Part 3

“It is, indeed, open to question,” he says, “whether under some aspects ‘the spirit teachings,’ for example, obtained through the mediumship of the Rev. Stainton Moses are not, on the whole, more hopeless than the quality of the trance address delivered in a back street on a Saturday night before a circle of mechanics, for the simple reason that from the normal gifts of the medium we had fair reason to look for better.”

The revelations conveyed through “Spirit Teachings” suggest to this experienced occultist that “if the dead have spoken at any time since the beginning of the Rochester knockings they have said nothing to arrest our attention or to warrant a continued communication.” Mr. Podmore, in “Modern Spiritualism,” mentions that “Imperator” and his associates were supposed to represent personages of some importance on earth. Their real names were revealed by Stainton Moses to one or two friends. After the migration of these “controls” to Mrs. Piper, “they more than once professed, as a proof of identity, to give their names, but their guesses have been incorrect.”

Mr. Podmore thought that the clue to the enigma of Stainton Moses’ life “must be sought in the annals of morbid psychology.” In justice to the medium it should be added that, while working as a curate in the Isle of Man, he showed remarkable courage and zeal during an outbreak of smallpox, helping to nurse sick and bury the dead. In the various positions he held as parish clergyman and schoolmaster he was liked and respected by all. The physical phenomena of his mediumship were always said to be secondary; his own wish was to emphasise the religious teaching he promulgated through automatic writing.

Spiritualists of to-day reject entirely the notion that the phenomena associated with Stainton Moses were produced by fraud, but as Mr. Hill says, “Whether they were due to spirits is another question, not to be finally settled until we know the extent of our subliminal self’s hidden powers.”

II

If doubts are felt by Spiritualists themselves with regard to the origin of such a standard work as “Spirit Teachings,” can we wonder that all but the most credulous reject great masses of ordinary automatic writing and concentrate their attention on a possibly valuable “residuum”? As Sir William Barrett recognises, the automatist, even when absolutely above suspicion, may unconsciously guide the pencil or the indicator of the “ouija board.” May not the explanation of surprising communications, when such occur, be found in “thought-transference from those who are sitting with the medium, or telepathy from other living persons who may know some of the facts that are automatically written?”[23]

Sir William Barrett asks the question, though he does not consider that an affirmative answer covers the facts. Honest-minded Spiritualists are groping after a natural explanation of the phenomena. The best of them, we are sure, would agree with Dr. Barnes that automatic writing, taken as a whole, has no evidential value in favour of the theory that it is possible to communicate with the dead. As the “table phenomena” point to dimly realised extensions of man’s physical powers, so the unexplained facts of automatic writing find their probable explanation in thought-transference, or in that mysterious realm where experts talk of “the dissociation of the personality.”

Mr. Gerald Balfour, whose writings on Psychical Research deserve the closest and most attentive study, discussed in the _Hibbert Journal_ ten years ago the problem of dissociation, “whereby an element of the normal self may be supposed to become in a lesser or greater degree divided off from that self, and to acquire, for the time being, a certain measure of independence.”

“It would appear to be with this secondary self (or selves, if there be more than one of them) that we have to reckon in dealing with the facts of automatism rather than with the normal self: a deduction drawn from the consciousness or unconsciousness of the latter may be altogether inapplicable to the former. How ready these second selves are to act a part, and how cleverly they often do so, the experience of hypnotism is there to show.”

III

“Nearly every woman,” writes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in “The New Revelation,” “is an undeveloped medium. Let her try her own powers of automatic writing.” Doctors have cried out against this dangerous advice given by one of the medical fraternity, and we have not found it supported by any leading authority in the ranks of Spiritualism. We are able to state, on excellent authority, that the late Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace strongly deprecated any similar attempts by amateurs. In private conversation he used to tell of a man who, having practised automatic writing, became absolutely incapable of writing the simplest note without his hand being used by other agencies. He was not able to hinder this by his own will, and in order to effect a cure he was obliged to abstain for years from using a pencil at all. Dr. Russel Wallace had a strong belief in the existence and activity of malignant low-grade spirits who seek to gain control over men.

