The spiritualists who protest against the attribution of spiritualistic phenomena to the devil may be divided into two classes: 1st, Those who believe there is no such being as the devil; 2d, Those who, believing him to exist, think it unreasonable to attribute such phenomena as those under consideration to such a being.
To these first I can but admit that there is no demonstrating the devil; but, on the other hand, I would remind them that, in denying his existence, they are opposing themselves, 1st, to the religious instinct of the great mass of mankind, who are persuaded that life is a warfare, that there is an enemy. 2d, To the unwavering, explicit tradition of the Christian church. It is impossible to read the Gospels and the other records of the early church without having the idea of a battle, and an enemy against whom it is waged, brought prominently before you. Our Lord came to break the power of Satan, and to take away "the armor in which he trusted"; and the church was instituted for his detailed discomfiture. Every soul that is saved is regarded as a spoil snatched from the hand of the enemy; every one who is cast out of the church is delivered over to Satan.
Some of the earliest words of the church's ritual are words of defiance and adjuration of the enemy upon whom it was her mission to trample. Her exorcisms, for instance, in the baptism service testify to a consciousness of the devil's presence which is simply startling in its realism. He is never forgotten from the moment when, gently breathing on the child's face, she charges the unclean spirit to give place to the Holy Ghost, to the moment when he is cast out headlong, followed by the renunciations of his rescued victim.
The extreme antiquity of these exorcisms is sufficiently vindicated by the poetic paraphrase of Prudentius in the IVth century:
Moreover, though the devil is expelled in baptism, the church never lets her children lose sight of him. She is ever warning them in the words of S. Augustine: "Take care, afflicted mortals, take care that the evil one defile not ever this house of the body; that, introduced by the senses, he debauch not the soul's sanctity, nor cloud the intellectual light. This evil thing winds through all the inlets of the senses, moulds itself in forms, blends with colors, weds with sounds, lurks in anger and guileful speech, clothes itself in scents, transfuses itself in savors, and by a flood of troublous movement obscures the mind with evil desires, and fills with vapor the channels of the understanding, through which the soul's ray might shed the light of reason."[193] Voltaire was quite in the right when he set down a priest who would fain compromise with infidelity by throwing up the devil, in this wise: "Belief in the devil is an essential point of Christianity: no Satan, no Saviour."
Those who, admitting the devil to exist, deny that spiritualistic phenomena are diabolical, urge various pleas which I purpose to examine in detail. They insist upon, 1st, the innocent and friendly character of the phenomena. 2d, The difficulty of believing that the devil would be allowed to take so great a liberty with respectable persons without some sort of understanding on their parts. 3d, The fact that spiritualism is a great and most efficient exponent of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God in a materialistic generation.
Now, as regards the first plea, I simply deny the fact of the innocence. I submit that pantheism and the non-existence of eternal punishment are immoral doctrines, the spread of which is calculated to make the world worse; and that these are pre-eminently the doctrines of spiritualism, taught always indirectly, and standing out more and more clearly in proportion as the pious twaddle in which they are incorporated for the sake of weak brethren is laid aside, and the spiritualistic element can give itself free way.
Demoralizing, also, is the distaste which spiritualism creates for all religion, inasmuch as religion lives by faith. An example of this is given in Experiences with D. D. Home, p. 60. The party of spiritualists had been conversing, as they imagined, with the spirit of the child of one of them, lately dead, the body, in its coffin, being in the room in which they were sitting. After the burial, we are told, "On our way home, every one remarked that the burial-service, which is, in general, so impressive, had that day, while in church, sounded strangely flat and unprofitable. Mrs. Cox asked how it was that the clergyman had not used the words, 'dust to dust, ashes to ashes, earth to earth.' We assured her that he had; but she declared she had not heard them, although standing as near to him as any of us."
In other respects spiritualism is by no means innocent. It is impossible to set aside the strong testimony, not merely of medical men, who might be supposed prejudiced, but of so many who have either practised spiritualism themselves, or had spiritualist friends, as to the gradual exhaustion of the vital powers which it produces when persevered in to any extent. And, again, it is by far the most efficacious destructive of the barriers of propriety, particularly between the sexes. No one can read much even of the most respectable séances without feeling that the worthy persons who take part in them, whilst securing, may be, the perfect propriety of the particular séance in which they are engaged, are lending the cloak of their respectability to an institution especially marked out for the dissemination of corruption. My contention is that the devil has in spiritualism the prospect of an excellent harvest of evil, of which he has received a very sufficient earnest.
