Spiritualism: Extracts on Past Spiritualist Practices and Teachings by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 22, 1874

Spiritualism: Extracts on Past Spiritualist Practices and Teachings

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Spiritualism.—No. 8.

We wish the reader to understand and to bear in mind that the following extracts prove, not merely what spiritualists now believe and practice, but what they have believed and practiced in the past. These testimonies were collected by us about ten years ago. It is eight years since the National Convention of Spiritualism in Chicago, which met on purpose to adopt a platform and to perfect a general organization, declared that no one should be excluded on account of his life or conduct, and that they would not consider charges against their members. Neither this platform, nor the general sentiment of speakers and writers, as shown in the following quotations, was repudiated by the Banner of Light, nor by the Religio-Philosophical Journal. Their present affectation of sensitiveness over the practices of Moses Hull and Mrs. Woodhull are of little value while they stand committed in favor of such teachings.

John M. Spear is a noted medium through whom popular spirit works have been indicted; but, like a practical spiritualist that he is, he became the father of an illegitimate child. Some, even among spiritualists, were so infected with what A. J. Davis calls “a sort of atheism” as to blame him for this act! But he was safe among his friends—he found plenty of defenders. A Mr. Stearling wrote two articles, which were published in the Spiritual Telegraph, in vindication of Mr. Spear, and Miss H., his affinity. The following is an extract from this defense:—

“Suppose, then, Miss H. has become a mother. Does that fact warrant you in calling Mr. Spear a libertine or a debauchee? May he not, after all, have acted in this affair in perfect consistency with all his past life, a pure, good man? Again, does this fact of Miss H.’s maternity necessarily imply wrong or corruption in the movement? She desired to be the mother of a child; but she was not willing to become a legal wife, in which relation she might be compelled not only to give birth to unwelcome children, but also to yield her body to the gratification of unhallowed passion. Now, sir, will you, believing this, condemn such conduct? I cannot—will not! I deem it a matter with her own soul, and the one she loved, and her God, with whom she is at peace. The smiles of Heaven have been upon her: her religious nature has been greatly blessed; her spiritual vision has been unfolded, and her prospects of health and happiness, and especially of usefulness to her race, greatly augmented, and she feels to bless God that strength and courage have been given her to walk thus calmly, deliberately, and peacefully, in a path ignored by a corrupt and unappreciative world.”

Such a defense of crime—such a mingling together of mock reverence for God with a total disregard of his authority, and insult to the purity of his government, cannot be found outside of spiritualism.

But Miss H. has also spoken—she asserts her rights as follows:—

“I will exercise that dearest of all rights, the holiest and most sacred of all of Heaven’s gifts—the right of maternity—in the way which to me seemeth right; and no man, nor set of men, no church, no State, shall withhold me from the realization of that purest of all inspirations inherent in every true woman, the right to re-beget myself when, and by whom, and under such circumstances as to me seem fit and best.”

One would think by the above that woman’s most sacred rights were being invaded by both church and State; but it is enough to astonish Heaven and earth that a woman should rise up in this enlightened age and covet the honor of martyrdom for the cause of prostitution!

Warren Chase is one of the most popular of all the authors and lecturers of spiritualism, and he has done more to undermine the foundations of morality than any other one. Of his own marriage he says:—

“The priest said God put two beings together so that no man should dare to put them asunder. If God did do it, then the priest did not; and if God did not, then the priest surely did not; and hence his act was useless either way, except as a license to society to call them man and wife.”—P. 67.

But if the marriage rite is useless, it is evident that men and women may, as he quotes approvingly, trust their attractions without any restraint to protect society. And to carry out the idea of the uselessness of the marriage rite, he publicly and privately advises to disregard its obligations where it has already been solemnized.

Mr. Chase is not an ignorant man, but a very reckless one. He well knows that to abolish legal marriage, in the present and prospective state of society, would be to bring upon our sinful race the greatest possible calamity; that without the restraints of law, over the vicious, society, as such in any civilized sense, could not exist. What, then, are his motives for persistently opposing the legal relation of marriage? What substitute will he offer? The law of attraction, or the “religion of desire,” as Dr. Child has it?

