Mother was also a member of the same church in Rochester in 1849. She was officially waited upon in Arcadia by a very young preacher (hardly twenty years of age in appearance) who had, evidently, but little experience in the office to which he had been specially called to save souls. He introduced himself as the “servant of the Lord,” and, walking up to mother, said, “This is sister Fox, I suppose?” Mother replied, “I am Mrs. Fox.” “Well, Mrs. Fox, there is a complaint against you for countenancing your children in carrying on a wicked deception. It is calculated to do much harm, and it is contrary to the religion of the Bible.” He urged her to make her confession before the church, and cause her children to discontinue their unholy pursuit, and she could remain in good standing in the church. This little man was a circuit preacher, and we suppose had taken upon himself to do the Lord’s work, in his own way, as we never heard from him again; and I seriously doubt if any one ever sent him. It recalls what Sojourner Truth said to the preacher, when she was attending a woman’s rights meeting in the church and a violent thunder-storm came up, with peal after peal shaking the building to its foundation, when the minister arose and proposed that they should adjourn, as he thought the Lord was angry on account of the movement, and he believed it was wicked to hold such a meeting in a church.
Sojourner arose and said to him, “Set still, chile. Don’t you be afeared. I don’ believe the Lord ever hearn tell on you.”
Mother was never expelled from the church, but the leading members came to our side—minister and all.
A celebrated seer has publicly asserted that rapping mediums are necessarily of nervous temperament, apprehensive of evil, and usually diseased.
There has never been in our family, so far as I have been able to trace them, on either side, a taint of disease; from my mother’s grandfather Rutan, who lived to be ninety-three years of age, and her grandfather on her father’s side, John C. Smith, who was more than eighty years of age when he left this sphere of existence. The same is true of my father’s father and grandfather, neither of whom were diseased. We have been singularly free from all manner of ailments so common in thousands of families. We had no taint of hereditary scrofula, were never subject to inflammatory diseases. Healthy, sound, and strong, not easily frightened, steadfast in faith, and never disposed to believe anything without evidence. I have very little interest in anything covered by the words theoretic speculations, or in self-induced conditions, in which many thousands who stand on rostrums and teach the anxious inquirers after truth that of which they themselves know little or nothing. My motto is: Live up to your highest light. Listen to the small voice within, and obey the dictates of your conscience. Do unto others as you would be done by. Follow the golden rule. Go worship where and what your conscience, not pride, leads you, and you need not fear to meet your God.
Justice as well as reverential duty has prompted my gracing the title-page with the portrait of my mother, rather than follow the customary practice of placing upon it that of the author, by way of personal introduction to the eye of the reader. Though, as has been seen, our father had but little part to play beyond that of consenting spectator in the early history of Spiritualism, yet my mother’s part in it, and services to its cause, were of the highest value and importance. Her strength, moral and mental, as the central figure of our family group before the public, largely supported us in our mission, in which she always accompanied and protected us; nor, after she had once yielded her consent and acceptance of the “duty,” did she ever begrudge her time and her labors thus withdrawn from the private life of domesticity, which would have been infinitely her preference.