Part 4

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God.”

If mockers within the fold of Spiritualism cry contemptuously, “You are uttering language far beyond the range of mortal understanding,” the Christian knows that the reality is indeed far beyond his finite apprehension. He looks up and says with St. Thomas, “My Lord and my God.”

V

THE SAVIOUR FROM SIN

The witness of the Christian heart confirms the testimony of the human race in all ages that a Saviour is needed. It is not only the races influenced by Hebrew literature who have shared the consciousness of sin. A modern scholar quotes from an Egyptian hymn to Amon, Lord of Thebes, helper of the poor:

“Though the servant be wont to commit sin, yet is the Lord wont to be gracious. The Lord of Thebes spends not the whole day wroth. If he be wroth for the space of a moment it endureth not--turns to us in graciousness. Amon turns with his breath.”[36] The cry for mercy rises from the oldest literature of Hinduism. An ancient Vedic hymn has these words, “Without thee, O Varuna, I am not the master even of the twinkling of an eye. Do not deliver us unto death, though we have offended against thy commandments day by day. Accept our sacrifices, forgive our offences. Let us speak together again like old friends.”[37]

A saint of Buddhism, the noble Lama from Tibet, is represented by Rudyard Kipling as a pilgrim seeking for the River which washes away sin.

As buried civilisations gradually yield up their treasures to the explorer, the cry is heard without need of sound or language: “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” How is it that Spiritualism cannot hear that _De Profundis_? Spiritualism is without a message for the penitent, for it knows nothing of a Divine Redeemer. There is a harshness and shallowness in its conceptions of the future state, except in so far as these are influenced by Christianity. General Drayson said to Sir A. Conan Doyle, “You have not got the fundamental truth into your head. That truth is, that every spirit in the flesh passes over to the next world exactly as it is, with no change whatever. This world is full of weak or foolish people. So is the next.”

Compare such words with the language of the Burial Service. Spirits do not always pass away at their best and truest. Long illness may have clouded the perceptions, infirmities of old age may deface the character, there may come at the last “fightings and fears within, without.” Père Gratry tells us that the young priest, Henri Perreyve, one of the bravest and best of men, cried twice in his dying hour, “_J’ai peur_” (“I am afraid”), as if he saw the Arch-Fear confronting him in visible form. Deep knowledge of the human heart lies behind the words of the Prayer Book: “Spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, Thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.” To the latest moment of life and beyond it the soul has no resting-place except in the Rock of Ages. “The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness.” The burden of sin drops away, and the pilgrim, as he passes over, may say, as in the hour of his conversion, “He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death.”

But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thinks that in “conventional Christianity” “too much seemed to be made of Christ’s death.” “The death of Christ, beautiful as it is in the Gospel narrative,” he says again, “has seemed to assume an undue importance, as though it were an isolated phenomenon for a man to die in pursuit of a reform.” “In my opinion,” he goes on, “far too much stress has been laid upon Christ’s death, and far too little upon His life. That was where the true grandeur and the true lesson lay.”... “It was this most wonderful and uncommon life, and not His death, which is the true centre of the Christian religion.”[38]

Spiritualism, in a word, does not wish to face the Cross. The “spirit-guides” talk vaguely of a “Christ-Spirit,” whose special care is the earth. There is nothing in their report of Atonement or Redemption. As Dr. Jowett has pointed out, the “New Revelation” has much to say on our Lord Jesus Christ as a “medium.” It says nothing of Him as Mediator. It offers fellowship with discarnate human personalities, but has no longing for fellowship with the Risen Lord. The ideas of the “spirit-guides” on prayer are set forth by Sir A. Conan Doyle in “The New Revelation.” The “spirits” declare that “no religion upon earth has any advantage over another, but that character and refinement are everything. At the same time, they are also in agreement that all religions which inculcate prayer and an upward glance rather than eyes for ever on the level are good. In this sense, and in no other--as a help to spiritual life--every form may have a purpose for somebody.”[39]

The cardinal doctrines of the faith are rejected by Spiritualists. Man is not regarded in their creed as “a sinner saved by grace.” Many cannot understand, Sir A. Conan Doyle tells us, such expressions as “redemption from sin,” “cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.” But the Christian says from his heart:

“Grace and life eternal In that Blood I find. Blest be His compassion, Infinitely kind.”