With regard to the gentle behavior, which is supposed to be inconsistent with the character of one who is spoken of as "a roaring lion," I would observe that this gentleness on the part of the spirits is by no means invariable; see the violent scene (Experiences, p. 154) in which Home is tormented and screams; or, again, where the company is struck by the "disagreeable and fearful glowing" of his eyes (Rep., p. 208). However, it must be confessed that the general character of the manifestations is gentleness itself; but of this sort of gentleness there are plenty of examples in accounts of mediæval magic, when spirits have persevered for a considerable time in gentle, not to say pious, behavior, and, indeed, only came out as devils when worried by the church. The following is taken from the Gloria Posthuma S. Ignatii.[194]
A little girl of nine, the daughter of an artilleryman at Malta, was made quite a pet of by spirits, who were always bringing her little presents of jewelry and fruit, at one time giving her fresh figs in January. She was frightened just at first; but they talked so charmingly of their being creatures of the good God as well as she, and seemed to know so much about the inside of churches, that the child could not but think well of them. They did her a wonderful number of kind services of various sorts. For a long time the child's parents, who never saw the spirits, but only the effects they produced, acquiesced, and seemed to think it rather a good joke. There was only one thing that troubled them, and which ultimately made them call in the priest, and this was that the spirits, who showed themselves amiably enough disposed towards the family in general, had an exceptional spite against one little boy. They never saw him come into the room without showing disgust and saying all sorts of unpleasant things about him to their little protégée. There was nothing peculiar about the boy, except that he served Mass every morning. When the priest was sent for, and the house exorcised, the amiable spirits, as is invariably the case under these circumstances, lost their temper, and went off in ugly shapes, vomiting fire; in fact, to borrow the spiritualist expression, showing themselves very unformed spirits indeed.
With this account we may compare Mr. Fusedale's extraordinary letter (Rep., p. 255), in which he says that the spirits habitually play with his children and amuse them by showing them pretty scenes in a polished globe. He tells us that he has himself seen one of these scenes—a ship hemmed in by ice in an Arctic sea—and that he has often witnessed his little boy shoved across the room in a chair, his legs being too short to reach the ground, and "no human agency near." The two accounts are not unlike, except that in the second story the materials for playing out the last scene are wanting.
As regards the second plea, no doubt there is something odd, at first sight, in so many respectable persons having got into such intimate relations with the devil without knowing anything about it; and though there are not wanting individual instances in the history of diablerie, I must confess that I have met with nothing of the sort on so large a scale. But then, we must remember that there never has been a time when respectables as a body were so irreligious, and it is religion that is the great obstacle to such unconscious intercourse with Satan. No Christian who knows anything of the way in which the ancient world was exorcised need be surprised at the devil's being able considerably to enlarge his sphere, as the church has been compelled to narrow hers.
At first, indeed, it seemed as if this was not to be the case. The philosophy of the last century boasted, with some plausibility, that it had done what the church, with all her exorcisms, had never succeeded in doing—that it had swept away Satan altogether, along with his great adversary. Church and devil had gone down together; and for a time people persuaded themselves that the devil, anyhow, had gone. In the solemn obsequies of the whole caste of superstition, as the world fondly thought it, the devil was carried out first, dead, hopelessly dead, free-thinking priests, such as Voltaire rebuked, bearing up the pall. Though many a mocking requiescat has been chanted over his grave, like that of the church, it has proved to be a cenotaph; and now that he appears again, we can hardly wonder if he finds himself more at home than ever since Christianity came into the world.
Satan has ever been, as the schoolmen called him, God's ape (simius Dei), reproducing in the mysteries of the "Sabbath" the rites, and even the organization, of the church; but now, after the world's reiterated rejection of Christ, it would seem that the enemy has been permitted to carry the parody a step further. Not only wherever two or three are gathered together in his name is he in their midst, but, good shepherd-wise, he is allowed to seek the sheep that had been lost. Uninvited he seeks them in the unromantic circle of XIXth-century life, entrenched as this is amongst elements the least promising, one should think, for mysticism of any sort. In bright, cheerful, modern rooms, amongst the rustle of innocent commonplaces, he finds his opportunity and his profit, and gently and genially weans his victims from what fragments of dogmatic religion they may still retain to the liberty of his children. At least, there is nothing unnatural in this view.
