The Prophetic Faculty: War and Peace.
In our last issue, the psychometric faculty of prophecy was illustrated by predictions of peace, while generals, statesmen, and editors were promising a gigantic war. In this number the reader will find a grand prediction of war, while statesmen and states were anticipating peace, and a southern statesman, even upon the brink of war, offered to drink all the blood that would be shed.
The strength of the warlike spirit and prediction at the time psychometry was prophesying peace was conspicuous even as late as the ninth of March, when the London correspondent of the Sun wrote as follows:
“An eminent Russian general with whom I have talked believes the plan of Russian attack on Austria is fully developed. Galicia is to be the battleground between the two countries. Russia will enter the province without trouble, as there is nothing to hinder her. Then she will make a dash to secure the important strategic railroad which runs parallel with the Galician frontier, and seek to drive the Austrians over the Carpathians.
“That Galicia will witness the first fighting is generally admitted, as also that the possession of the strategic railroad, running as it does just at the rear of the Austrian positions, would be the most vital question. It may be interesting to say that military men of whatever nationality look upon an early war as a certain thing. They are not content to say they believe war is coming; they are absolutely positive of it, and each little officer has his own personal way of conclusively proving that this sort of peace cannot go on any longer.
“Meanwhile there are lots of straws floating about this week, which indicate that international winds are still blowing toward war. From Russian Poland there is reported an interruption in all kinds of business, owing to the war scare. Manufacturers refuse to accept orders from private persons, and financial institutions have still further weakened business by reducing their credit to a minimum. A letter from St. Petersburg tells of the tremendous enthusiasm of the troops at the review by the Czar on last Saturday, of the wild cheering for his imperial Majesty, of the loud and strident whistles audible above the roar of the cannon with which the officers command their men, and of the general blending of barbaric fierceness and courage with modern discipline and fighting improvements.
“In Vienna the troops are hard at work practising with the Numannlicher repeating rifle, with which all have been provided. The Sunday observance act, usually rigorously enforced, has been suspended, that the government orders for military supplies may be completed two weeks earlier than contracted for.
“The business of the Hotchkiss gun-making concern is shown to have increased one hundred per cent with the war scare, and the eagerness to secure the stock, which now stands at thirty per cent premium, shows a conviction among monied men. The capital has been subscribed fifteen times over.”
The persistent prediction of peace was speedily fulfilled. March 12 my statement was sent to the press, and March 22 Bismarck said to Prince Rudolph of Austria that “peace is assured to Europe for 1887,” and newspaper correspondents announce that the war alarm is over. Mr. Frederick Harrison, who is travelling on foot in France, writes that he has found no one who desires war, and that the people are not even thinking of it.
What is the popular judgment, or even the judgment of popular leaders worth upon any great question? The masses of mankind have their judgments enmeshed and inwoven in a web of mechanical habituality, compelling them to believe that what is and has been must continue to be in the future, thus limiting their conceptions to the commonplace. Their leaders do not rise to nobler conceptions, for if they did not sympathize with the popular, commonplace conceptions and prejudices they would not be leaders.
“We deem it safe to assert,” says Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten in her most valuable and interesting “History of Modern Spiritualism,” “from opinions formed upon an extensive and intimate knowledge of both North and South, and a general understanding of the politics and parties in both sections, that any settlement of the questions between them by the sword was never deliberately contemplated, and that the outbreak, no less than the magnitude and length of the mighty struggle, was all, humanly speaking, forced on by the logic of events, rather than through the preconcerted action of either section of the country. We say this much to demonstrate the truly prophetic character of many of the visions and communications which circulated amongst the Spiritualists prior to the opening of the war.”
