The following experience of a spiritualist from the Spiritual Telegraph will serve to show how complete and powerful this deception is becoming.
Spirit-Music and Voices.
BRETHREN OF THE TELEGRAPH:
After a long silence, I feel moved to offer you a few more all-potent facts. My experience during my silence has been full of them, but I had concluded that you had received testimony enough from one witness, and therefore refrained from sending you an account of a multitude of demonstrations which otherwise might have been interesting. I have, however, recently seen, heard, and felt so many performances which I positively know were produced by departed human Spirits, that I feel like sending them into a sceptical world, and thus, if possible, adding to the immense amount of testimony which has been offered in favor of immortality as a demonstrable truth—a doctrine, as I humbly conceive, which never was realized except by spiritual intuition or external demonstration. But I did not mean to theorize, but briefly state a part of my recent experience.
I have not only seen heavy tables raised entirely from the floor without contact, but I have seen with my natural vision Spirit-forms, heard Spirit-voices, seen and felt substantial Spirit-hands, in company with scores of others, under circumstances in which, I most solemnly declare before God, angels, and men, I know I could not be mistaken any more than I am in regard to the fact of my existence. These things have been witnessed while a musical instrument was sending forth indescribably sweet music in three parts, and questions of various members of the circle were answered at the same time by sounds of the instrument, all of which was performed without visible hands.
After the medium (D. D. Home) had retired with my son, on the evening of the 17th instant, I was called to hear the music. Knowing there was no instrument in the room, I doubted; but as I ascended the stairs, I distinctly heard the most exquisite, rich, and melodious sounds which have ever fallen upon my ears; as I entered the room, the music seemed to retire, till I could only hear, as it were, its distant echo; but as soon as we all became tranquil again, the glorious harmonious commingling of sweet, rich, heavenly music seemed gradually to approach, until the walls of the room seemed to be annihilated, and we realized that “Heaven was opened to man,” and the caverns of eternal space were filled with the everlasting anthems of the blest.
To our surprise, we distinctly heard, mingled with some of the more prominent strains of this wealth of melody, the words, “Holy, holy, holy!” etc. Next we heard the name of my Spirit-daughter, as it were, incorporated in this glorious chant of heaven. Then we were all addressed by name, with such expressions of holy affection as are not in the power of words to describe; and we knew for the first time what the poet meant when he said—
“Harps of the blessed, your voices I hear.”
Oh, it was then that I felt just like sliding out of my mental shell, and joining that glorious celestial throng, to bathe my earth-scarred soul in that sea of beatific sight and song! “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace and good will,” is the spontaneous ejaculation of the ravished soul of your unworthy friend, RUFUS ELMER.