As regards the second plea, no doubt there is something odd, at first sight, in so many respectable persons having got into such intimate relations with the devil without knowing anything about it; and though there are not wanting individual instances in the history of diablerie, I must confess that I have met with nothing of the sort on so large a scale. But then, we must remember that there never has been a time when respectables as a body were so irreligious, and it is religion that is the great obstacle to such unconscious intercourse with Satan. No Christian who knows anything of the way in which the ancient world was exorcised need be surprised at the devil's being able considerably to enlarge his sphere, as the church has been compelled to narrow hers.
At first, indeed, it seemed as if this was not to be the case. The philosophy of the last century boasted, with some plausibility, that it had done what the church, with all her exorcisms, had never succeeded in doing—that it had swept away Satan altogether, along with his great adversary. Church and devil had gone down together; and for a time people persuaded themselves that the devil, anyhow, had gone. In the solemn obsequies of the whole caste of superstition, as the world fondly thought it, the devil was carried out first, dead, hopelessly dead, free-thinking priests, such as Voltaire rebuked, bearing up the pall. Though many a mocking requiescat has been chanted over his grave, like that of the church, it has proved to be a cenotaph; and now that he appears again, we can hardly wonder if he finds himself more at home than ever since Christianity came into the world.
Satan has ever been, as the schoolmen called him, God's ape (simius Dei), reproducing in the mysteries of the "Sabbath" the rites, and even the organization, of the church; but now, after the world's reiterated rejection of Christ, it would seem that the enemy has been permitted to carry the parody a step further. Not only wherever two or three are gathered together in his name is he in their midst, but, good shepherd-wise, he is allowed to seek the sheep that had been lost. Uninvited he seeks them in the unromantic circle of XIXth-century life, entrenched as this is amongst elements the least promising, one should think, for mysticism of any sort. In bright, cheerful, modern rooms, amongst the rustle of innocent commonplaces, he finds his opportunity and his profit, and gently and genially weans his victims from what fragments of dogmatic religion they may still retain to the liberty of his children. At least, there is nothing unnatural in this view.
The third plea is, in the spiritualist's mind, irresistible, and it has had, doubtless, considerable influence in preventing various religious persons from condemning spiritualism. The great evil of the day is materialism; now, then, it is asked, is it conceivable that the devil should appear as the advocate of the two great spiritual doctrines of the immortality of the soul and the existence of God; nay, should actually convert numbers to a belief in these doctrines? I answer, 1st, that when the devil first came forward as the champion of human liberty, he certainly did preach both the immortality of the soul and the existence of God. "Ye shall not die." "Ye shall be as gods." True, he was denying in one breath the death of the body and the death of the soul; but this is quite in the fashion of spiritualism, which invariably denounces any use of the word "death." 2d, That the doctrine of the immortality of the soul loses all disciplinary force when converted into that of endless, inevitable progression. The possibility of a miserable finality has been accepted by the noblest philosophers as a necessary phase in that melody of a future life which, to use the expression of Socrates (Phædo, cap. 63), it is "so necessary for each man to sing to himself." There are some, he had said (cap. 62), whom "a befitting fate casts into Tartarus, whence they never come out." And in the last book of the Republic, where human life is described as going on in an indefinite series of metempsychosis, we are shown, as the generations sweep round, a pit into which the very bad fall out of the circle, never to join it again. Nor is the doctrine of the existence of God when converted into pantheism of more avail. A deity who is the mere terminus ad quem of necessary evolution can neither be feared as judge nor worshipped as God.
Long experience has taught the evil one that man cannot do without religious sentiment; so he aims at getting its circulation into his own hands by coming forward boldly as the advocate of its cardinal points. He is determined to risk no more disappointing losses, by striving to feed men on the dry husks of materialism, which are insufficient to support life, and are sure, sooner or later, to provoke nausea and repulsion. As to those who have been really converted from scepticism by the spirits, nay, have been landed, as has sometimes been the case, in the bosom of the Catholic Church, I can only say, Blessed be God! who has ever exercised seignorial rights upon the devil's fishing.
So much for the spiritualist amendment. I shall now proceed to consider the positive arguments and evidence tending to show that spiritualism is diabolic.