“The mystic life leads no one from the life of the Church.” The contrary is true of Spiritualism.

FOOTNOTES:

[26] Rev. Cyril E. Hudson in _The Nineteenth Century and After_, May, 1919.

[27] “On the Threshold of the Unseen,” pp. 25, 33, 34.

[28] “Raymond,” p. 376.

[29] The pamphlet with the title “The Seven Principles of Spiritualism,” by the Secretary of the Spiritualists’ National Union, is quoted by Mr. Hill in “Spiritualism,” p. 144.

[30] St. Matt. xxiii. 8.

[31] St. Matt. xxv. 40.

[32] St. John xx. 17.

[33] Hebrews ii. 11 (Dr. Moffatt’s translation of each text).

[34] “Spiritualism: Its History, Phenomena, and Doctrine,” pp. 256-260.

[35] July 12th, 1919. Some of the letters printed in _Light_ during subsequent weeks are very instructive, and confirm the view of Mr. Fielding-Ould as to a widespread division in the ranks.

[36] Professor Breasted, “Development of Religion and Thought in Ancient Egypt,” p. 352.

[37] Quoted by Max Müller.

[38] “The New Revelation,” pp. 72-74.

[39] “The New Revelation,” p. 100.

_Chapter IX_

QUALITY OF THE ALLEGED MESSAGES

When a Spiritualist tells us that he receives messages from discarnate human beings through the medium and the medium’s “control” certain questions immediately arise. “Of what nature are these messages? What have you learned from them? How have they affected your judgment of this world and the next? Are they likely to help mankind in its upward progress?”

I

A twofold answer reaches us from within the ranks of Spiritualism.

(1) At an early stage of the inquiry, as Mr. A. E. Waite points out, the belief was accepted that “life for man on the other side of the screen of material things was, specifically, neither better nor worse than our own ... it was so entirely human, with all the folly that resides in humanity.”

Spiritualist leaders of to-day would not dispute that point. “Yes, of course,” they would say, “it is always possible that the inquirer may get in touch with ‘naughty boys’ on the other side. The spirit passes over just as it was on earth. Bad influences as well as good are present in every séance.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle has said plainly: “We have, unhappily, to deal with absolute cold-blooded lying on the part of wicked or mischievous intelligences. Every one who has investigated the matter has, I suppose, met with examples of wilful deception, which occasionally are mixed up with good and true communications.”

Aside from wilful deception, there seems to be a certain mocking malevolence, where we should least expect it, on the part of the supposed spirits. “We do not want to make it too easy for you” is a strange utterance from the other side to bereaved parents.[40]

Speaking at Manchester on May 28, 1919, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle reported a singular experience of his own in Glasgow a few weeks earlier.

“I had to address a very large meeting,” he said, “exactly double the size of this one, and in the morning I went to a séance; we had a number of wonderful manifestations, and finally we had a message sent in a direct voice. The message which came to me was: ‘You are going to have a very good meeting to-night.’ I said, ‘Thank you.’ The voice then said, ‘It won’t be quite the same as you are accustomed to; we have a little surprise for you.’ I said, ‘Not unpleasant, I hope?’ They just chuckled at that, and that was all I got.” When the lecturer faced his audience everything he had intended to say passed entirely out of his head. Preachers and platform orators can tell something of the agony of that experience, which has not infrequently been the premonitory symptom of a nervous illness. “I don’t know how long I stood; I suppose about a minute, though it seemed like a week, and all the time I was struggling in the endeavour to find something to say.” The lecturer recovered himself, and all went well; but is there not here a parallel with the Celtic superstition that the powers of nature are malicious, and will do us a bad turn if they can? Alexander Smith writes of “that sense of an evil will, and an alienation from man in nature,” which is found in ancient fragments of Scottish river-lore.

