Progress of Spiritualism by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 3, 1874

Progress of Spiritualism

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Spiritualism.—No. 12.

Progress of Spiritualism.

Since preparing the foregoing articles, I have seen special correspondence from New York to the Chicago Times, giving, with other things, the names of prominent men in the city first named who are reputed to be spiritualists. The writer does not offer any opinion of his own; indeed, he says he has never taken sufficient interest in it to investigate its claims. He writes only as a chronicler of passing events, and it may be that the information he offers is reliable.

The following extracts present the most interesting points of this correspondence:—

“It may seem strange—it is true nevertheless,—that many men and women here, of culture and position, firmly believe that their beloved dead are constantly near and about them; that they communicate with them as regularly as though they were living.

“Secret Believers. There are hundreds, yes, thousands, of our citizens who privately adhere to spiritualism, and outwardly reject it. They are afraid that they will be laughed at; that their business interests may suffer; that their mental soundness may be suspected; or that they may lose social caste if their genuine opinions be ascertained. This apprehension, however, is growing less every day. So many prominent persons, not in America alone, but in Europe, have professed spiritualism, that the weaker and humbler brothers feel an added moral support.

“Prominent Spiritualists. The czar of Russia, Bismarck, Thiers, Gambetta, Castelar, Victor Emanuel, Gladstone, the prince of Wales, Carlyle, Disraeli, and any number of the crowned heads, statesmen, scholars, and philosophers of the old world, are declared to be spiritualists.

“The New Yorkers falling in the same category, if report may be trusted, are beyond enumeration.

“Clergymen. Among the clergy are named Henry Ward Beecher, Edwin H. Chapin, Henry W. Bellows, Octavius B. Frothingham, George H. Hepworth, Samuel Osgood, Morgan Dix, Henry C. Potter, Stephen H. Tyng, Charles F. Deems, T. DeWitt Talmage. It is said that none of these are open adherents of the doctrines, since their theological calling and training render them unwilling to be ranked with the new sect.

“Journalists. Horace Greeley was undoubtedly a spiritualist, though not inclined to avow it. James Gordon Bennett is reputed to be; so is Manton M. Marble, George Ripley, Wm. Henry Hurlbut, Charles A. Dana, George Wilkes, Ivory Chamberlain, William Winter, George Jones, Wm. Cullen Bryant, Parke Godwin, Robert Bonner, John Swinton, Wm. C. Church, and a host of the subordinates.

“Lawyers. Of the legal fraternity the spiritualists claim Oakey Hall, Charles S. Spencer, John Graham, W. O. Bartlett, Wm. Allen Butler (the redoubtable Benjamin F. Butler is also put in the list), and a number of the judges and leading practitioners.

“Literateurs. George William Curtis, James Parton, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Richard Grant White, Herman Melville, Richard Henry Stoddard, Bret Harte, Kate Field, Elizabeth Stoddard, Edna Dean Proctor, Edmund Clarence Stedman, Kate Hillard, Anne Lynch Botta, Benson J. Lossing, “Josh Billings,” John G. Saxe, Charles Dudley Warner, Barry Coffin, and “Mark Twain,” are asserted to represent the literary class.

“Actors. A large majority of actors are pronounced adherents. Edwin Booth, Joseph Jefferson, Lester Wallack, Clara Morris, Fanny Davenport, George Clarke, Pauline Lucca, John Owens, Sarah Jewett, Matilda Heron, George Fawcett Rowe, Edward Sothern, Fanny Morant, and Edwin Adams, are counted as strong in the faith.

“Business Men. Numbers of our shrewdest business men, who would not be thought to yield to the vagaries of the imagination, are ranked by common report as converts to the creed. Many of them, oddly as it looks, actually have recourse to the spirits for commercial guidance, and claim that they owe some of their most profitable speculations to that source.

“Hard-headed old Cornelius Vanderbilt is designated as a spiritualist; but he would not admit it, if broken on a wheel. The story is that Woodhull and Claflin convinced him by the revelations they made as mediums. They also pretend to have cured his present wife of a disease which would have proved fatal, and to have been of incalculable value to him in divers manners.

“Jay Gould, Henry N. Smith, Rufus Hatch, Horace B. Claflin, Leonard Jerome, Daniel Drew, Moses Taylor, Royal Phelps, and I know not how many more, are set down with the spiritualists.

“Indeed, they are to be found in abundance in every grade of affairs, and in every rank of life. Some of the most unreserved believers are ultra evangelical Christians and straight-laced folk generally.

