Finally, dear, eloquent lady, your exhortations in behalf of honesty are very admirable, indeed, and would be much more admirable if the exhortation itself were more fair and honest—if you did not seem to sprinkle the reproach of dishonesty over multitudes of honest people more gifted than yourself, with the power to find and clasp the holiest truths. If the inferior and less honorable class of mediums are now before the public, why is it? It is due solely, dear lady, to such people as yourself and your psychic society men, and “fellows of a baser sort,” who follow your lead—to those whose censorious and sometimes scurrilous hostility against spiritual phenomena has driven into retirement or kept in concealment the most beautiful and holy phenomena that were ever known on earth. Angels do not confront the hissing mob. But their visits to-day are neither few nor far between. In every bower of perfect spiritual purity they come. Let but this brutal opposition of men and fluent scorn of women cease, and the universal air will be fragrant as the spiritual beauty now hidden shall become a part of our social life, and even the fastidious Miss Phelps will be satisfied and delighted.
[Note.—Miss Phelps, if she had due respect for her grandfather, the Rev. Dr. Phelps of Stratford, Conn., ought to be an earnest champion of spiritualism, for it was at his house that the most wonderful phenomena were realized, when invisible spirits carried on their pranks with the furniture like human beings. Dr. Phelps was a thorough spiritualist, and introduced the spiritual doctrine into his sermons, though exercising the worldly wisdom of not using the word spiritualism.]
Spiritual Phenomena.
Abram James—Man and Medium.
It was in the summer of 1863 that I first met this marvelous medium, one of the very best in the way of intellectual development that I ever saw. James was born in Pennsylvania, of Quaker parentage. He inherited the simplicity, candor, and truthfulness of the sect. He had absolutely no guile in his nature. He had had but six months’ common school education, but, possessing considerable natural ability, he had to some degree remedied his deficiencies in this particular. He wrote a fair hand, spelled well and conversed with some facility on ordinary topics, but was absolutely ignorant of any language but his native English, and had no knowledge whatever of scientific subjects; this I know to be a fact. James was above the medium height, very thin and spare, blonde complexion, light hair and blue eyes—a natural negative organization. When I first made his acquaintance he was employed in the yards of one of the railroad companies in Chicago, making up trains, or some employment of that character.
Of James’s original development as a medium I know nothing, as I first knew him in his abnormal character, in which he was truly marvelous, being perfectly familiar with all languages, living and dead, and with all subjects—religion, science, philosophy, and ethics.
I have heard this man speak and deliver long discourses in German, Spanish, Italian, French, Latin, Greek, and other tongues which I did not know. I have taken scholarly linguists in his presence and to them he demonstrated that he spoke in foreign tongues.
I have heard him deliver lectures on a great variety of scientific subjects,—on political economy, theology, and natural philosophy. His thought and method of treatment were of the very highest types of intellectual ability. Of course James did not profess to do this of himself; he was in fact, wholly unconscious of doing anything. When entranced, the controlling spirit would say, for example: “The Baron von Humboldt will address you this afternoon on the Cosmos.” Then in a discourse or lecture of an hour’s duration he would give a condensed history of the origin and development of the world. I remember on one occasion he took up the nebular or La Place theory, adopted it as the true one, and traced the rise and progress of the earth through the evolution of matter to its present condition, in a most comprehensive and masterly manner. At another time it was said: “John Quincy Adams will speak to you to-day on the political condition of your country,” and with all the grace, dignity, and eloquence of the famous old Senator from Massachusetts when addressing the Senate of the United States, this medium delivered a speech of which Adams himself would not have been ashamed. It was in the war times, and fully embodied the sentiments which we know were predominant in Mr. Adams’s mind—the permanency of the Union and liberty for the slave. It was before the emancipation proclamation, but the speaker assured his hearers that the day was close at hand when the oppressed and abused slave should walk out in freedom before all the world.
I remember one very remarkable occurrence. James was entranced by the spirit of Michael Angelo, and a lady medium present was controlled by Raphael, and these two, partly in Italian and partly in English, discoursed upon art, painting, architecture, and sculpture in a manner calculated to produce a lasting impression upon the minds of those who were so fortunate as to be witnesses of the scene. The spirits were evidently fearful of losing control of the medium, and in their hasty desire to speak constantly interrupted each other, but they referred to the great works in which they had been engaged while on the earth, and the monuments they had left behind them. I remember Raphael particularly speaking of his last great painting of the Transfiguration, which he declared he had left in an unfinished condition in Rome, and which he desired to complete if he only had the opportunity. I regret that I am not able at this distant time to give full details of these, their marvelous revelations. I had shorthand notes taken which were afterwards written out, but unfortunately they were all destroyed in the great Chicago fire, in 1871.