They commissioned mediums to write, women and men indiscriminately to preach, to heal the sick, to see through the material and reveal the spiritual, to break up the marriage relation, to destroy parental affection, to form new standards of private and social virtue, to disturb and destroy all the old foundations and safeguards of society, and reconstruct the social system upon the modern ideas of socialism and the most offensive forms of free-loveism.
Religious liberty with them meant social licentiousness, and the social virtues were sacrificed to the lustful passions.
These things can not all be affirmed of all spiritualists, and yet the inevitable tendency is the same, and the extremest consequences are legitimate. To say that thousands of people in Missouri, through the subtle agencies of spiritualism, renounced their religion, forsook the church, neglected to read God’s Word, turned themselves away from paths of piety and works of righteousness to serve tables, and became downright infidels, is not half of the whole truth. To a large extent the minds of men became detached from the foundations of Divine truth, and wandered, like the “unclean spirit, seeking rest and finding none.”
Systems of infidelity, and infidelity without system, sprang up in every direction and found supporters amongst those that were least suspected, and the church began to tremble for the “faith which was once delivered unto the saints.” Free-thinking, so-called, took the place of solid, religious faith, and every form of doctrine received encouragement in the public mind. The tendency in the public mind to skepticism was never more alarming, and the mystic vagaries of Andrew Jackson Davis stood in defiant competition with the New Testament. Lecturers appeared in every city and centre of population, haranguing the people upon the vain philosophies of men and questions of science, falsely so-called, seeking to turn away their ears from the truth unto fables, and “doting about questions and strifes of words” that would and did disturb the foundations of godliness. Nor could both the religions press and pulpit countervail their influence upon the public mind. Infidel clubs and associations were formed under different disguises, and many mischief-makers began to believe and teach “unwholesome doctrines” and deceive the ignorant and unwary. It was a common thing to hear of men lecturing in the principal towns on spiritualism, a higher civilization, phrenology, pathology, physiology, hygiene, and other kindred topics, and selling maps, charts and cheap books. In some places they drove a brisk trade, and set all the old women—and young ones, too—men and boys to talking and querying over the new ideas and theories advanced by these flippant, and often immodest lecturers.
The character of such teachings can not better be illustrated than by relating a somewhat novel adventure which the author had in the spring of 1859 with one of these lecturers.
While stationed in Jefferson City I was invited by the Moniteau County Bible Society to deliver a lecture in California on the Bible cause, and aid them in raising funds to supply the destitute of the county with the Word of God. Arriving in California by the afternoon train I was informed that a gentleman, a stranger, had been there lecturing for several evenings, and would lecture again that evening, in a public hall. My informants had not heard him, and could not tell exactly his subject or his object. When informed that his lectures were free, and that he was selling some kind of books, I was not long at a loss to reckon his moral latitude and longitude, and, indeed, to “guess” whence he came, and what he came for, and hoped that some lucky chance would throw us together.
The meeting of the Bible Society that night was quite a success, but my anxiety to see the lecturer seemed fated to disappointment. The next morning, in company with a friend, I went to the hotel, near the depot, to await the arrival of the down train. A goodly number of gentlemen sat and stood about in the public room awaiting the train also. My friend soon opened the way (as he knew many of them) for an appeal to them for contributions to the Bible cause, to which they pretty generally declined to respond. About this time a rather queer looking genius entered the hotel from the street, hastily and boisterously relieving himself at once of what seemed to be a meal sack half filled with books, and several rather pert exclamations and general salutations, taking a seat near me. I did not at first suspect his identity, but his inveterate loquacity brought him into notice, and my eye soon measured a small, thin-visaged, sharp-nosed, squint-eyed, thin-lipped, cadaverous, nervous specimen of humanity, a stranger to every sense of modesty, propriety and decency, and who believed that with himself all wisdom would die. He soon learned that I lived in Jefferson City, and the following conversation occurred. Turning to me, whom he had evidently been regarding for some time with uncivil curiosity, he said:
“You live in Jefferson City?”
“Yes, sir.”
“On your way home now?”