Dr. Gridley published a work under the title of “Astounding Facts from the Spirit World.” Of what is, and what is to be, he said:—

“Friend Bryant, and other spirit friends from the fifth degree, deny the statements of such as have dressed up this subject in glowing colors. They state that no good and advancing spirits below the fifth degree have aught to do with the sexual relation in any sense whatever, any more than the virtuous part of the community do on earth before marriage. They state that after the Judgment the positive spirit can readily fill the negative by contact, and as the male is generally and naturally positive to the female, so a spiritually enlightened wisdom often inclines them to assume the position of connubial commerce, not to produce a new existence, as on earth, but to supply the negative spirit with their own positive elements, or in other words, to multiply their own spiritual life in others. . . . The spiritual world is the counterpart of the earth-world in this as in other matters, and as the generative organs are the proper vehicles for the impartation and propagation of natural life, so the same organs in the higher life and of course on a higher plane are vehicles through which spiritual life is often, though by no means always, disposed to flow. They affirm that any positive spirit has free access to any negative spirit where there is affinity—that though the male may have a female companion who is constitutionally adapted to be to him a better help-meet on the whole than any other, and so generally accompanies him, yet the latter has no jealousy and knows no exclusiveness, that she is glad to have the life of God increased in any way, and anywhere—that the same liberty will ere long be given to men on earth, ‘who are found worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead,’ which can be done without putting off the body.”—Astounding Facts from the Spirit World, pp. 171–2.

Evil-minded spirits in all the degrees are represented as given to licentiousness.

But the point to which we call especial attention is the license for promiscuous intercourse which is soon to be given to men on earth. Note that the license will extend to all above the fourth degree—that the true reformers are all in that degree, except a few who have passed through it—and that it usually takes about eleven years to pass through it. What a flood of iniquity these demons are pouring upon the world!

The time indicated in this book for such privileges to be given to that class of reformers, has already arrived. Therefore the course of Moses Hull and his wife, Mrs. Woodhull, and the National Convention of Spiritualists, is only what we have been expecting. The spirits have been training up their deluded followers to this position for twenty years past.

Cora Hatch was, for years, the most popular of trance-speaking mediums. Her husband, Dr. Hatch, traveled extensively with her, and thereby became well acquainted with mediums, and with spiritualism, as it is practiced as well as taught by the body of its adherents. The following is his testimony of the immorality of its doctrines and the lives of its advocates:—

“All spiritualists claim that the mental control of mediums is spiritual psychology, and that for the time being, the mind is held in perfect vassalage to the controlling spirit. Also, that the spirit world is made up of just such persons as are daily passing from this world to that, and that both the good and evil alike have power to return and obsess mortals who are mediumistic. Therefore, taking the concession of the spiritualist and combining it with the well-known laws of psychological control, we are inevitably forced to the following conclusion, viz., that there is no reliance to be placed upon the veracity or moral integrity of any mental medium on earth. Their oath would be wholly unreliable, for the moment they are called upon to bear witness they may become infested or obsessed by an outside influence which desires to give different testimony, and thereby made to utter such statements as they know to be wholly false, when in their normal condition; and at the same time they may be, apparently, perfectly themselves in reference to all other things. Here we have a basis, according to the spiritualist’s own theory, which is incontrovertible, and which establishes upon immutable laws the perfect unreliability of mediums.

“The most damning iniquities are everywhere perpetrated in spiritualist circles, a very small percentage of which ever comes to public attention. I care not whether it be spiritual or mundane, the facts exist, and should demand the attention and condemnation of an intelligent community.

“It is worse than useless to talk to the spiritualists against this condition of things; for those who occupy the highest position among them are aiding and abetting in all classes of iniquities which prevail among them. The abrogation of marriage, bigamy, accompanied by robbery, theft, rapes, are all chargeable upon spiritualism. I most solemnly affirm that I do not believe that there has during the past five hundred years, arisen any people who are guilty of so great a variety of crimes and indecencies as the spiritualists of America.

