THE SPIRITUALISTS.
Somehow or other the Spiritualists are under a cloud in this country, and their leader—Mr. Home—has been compelled, in consequence of the decision of a highly-prejudiced and extremely ignorant jury, to hand over to Mrs. Lyon a very handsome sum of money which she had conveyed to him in consequence of representations made by him to her that such was the desire of her deceased lord and master. Up to that time Spiritualism was making great way, and Mr. Home, as its high priest and apostle, was in request with the nobility, and was the friend of kings and emperors. He had married a Russian Countess; he wore a diamond ring on one hand, given by the Czar, and on the other hand another, the present of the Emperor of France. His speaking eye and melodramatic manner made him in society a really charming man; literary ladies were enthusiastic in his favour. A spiritual Athenæum was opened in Sloane Street, Chelsea, at which a very eminent man gave the inaugural discourse, and at which there were spirit drawings displayed, and spirit poems read—all suggestive of the fact that the spirits were very ordinary people, after all. But it was not so much there as at the houses of his friends that
Mr. Home tried best to display his powers. At such times there was a wonderful parade of religion. Previous to his attending a séance, a friend of the author was asked whether he believed in the doctrine of the Trinity; “because,” said the fair questioner, “we find that the spirits do not like to appear before sceptics;” and the Bible was read, and prayer offered up in apparently the most reverent, and earnest, and occasionally the most tiresome manner. Then came a few childish tricks, such as a handkerchief conveyed by spirits under the table, the accordion played by spirits under the table, and other intimations of what was said to be spiritual agency, but all equally out of sight. A few marvellous things were said by Home—secrets occasionally—which the hearer thought no one knew but himself, but secrets of the most uninteresting and unimportant character. And then the unbeliever passed out, scarcely knowing whether to laugh or weep; whether he had assisted at a religious meeting or a farce; whether he had been in the company of a mortal fitted for a solemn mission to an idle and adulterous generation seeking after a sign, or whether all he had seen and heard was but the clever manœuvring of a clever professor of legerhave
to take his stand with the Brothers Davenport and other doubtful mediums who have had their day.
The Spiritualists in this country set great store by Home. They have never been able in our cold climate to raise mediums worth talking about. The latter have been chiefly American importations. Mr. Harris came as a preacher of Spiritualism, and, after a few Sundays at Store Street, vanished like a spirit, and was heard of no more. A Spiritual Magazine was started. Mrs. Marshall and her niece, of 22, Red Lion Street, Holborn, were declared by that—we presume official authority—to be “Media.” Then came the solid testimony of a learned American judge, declaring “the first thing demonstrated to us is that we can commune with the spirits of the departed; that such communication is through the instrumentality of persons yet living; that the fact of mediumship is the result of physical organization; that the kind of communion is effected by moral causes; and that the power, like our other faculties, is possessed in different degrees, and is capable of improvement by cultivation.” But the sect did not prosper. Then came grotesque indications of spiritual presence. Not content with table-rapping, the spirits
had recourse to all kinds of antics, and the subject of Spiritualism became more and more distasteful to the intelligent, and more and more popular with that large class of idle wealthy men and women who have no healthy occupation, and are always in search of excitement. The climax was reached when the Cornhill told how Mr. Home floated in the air, how heavy tables would leap from one end of the room to the other, how music was produced on accordions, “grand at times, at others pathetical, at others distant and long-drawn,” when those accordions were held by no mortal hands. “I can state,” wrote Dr. Gulley, of Malvern, “that the record made in the article ‘Stranger than Fiction’ is in every particular correct; that the phenomena therein related actually took place, and moreover that no trick-machinery, sleight of hand, or other artistic contrivance, produced what we heard and beheld. I am quite as convinced of this last as I am of the facts themselves.” Well might the Spiritualists crow; had not Robert Owen and Lord Lyndhurst also believed? Was it not uncharitable to say that they were in their dotage? The testimony of such men settled everything.
In America, Spiritualism is more prosperous than in England. In the “Plain Guide to Spiritualism”
Mr. Clarke tells us there are in that country 500 public mediums who receive visitors; more than 50,000 private ones; 500 books and pamphlets on the subject have been published, and many of them immensely circulated; there are 500 public speakers and lecturers on it, and more than 1000 occasional ones. There are nearly 2000 places for public circles, conferences, or lectures, and in many places flourishing public schools. The decided believers are 2,000,000, the nominal ones nearly 5,000,000; on the globe itself it is calculated there are 20,000,000 supposed to recognise the fact of spiritual intercourse. In Paris and the different parts of France the manifestations have been almost of every kind, and of the most decisive and distinguished character. “Great numbers of persons have been cured by therapeutic mediums,” writes William Howitt, “of diseases and injuries incurable by all ordinary means. Some of these persons are well known to me, and are every day bearing their testimony in aristocratic society.” Writing thus, Mr. Howitt defines Spiritualism “as the great theologic and philosophic reformer of the age; the great requickener of religious life; the great consoler and establisher of hearts; the great herald to the wanderers of earth starved upon the
husks of mere college dogmas.” “I believe,” says Mr. C. Hall, “that as it now exists, Spiritualism has mainly but one purpose—to confute and destroy Materialism, by supplying sure, and certain, and palpable evidence that to every human being God gives a soul, which He ordains shall not perish when the body dies.” This, as good old Isaak Walton says, in narrating Dr. Donne’s Vision, “this is a relation that will beget some wonder; and it well may, for most of our world are at present possessed with an opinion that miracles and visions are ceased.”
What is Spiritualism? Ask its opponents. They regard it as necromancy, a practice not only forbidden under the Old Testament, but which even in the New we find classed by St. Paul under the general denomination of witchcraft, with such works of the flesh as idolatry, murder, adultery, and drunkenness, concerning all of which the Apostle Paul adds the solemn declaration (Gal. v. 19–21), “That they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Such undoubtedly is the feeling entertained with regard to Spiritualism by the great majority of orthodox Christians, who are quite satisfied by Scripture testimony, who accept what they think God has revealed to them in His Book, and who seek or require