The third plea is, in the spiritualist's mind, irresistible, and it has had, doubtless, considerable influence in preventing various religious persons from condemning spiritualism. The great evil of the day is materialism; now, then, it is asked, is it conceivable that the devil should appear as the advocate of the two great spiritual doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God; nay, should actually convert numbers to a belief in these doctrines? I answer, 1st, that when the devil first came forward as the champion of human liberty, he certainly did preach both the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. "Ye shall not die." "Ye shall be as gods." True, he was denying in one breath the death of the body and the death of the soul; but this is quite in the fashion of spiritualism, which invariably denounces any use of the word "death." 2d, That the doctrine of the immortality of the soul loses all disciplinary force when converted into that of endless, inevitable progression. The possibility of a miserable finality has been accepted by the noblest philosophers as a necessary phase in that melody of a future life which, to use the expression of Socrates (Phædo, cap. 63), it is "so necessary for each man to sing to himself." There are some, he had said (cap. 62), whom "a befitting fate casts into Tartarus, whence they never come out." And in the last book of the Republic, where human life is described as going on in an indefinite series of metempsychosis, we are shown, as the generations sweep round, a pit into which the very bad fall out of the circle, never to join it again. Nor is the doctrine of the existence of God when converted into pantheism of more avail. A deity who is the mere terminus ad quem of necessary evolution can neither be feared as judge nor worshipped as God.
Long experience has taught the evil one that man cannot do without religious sentiment; so he aims at getting its circulation into his own hands by coming forward boldly as the advocate of its cardinal points. He is determined to risk no more disappointing losses, by striving to feed men on the dry husks of materialism, which are insufficient to support life, and are sure, sooner or later, to provoke nausea and repulsion. As to those who have been really converted from scepticism by the spirits, nay, have been landed, as has sometimes been the case, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, I can only say, Blessed be God! who has ever exercised seignorial rights upon the devil's fishing.
So much for the spiritualist amendment. I shall now proceed to consider the positive arguments and evidence tending to show that spiritualism is diabolic.
1st. I notice its shrinking and disgust for all active Catholicism which extends to the use of fragments of Catholic truth in the hands of zealous sectarians. This antipathy, I contend, is invariable; but I must guard against being misunderstood. I admit that the spirits have indulged from time to time in a considerable amount of Catholic, or, I should rather say Ritualist, talk. Several instances may be found in Mr. Home's séances in which holy-water and crucifixes are spoken of with a certain amount of unction. I admit, too, that though sometimes the spirits are discomfited by the mere presence of a religious object—a medal, relic, etc.—this is by no means ordinarily the case. It is quite possible for religious objects to be so presented as in no way to embarrass the spirits, who have been sometimes permitted to carry them about with apparent tenderness, even as Satan was allowed to carry our Lord and set him on a pinnacle of the temple. A sword requires to be handled with a certain amount of vigor and intention if it is to avail as a weapon. If holy objects are brought out simply as so many Catholic testimonials and orders of merit for the spirits, I know nothing in the nature of things or in the promises of God to prevent the devil wearing them in his button-hole. On the other hand, a man uncertain of the spirits' character, but with an honest and lively intention of rejecting them so far as they are God's enemies, "fugite partes adversæ," if he adjures them in his name, will either reduce them to silence and impotence, or extort the confession that they are devils.
It would be easy to produce numbers of instances of the extraordinarily hostile sensitiveness of the spirits in regard to the use in their presence of Catholic prayers, medals, relics, etc. In fact, in order to avoid being a non-conductor, if not an obstructive, a certain undogmatic attitude of mind is required. We need not, indeed, reject Christ, but we must be prepared to look for another beside him, if not in his place. Mr. Home (Rep., p. 188) says that, for the medium's success, "the only thing necessary is that the people about should be harmonious." He explains that "the 'harmonious' feeling is simply that which you get on going into a room and finding all the people present such as you feel at home with at once.... Scepticism is not a hindrance; an unsympathetic person is." I have no doubt that this account is perfectly accurate so far as it goes. A Christian's hatred of what he suspects to be the devil, and Professor Tyndall's contemptuous disgust for what he considers a piece of cheating, are both no doubt natural impediments to spiritualistic manifestations; although, in the former case, it may well be that it is something more.
The following scene from Prudentius (Apoth., 460-502) illustrates what I have said as to Christian rite and formulary availing against sorcery, not as a charm, but as a weapon of faith. It must be remembered that Julian had been baptized, but his baptism had no effect in breaking the magic rites. We venture thus to render it:
The fathers have the completest confidence in the efficacy of Christian weapons in Christian hands, and even, when used honestly, in hands not yet Christian, to defeat sorcery.