Not only was it prophesied by the Quaker Joseph Hoag thirty years in advance, but more fully prophesied from the spirit world by the spirit of Gen. Washington, and again most eloquently predicted through the lips of Mrs. E. Hardinge Britten in 1860. Yet who among all the leaders of the people knew anything of these warnings, or was sufficiently enlightened to have paid them any respect? The petition of 15,000 Spiritualists was treated with contemptuous ridicule by the American Senate, and even the demonstrable invention of Morse was subjected to ridicule in Congress. Congressmen stand on no higher moral plane than the people who elect them, and it is the moral faculties that elevate men into the atmosphere of pure truth.
But ah! could we have had a Congress and State Legislatures in 1860, composed of men sufficiently elevated in sentiment to realize the state of the nation and the terrible necessity of preserving the peace by conciliatory statesmanship, that four years of bloody horror and devastation might have been spared.
Will the time ever come when nations shall be guided by wisdom sufficient to avoid convulsions and calamities? Not until there is sufficient intelligence and wisdom to appreciate the science of man, to understand the wondrous faculties of the human soul, to follow their guidance, and to listen to the wisdom of our ancestors as they speak to us from a higher world.
The prophecies to which I would call attention now, came from the upper world, and came unheeded and unproclaimed! Great truths are always buried in silence, if possible, when they first arrive. It is probable that the grandest prophecies in their far-reaching scope will always come from such sources, and the grandest seers will be inspired. The grandest prophecy of the ultimate destiny and power of “Anthropology” came to me direct from an exalted source in the spirit world, and no human hand had aught to do with its production. But the human psychometric faculty has the same prophetic power in a more limited and more practical sphere. We have no reason to affirm that the wonderful personal prophecies of Cazotte on the brink of the French Revolution, stated in the “Manual of Psychometry,” were at all dependent on spiritual agency.
The prophecy of our great American calamity, which purports to have come from the spirit of Gen. Washington, appears in a book published by Josiah Brigham in 1859, of which few of my readers have any knowledge. The messages were written by the hand of the famous medium, Joseph D. Stiles, between 1854 and 1857, at the house of Josiah Brigham in Quincy, Mass., and were published at Boston in 1859, in a large volume of 459 pages, entitled “Messages from the Spirit of John Quincy Adams.” The medium was in an unconscious trance, and the handwriting was a fac-simile of that of John Quincy Adams. But other spirit communications are given, and that which purports to come from Washington was in a handwriting like his own, though not of so bold and intellectual a style. I quote the portion of his message which relates to the war of secession, as follows:
“The cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, when they had attained the summit of imperial wickedness and licentiousness, as the Bible informs us, fell from their high estate by the visitation of natural penalties, and the righteous judgments of an overruling Providence. The fall of Rome and other large cities proves to us that no individual or nation can disobey the irrepealable enactments of the Infinite Father, and escape the fixed penalties attached to such transgression!
“And can boasting, sinful America indulge in the flattering, delusive hope, that the heavy judgments which fell upon those ancient cities will be averted from her, whose guilt is equal, if not even greater than theirs? Does she think that Cain-like, she can escape the vigilant, sleepless eye of that Divine Parent,
‘Whose voice is heard in the rolling thunders,
And whose might is seen in the forked lightnings,’
and that He will turn a deaf ear to the cry of ‘mortal agony,’ daily borne on the ‘four winds of Heaven’ to His throne of justice, from the almost broken hearts of His slavery-crushed children?
“Far from it; America can no more expect mercy in her prosperous wickedness, from the hand of Deity, that can the most degraded child of earth expect to enjoy equal happiness and bliss with the more refined and exalted intelligences of heaven. The Parent of all cares not for the unity or perpetuation of a family of States, where the prosperity or welfare of a single child of His is concerned.
“God, the eternal Father, has commissioned us, His ministers of truth and justice, to a great and important undertaking! He has invested us with power and authority to influence and guide the actions of mankind, and aid them in their struggles for right and truth. He has bade us arm ourselves with the weapons of love and justice, and hasten to the rescue of our struggling brother man. His call is imperative and binding, and we must and WILL obey!