Sir William Barrett, in a very grave passage, discourages “young persons and those who have little to interest their time and thoughts” from “making any experiments in this perplexing region.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has never known “a blasphemous, an unkind, or an obscene message” to be transmitted ostensibly from the other side. Sir W. F. Barrett has been less fortunate in his experience. “It not infrequently happens,” writes this great authority, “as some friends of mine found, that after some interesting and veridical messages and answers to questions had been given, mischievous and deceptive communications took place, interspersed with profane and occasionally obscene language. How far the sitters’ subliminal self is responsible for this, it is difficult to say; they were naturally disquieted and alarmed, as the ideas and words were wholly foreign to their thoughts, and they threw up the whole matter in disgust.”[24]

Sir Oliver Lodge, in “Raymond” (p. 225), warns his readers against the misapplication of psychic power. His paragraph headed “Warning” gleams like a sea-light over sunken rocks. It was with a deep sense of responsibility, we may be sure, and with a consciousness of surrounding danger, that the world-famed scientist wrote these words: “Self-control is more important than any other form of control, and whoever possesses the power of receiving communications in any form should see to it that he remains master of the situation. To give up your own judgment and depend solely on adventitious aid is a grave blunder, and may in the long run have disastrous consequences. Moderation and common sense are required in those who try to utilise powers which neither they nor any fully understand, and a dominating occupation in mundane affairs is a wholesome safeguard.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, we believe, stands alone among leading Spiritualistic teachers in his advice that all and sundry should practise planchette-writing. “Such practices,” as Dr. Barnes remarks, “do little harm to men and women whose minds are healthy; but there is a danger that through them persons whose minds are unstable may develop fixed illusions.”[25]

FOOTNOTES:

[23] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” pp. 162, 163.

[24] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” p. 322.

[25] “Spiritualism and the Christian Faith,” p. 47.

_Chapter VII_

IS THERE DANGER FROM THE OTHER SIDE?

Canon Barnes, in his excellent pamphlet, “Spiritualism and the Christian Faith,” warns the clergy against a line of opposing argument which would commit them to an acceptance of the mediæval system of demonology. We can confirm the testimony of Dr. Barnes that it is not uncommon to hear in Christian pulpits an admission that the medium can receive communications from another world, and to find this admission coupled with the suggestion that these communications are sent by evil spirits. We entirely agree with Dr. Barnes that the worst way of attacking Spiritualism is to admit its fundamental claim that communication with “spirits” can be set up, and then to assert that the “spirits” with whom intercourse is established are evil. “Such teaching attempts to combat Spiritualism by a revived belief in demonology.” The “danger from the other side” is of a different and more subtle nature. “No one at the present day,” writes Mr. Arthur E. Waite, “would desire to submit that a Spiritualist who receives at a séance that which, so far as his knowledge extends, is satisfactory evidence that he is holding some kind of communication with, let us suppose, a departed relative, is in reality being imposed upon by any satanic intelligence according to the conventional view; but it remains that he is assuming throughout the good faith of the other side of life, and that it is incapable of utilising particular means of knowledge in an unscrupulous way.” Trustworthy teachers of Spiritualism do not, in their own investigations, “assume the good faith of the other side of life.” The most serious warnings as to possible dangers to the inquirer come from men of high character and responsible position, who accept the tenets of Spiritualism.

I

The Church has taught in every age that man’s soul is engaged in warfare with unseen powers. St. Paul’s words in Ephesians vi. 11, 12, are impressively rendered by Dr. Moffatt: “Put on God’s armour so as to be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil. For we have to struggle not with blood and flesh, but with the Angelic Rulers, the Angelic Authorities, the potentates of the dark present, the spirit-forces of evil in the heavenly sphere.”

There is no stranger, more disputed, passage in Dante’s “Purgatorio” than that in which the poet represents the evil serpent seeking to gain access to the penitents on the lower slopes of the Mount. Sinless they are, but they have not reached the terraces of suffering; they are waiting, pale and humble, for permission to move upward at daybreak, and they sing the compline hymn.

Guardian angels come at once to the defence of those whose rest in the flowery dell is disturbed by thoughts of the adversary. These angels, as Maria Rossetti says, are “green-winged and robed for hope, golden-haired and radiant-visaged for glory, with fiery swords against the lurking serpent, with blunted swords towards the reposing elect, falcons to watch, falcons to fly, moved swifter than seen to move.”

Those penitents of Dante’s “Dell of Princes” would have echoed the words with which John Bunyan closed the first part of the “Pilgrim’s Progress”: “I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of destruction.” Would they not, as the dawn-light guided them upward to St. Peter’s gate, have warned Christian souls on earth against any tampering with “spirit-forces of evil”?

“Principalities and powers, Mustering their unseen array, Wait for thy unguarded hours; Watch and pray.”

II

Mental and moral wreckage may be the fate of those who surrender the will in a vain attempt to lift the curtain of unseen realms. It was an ancient belief that evil spirits could not obtain a footing in any house unless the inmate gave them a deliberate invitation to enter. “Reverend father,” says Magdalen in “The Abbot,” “hast thou never heard that there are spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when once admitted, which yet cannot enter the house unless they are invited, nay, dragged, over the threshold?” We remember how Coleridge uses the same superstition in the mysterious fragment, “Christabel”:

“The lady sank, belike thro’ pain. And Christabel with might and main Lifted her up, a weary weight, Over the threshold of the gate; Then the lady rose again, And moved as she were not in pain.”