Who is and who is not a spiritualist, it is impossible to determine for the reasons already given. Personally I have no bias, scarcely an opinion, on the subject. I hardly feel interest enough to examine it. Nevertheless, I know how wide-spread the belief is, how rapidly it is extending, and how many prominent persons are believers who hesitate to make such admission.”

Science and Spiritualism.

There is one phase of the investigation of spiritualism which does injustice to the truth and to science. Whenever a scientific scholar embraces spiritualism, it is set down as a testimony from science in favor of spiritualism. This is not correct. No one has ever pretended to prove spiritualism by scientific tests, or on scientific grounds. The most that they can say is that they cannot discover any collusion nor trace it to its origin. They admit its claims because they cannot determine its origin.

Now it is evident that this is not the voice of science in favor of spiritualism. It is only a confession on their part that it does not fall within the range of scientific tests. Of course when it is removed from the field of scientific research, it becomes, to them, a matter of conjecture, as much as to the unlearned. Their testimony is entirely of a negative character. They admit its claims because they are not able to give any satisfactory solution of its mysteries. But this does not prove anything. It certainly does not prove that the claims of spiritualism are correct; it shows only that they do not know anything about it.

Whether the testimony of scientists is of any value at all depends altogether on the thoroughness of their investigations. But it must be remembered that their investigations are phenomenal, not scientific; and therefore their conclusions are worth no more than are those of the unlearned who observe the phenomena with equal carefulness. No one has a right to affirm that a proposition is true because he does not know that it is not true.

Where science and human reason fail, the Bible comes to our aid. The claims of spiritualism are based on certain phenomena or

facts of occurrence. These occurrences are, by careful observation, determined to be of unknown origin; that is, their origin is not from anything natural; they are supernatural. But that which is supernatural is beyond the bounds of science and mere reasoning. It must be established by testimony above nature.

Having arrived at this evident conclusion, we must either admit the claims of spiritualism on its own word, or take some other testimony which claims to be above nature. Such testimony we find in the Bible. It claims to be of divine origin; to establish its claims by the fulfillment of its prophecies, by the purity of its morality, by the harmony of its teachings, and by its vindication of divine justice even in dispensing mercy to the erring. In each of these points, spiritualism entirely fails to establish its claim to our acceptance. The teachings of the Bible are elevating; those of spiritualism are degrading.

The Bible informs us that there were intelligences created before the creation of man. That they rejoiced in the creation of this world, and guarded the way of the tree of life after the fall of man. That some of them sinned, as man has sinned, and lost their “estate.” That, under the name of demons (devils), they carry on their deceptions, and their rebellions against God. And that they work miracles or “lying wonders,” to turn men away from the truth. The mediums of spiritualism and their works are described in the Bible, and identified beyond all question. Their doctrines are called the doctrines of devils.

Spiritualists prove the Bible true by denouncing it, by denying the authority of God, by denying Jesus Christ and all means of salvation outside of man’s own nature, by denying a future judgment and human accountability, denying that any action is morally wrong, and by affirming that the purest state of society and the highest morality can only be found in the abrogation of marriage and the unrestrained passional attraction of the sexes!

With these facts before us on every hand, why is it that men of education, of good reasoning ability, admit the claims of spiritualism and entirely ignore the testimony of the Bible? This question may be readily answered by any one who has observed the tendency of the schools of these degenerate times. The disposition has for some time been growing among men to accept science as the highest possible source of knowledge, and to rule out the testimony of the Bible as of no real value. Indeed, they have been placed in opposition to each other, and that even by professed teachers of the Bible, and the testimony of science has been decided positive and determinate, and that of the Bible speculative and uncertain. The Bible has thus been caused to lose its hold upon the popular mind and heart, and when science is found to be at fault, when it fails to measure the supernatural, men are left without a compass, at the mercy of the winds of speculation. Having lost their reverence for the Bible, they have thrown off restraint; and now, when their dependence fails, they would rather float even into the vortex of a whirlpool than to return to the teachings of the Bible, which restrains their selfishness and requires humility.

The apostle Paul speaks of “the oppositions of science falsely so called,” and says they are “vain babblings.” Much that is called science in this age will fall under this head. We often hear men flippantly talk of what “science proves,” when not a single well-attested fact exists to support their assertions. Many are but reproducing what the apostle so graphically describes in Rom. 1: “Professing themselves to be wise they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man,” &c. “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator.”

J. H. Waggoner.