“We are able to discern the period rapidly approximating when man will take up arms against his fellow-man, and go forth to contend with the enemies of Republican liberty, and to assert at the point of the bayonet those rights of which so large a portion of their fellow-creatures are deprived. Again will the soil of America be saturated with the blood of freedom-loving children, and her noble monuments, those sublime attestations of patriotic will and determination, will tremble, from base to summit, with the heavy roar of artillery, and the thunder of cannon. The trials of that internal war will far exceed those of the war of the Revolution, while the cause contended for will equal, if not excel, in sublimity and power, that for which the children of ‘76 fought.
“But when the battle-smoke shall disappear, and the cannon’s fearful tones are heard no more, then will mankind more fully realize the blessings outflowing from the mighty struggle in which they so valiantly contended! No longer will their eyes meet with those bound in the chains of physical slavery, or their ears listen to the heavy sobs of the oppressed child of God. But o’er a land dedicated to the principles of impartial liberty the King of Day will rise and set, and hearts now oppressed with care and sorrow will rejoice in the blessings of uninterrupted freedom.
“In this eventful revolution, what the patriots of the past failed to accomplish their descendants will perform, with the timely assistance of invisible powers. By their sides the heavenly hosts will labor, imparting courage and fortitude in each hour of despondency, and urging them onward to a speedy and magnificent triumph. Deploring, as we do, the existence of slavery, and the means to be employed to purge it from America, yet our sympathies will culminate to the cause of right and justice, and give strength to those who seek to set the captive free, and crush the monster, Slavery. The picture which I have presented is, indeed, a hideous one. You may think that I speak with too much assurance when I thus boldly prophesy the dissolution of the American Confederacy, and, through it, the destruction of that gigantic structure, human slavery! But this knowledge was not the result of a moment’s or an hour’s gleaning, but nearly half a century’s existence in the seraph life. I have carefully watched my country’s rising progress, and I am thoroughly convinced that it cannot always exist under the present Federal Constitution, and the pressure of that most terrible sin, slavery!”
Had the people of this country been sufficiently enlightened to investigate these messages fairly, they would have seen that there was sufficient evidence that this warning really came from Washington, and the pulpit would have enforced its solemn truths. But our destiny was fixed; Washington knew that his voice would not be heeded, and that war could not be prevented.
Again came the warning in 1860, through the lips of a more intellectual medium, more capable of expressing the bright thought of the higher world. Mrs. E. Hardinge Britten tells the story in her “History of American Spiritualism,” pages 416-419. She refers to the stupid and criminal action of the Legislature of Alabama; and a similar piece of brutality has been recommended by a committee in the Pennsylvania Legislature recently. The following is quoted from the History.
The Alabama Legislature and the Spirits—Prophecy in the Alabama Legislative Halls—Retribution.
Sometime about the month of January, 1860, the Legislature of Alabama passed a bill declaring that any person or persons giving public spiritual manifestations in Alabama should be subject to a penalty of five hundred dollars.
We have given the substance, though not the exact wording of this edict, which was met by considerable opposition, not only on the part of great numbers of Spiritualists resident in the State, but also by the governor himself, who refused to give his sanction to the bill.
Mr. George Redman, the celebrated physical test medium, had just passed through the South, and remained long enough to create an immense interest throughout its length and breadth.
The author was already engaged to deliver a course of lectures in Mobile, and numerous invitations were sent to her from other parts of the State.
As Mrs. Hardinge’s visit was anticipated at the very time when the bill above named was in agitation, its friends in the Legislature considered themselves much aggrieved by the governor’s refusal to sanction its passage, and deeming either that he was suspiciously favorable to the cause it was designed to destroy, or that their own case would be aggravated by the advent of the expected lecturer, they passed their bill over the governor’s veto, just twenty-four hours before the explosion anticipated on her arrival could take place.