(2) A cautious attitude might seem advisable under such conditions, and we are surprised to note a tendency on the part of our newer Spiritualist teachers to dogmatise on theological matters. “Spirit Teachings,” by Stainton Moses, has become a sort of Bible to the sect. Sir Oliver Lodge reprints passages from it in “Raymond.” Sir Arthur Conan Doyle takes the rubbish received through “Imperator” and his fellows with the utmost seriousness, though the genius which created Sherlock Holmes has not otherwise been dulled in psychical studies. Sir Arthur is quick enough to criticise the famous “cross-correspondence” analysed by Mr. Gerald Balfour in “The Ear of Dionysius.” Two eminent Greek scholars, Professor Verrall and Professor Butcher, are supposed to have collaborated to produce a Greek problem. “It may be remarked, in passing,” says Sir A. Conan Doyle, “that these and other examples show clearly, either that the spirits have the use of an excellent reference library, or else that they have memories which produce something like omniscience. No human memory could possibly carry all the exact quotations which occur in such communications as ‘The Ear of Dionysius.’”

The Churches must, however, in Sir Arthur’s view, accept the tenets of Spiritualism or perish.

II

Impartial students of the literature--a growing mass of documentary evidence--are impressed (1) by the triviality of the messages. Punsters would seem to carry on their jokes from the other side. A message which was presumed to come to Mrs. Holland from Myers contained a mysterious allusion to “a peck of pickled pepper.” In the opinion of the best S.P.R. critics the words conveyed a punning allusion to Mrs. Piper. Is there not something pitiable in the thought that the great writer who gave us “St. Paul” and the “Classical” and “Modern” Essays should be occupied in the unseen life in trying to transmit to earth punning references to the name of a medium? Professor William James remarked on the extreme triviality of the supposed communications.

“What real spirit,” he wrote, “at last able to revisit his wife on this earth, but would find something better to say than that she had changed the place of his photograph? And yet that is the sort of remark to which the spirits introduced by the mysterious Phinuit are apt to confine themselves.”

A woman writer passed away not long ago in early middle life. Her mother tried to get in touch through a medium with the departed spirit, and received a message to the effect that some valuable old lace had been forgotten in the top drawer of a tallboy, and that it ought to be taken out and washed! In a recent newspaper article by an eminent Spiritualist, reference was made to a supposed authentic communication lately received from the other side. It concerned a pair of grey suède shoes and a fountain pen.

Spiritualists tell us that such “trivial fond records” as we find, for instance, in “Raymond,” are of more value as evidence than graver talk of a general kind. Sir Oliver Lodge says, for instance, “The idea that a departed friend ought to be occupied wholly and entirely with grave matters, and ought not to remember jokes and fun, is a gratuitous claim which has to be abandoned. Humour does not cease with earth life. Why should it?”[41]

With the utmost respect, we reply that Sir Oliver misses the point. The solemn platitudes of “Imperator” are, if possible, even less convincing than the descriptions of life in the unseen world given in “Raymond,” over which Mr. Wells makes merry in “The Undying Fire.” Why is it that the outpourings of Spiritualism almost invariably, as Dr. Barnes points out, “reflect the commonplace thoughts of commonplace minds”?

If spirits were indeed communicating with men from within the veil, would not their language bear some trace of the mighty change they have undergone? Mr. Birrell, in one of his Bristol speeches, raised a question which must occur to every thoughtful inquirer. “The records of Spiritualism,” he said, “leave me unconvinced. They lack the things of morality, of grandeur, of emotion; in a word, of religion. They deal with petty things, mere prolonged egoism, as if the one thing we want to be assured of is continued existence, and an endless capacity to exchange platitudes. A revelation of the life beyond the grave ought surely, if it is to do any good in the world, to be more stupendous than that--something of really first-class importance. Otherwise we are just as well without it.”

