“Why Don’t You Investigate?”
By John Harvey Waggoner
THIS question is asked with great confidence by spiritualists when we refuse to visit their gatherings and to meet them on a level in public controversy. We have investigated. We do investigate. We protest against the injustice contained in this question. It implies that we have not investigated, and will not investigate, spiritualism; which is not true. Webster says to investigate is to search or inquire into. And of course inquiry into anything is for the purpose of gaining an understanding of it. And when it is well or sufficiently understood, the object of the investigation is attained. Now I object to the implication contained in this question. 1. Because, as before said, we have investigated. We have read their books and papers, and heard their speakers, and conversed with them in private, and seen its practical workings in the lives of its most fully-developed adherents. We claim that we sufficiently understand spiritualism. Some, who are not themselves, fully instructed in the wiles of spiritualism, say we do not understand their books—we misapprehend their teachings. We know better than this. Their utterances are too plain to be misunderstood. They deny God, the Bible, Jesus Christ, the law of marriage, in fact, all authority in the most unequivocal terms. I have seen scores of Bible believers who have embraced spiritualism, and without a single exception they go in the same direction. First, and in a short time, they doubt or disbelieve some of the Bible, then all; soon they deny the atonement of Christ, then the existence of a supreme, personal God, and this opens the way for all the abominations of which spiritualism is the parent. See the case of Moses Hull. A lover and earnest defender of God’s word, he fell under the bewildering influence of spiritualism, and immediately rejected the Bible, denied Jesus Christ as a Saviour, declared the Jehovah God of the Bible was the spirit of a dead man! and within two years of the time of the change, he wrote a pamphlet on “Love and Marriage,” in which he prophesied the coming of a conflict which will destroy the marriage institution, and expressed a desire to be in the forefront of the battle, and also the hope that the institution might not be purified, but “consumed.” With such things before our eyes; with such accredited mediums as J. M. Spear pleading his right to beget illegitimate children; and spiritualist papers publishing a vindication of his paramour who denied the right of the government to interfere with her illegal maternity; and women in public congregations denouncing all laws concerning marriage, proclaiming their right to have children when, by whom, and by as many as, they will! and their well accredited authors and mediums proclaiming new marriage rules and a new religion, consisting simply of desire! Can we doubt the meaning of these words? Has Cora Hatch, the trance lecturer, ever lost caste among spiritualists by reason of her living with so many different men? Did not their national convention adopt a resolution that no manner of life should recommend to, or debar from, their fellowship? Investigate, forsooth! if there is any depth of iniquity in spiritualism not yet revealed to us in their teachings and their lives, we pray to be spared the recital. For the sake of our common humanity we are ashamed of what we have already found among them, and see no necessity for further investigation. But, 2. I object to their proposed method of investigation, and think I can show reason why it is neither proper nor efficient. They assume that the only proper way to investigate spiritualism is to come into closer contact with it—to mingle with its votaries, and learn by association what it is in practice. But having ascertained that it is evil and only evil, that an “irresistible influence” falls upon those who come under its control, I affirm that association, that contact with it, deprives of the power of investigation. We all judge thus of other evils, even of those whose influence is not so immediate and irresistible; why not, then, of this? I once asked a man, a native of Massachusetts, who had passed several years in Alabama, how he then regarded slavery. He answered that his convictions were the same that they were when he left his native State, that it was a great evil and wrong; but his feelings had undergone a great change by association. Once he regarded every act of tyranny with horror; but after years of association he did not realize or even notice its most brutal features. And so it is with every evil. Association blunts the sensibilities. Investigate! As well tell me that I must go to the liquor saloon, mingle with the noisy rabble, or join in their indecent orgies, to investigate the nature of intemperance. All that I know of the evil of intemperance I have learned just as I have obtained my knowledge of spiritualism, and yet I believe I understand the true nature and bearing of intemperance better than the most besotted drunkard in the land! Must I visit a brothel to investigate licentiousness, or to learn that it is evil? Does not every one know that such a course perverts the judgment, weakens the reason, scars the conscience, destroys189manhood, and ruins the victims of such folly and presumption? Were we ignorant of spiritualism; had we not followed it from its rise in Western New York to the present time, and kept ourselves acquainted with its progress by the extensive reading of its literature, we should not speak thus. But to us who have been ever forward to examine its claims, until its enormities lie all exposed before us, this challenge to investigate appears like the “sheep’s clothing” which cannot half hide the “ravening wolves,” eager for their prey, and rejoicing in their power to destroy. “O my soul, come not thou into their secret; unto their assembly, mine honor, be not thou united.”