My second argument is the similarity between spiritualism and mediæval witchcraft. I have already noticed incidentally several points of resemblance, and would now draw attention to what is, perhaps, the most important point of all. Of course, such similarity has no argumentative force if Miss Blackwell's theory be admitted.
As I have before remarked, one of the most prominent characteristics of mediæval magic was its being a parody of the church. The principal ceremony of the "Sabbath" was a diabolical burlesque of the Mass, in which the devil preached, and the celebrant stood on his head, and the servers genuflected backwards. Now, amongst modern spiritualists I have discovered no such violation of decency; the parody is not so complete, and, on the whole, it is a decorous one; but it unmistakably exists, and is on the increase. It is by no means uncommon to assemble the spirit circle before an altar with crucifix and candles. In Experiences with D. D. Home we find that that gentleman has quite a craving in this direction. He baptizes with sand, he stretches himself in the form of a cross, imitates the phenomena of Pentecost, the rushing wind, the dove, the tongues of fire, and is perpetually anointing his friends with some mysterious substance, which apparently emanates from his hands.
Against what has been said on behalf of the devil hypothesis the spiritualist can urge nothing, except the by no means unwavering testimony of the spirits themselves, and the spiritualist's own recognition of the identity of his departed friends. As to the spirits' testimony, it is worth just nothing. Evil spirits have always personated the dead, as philosophers, fathers, schoolmen with one accord testify. As to the recognition of friends, I should wish to treat with all due consideration the natural craving of friends to obtain some intelligence of their departed friends; but, on the one hand, minute imitations of manner are certainly not beyond the devil's power; on the other, affection is anything but keen-sighted, and the rapture of a communication at all, when once the idea is admitted, is apt to throw all minor details into the shade. Was not Lady Tichbourne able to trace the features of her drowned boy in the Claimant's photograph?
Wherever the spirits have represented persons of known character and ability—men, for instance, who have left a gauge of their mental qualities in their writings, like Shakespeare or Bacon—the personation has been invariably a lamentable and most palpable failure. That the spirits of clever men do not at all talk up to the mark is notorious and generally admitted by candid spiritualists. Mr. Simkiss (Rep., p. 133) says, "Beyond solving the important question, 'If a man die, shall he live again?' by the very fact of spirits communicating and proving their identity, there is to me little that is consistent or reliable in what is revealed through different mediums." Mr. Varley (p. 168) endeavors to explain the feebleness of spirit-talk by want of education and development on the part of the mediums by which their communications are conditioned. I do not say that there is not something in this; but surely the communications of genius would, under the most adverse circumstances, take the form rather of broken sense than fluent twaddle.
The extreme irritation invariably manifested by the spirits towards anything like suspicion, particularly if it take the form of trying to subject them to a religious test, is surely grotesquely unnatural in the case of spirits who have shuffled off the coil of mortality, with whom life's fitful fever has passed. We have at least some right to expect that persons who in their lifetime had a reasonable amount of dignity and patience should have increased rather than diminished their stock of virtue with their enlarged experience, unless, indeed, they have so lost God as to have lost themselves.
It is difficult to conceive a justification for the spiritualist who, believing that he is dealing with spirits, refuses to entertain the idea that these may be devils, and makes no attempt to bring them to a test. His best excuse, perhaps, would be that the world has to such an extent lost its standard of faith and morals wherewith to test anything.
Spiritualists may object that some thing, at least, of what I have urged against them avails as much, or even more, against the devil hypothesis. Thus, if the spirit of Bacon is too nonsensical for Bacon, à fortiori he is too nonsensical for Lucifer, who must needs be the cleverer spirit of the two. Upon this I observe that the retort shows a complete ignorance of the devil's character and position. "The character of a myth," some one interposes. Well, I am not now discussing his existence. Even a myth must be in keeping. You have no right to give Cerberus four heads, or make him mew instead of bark, for all he is a myth. I suppose people have been seduced by Milton's grand conception of the "archangel fallen" and the splendid melancholy of his solemn rhetoric; but the devil of theology never says anything wise or fine. He is, indeed, understood to retain the natural powers with which he was created; but he is wholly averse from the God whom all wise and fine utterances do, in their measure, praise. Wherefore all such are in the highest degree repugnant to Satan. Neither are such costly and uncongenial deceits necessary to beguile man. Selfinterest and curiosity may be gratified at a cheaper rate.
The concessions of spiritualists themselves in reality reduce the difference between us very considerably. I have gained all that I care for, if it be conceded that these spirits may be the spirits of the damned, who are equivalently devils; and Miss Blackwell admits that these spirits are "in a manner devils," and Mr. Home (Experiences, p. 167) says of some of them: "I tell you you do not know the danger, they are so fearfully low—the very lowest and most material of all. You might almost call them 'accursed.' They will get a power over you that you cannot break through." The one great difference between us is that consistent spiritualists hold that there is no finality; that these irrepressible devils—for they are always obtruding themselves amongst the respectable spirit guests—may be reformed. But even so, would it not be well to consider whether the chances are not in favor of our being ruined before they are restored? Once and again it may be that a spirit speaks to them who is from God, even as God spake sometimes in the high places of Baal.[195] But God is not wont to reward imprudence, and, on their own showing, spiritualists stand convicted of the most extraordinary rashness in thus exposing themselves to the whirlwind of spirit influence without having a spiritual constitution, so to speak, or any canons or habits of spiritual life wherewith the influence can be tested.
Man, as Alvernus finely says, is a being created "upon the horizon of two worlds"—the world of sense and the world of spirit. But in the sensible world only is he at home, wherein his material nature is sufficiently developed for him to hold his own; whereas, in the spirit-world, with which he is also in contact, the God of both worlds must be his guide, or, horsed upon his excited imagination, he may easily be lost in the wilderness, and fall a prey to lawless spirits. Nothing can be more striking than the contrast between the sobriety of the Catholic Church in her dealings with the spirit-world and the rashness of spiritualists. The church has always recognized as a reality spirit communications of various kinds, good and bad; but she has always tested most rigidly the character of the spirits; and even when these have satisfied every test, she has only allowed their sanctity to be highly probable; she has never, so to speak, granted them her testamur. They are ever on their trial, inasmuch as she insists that the lessons they communicate shall be in strict subordination to the rule of faith and morals; in other words, to the ordinary duties of life. The church has ever shown herself keenly alive to the dangers of supernatural intercourse. She has been jealously on her guard against overwrought sentimentalism, vanity, or any strained or undue development of one part of the patient's moral nature at the expense of the rest.
Whilst she prizes amongst the choicest of her devotional treasures the private revelations of her saints, such as those of S. Bridget, S. Gertrude, S. Catharine of Sienna, and many more, yet if one consults the great masters of Christian spiritualism, if I may so speak—such as S. John of the Cross, for example—who have themselves experienced the favors of which they treat—the ecstasy, the vision, and the prophecy—one is more struck than by anything else by the stern common sense of their precautions against deception, and the sad sobriety of their confession that, after all, you can hardly ever be quite sure that you are not the victim of an illusion.