On landing in Mobile, Mrs. Hardinge was greeted by a large and enthusiastic body of friends, but found herself precluded, by legislative wisdom, from expounding the sublime truths of immortality in a city whose walls were placarded all over with bills announcing the arrival of Madame Leon, the celebrated “seeress and business clairvoyant, who would show the picture of your future husband, tell the successful numbers in lotteries, and enable any despairing lover to secure the affections of his heart’s idol,” etc. Side by side with these creditable but legalized exhibitions, were flaming announcements of “the humbug of Spiritualism exposed by Herr Marvel,” with a long list of all the astonishing feats which “this only genuine living wizard” would display for the benefit of the pious State where angelic ministry might not be spoken of.
Mrs. Hardinge passed through Mobile, leaving many warm hearts behind her, who would fain have exchanged these profane caricatures for the glad tidings which beloved spirit friends were ready to dispense to the world.
In passing through the capital city, Montgomery, a detention occurred of some hours, in forming a railway connection en route for Macon, Georgia, when Mrs. Hardinge and some friends travelling in her company, were induced to while away the tedious time by visiting the State House. The Legislature was not sitting that day, and one of the party, a Spiritualist, remarked that they were even then standing in the very chamber from which the recent obnoxious enactment against their faith had issued.
The day was warm, soft, and clear. The sweet southern breeze stirred a few solitary pines which waved on the capitol hill, and the scene from the windows of the legislative hall was pleasant, tranquil, and suggestive of calm but sluggish peace.
At that period—January, 1860—not an ominous murmur, not the faintest whisper, even, that the war spirit was abroad, and the legions of death and ruin were lighting their brands and sharpening their relentless swords to be drenched in the life-blood of millions, had made itself heard in the land.
The long cherished purposes of hate and fratricidal struggle were all shrouded in the depths of profound secrecy, and the whole southern country might have been represented in the scene of stillness and tranquility that lay outstretched before the eyes of the watchers, who stood in the State House of the capital city of Alabama, on that pleasant January afternoon.
There were present six persons besides the author, namely: Mr. and Mrs. Adams, of Tioga County, Pennsylvania; Mrs. Waters and her son, a Scotch lady and gentleman from Aberdeen; Mr. Halford, of New York City; and Mr. James, of Philadelphia. All but the mother and son from Scotland were acquainted with the author, and more or less sympathetic with her belief; all are now living, and willing to testify to what follows.
Suddenly Mrs. Hardinge became entranced, when the whole scene, laying outstretched before her eyes, appeared to become filled with long lines of glittering horse and foot soldiers, who, in martial pomp and military discipline, filed, rank after rank and regiment after regiment, through the streets of Montgomery, and then passed off into distance, and were lost to view.
Meantime the crash of military music seemed to thrill through the clairvoyant’s ears, at first merely marking the tramp of the vast bodies of infantry with a joyous rhythm, but anon, as it died off in their receding march, wild, agonizing shrieks commingled with its tones, and the thundering roll of the drums seemed to be muffled by deep, low, but heart-rending groans, as of human sufferers in their last mortal agony.
At length all was still again; the last gleam of the muskets flashed in the sunlight and melted away in the dim horizon; the last echo of the strangely mingled music and agony ceased, and then, over the whole radiant landscape, there stole an advancing army of clouds, like a march of tall gray columns, reaching from earth to the skies, and filling the air with such a dense and hideous gloom that the whole scene became swallowed up in the thick, serried folds of mist. In the midst of these cloudy legions, the eye of the seeress could discern innumerable forms who seemed to shiver and bend, as if in the whirl of a hidden tempest, and flitted restlessly hither and thither, aimless and hopeless, apparently driven by some invisible power from nothing to nowhere.