(2) Among Spiritualists themselves we hear constant discussion as to the singular failure of the “spirits” to give names. Dr. L. P. Jacks examines this problem in the _Journal_ of the S.P.R. for May, 1919.[42]

He had been “struck by the fact that a spirit who manifested his former personal appearance with great accuracy, even to minute details, was yet apparently unable to manifest his name, except in an imperfect and doubtful manner.” Why was his old coat manifested and his name not?

“Our names, while unessential to our self-consciousness, do play a prominent part in our sensible experience, especially with those of us who are cursed with an interminable correspondence, and one would think that a mind returning to its old tracks, as Sir Oliver Lodge suggests the spirits do, would find his name one of the easiest things to pick out.”

Professor Jacks is disposed to find a solution of the puzzle in telepathy. “It is easier,” he says, “to understand how a telepathist, having succeeded in reading one part of my mind, should fail or omit to read another, than it is to understand how an educated man in the other life should be able to reproduce his coat, but unable to trace the letters of his own name.”

The failure of the “spirits” to give names is a highly suspicious fact. How is it, asks Dr. Jacks, that the “control” which reproduces through the medium long messages as given by the communicating spirit, should fail to “catch” the name, in spite of the effort of all parties to get it through?[43]

FOOTNOTES:

[40] “Raymond,” p. 121.

[41] “Raymond,” p. 349.

[42] In an article entitled “Personal Appearance of the Departed,” _Journal of the Society for Psychical Research_, May, 1919.

[43] _Journal_, May, 1919, p. 28.

_Chapter X_

THE CHURCHES AND THE SÉANCE

The late Dr. Amory Bradford, one of the most eminent leaders of American Congregationalism, caused something of a sensation eleven years ago when he urged the students of Hackney College, Hampstead, to occupy themselves with psychical matters. Not a few of the younger Congregational ministers can recall that strange hour in the library when Dr. Bradford seemed to challenge the Churches with the names of Sir Oliver Lodge, Sir William Crookes, and Dr. Russel Wallace. “These learned scientists,” he argued, “are trying to lift the fringe of the dark veil, and you young ministers ought to show an equal eagerness.” In the American Churches, he said, people were asking their pastors: “Cannot you reveal to us the secret of the world beyond the grave? Our scientific men are occupied with psychical research; what are you ministers doing? Ought not every divinity student to have his attention directed early to these occult mysteries which laymen are discussing in the privacy of their own homes?” As the audience streamed into the lobbies, it was admitted that no more surprising address had been delivered of late years in a London theological college. When the twilight of the June evening enwrapped the departing company, many must have been wondering, with Dr. Garvie, how the students were to find time for such highly-specialised and laborious researches as those conducted by the Psychical Society.

The Principals of our theological institutions are level-headed men, and they did not see their way to provide a dark-room for the séance, as hotels supply a dark-room for the amateur photographer. The Churches have rejected the proposal that they should enter into competition with the experts on whom it falls to investigate the phenomena of Spiritualism. Is their refusal based on cowardice? Very far from it. Sir Walter Scott, in “The Monastery,” has shown us once for all how a great Christian, before the dawn of modern science, met the onset of what seemed to him a supernatural being. When the Monk Eustace was challenged by the White Lady in the Vale of Glendearg, he answered in words which Christian teachers would use to-day, were a similar demand made upon them:

“In the name of _My_ Master,” said the astonished monk, “that name before which all things created tremble, I conjure thee to say what thou art that hauntest me thus.... At the crook of the glen? I could have desired to avoid a second meeting, but I am on the service of the Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against me.”

On negative and on positive grounds the Churches decline to lift the gauntlet thrown down to them by Spiritualism.

I

(1) They note, in the first place, that the challenge comes in language of insult from some of their deadliest foes.