“It is prudent,” says Camille Flammarion, “not to give oneself exclusively to occult subjects, for one might soon lose the independence of mind necessary to form an impartial judgment.”

III

Impressive warnings as to possible dangers from the other side have come from leading spiritualists who have not separated themselves from the Christian faith. It will not be the fault of Sir William Barrett if foolish and credulous séance-haunters get into deep waters. In the latest edition of his standard book he reprints, with slight modification, an often cited passage which he wrote more than ten years ago.

“Certainly,” he says, “the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, points to a race of spiritual creatures, not made of flesh and blood, inhabiting the air around us, and able injuriously to affect mankind. Good as well as mischievous agencies doubtless exist in the unseen; this, of course, is equally true if the phenomena are due to those who have once lived on the earth. ‘There are as great fools in the spirit world as there ever were in this,’ as Henry More said over 200 years ago. In any case, granting the existence of a spiritual world, it is necessary to be on our guard against the invasion of our will by a lower order of intelligence and morality.”

It is the danger to the will, fully recognised and acknowledged, which leads Sir Oliver Lodge and others to press on students of Spiritualism the need for a primary absorption in worldly affairs. Camille Flammarion, the chief French authority, urges the same view. “There are foods and drinks,” he says, “which it is most wholesome to take only in small quantities.” After a lifetime devoted to the study of mediumship, this brilliant Frenchman thought that three principles only were established:

(1) The soul exists as a real entity independent of the body.

(2) It is endowed with faculties still unknown to science.

(3) It is able to act at a distance without the intervention of the senses.

IV

Passing, then, from the first part of our subject, we may summarise as follows:--

(1) The past of Spiritualism is deeply tainted with fraud, and the present is “clouded with a doubt.” There may have been unconscious cheating, but there has been much deliberate roguery.

(2) Even where fraud seems to be eliminated, it is probable that the unexplained phenomena of mediumship will become clear as a wider knowledge is gained of man’s physical and mental powers. “I hold,” says Dr. Barnes, “that all the well-attested evidence, on which the theory of spirit-communication is based, will ultimately be explained by a fuller knowledge of the interchange of consciousness between living persons.”

(3) We reject the crude theory that mediumistic phenomena are caused by diabolic intervention.

(4) We believe that mental and moral ruin may result from “borderland” studies, because in these the personality is peculiarly liable to the loss of will-power and self-control. “We shall do well to keep the doors of the soul shut until we can open them to God.”

_Chapter VIII_

SPIRITUALISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Spiritualism, a recent writer[26] says, is more and more proving itself a rival to Christianity. Its votaries cease, almost invariably, to be Christians in any traditional sense of the word. It grips the mind of “dabblers” with an extraordinary fascination, and “seems to demand a self-surrender as great as that which Christianity itself involves, a surrender of the whole personality.”

We propose to ask in this chapter, “What is the attitude of Spiritualist teachers towards the Christian faith?” An exceptional position, let us remark at the outset, is occupied by two of the leaders, Sir W. F. Barrett and Sir Oliver Lodge. The former regards the evidence afforded at the séance as “a handmaid to faith,” and warns beginners “against making a religion of Spiritualism.”[27]

Sir Oliver Lodge, as we know from his writings, has a sincere reverence for the Person of our Lord. He is convinced that grades of being exist, not only lower in the scale than man, but higher also, grades of every order of magnitude from zero to infinity. Among these lofty beings “is One on whom the right instinct of Christianity has always lavished heartfelt reverence and devotion. Those who think that the day of the Messiah is over are strangely mistaken; it has hardly begun.... Whatever the Churches may do, I believe that the call of Christ himself will be heard and attended to, by a large part of humanity in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth.... My own time down here is getting short; it matters little; but I dare not go till I have borne this testimony to the grace and truth which emanate from that divine Being.”[28]

There is something characteristic in the question asked by the bereaved father at an “automatic” séance reported in “Raymond”:

“O. J. L.: Before you go, Raymond, I want to ask a serious question. Have you been let to see Christ?”

“Father, I shall see him presently. It is not time yet.”

Intercourse with the departed means for Sir Oliver Lodge “nothing less than the possibility some day of a glance or a word of approval from the eternal Christ.”

I

A different world opens upon us as we examine the general literature of Spiritualism. Its “Seven Principles” have been set forth as follows:[29]

I. The Fatherhood of God. II. The Brotherhood of Man. III. Continuous Existence. IV. Communion of Spirits and Ministry of Angels. V. Personal Responsibility. VI. Compensation and Retribution Hereafter for good or ill done on earth. VII. A path of endless progression.