Tertullian (Apol., c. 23) throws out this bold challenge: "Let any one, known to have a devil, come before your tribunal. That spirit, if bidden speak by a Christian, shall as truly confess himself a devil as he has elsewhere falsely declared himself a god. Or bring forward some one of those who are thought to be divine patients, who, sniffing up the altar's deity, conceive of the steam, violent retchers with panting utterance; the heavenly Virgin herself, the promiser of rain, Æsculapius too; ... if they do not all confess themselves devils, not daring to lie to a Christian, then and there shed that insolent Christian's blood."
Nor is it only the passionate Tertullian who can speak thus. S. Athanasius (De Incarn., num. 48) is hardly less energetic: "Let any one come who wishes to test what we have said; and let him, in the midst of the manifestations of demons, and the guiles of oracles, and the marvels of magic, use the sign of the cross, which these mock at, or merely name Christ, he shall soon see how quickly the demons are routed, the oracles silenced, the whole magic art and its charms utterly wiped out."
The instances of modern spiritualist manifestations being stopped by religious adjuration are very frequent.
Mr. Glover (Rep., p. 205) had been asking the spirits about the time of our Lord's coming; they had answered glibly enough, and had pointed out several texts in the Bible, when, apparently on a sudden impulse, "he made a cross in a circle, and asked, in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, if the communications were of God, and the answer was 'No.' He then asked if they were of the devil, and the answer was 'Yes.'"
Mr. Chevalier (Rep., p. 218) says that, after having received several communications purporting to come from his recently-lost child, "One day the table turned at right angles, and went into a corner of the room. I asked, 'Are you my child?' but obtained no answer. I then said, 'Are you from God?' but the table was silent. I then said, 'In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, I command you to answer; are you from God?' One loud rap—a negative—was then given. 'Do you believe,' said I, 'that Christ died to save us from sin?' The answer was, 'No.' 'Accursed spirit!' said I, 'leave the room.' The table then walked across the room, entered the adjoining one, and quickened its steps. It was a small, tripod table. It walked with a sidelong walk. It went to the door, shook the handle, and I opened it. The table then walked into the passage, and I repeated the adjuration, receiving the same answer. Fully convinced that I was dealing with an accursed spirit, I opened the street-door, and the table was immediately silent; no movement or rap was heard. I returned alone to the drawing-room, and asked if there were any spirits present. Immediately I heard steps, like those of a little child, outside the door. I opened it, and the small table went into the corner as before, just as my child did when reproved for a fault. These manifestations continued until I used the adjuration, and I always found that they changed or ceased when the name of God was used."
Miss Anna Blackwell (Rep., p. 220) gives her evidence immediately after Mr. Chevalier's. Whilst admitting the fact that the spirits often call themselves devils, she suggests a twofold explanation: 1st. That they are coarse, undeveloped spirits. 2d. That they are vexed at the rude treatment they have received. She is speaking of her sister's mediumship: "The spirit would use her hand to write what communication had to be made. The spirits wrote what was good and bad. One wanted to sign himself Satan and Beelzebub; but," continues Miss Blackwell, "my sister did not believe in the existence of any such a spirit, and she said, 'No; if you are permitted to come to me, it is not to tell such outrageous lies. If you persist in trying to impose upon me, you sha'n't write.' I have been present at many such little fights. She would resist the spirit, and, when she saw the capital S of Satan being written, would twist her hand. The spirit has then written, 'I hate you, because I cannot deceive you.' ... We never begin without prayer. We say to the spirits that wish to deceive us, 'Dear spirits, we are all imperfect; we will endeavor to benefit you by our lights, in so far as they are superior to yours.' Sometimes they would overturn and break the table; yet they were rendered better by our kindness. We would never dream of addressing one as an 'accursed spirit.' From one who was very violent, and by whom I have been myself struck, we have received progressive messages, saying, 'We are going up higher now; we have, through your help, broken the chains of earth, and we leave you.' When my sister found the S being written, or the capital B for Beelzebub, she would say with kindness, but firmness, 'Dear spirit, you must not deceive; it is not for such tricks, but for a good end, that you are permitted to come.'"
