things are wrong, are sin, are treason against God; but they are also, and because treason against God, and a dealing with the enemy, unwise and degrading. There is no saying to what depths he may fall who gives way to them, or the misery and wretchedness he may bring upon himself, and even upon those dear to him. I could, were I disposed, draw proofs enough from my own experience, while I was a prey to the superstitions still so rife in our country; but I will not trouble you with them. But of this be sure, that you will never root out that superstition by denying the existence and influence of demons. The remedy is in religious faith, in cultivating a firm trust in God, in obedience to his commands,—and in the firm persuasion that all dealings with devils is unlawful, and that all regard paid to signs, dreams, and omens is superstitious and sinful, and, what will weigh perhaps still more with our age, wholly unprofitable. No good can come from seeking knowledge by forbidden paths, and much evil is sure to come.” “I am glad,” said Jack, “that Mr. Merton has the grace to admit so much. It would have been a blessed thing for me, if I had been taught to regard mesmerism as unlawful; better still, if it had never been recommended to me as a legitimate science. I do not believe in Satanic invasions; but I do believe little good comes from departing from the old ways, and attempting to be wiser than our fathers were.” CHAPTER XXV. CONCLUSIONS. Our conversations were continued, but they threw no additional light on the main subject of our investigations, and I may well dispense myself from the labor of recording them. I found my early suspicion confirmed, and finally adopted Mr. Merton’s conclusion, that the class of phenomena which had for several years occupied my attention, and to which, according to the spiritists themselves, the recent spirit-manifestations belong, are real, are facts which actually take place, and are, under certain relations and to a certain extent, superhuman in their origin and character. As these phenomena cannot be ascribed to God or to good angels, they must be ascribed to Satan, to evil spirits, the enemies of God and man. I am well aware that this conclusion will be received by my brother savans with great derision, and that they will look upon me as having lost my wits. Even many who are not savans, who are sincere and firm believers in Christianity, and who, in a general way, admit the fact of Satanic invasion, will laugh at the supposition that the phenomena of spirit-rapping, table-turning, &c., are any thing more than very bungling pieces of humbuggery and sleight-of-hand. Be it so. Their good or bad opinion, their esteem or contempt, is of very little importance to me, who have not many days to live, and who have so soon to face another and a far different Judge. He who fears God, cannot fear man. My conclusion has not been hastily adopted, and it is, as far as I can see, the only conclusion to which a Christian philosopher can come. Mr. Cotton had preserved, what so many have lost, the Christian tradition as to evil spirits, and was right in the main. His error was in ascribing _all_ the phenomena exhibited by the practice of mesmerism to the devil and his angels. Mesmerism, though abnormal, is to a certain extent susceptible of a satisfactory explanation on natural principles. Man, as Mr. Merton, after the elder Görres, maintained, has a twofold development, the one normal, in which he rises to spiritual freedom by union with God, the other abnormal, in which he descends to spiritual slavery by descending to union with created nature. In the former he tends continually to escape from the fatalism of nature, and to ascend to the pure and serene atmosphere of spiritual freedom, in which the spirit becomes supreme over the body. In the latter he follows the laws of fatal or unfree nature, loses his spiritual dominion, becomes, or tends to become, subject in his soul to his body, while the body falls under the operation of the general forces of necessary nature, and responds fatally, or without freedom, to the pulses of the external universe. In the ascending development, by the aid of grace and good angels, the man, the Christian mystic, like St. Catharine, St. Theresa, or St. Bernardine of Sienna, and so many others of the saints of the Church, rises to spiritual freedom, and even to a certain extent, liberates the body from the fatalism of nature. The body itself seems to enter into the freedom of the spirit, and, through the free soul informing it, to be able to resist the action of necessary or unfree nature, as the vital principle enables the living body to resist and overcome the action of chemical affinity. The body is as it were spiritualized, not absolutely indeed, but partially, as if in anticipation of the resurrection, or rather, as pointing to a resurrection and its glorious transformation hereafter. It is baptized, participates, if I may so say, in the sanctifying grace infused into the soul, becomes pure, and even when the soul leaves it, emits a fragrant odor.