That well-known Spiritualist teacher, Professor James H. Hyslop, Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, denounced the Church for its “fatal genius in allying itself with decadent causes.” “The self-confidence of science,” he wrote, “is directly proportioned to the despair of religion. The ministry do not know what creed is safe to believe or assert, and the churches have become social clubs, and talk about the poor as an excuse for an existence that, so far as social efficiency is concerned, can as well be supplied by literature and art.” Enemies of the Church, who view with contempt her action throughout the Christian ages, are among the very people who are urging her ministers to become Spiritualists.

(2) Christian ministers have not the training, capacity, or experience requisite for the detection of conjuring tricks, which may account for the phenomena in a séance.

We may quote these propositions formulated by the late Mr. Frank Podmore in his “Studies in Psychical Research:”

(_a_) “The conditions under which the phenomena generally occur--conditions for the most part suggested and continually enforced by the medium--are such as to facilitate fraud and to render its detection difficult.

(_b_) “Almost all the phenomena are known to have been produced under similar conditions by mechanical means.

(_c_) “Almost every professional medium has been detected in producing results by trickery.

(_d_) “There are cases on record in which private persons, with no obvious pecuniary or social advantage to secure, have been detected in trickery.

(_e_) “The conditions of emotional excitement in which investigators have for the most part approached the subject ... are calculated seriously to interfere with cold and dispassionate observation.”

The above passage is none the less impressive because it was written more than twenty years ago. The task of examination belongs to those who, while fully acquainted with the records of the past, possess the knowledge and trained powers of observation which such investigations require.

II

The Churches have positive duties, and may not turn aside from their chief business. (1) It is the fashion with Spiritualists to write as if their cult were the only alternative to blank Materialism, because they forget that the one sure message about the Unseen has been committed by our Lord Jesus Christ to His servants and friends. The Churches proclaim that message. Christian ministers, like the Shepherds of Bunyan’s Delectable Mountains, have in their hands a perspective glass through which the pilgrims may see the gates of the Celestial City. Their teaching, like that of the Shepherds, bears the mark of “other-worldliness,” which thirty years ago was applied as a term of reproach to the organised denominations in this country. The Churches can say, in the words of a saintly Wesleyan minister, William Arthur, “The last tunnel is on the east of the land of Beulah, towards the rising of the sun, and opens in face of the golden gate, where are the Shining Ones. How far off it is I cannot tell: the Everlasting Hills are covered with a golden haze. Glory be to God.”[44]

Goethe put the same thought somewhat differently in “Faust”:

“What a cloud of morning hovers O’er the pine-trees’ tossing hair! Can I guess what life it covers? They are spirits young and fair.”

“Then said the Shepherds one to another, Let us here show to the pilgrims the gates of the Celestial City, if they have skill to look through our perspective glass. The pilgrims then lovingly accepted the motion. So they had them to the top of a high hill, called Clear, and gave them their glass to look.”

The Church possesses to-day the gift of clairvoyance, but she exercises it like the Shepherds on bracing mountain-tops, not in dark and stifling rooms. Her messengers go among the sick, the dying, and the bereaved, speaking of eternal life through Christ.

(2) The Church has never denied that the blessed dead may in ways unknown to us influence the living and lead them upward. St. Teresa learned much from the devout monk, St. Peter of Alcántara. At the moment of his death, according to Teresa’s testimony, he appeared to her in great glory, and said he was going to rest. “It seems to me,” she added, “that he consoles me more than when he was here with me.”

To the mourning heart the Christian teacher may say in St. Paul’s words: “Perhaps he therefore departed from thee for a season that thou mightest receive him for ever.”

“Have not we too?--Yes, we have Answers, and we know not whence; Echoes from beyond the grave, Recognised intelligence.

“Such rebounds our inward ear Catches sometimes from afar;-- Listen, ponder, hold them dear. For of God, of God they are.”[45]