It is often said that the education question is the question of the day; but I was hardly prepared to find that it embraced the spirit-world. I know not which to pity most, those to whom the responsibility has been brought home of having to educate a vast number of imperfect spirits, who are, as Miss Blackwell admits, "all in a manner devils," or the wretched spirits who have thus to begin all over again as day-scholars at a dame's school.
According to Miss Blackwell's theory, the church is evidently responsible for the existence of the devil. So far as he can be said to exist at all, he is the church's creation; for, instead of doing her best to instruct and humanize the rude but well-meaning spirit Arab thrown upon her hands, she has goaded him to desperation by addressing him as "Maledicte damnate." Oh! if she had only called him "dear spirit," with Miss Blackwell, he might ere now have comported himself conformably, instead of masquerading under such uncomfortable names as Satan and Beelzebub and doing a world of mischief.
My second argument is the similarity between spiritualism and mediæval witchcraft. I have already noticed incidentally several points of resemblance, and would now draw attention to what is, perhaps, the most important point of all. Of course, such similarity has no argumentative force if Miss Blackwell's theory be admitted.
As I have before remarked, one of the most prominent characteristics of mediæval magic was its being a parody of the church. The principal ceremony of the "Sabbath" was a diabolical burlesque of the Mass, in which the devil preached, and the celebrant stood on his head, and the servers genuflected backwards. Now, amongst modern spiritualists I have discovered no such violation of decency; the parody is not so complete, and, on the whole, it is a decorous one; but it unmistakably exists, and is on the increase. It is by no means uncommon to assemble the spirit circle before an altar with crucifix and candles. In Experiences with D. D. Home we find that that gentleman has quite a craving in this direction. He baptizes with sand, he stretches himself in the form of a cross, imitates the phenomena of Pentecost, the rushing wind, the dove, the tongues of fire, and is perpetually anointing his friends with some mysterious substance, which apparently emanates from his hands.
Against what has been said on behalf of the devil hypothesis the spiritualist can urge nothing, except the by no means unwavering testimony of the spirits themselves, and the spiritualist's own recognition of the identity of his departed friends. As to the spirits' testimony, it is worth just nothing. Evil spirits have always personated the dead, as philosophers, fathers, schoolmen with one accord testify. As to the recognition of friends, I should wish to treat with all due consideration the natural craving of friends to obtain some intelligence of their departed friends; but, on the one hand, minute imitations of manner are certainly not beyond the devil's power; on the other, affection is anything but keen-sighted, and the rapture of a communication at all, when once the idea is admitted, is apt to throw all minor details into the shade. Was not Lady Tichbourne able to trace the features of her drowned boy in the Claimant's photograph?
Wherever the spirits have represented persons of known character and ability—men, for instance, who have left a gauge of their mental qualities in their writings, like Shakespeare or Bacon—the personation has been invariably a lamentable and most palpable failure. That the spirits of clever men do not at all talk up to the mark is notorious and generally admitted by candid spiritualists. Mr. Simkiss (Rep., p. 133) says, "Beyond solving the important question, 'If a man die, shall he live again?' by the very fact of spirits communicating and proving their identity, there is to me little that is consistent or reliable in what is revealed through different mediums." Mr. Varley (p. 168) endeavors to explain the feebleness of spirit-talk by want of education and development on the part of the mediums by which their communications are conditioned. I do not say that there is not something in this; but surely the communications of genius would, under the most adverse circumstances, take the form rather of broken sense than fluent twaddle.
The extreme irritation invariably manifested by the spirits towards anything like suspicion, particularly if it take the form of trying to subject them to a religious test, is surely grotesquely unnatural in the case of spirits who have shuffled off the coil of mortality, with whom life's fitful fever has passed. We have at least some right to expect that persons who in their lifetime had a reasonable amount of dignity and patience should have increased rather than diminished their stock of virtue with their enlarged experience, unless, indeed, they have so lost God as to have lost themselves.
It is difficult to conceive a justification for the spiritualist who, believing that he is dealing with spirits, refuses to entertain the idea that these may be devils, and makes no attempt to bring them to a test. His best excuse, perhaps, would be that the world has to such an extent lost its standard of faith and morals wherewith to test anything.