The name of our Lord is not mentioned, yet these “principles” would be words of little meaning but for His life on earth, His death, His resurrection, and His glorious reign. It was He who taught us to say “Our Father.” New ideas were poured by Him into the Roman world. “One is your teacher, and you are all brothers.”[30] “The King will answer them, ‘I tell you truly, in so far as you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even to the least of them, you did it to me.’”[31] The Risen Saviour said on Easter morning, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and yours, to my God and yours.’”[32] Though exalted far above all heavens, “He is not ashamed to call them brothers.”[33] His followers believe in the communion of saints. The ministry of angels is not strange to them, since “angels came and ministered to Him.” His teaching on responsibility, compensation and retribution is the highest yet vouchsafed to mankind. If continuous existence is the master-chord of Spiritualism, it was He who brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, who showed to dying men the path of life. Why, then, is His name omitted from the “Seven Principles” of Spiritualism? The challenge cannot be put aside. The question goes sounding through the ages to every new discipleship, “What think ye of Christ?”

II

Impatience and annoyance seem to be roused in certain Spiritualists when the question is put to them. Mr. J. Arthur Hill, in the concluding pages of his best-known volume,[34] refers to the complaint of “a clerical reviewer of a recent book of mine ... that I nowhere stated my belief regarding Christ.”

“It seemed a curious objection,” he goes on, “and it had not occurred to me that anyone would expect Christology in a book mainly describing psychical investigations.” He refers to “technical theological details on which I am incompetent to pronounce,” and adds that “Spiritualists seem for the most part to be uninterested in the subtleties of the Trinitarian doctrine. All venerate the person and teaching of Jesus.”

The writer expresses his own belief that “Jesus may have belonged to some order higher than ours.” “I admit,” he says, “that I have felt this about Emerson.... Consequently, I sympathise with those who, being rightly humble about their own persons, but rating others and human possibilities in general too low, feel the necessity of regarding Jesus as more than man.”

It is strange that a writer of Mr. Hill’s intelligence should forget that we are living in a Christian land, and that Spiritualism professes to bring new certainties about the future life to those whose hope and anchor on futurity has hitherto rested wholly in the Christian faith. He goes as far as he possibly can to meet the inquiries of Christian readers, but evidently thinks it unfair that they should tease him. That is the surprising thing.

Take in contrast the language of James Smetham, when he was studying the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The great difference of such a subject from all others is that all the interests of Time and Eternity are wrapped up in it. The scrutiny of a title-deed of £100,000 a year is nothing to it. How should it be? Is there a Christ? Is He the heir of all things? Was He made flesh? Did He offer the all-perfect sacrifice? Did He supersede the old order of priests? Is He the Mediator of a new and better covenant? What are the terms of that covenant? There are no questions like these. All other interests seem low, trivial, momentary.”

III

Two affirmations meet us on the threshold of the Gospels. One is the assertion of our Lord’s Divinity, which Mr. Gladstone called “the only hope of our poor wayward human race.” “Immanuel, God with us,” has been the conquering cry of Christian ages. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The other is the proclamation that a Redeemer had come to Sion. “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”

What is the attitude of Spiritualism towards these central truths?

IV

THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD

We need say little about the controversy on the Divine Nature of our Lord which has broken out in the ranks of Spiritualism. The difference was proclaimed in a letter to _Light_[35] by the Rev. F. Fielding-Ould, a London clergyman, who is himself a Spiritualist, and whose writings are recommended by Sir A. Conan Doyle. “No one,” says this clergyman, “has a right to call himself a Christian unless he believes in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. He may be a person of estimable character, and greatly developed spirituality, but he is not a _Christian_.” On the truth of our Lord’s Divinity the Church is erected. “Take it away, and the whole elaborate structure falls into ruins. It is upon that rock that the great vessel of modern Spiritualism is in imminent danger of being wrecked.... In the Spiritualist hymn-book the name of Jesus is deleted--_e.g._, ‘angels of Jesus’ reads ‘angels of wisdom.’ At their services His name is carefully omitted in the prayers, and the motto of very many is, ‘Every man his own priest and his own saviour.’ Christian Spiritualists, who rejoice in many of the revelations of the séance room, are alarmed. They are quite prepared to allow every man to make his own decision, but that the movement as a whole should be identified with Theism, and that they themselves should be considered as having renounced their faith and hope in Jesus Christ is intolerable.”

Mr. Fielding-Ould adds that Spiritualism is “utterly discredited and condemned” if it can be shown that “the communicating spirits are the authors of and responsible for this anti-Christian tendency.” His language is that of a man who has been misled through ignorance, and who has been brought up sharply on the edge of a precipice.

There never was a time when the Church of England, and all the Christian Churches of this country, accepted with firmer conviction the language of the Te Deum and of the Nicene Creed. “Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.”