Character of Spiritualism.
Nothing can be more damaging to the claims of Spiritualism than the character of its revelations. Indeed, it is difficult to treat this subject with gravity. Here are ten thousands of people professing to hold intercourse with the inhabitants of another world. They possess the faculty of summoning the spirits of departed men of ancient as well as modern times, and the highest class mediums can converse with these spirits, and convey their utterances to the public. It is no more than reasonable to expect that with such a facility of intercourse as has thus been opened up, we should by this time have learned something respecting the other world; or at least, assuming that such communications may be forbidden—that the spirits may not be permitted, like the ghost in Hamlet, to unfold the secrets of their prison-house—we should have expected to receive some sentiments worthy of the reputation of the illustrious men who have been of late so frequently deprived of their celestial repose. The utter absence of dignity, of novelty, of consistency in the ten thousand answers which have been rapped out from the spirits, is, to say the least, not calculated to enhance the credit of the witnesses. The internal evidence is all against them. There is only one point in which the spirits generally agree, namely, that the other world closely resembles our own; yet even this statement is not supported by the character of the communications received, which exhibit an amount of imbecility, bad grammar, and inanity, very different from the vigorous, common-sense talk of the average of people in their daily life. How is it that the three million mediums in the Northern States have not been able to get a scrap of information from the spirits respecting155the plans of the Confederate commanders? How is it that not one of them discovered the whereabouts of Gen. Lee, or of Stonewall Jackson, and prevented their pouncing on the Northerners unawares? How is it that not a single secret crime has been brought to light, or offender brought to justice? How is it that the spirits are so destitute of moral courage as invariably to coincide with the religious and political opinions of the parties who seek their intercourse; so that when a Universalist inquires as to the condition of the departed, he receives for answer that all are happy, and that "the burning gulf, with all its horrible imagery, exists only in the traditions of men, and in the fitful wanderings of a distracted brain;" while Calvinist mediums "receive much injury to their health from the infernal stenches and effluvia," and are "sickened and disgusted by a detestable taste of mixed sulphur, soot and salt, and felt continual burning as from poisoned arrows and the stings of scorpions?" How is it that the spirits, when attempting physical feats, can do nothing better than raise a table to an angle of forty-five degrees, or cause chairs to fall over, or lift up Mr. Home's coat-tails as he floats near the ceiling, or make the joints of arm-chairs crack at their masters, or execute a half illegible scrawl upon a piece of paper? Can any noble or elevated feature be pointed out which tends to relieve these ghostly confabulations of their inherent incredibility, or to show that the internal evidence is not hopelessly against them? It is astonishing how little respect Spiritualists have for spirits. Mr. Howitt believes that the improvisatori of Italy are all mediums; "they are but the flutes and trumpets through which spiritual poets pour the music and eloquence of other spheres for the occasion." If so, the only conclusion to which we can come is that the terrestrial poets are beyond comparison better than the spiritual, and that any decently educated musician can beat the flutists and trumpeters of the unseen spheres at extempore melody. Indeed, in whatever department their powers are tried, their inferiority to us corporeal beings becomes evident. As Mr. Howitt refers to this objection again and again, he can not be supposed to be indifferent to it; and in truth he ill conceals a little vexation at his friends, the spirits, for not behaving with more dignity. He assures us, however, that they could do a great deal better if they would, and that the reason why their communications are not more worthy of themselves is that the present age is not in a condition to profit by anything higher. "Men sunk in their spiritual condition to the earth, must have manifestations of the earth first, to awake them. For this reason the much-despised and ridiculed physical manifestations have come first, as the only ones" (the italics are Mr. Howitt's) "adapted to the degraded physical status of men, many of them imagining themselves peculiarly enlightened and refined." This degraded type of mankind, we are elsewhere informed, is represented by such petrified men as Faraday and Brewster, who have no more faith than a stone, and whose scientific atheism clings to them like a death-pall, and renders them "as utterly disqualified for psychological research as a blind man for physical research." The reason, then, why the revelations of Spiritualism up to the present time have not taken a higher type than the climbing of tables on to ottomans, is not because the spirits are incapable of any thing loftier, but because such babes as the Faradays and Murchisons of our age can at present only have milk administered to them. This explanation is offered in all seriousness and good faith on the part of our author. He does not appear to have reflected how different is such conduct from that of the divine founder of Christianity, with whom he is most anxious to ally the cause of Spiritualism; who, appearing to a generation equally debased, we may presume, with our own, did not think fit to convince them by tricks and empty truisms, but uttered doctrines which as far outshine the wisdom of existing Paganism as his miracles outshone the feats of ancient or modern necromancy.—London Quarterly.