Spiritualists may object that some thing, at least, of what I have urged against them avails as much, or even more, against the devil hypothesis. Thus, if the spirit of Bacon is too nonsensical for Bacon, à fortiori he is too nonsensical for Lucifer, who must needs be the cleverer spirit of the two. Upon this I observe that the retort shows a complete ignorance of the devil's character and position. "The character of a myth," some one interposes. Well, I am not now discussing his existence. Even a myth must be in keeping. You have no right to give Cerberus four heads, or make him mew instead of bark, for all he is a myth. I suppose people have been seduced by Milton's grand conception of the "archangel fallen" and the splendid melancholy of his solemn rhetoric; but the devil of theology never says anything wise or fine. He is, indeed, understood to retain the natural powers with which he was created; but he is wholly averse from the God whom all wise and fine utterances do, in their measure, praise. Wherefore all such are in the highest degree repugnant to Satan. Neither are such costly and uncongenial deceits necessary to beguile man. Selfinterest and curiosity may be gratified at a cheaper rate.
The concessions of spiritualists themselves in reality reduce the difference between us very considerably. I have gained all that I care for, if it be conceded that these spirits may be the spirits of the damned, who are equivalently devils; and Miss Blackwell admits that these spirits are "in a manner devils," and Mr. Home (Experiences, p. 167) says of some of them: "I tell you you do not know the danger, they are so fearfully low—the very lowest and most material of all. You might almost call them 'accursed.' They will get a power over you that you cannot break through." The one great difference between us is that consistent spiritualists hold that there is no finality; that these irrepressible devils—for they are always obtruding themselves amongst the respectable spirit guests—may be reformed. But even so, would it not be well to consider whether the chances are not in favor of our being ruined before they are restored? Once and again it may be that a spirit speaks to them who is from God, even as God spake sometimes in the high places of Baal.[195] But God is not wont to reward imprudence, and, on their own showing, spiritualists stand convicted of the most extraordinary rashness in thus exposing themselves to the whirlwind of spirit influence without having a spiritual constitution, so to speak, or any canons or habits of spiritual life wherewith the influence can be tested.
Man, as Alvernus finely says, is a being created "upon the horizon of two worlds"—the world of sense and the world of spirit. But in the sensible world only is he at home, wherein his material nature is sufficiently developed for him to hold his own; whereas, in the spirit-world, with which he is also in contact, the God of both worlds must be his guide, or, horsed upon his excited imagination, he may easily be lost in the wilderness, and fall a prey to lawless spirits. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the sobriety of the Catholic Church in her dealings with the spirit-world and the rashness of spiritualists. The church has always recognized as a reality spirit communications of various kinds, good and bad; but she has always tested most rigidly the character of the spirits; and even when these have satisfied every test, she has only allowed their sanctity to be highly probable; she has never, so to speak, granted them her testamur. They are ever on their trial, inasmuch as she insists that the lessons they communicate shall be in strict subordination to the rule of faith and morals; in other words, to the ordinary duties of life. The church has ever shown herself keenly alive to the dangers of supernatural intercourse. She has been jealously on her guard against overwrought sentimentalism, vanity, or any strained or undue development of one part of the patient's moral nature at the expense of the rest.
Whilst she prizes amongst the choicest of her devotional treasures the private revelations of her saints, such as those of S. Bridget, S. Gertrude, S. Catharine of Sienna, and many more, yet if one consults the great masters of Christian spiritualism, if I may so speak—such as S. John of the Cross, for example—who have themselves experienced the favors of which they treat—the ecstasy, the vision, and the prophecy—one is more struck than by anything else by the stern common sense of their precautions against deception, and the sad sobriety of their confession that, after all, you can hardly ever be quite sure that you are not the victim of an illusion.
That a certain moral discipline is necessary in order not to be deceived, even when you are dealing with one who has a true spirit of prophecy, is implied in the words of Ezechiel, cap. xiv.: "For every man of the house of Israel, and every stranger among the proselytes in Israel, if he separate himself from me, and place his idols in his heart, and set the stumbling-block of his iniquity before his face and come to the prophet to inquire of me by him: I the Lord will answer him by myself.... And when the prophet shall err and speak a word, I the Lord have deceived that prophet.... According to the iniquity of him that inquireth, so shall the iniquity of the prophet be."
S. Augustine (De Gen. ad Lit., lib. xii. c. 13, 14) might be warning those spiritualists who place their security in the peacefulness and truthfulness of their communications: "The discernment of spirits is very difficult. When the evil spirit plays the peaceful (quasi tranquillus agit), and, having possessed himself of a man's spirit without harassing his body, says what he is able, enunciates true doctrine, and gives useful information, transfiguring himself into an angel of light, to the end that, when persons have trusted him in what is clearly good, he may afterwards win them to himself. I do not think he can be discerned except by means of that gift of which the apostle saith when speaking of the diverse gifts of God: 'To another discernment of spirits.' It is no great thing to discover him when he has gone so far as to do anything against good morals or the rule of faith, for then he is discovered by many; but by the aforesaid gift, in the very beginning, whilst to many he still appears good, his badness is found out forthwith."
