“Reflecting on these singular facts, I determined to inquire further and really satisfy myself that the manifestations were what I suspected them to be. I went to Mrs. Marshall, and took with me three clever men, who were not at all likely to be deceived. I was quite unknown; we sat at a table, and had a séance: Mrs. Marshall told me the name of my child. I asked the spirit some questions, and then pronounced the adjuration. We all heard steps, which sounded as if someone was mounting the wall; in a few seconds the sounds ceased, and although Mrs. Marshall challenged again and again, the spirits did not answer, and she said she could not account for the phenomenon. In this case, I pronounced the adjuration mentally; no person knew what I had done. At a séance, held at the house of a friend of mine, at which I was present, manifestations were obtained, and, as I was known to be hostile, I was entreated not to interfere. I sat for two hours a passive spectator. I then asked the name of the spirit, and it gave the name of my child. ‘In the Name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,’ said I, ‘are you the spirit of my child?’ It answered, ‘No!’ and the word ‘Devil’ was spelled out.”
Dr. Edmunds: “How were the names spelled out?”
Mr. Chevalier: “The legs rapped when the alphabet was called over. Mrs. Marshall used the alphabet herself, and the table rapped when her pencil came to the letters. My opinion of the phenomena is that the intelligence which is put in communication with us is a fallen one. It is the Devil, the Prince of the Powers of the air. I believe we commit the crime of Necromancy when we take part in these spiritual séances.”
We obtain from these extracts, which might be multiplied thirty-fold from the authorized publications of the Spiritualists, some idea of the nature of their séances and proceedings. Our own statement at the outset has been more than justified as regards its moderation and accuracy from the examples provided in the extracts in question. “Necromancy” has been well defined to be “The art of communicating with devils and of doing surprising things by means of their aid; particularly that of calling up the dead and extorting answers from them.” Now this, it seems clear, in one form or another, is precisely that which is carried on by a considerable and increasing section[52] of people in America, in England, on the Continent, and elsewhere. It is practised mainly by persons who were such extreme Protestants in previous times that, having almost altogether denied the Supernatural, they have been reluctantly won over to a belief in it by communion with evil spirits. Father Perrone, the distinguished Jesuit, has calculated that upwards of two thousand treatises have been published in defence of the system of these manifestations during the past fifteen years. It has been pointedly remarked by an English clergyman, of those people who once, like the ancient Sadducees, rejected the idea of the existence of spirits, but who now have accepted the Spiritualistic theory, that “they have given up believing in nothing, and have taken to believe in the Devil.”[53] And this epigrammatic saying is hardly too pointed. According to Perrone, the modern professors of divination frankly allow that the phenomena have passed through three phases. First, that of Mesmerism; secondly, artificial Somnambulism and Clairvoyance; and thirdly, Spiritualism, properly so called. He gives five reasons for maintaining his theory of diabolical agency with regard to the same. 1. From the nature of the phenomena. 2. From its effects. 3. From the manner in which Mesmerism operates. 4. From the malice and wickedness of the agent, who frequently utters anti-Christian and blasphemous doctrines; and lastly, 5. from the frank and candid admission of the mediums or operators themselves.
In most cases it may be safely assumed that evil spirits personify the souls of the departed. That such spirits are the deadly foes of man so long as he is in his period of probation, may, for all Catholic Christians, be also assumed. That such spirits, moreover, constantly represent the departed as continually desiring the hand of Death to fall upon their earthly friends, in order, as is implied or stated, that a future of unclouded light and everlasting happiness may speedily link them together, can be seen from a careful study of the records of Spiritualism. Some of the facts already set forth teach this. The principle that men, whether good or bad, righteous or unrighteous, will all be certainly saved, and be for ever hereafter in bliss, is the practical heresy[54] that Spiritualism in its theological aspect has most openly taught, and still continues to teach. “Spiritualism,” writes Mr. William Howitt, a convert to it from Quakerism, “rejects the doctrine of eternal damnation as alike injurious to God and man. Injurious to God’s noblest attributes, repugnant to the principles of justice, and unavailing in men as a motive to repentance.... Spiritualism knows that there are isolated passages in the Gospels and in the words of our Saviour capable of being made to bear an appearance favouring the doctrine of eternal punishment, but it knows that the original terms bear no such latitude, and when Christ says there is a state ‘where the worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched,’ it admits the state, but denies that any of God’s creatures will continue in that state a minute longer than is necessary to purge the foulness of sin and the love of sin out of their spiritual constitutions. Were the solution of this supposed difficulty much harder than it is, Spiritualism would place the love of God and the love of Christ, and all the great and gracious attributes of God and His Saviour—justice and truth and wisdom, and a charity more immeasurable than God Himself recommends to mankind, confidently and courageously against so horrible and senseless a doctrine.”
Now, though Spiritualism be ignored by the press, Universalism, its own offspring, is constantly and persistently maintained. Spiritualism also flatly denies the great Christian doctrine of the Resurrection of the body:—
“Spiritualism teaches, on the authority of Scripture and of all spirit-life, that there is no such thing as death: it is but a name given to the issue of the soul from the body. To those in bodies who witness this change, the spirit is invisible, and they only see a body which ceases all its living functions, has lost that intelligence which during so-called ‘life’ emanated from it, and lies stiff and cold, and to all appearance dead. But even the body is not dead. There is a law of life even in what is called dead matter, which is perpetually changing its particles and converting them into mere black earth and water, and hence into all the articles necessary for the physical life—corn, meat, wine, all foods, all fruits. The same law immediately begins to operate in the dead body, and, if unobstructed, speedily resolves it back into earth, and then forms this again into food and clothing and fresh enveloping forms for fresh human beings. The whole of the universe is in perpetual action, and the ever-revolving wheel of physical is subserving the perpetual evolution of spiritual life.”[55]
“The Church of England and Spiritualism accord, but not in the doctrine of the resurrection of the body. The spirits all assert with S. Paul, that the body which rises from the death-bed is the spiritual body, and that the soul needs no other, much less an earthly body, in its spirit-home—that, in fact, nothing of the earth can ever enter heaven. That if the spirits of just men are made perfect, they can be nothing more, and no addition of anything belonging to this earth can add to their happiness, freedom, power, and perfection, but on the contrary. That so far from receiving at some indefinite and, probably, very distant period, their earthly bodies back again, they are continually, as they advance, casting off the subtler particles of matter that have interpenetrated their spiritual bodies.”[56]
With regard to the influence of the Protestant Reformation on that temper of mind and habit of thought which have led sceptics and those whose faith has been overturned by the blasphemies of Calvin or the immoral principle of the Lutheran systems and their offshoots, to become votaries of Spiritualism, we cannot do better than put on record Mr. Howitt’s deliberate judgment, expressed in language which, however painful to read in some parts, is at once forcible and pertinent:—