It is conceived by spiritualists that if, as the orthodox allege, God be omnipotent, he can make his creatures to suit his will; if he be omniscient, he must know what they are when made; and if he be prescient, he can foresee what they will be, and consequently cannot have the smallest conceivable motive for exposing them to probation.
I foresee that it may not be deemed expedient to take any notice of this letter; but whatever may be the result in this way, does not interfere with the propriety of my putting it in your power to avail yourselves of my offer; since I have a sanction from a higher source, the spirit of the immortal Washington, the proofs of whose communion with me I am prepared to submit to any respectable inquirers.
I am aware that this language would, a few years ago, have made me attach the idea of insanity to the author; but this cannot, nevertheless, in the slightest degree, be deducible from it now, from the notorious fact that the same monomania is never entertained by any two persons, and in my hallucination, if it be such, there are a multitude of participators. That is to say, there are a multitude of persons of every grade who believe that they have communicated with their spirit friends, as I have with mine; and who, like me, have believed themselves to have held communion with the spirits of some of the most distinguished men who have departed this life. A faith in the miracles of the New Testament may as well be adduced as insanity as belief in spiritual manifestations under these circumstances.
The fact that manifestations have been made and truthfully described has been admitted by the Catholic Church, but are ascribed to Satanic agency.
Let the doctrines of Spiritualism, and those of the church in question, be compared, in order to determine which owes most to Satan.
The existence of a devil being admitted, was there ever a more fertile source of diabolical intolerance than the idea that a peculiar belief being necessary to save men’s souls from hell fire, any temporal evil to which mortals might be subjected to coerce belief, would be as justifiable as the forcible extirpation of an incipient cancer from the body of a child unwilling to submit to the operation? If ever there was a devil’s agency, it may be seen in the auto-da-fé, the Inquisition, and the massacre of St. Bartholomew’s day.
Of the same devilish character was the execution of Servetus by Calvin, or the persecution of the Quakers and witches by the Puritans.
Respectfully, your well-wisher, Robert Hare.
A LETTER FROM DR. HARE.
Addressed to the President of the Association for the Advancement of Science, at their meeting, August 18, 1855.