“THE RAPPING MYSTERY.
“Messrs. Editors: There has been a vast deal of ink shed upon the above-named subject, and much of it to but little purpose, except to demonstrate the willingness of individuals to show up before the world the least attractive features of their intellectual and moral characters. Far the greater number of paragraphists who have essayed to enlighten the world on this subject, and protect this community in particular from humbug, as they are pleased to term it, have made up their various articles of exceedingly cheap material. Ridicule, the fool’s argument, has formed the chief staple of their lucubrations. Denunciation, unsparingly poured out, has been heaped upon the heads of those most immediately connected with this singular phenomenon, and an unwarrantable and unmanly meanness, which has led the writers, almost without exception, to traduce the character of the Fox family, and has taught us how easy it is for men to forget their manhood and stoop to a point at which they can lay claim to but little of the nobility of human nature.
“I, for one, can find an apology for the penny-a-liners who have poured their puerile effusions at the knocking mystery. They do but cater for a public sentiment and public ignorance in this matter; and their bread-and-butter demands of them that they shall not wave their inky wands beyond the line of that opinion. But there are some for whom we cannot make this apology. I notice in your paper of 23d inst. a communication over the signature of C. D. The writer of said article lays claim (and not a groundless one) to the reputation of a man of wisdom. He is known among us as the expounder of laws natural and divine. His picture, so he tells us, hangs from the walls of the Athenæum, and looks down complacently upon its visitors as a teacher of the exact and occult sciences. The community in which he lives has nourished him during a long lapse of years, has accredited to him the prerogatives he has claimed, and has looked up to him, as one clothed with authority, to enlighten it upon all abstruse subjects. And yet, with the knowledge (which he must possess) that if anything be spoken of it must be spoken of understandingly,—that a man in his position utterly disregards the safety of his reputation who rushes to record an opinion without ascertaining that it is tenable, and that he has facts to sustain him; this self-same C. D., this Solon of the closet and pulpit, without a particle of evidence, in the absence of all personal observation, rushes in the hot haste of blind folly to the press, and tells the “good people” that the phenomenon in question is no phenomenon at all, but only a sheer humbug! a miserable delusion, cunningly contrived, but fit only to deceive such fanatical fools as have been chasing shadows from time immemorial, down to the advent of Mormonism.
“This word humbug is in great request. It is of modern origin, and the moderns are making the most of it. Everything new, while going through its incipient stage, is denominated ‘humbug.’ Everything and everybody a whit in advance of the age or its intelligence is looked at askance by the gaping crowd, and ‘humbug’ is the ready watchword. The community’s acknowledged leaders, and whose antics, at times, should have taught them that
‘A little learning is a dangerous thing,’
are asked by their too credulous disciples to give them their opinion on some new and startling development in physics or man’s intellectual nature, and immediately these ‘learned Thebans,’ scorning the patient toil and honest purpose of the true student, turn their blear eyes upon the interrogations and shout Humbug! Humbug!
“In such cases their visual organs are of about as much service to them as the sun is to that burrowing animal which shuns the light of day. When will men, even whose gray hairs seem to ask us to expect better things of them, learn that bareface assertion weighs not as evidence with those who choose to think for themselves? Ours is a thinking age, and requires something more than the bold say so of any man to convince people that a thing may or may not be. We live at a period, too, and in the midst of minds which have learned that much that was received as unadulterated truth by the past, upon which the dust of buried centuries had gathered and seemed to hallow, has been proved erroneous by the light of advancing knowledge and the searching analysis of science. And who shall say where that knowledge is to stop? Is there to be no new unfolding of man’s intellectual powers? Is he ever to remain in the comparative ignorance he now is in respecting the relations which he, while here in this life, sustains to the spiritual world? Are the laws of his being and its attributes as yet entirely revealed to him? Is the physical of this world of so much importance that the astounding developments of this and the coming cycles of time are to be confined entirely to that, to the exclusion of man’s higher and more ethereal nature? These questions I leave your correspondent C. D. and his coadjutor J. W. H. to answer for themselves in their more reflective hours.
“C. D. says ‘the wary and eagle-eyed are kept out, and excluded from opportunity of investigation.’ Now, to be perfectly plain, this remark borders very much upon misrepresentation. It is not so. And if the gentleman would have ‘the good people’ understand that he is thus denied, I would undeceive them. Mr. Dewey has on more than one occasion been urged by those who would have afforded him every opportunity for investigation, to test the reality of the said phenomena. He could have had, and may have, associated with him in such investigation, men whom he or others may select, as his equals in every respect, to aid him; and before he has the temerity to repeat his uttered cry of humbug, and brand again, with most unchristian readiness, as deceivers, individuals whom he does not know, I call upon him to avail himself of the senses which God has given him for that purpose. He need feel no repugnance to visiting so obscure a locality as Troup Street. His equals (to say the least) have been there before him, and he would not have to tarry long in that region to meet with visitors who possess more intelligence, a wider charity, greater modesty, and a better purpose than he has manifested in his communications.
“A man’s practice is the touchstone of his faith, and I want no better evidence of the practical infidelity of any one, than to know that while he preaches for so much the square yard the doctrine of an after-life, he scouts anything which comes to us in the shape of tangible evidence of the soul’s immortality.
“Mr. Dewey says he will be ‘glad to see the truth advanced, lead where it may.’ In this I join him, and such motive must be my apology for trespassing upon your columns and patience.