“For a long time I was swallowed up in its whirlpool of excitement, and comparatively paid but little attention to its evils, believing that much good might result from the openings of the avenues of spiritual intercourse. But during the past eight months I have devoted my attention to critical investigation of its moral, social, and religious bearing, and I stand appalled before the revelations of its awful and damning realities.”

Mrs. Hatch, under the influence of spiritualism, left her husband for certain affinities, since which time she has passed under the names of Scott, Tappan, McKinley, &c., &c. As Cora Scott she lectured in Clinton Hall, New York, as usual under spirit influence. At the close of her lecture a discussion arose, and while an elderly man was speaking a young man interrupted him. The latter part of the scene we give as found in a Boston paper. The young man said:—

“‘I have come here to shame that old man. He is my father. He left his wife and children, and is now living with Cora Hatch, in East Broadway.’

“A voice.—‘Well, go home, and do not come here to settle your private troubles.’

“Young Man.—‘You may think I am doing wrong; but if you knew all the facts of the case you would think I am doing right.’

“Several voices.—‘Go on. Let us hear the story. Take the stand,’ &c.

“Young Man.—‘I have done everything to get that man to do right by his family, but I have not been able to do so. I am his son, and am here to shame him in public. His name is William McKinley, and he keeps a store at the corner of Chatham and Pearl streets. He has beaten my mother and treated her most shamefully, and he has abandoned her to live with Cora Hatch.’”

Dr. Randolph, after traveling eight years as a medium and speaker and making over 3000 speeches in its defense, gives the following view of its moral standing:—

“For seven years I held daily intercourse with what purported to be my mother’s spirit. I am now fully persuaded that it was nothing but an evil spirit, an infernal demon, who in that guise gained my soul’s confidence, and led me to the very brink of ruin. We read in Scripture of demoniac possession as well as of normal spiritual action. Both facts exist provable to-day; I am positive the former does. A. J. Davis and his clique of Harmonialists say there are no evil spirits. I emphatically deny the statement. Five of my friends destroyed themselves, and I attempted it, by direct spiritual influences. Every crime in the calendar has been committed by mortal movers of viewless beings. Adultery, fornication, suicides, desertions, unjust divorces, prostitution, abortion, insanity, are not evils, I suppose. I charge all these to this scientific spiritualism. It has also broken up families, squandered fortunes, tempted and destroyed the weak. It has banished peace from happy families, separated husbands and wives, and shattered the intellect of thousands.”

Mr. J. F. Whitney was editor of the N. Y. Pathfinder, and an advocate of spiritualism. After several years of familiarity with it he gives the following testimony against it:—

“Now, after a long and constant watchfulness, seeing for months and for years its progress and its practical workings upon its devotees, its believers, and its mediums, we are compelled to speak our honest conviction, which is, that the manifestations coming through the acknowledged mediums, who are designated as rapping, tipping, writing, and entranced mediums, have a baneful influence upon believers, and create discord and confusion; that the generality of these teachings inculcate false ideas, approve of selfish, individual acts, and indorse theories and principles which, when carried out, debase and make men little better than the brute. These are among the fruits of modern spiritualism, and we do not hesitate to say that we believe if these manifestations are continued to be received, and to be as little understood as they are, and have been since they made their appearance at Rochester, and mortals are to be deceived by their false, fascinating, and snake-like charming powers which go with them, the day will come when the world will require the appearance of another Saviour to redeem the world from its departing from Christ’s warnings. . . .

“Seeing, as we have, the gradual progress it makes with its believers, particularly its mediums, from lives of morality to those of sensuality, and immorality, gradually and cautiously undermining the foundation of good principles, we look back with amazement to the radical change which a few months will bring about in individuals, for its tendency is to approve and indorse each individual act and character, however good or bad these acts may be. . . .

“We desire to send forth our warning voice, and if our humble position, as the head of a public journal, our known advocacy of spiritualism, our experience, and the conspicuous part we have played among its believers, the honesty and the fearlessness with which we have defended the subject, will weigh anything in our favor, we desire that our opinions may be received, and those who are moving passively down the rushing rapids to destruction, should pause, ere it be too late, and save themselves from the blasting influence which those manifestations are causing.” J. H. Waggoner.