And these mystic shadows, flitting about in the thick grayness, were unbodied souls; not like visitants from the bright summer land, nor yet beings resembling the dark, undeveloped “dwellers on the threshold,” whom earthly crimes held bound near their former homes, but they seemed as if they were misty emanations of unripe human bodies, scarcely conscious of their state, yet living, actual individualities, once resident in mortal tenements, but torn from their sheltering envelope too soon, or too suddenly, to have acquired the strength and consistency of a fresh existence. And yet the numbers of these restless phantoms were legion, and their multitude seemed to be ever increasing, when, lo! this weird phantasmagoria too passed away, but not before the seeress had, with entranced lips, described to the listeners every feature of the scene she had witnessed.
Then the influence seemed to deepen upon her, and she pronounced words which the young Scotchman, Mr. Waters, a phonographic writer, transcribed upon the spot to the following effect:
“Woe, woe to thee, Alabama!
“Fair land of rest, thy peace shall depart, thy glory be shorn, and the proud bigots, tyrants, and cowards, who have driven God’s angels back from thy cities, even in this chamber, have sealed thy doom, and their own together.
“Woe to thee, Alabama! Ere five drear years have fled, thou shalt sit as a widow, desolate.
“The staff from thy husband’s hand shall be broken, the crown plucked from his head, the sceptre rent from his grasp.
“Thy sons shall be slain, thy legislators mocked and bound with the chains thou hast fastened on others.
“The blind ones, who have proscribed the spirits of love and comfort from ministry in thy homes, shall be spirits themselves, and ere those five years be passed, more spirits than bodies shall wander in the streets of Alabama, homeless, restless, and unripe, torn from their earthly tenements, and unfit for their heavenly ones; until thy grass-grown streets and thy moss-covered dwellings shall be the haunts of legions of unbodied souls, whom thy crimes shall have violently thrust into eternity!”
When this involuntary prophecy of evil import was read by the young scribe to the disenthralled medium, her own horror and regret at its utterance far exceeded that of any of her aghast listeners, not one of whom, any more than herself, attached to it any other meaning than an impression produced by temporary excitement and the sphere of the unholy legislative chamber.
How deeply significant this fearful prophecy became during the ensuing five years, all who were witnesses to its utterance, and many others, to whom it was communicated in that same year, can bear witness of.
Swept into the red gulf of all-consuming war, many of the unhappy gentlemen who had legislated against “the spirits in Alabama,” became, during the ensuing five years, spirits themselves, and have doubtless realized the inestimable privileges which the communion they so rashly denounced on earth was calculated to afford to the inhabitants of the spheres.
In other respects, the fatal prophecy has been too literally fulfilled. Many a regiment of brave men have marched out of the city streets of Alabama, only to return as unbodied souls, and to behold the streets grass-grown and deserted, and the thresholds which their mortal feet might never again cross, overspread with the moss of corruption and decay.
Alabama has truly sat “as a widow, desolate.” Her strength has been shorn, her beauty gone. No State has sent forth a greater number of brave and devoted victims to the war than Alabama; no Southern State has suffered more fearfully. May God and kind angels lift the war curse from her widowed head!
The following extract from a letter, written by Mr. Adams, one of the witnesses of the above scene, to the author, in 1864, from New York, during a temporary sojourn there, will carry its own comment on the fulfilment of the fatal prophecy:
“Now that my two poor boys are in daily danger of themselves becoming ‘unbodied spirits,’ Emma, I continually revert to that terrible prophecy of yours uttered in the assembly chamber at Montgomery. Heaven knows I was then so little prepared to expect war or any reasonable fulfilment of the doom, that I could only look to see some great pestilence, fire, or other sweeping calamity falling on poor Alabama. Last night, when I read in the Herald of the sweeping extermination that had visited those two fine Alabama regiments, I could not help going to Mrs. Adams’s desk, where she keeps the copy that young Waters made us of your prophecy, and reading it aloud to the whole company.
“Our friend J. B., who was present, insisted upon seeing the date, and when he saw that it was January, 1860, they were all fairly aghast, and said if ever there was genuine prophecy it was contained in that paper.”