[7] ----- Footnote 7: I do not forget here, nor do I intend to assert any thing against the doctrine of the Holy Council of Trent, that concupiscence remains after baptism, for the combat, or that the _fomes_ of sin remain, and that as long as one lives there is the possibility of sin. The body, in this life, is never wholly liberated and restored to its integral state; but that it is liberated in some measure, and that it in the saints, (in some saints at least,) in a degree participates, even this side the grave, in the freedom of the soul, I think is undeniable. ----- In the descending development, that is, in the abnormal development, in which we turn our backs on our Maker, who is at once our Original and End, our Creator and our Supreme Good, and tend in the direction from him, our soul lets go its mastery, and our body falls under the dominion of unfree nature, enters into the series of its laws, and is exposed to all its necessary and invincible forces. We become not merely sensual, but, in some sense, physical men, and act under and with the great physical agents of the universe. We become feeble and strong as the lightning whose bolt rends the oak, and is turned aside by a silken thread. Now to this abnormal development, mesmerism, in my judgment, belongs; and therefore, though abnormal, it is not necessarily preternatural. It belongs not to healthy but unhealthy nature, and its phenomena are never exhibited except in a subject naturally or artificially diseased. I have never known a person of vigorous constitution and robust health mesmerized. The experiments of Baron Reichenbach were all made on persons in ill health, for the most part on patients under medical treatment. The seeress of Provost was sickly, and suffering from an incurable malady; and it may be asserted as a general rule, that no one is a _subject_ of mesmerism whose constitution, especially the nervous constitution, is in its normal state. I have no doubt that many of the phenomena regarded by the vulgar as the effect of Satanic invasion, are to be explained by reference to this abnormal development, without the supposition of any direct agency of evil spirits. The precise limits of the power of this abnormal development we do not know, and therefore we are always to be exceedingly slow to assume the direct invasion of the devil to explain this or that extraordinary phenomenon, as Mr. Merton has already explained. The error of Mr. Cotton was in not distinguishing between abnormal phenomena artificially produced, and the phenomena of real demonic presence. He asked too much of us, and we gave him nothing. He failed to command from us the respect he deserved, and I am sorry for it. He was a worthy man in his way, and far less superstitious, and far more philosophical than those who thought it a mark of their superiority to ridicule him. But he is gone, and has in his own denomination left few behind who are worthy to step into his shoes. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to infer, from the fact that the proper mesmeric phenomena are explicable on natural principles, that the practice of mesmerism is lawful or not dangerous. It is an artificial disease, and injurious to the physical constitution. It moreover facilitates the Satanic invasion. Satan has no creative power, and can operate only on a nature created to his hands, and in accordance with conditions of which he has not the sovereign control. Ordinarily, he can invade our bodies only as they are in an abnormal state, and by availing himself of some natural force, it may be some fluid, or some invisible and imponderable agent like electricity, or what Baron Reichenbach calls od, and Mesmer animal magnetism, and the older magnetists called spirit of the world. The practice of mesmerism brings into play this force, and thus gives occasion to the devil, or exposes us to his malice and invasions. But, though it is unwise, as well as unscientific, to ascribe to Satan what is explicable on natural principles, the contrary error is the one which in our times is the most necessary to be guarded against. Nothing is more unphilosophical than to treat the dark facts of human history as unreal, or to attempt to explain them all without resort to demonic influence. Many of the facts recorded, no doubt, never took place. Many were the result of fraud, imposture, jugglery, and many are explicable by reference to the abnormal development of human nature; but after making all reasonable deductions for these, there remains a residuum, as Mr. Merton has said, which it is as absurd to attempt to explain without the action of evil spirits, as to explain the light of day without the sun, or the existence and preservation of the universe without God. Not otherwise can you ever succeed in explaining the introduction, establishment, persistence, and power of the various cruel, filthy, and revolting superstitions of the ancient heathen world, or of pagan nations in modern times. No genuine philosopher will attempt to explain them on natural principles alone. They reveal a more than human power, and we have no alternative but to ascribe them either to God or to the devil. We cannot ascribe them to God, for they were too foul and filthy, too deleterious in their effects, too debasing and enslaving in their influence, to be ascribed to a good source. They were, then, from Satan, operating upon man’s morbid nature, and permitted by Infinite Justice as a deserved punishment upon the Gentiles for their hatred of truth, and their apostasy from the primitive religion. Men left to themselves, to human nature alone, however low they might be prone to descend, never could descend so low as to worship wood and stone, four-footed beasts, and creeping things. To do this needs Satanic delusion. The same must be said of Mahometanism. The old theory, which made Mahomet an out-and-out impostor, who said, deliberately, “with malice aforethought,” “Go to now, let us make a new religion and impose it upon