1st. I notice its shrinking and disgust for all active Catholicism which extends to the use of fragments of Catholic truth in the hands of zealous sectarians. This antipathy, I contend, is invariable; but I must guard against being misunderstood. I admit that the spirits have indulged from time to time in a considerable amount of Catholic, or, I should rather say Ritualist, talk. Several instances may be found in Mr. Home's séances in which holy-water and crucifixes are spoken of with a certain amount of unction. I admit, too, that though sometimes the spirits are discomfited by the mere presence of a religious object—a medal, relic, etc.—this is by no means ordinarily the case. It is quite possible for religious objects to be so presented as in no way to embarrass the spirits, who have been sometimes permitted to carry them about with apparent tenderness, even as Satan was allowed to carry our Lord and set him on a pinnacle of the temple. A sword requires to be handled with a certain amount of vigor and intention if it is to avail as a weapon. If holy objects are brought out simply as so many Catholic testimonials and orders of merit for the spirits, I know nothing in the nature of things or in the promises of God to prevent the devil wearing them in his button-hole. On the other hand, a man uncertain of the spirits' character, but with an honest and lively intention of rejecting them so far as they are God's enemies, "fugite partes adversæ," if he adjures them in his name, will either reduce them to silence and impotence, or extort the confession that they are devils.
It would be easy to produce numbers of instances of the extraordinarily hostile sensitiveness of the spirits in regard to the use in their presence of Catholic prayers, medals, relics, etc. In fact, in order to avoid being a non-conductor, if not an obstructive, a certain undogmatic attitude of mind is required. We need not, indeed, reject Christ, but we must be prepared to look for another beside him, if not in his place. Mr. Home (Rep., p. 188) says that, for the medium's success, "the only thing necessary is that the people about should be harmonious." He explains that "the 'harmonious' feeling is simply that which you get on going into a room and finding all the people present such as you feel at home with at once.... Scepticism is not a hindrance; an unsympathetic person is." I have no doubt that this account is perfectly accurate so far as it goes. A Christian's hatred of what he suspects to be the devil, and Professor Tyndall's contemptuous disgust for what he considers a piece of cheating, are both no doubt natural impediments to spiritualistic manifestations; although, in the former case, it may well be that it is something more.
The following scene from Prudentius (Apoth., 460-502) illustrates what I have said as to Christian rite and formulary availing against sorcery, not as a charm, but as a weapon of faith. It must be remembered that Julian had been baptized, but his baptism had no effect in breaking the magic rites. We venture thus to render it:
"To give great Hecatè her glut of blood,
Whole troops of cows and lowing heifers stood
About her altar, every frontlet crowned
With shadowy cypress twisted round and round.
And now the priestly butcher drives his brand
Into the victims, and with bloody hand
Gropes keenly in the entrails chilling fast,
To count each fluttering life-pulse to the last.
When suddenly he cries, dead-white with fear,
'Alas! great prince, some greater god is here
Than may suffice these foaming bowls of milk,
The blood of victims, flowers, and twisted silk.
Yon summoned shades are scattering in dismay,
And scared Persephonè glides fast away,
With torch averted and with trailing scourge,
Thessalian charms are powerless to urge
The troubled gods to face the hostile thing.
In vain our spells and mystic muttering;
The flame has withered in yon censer's core,
The blinking embers shrink in ashes hoar.
The server with the plate can scarcely stand,
The rich balm dripping from his trembling hand.
The flamen feels his laurel chaplet go,
The victim leaps, and shuns the fatal blow.
Assuredly some Christian youth has dared
To enter here, and, as their wont, has scared
The assembled gods, and of their rites despoiled.
Avaunt! avaunt! thou that art washed and oiled!
That so anew fair Proserpine may rise.'
He shrieked, and swooning fell, as though his eyes
Had seen Christ angry and in act to slay.
In a like fear the prince now thrusts away
His royal crown, and gazes all about;
For the fond youth had dared his spells to flout
By bearing on his brow the Christian sign.
Lo! one, dragged forward from the brilliant line
Of royal pages, flaxen-haired and bright,
Resigns his arms, and owns that they are right:
That he is Christian, that his forehead bears
The wondrous sign that every witchcraft scares.
The startled monarch, leaping from his seat,
Upsets the pontiff in his swift retreat,
And flees the chapel, while the rest atone
Their impious deed, seeing their master gone,
And bowing low their heads in awe and shame,
In faltering accents call on Jesu's name."