Again (Confess., lib. x. c. 35), he speaks of the danger of seeking supernatural communications: "In the religious life itself, men tempt God when they demand signs and marvels, not for any one's healing, but simply for the sake of the experience. In this vast wood, full of snares and dangers, what have I not had to drive away from my heart! What suggestions and machinations does not the enemy bring to bear upon me, that I may ask for a sign! But I beseech thee that even as all consent thereto is far from me, so it may be ever further and further."
Amort, De Rev. Priv., p. 20, from Gravina, says: "It is often easier to establish the certainty of the deceitfulness of an apparition than of its truthfulness, because bad angels have their own characteristics, which good angels never imitate; on the other hand, the bad often imitate the appearance and manner of the good."
Amort, ibid., p. 104, from S. John of the Cross, says: "All apparitions, visions, revelations, consolations, sweetnesses, sensations, etc., which are received by the external senses, should ever and always be refused by the soul as much as in it lies.... In most cases they are diabolical.... When they are from God, they are sent in order that they may be despised, and that the soul, by means of the victory wherewith it overcomes these pleasures of the senses, divine though they be, may be led to the things of the understanding."
Ibid., p. 115: "When the words in any supposed revelation take the form of a process of reasoning after the application of the soul in contemplation, God, the natural reason, and the devil may all three concur in the same process."
No test of the holiness of a manifestation is considered quite satisfactory save that of a continued increase in virtue, especially in humility, in degrees corresponding to the increase of the favor; for the devil will not consent to be a master of virtue. When S. Teresa had scruples as to the source of her favors, it was thus her director consoled her.
So cautious is Catholic mysticism; whilst spiritualists are not afraid to keep a sort of spirit-ordinary, where
I repeat it, spiritualists who think they are communicating with spirits, and take no pains to test their character, as though the hypothesis of a devil were absurd, are inexcusably silly.
I must now consider some objections in the mouth of persons who, without pretending that they have found any satisfactory solution of the question in the theories of unconscious cerebration or psychic force, are nevertheless exceedingly impressed by the strong psychic element in the phenomena of spiritualism—the apparent necessity for the presence of one or more persons of a peculiar nervous organization, for a certain harmonious mixture, or rather melodious articulation, of the company, in order to produce the desired effect. "Surely," they say, "such law, i.e., such regular alternation of cause and effect, as can be discovered is psychic. So far as we can subject the phenomena to ordinary scientific tests, everything points to their being the product of the psychic force of a certain peculiarly constituted company." This is the tone of Mr. Cox's recent letter to the Times, and Mr. Edwin Arnold's letter in the Report is quite in the same key.
My answer is that I admit all that they say. Of course, so much of law as is detected is psychic. There is no other law at work within the sphere of our discovery. The question is whether there are not indications of an influence at work which is irreducible to psychic laws, whilst using, in a partially abnormal manner, psychic force.
Mr. Lewes will urge (letter, Rep., p. 264): "I might propose as an hypothesis that the chair leaped because a kobold tilted it up; ... but you would not believe in the presence of a kobold, because his presence would enable you to explain the phenomena." Most indubitably I should, if no less an hypothesis would explain the phenomena; particularly if I had otherwise reason to believe in the existence and operation of kobolds. I should hold the likelihood of the hypothesis of his action in the particular case as steadily increasing in proportion as the other hypotheses tended to break down.
"No guess," Mr. Lewes insists, "need be rejected, if it admits of verification; no guess that cannot be verified is worth a moment's attention." The last part of this trenchant dictum is worth a moment's attention. If it simply mean that it is not worth a scientific man's while to attempt a direct scientific examination of what clearly admits of no such treatment, I can only say that, however much the scientific man may sometimes need the lesson, it is neither more nor less than a truism. If it mean that no hypothesis is to be regarded by any one as "worth a moment's attention" which science can never hope directly to verify, it is conspicuously untrue. Even a terra incognita is not without scientific interest as marking a boundary; nay, it may be scientifically proved to contain a place known to exist and proved not to exist in any known lands.
Of course, the devil, or kobold, if Mr. Lewes prefers it, cannot be verified in the sense of caught and handed over to scientific men as a specimen of spiritualistic fauna. Neither do I suppose he can be really detected, except by the standard of Catholic truth, by Catholic tests, and Catholic weapons; and even then, in the eyes of unbelievers, he will be no further identified than as an adverse intelligence in a very bad temper. But surely this is enough, where men's minds have not been reduced to mere machines for registering rigid scientific results, to secure the devil hypothesis something more than "a moment's attention."
What law we detect in spiritualistic phenomena I conceive to be the working of the conditions in subordination to which the devil is able to communicate with man. This subordination is probably owing, in part, to the nature of things which compels certain things to accost certain other things in one way and not another, in part to the merciful reservation of God. It would seem as if the spirits were, on the whole, prevented from being more irreligious than the prevailing tone of the company, or at least of the most irreligious portion of it. It may very well be that the conditions limiting diabolical intercourse are more complex and imperious, where the spirit "quasi tranquillus agit, without harassing the body." In mediæval diablerie, the demon is often represented as hindered or assisted by instruments of a purely physical character; thus Coleridge makes Christabel lift the enchantress over the threshold. A crowd, by neutralizing individual resistance, may present fewer obstacles to the devil—nay, may supply a medium of its own; just as frightened cattle huddled-together in a thunder-storm are said, by the steam-column arising from their tightly compacted bodies, to furnish a conductor for the lightning.
I have indicated in several places of these essays what I conceive to be the objects the devil has in view in lending himself to spiritualism. His main object, I can hardly doubt, is to do with religious sentiment what we are told Mr. Fisk tried to do with the gold currency of America—"corner it," get its circulation into his own hands. In the numberless cases where religion is nothing more than sentiment, he is only too likely to succeed; second-sight is so much more satisfying to the imagination, and at the same time so far more modest in its demands upon the will, than faith. The spread of spiritualism in the last few years is notorious, and there is every prospect of its continuing. Whether it will ever enter upon a new phase of existence, and become a fact publicly acknowledged by scientific men, is a question. It has never been so recognized amongst civilized nations. Whatever miracles, divine or diabolical, were meant to effect, it was not to overbalance the general sway of purely human power, of which this world is the appointed stage. As a general rule, the brilliant series of miracles by which the Christian martyr has baffled death in the presence of admiring crowds has ended in quiet decapitation at a convenient mile-stone. Many a time, doubtless, has the Roman headsman flattered himself that his good straight-down blow effectually upset that fine story made up out of a drugged lion and a fagot of green wood, which had somehow imposed upon so many stupid people. Not, of course, that I am denying that there have been miracles which imperiously asserted themselves over all obstacles, like the series which ended in Pharao's drowning; but, as a general rule, God has spoken once and again, and then prosaic obstinacy has been given its way. On these occasions, God has no doubt submitted himself to a general law which he has made for all direct spiritual interference, and which he mercifully enforces with especial strictness in the case of the devil.
Any civilized nation engaged in active pursuits will always be likely to contain, one should think, a majority among its scientific men who will be unfitted to experience, and indisposed to believe in, and still more to acknowledge, the phenomena of spiritualism. But it is impossible to say; the spiritualistic system as developed by Allan Kardec (see Miss Blackwell's communication, Rep., p 284) seems to lend itself in a remarkable way to some of the most prominent scientific tendencies of the day. If ever Darwinists should stand in need of the consolations of religious enthusiasm, they might find a congenial home in spiritualism. In the vast system of metempsychosis to which Miss Blackwell introduces us, we have all the Darwinian stages and to spare. First in order comes the "primordial fluid," "containing all the elements of derived existence," "the first substantiation of creative thought." "There are three orders or modes of substantiality"—"psychic substance," and "corporeal substance," and "dynamic substance, or force," which last is stated to partake of the nature of the two other modes, and to be the intermediary between them.
(P. 300) "Every state of the psychic element determines corresponding vibrations of the dynamic element, which, effecting corresponding aggregations of the atoms of the material element, produce the substance or body which is the material expression of that state." The soul's magnetic envelope, "perisprit," is at once its first garment and the instrument by which it aggregates to itself the elements of its body.
This system embraces a twofold metempsychosis—that of formation and that of reformation. The first is the process by which the impersonal psychic element is gradually prepared for individualization or the attainment of conscious personality by being transfused progressively through the mineral, vegetable, and animal worlds—the same process, but with a different final cause, it would seem, as that described by the poet: