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vol. title: vol. period: 1881 pages in vol.: 439 |
President Garfield's Premonitions
Mr. Robert Cooper, of Eastbourne, sends us the following account of the premonitory experiences of President Garfield:—
There are circumstances connected with the death of the late American President that go to prove the active operation of some overruling power which men call God, Providence and sometimes Fate. I gather from the American papers, which my transatlantic friends have recently inundated me with, certain items of the above character, which I think will be of interest to the public, and which may not reach it in any other way. It appears that after his nomination at Chicago, the late President is reported to have said to a personal friend, who questioned him in regard to it, “I have felt bad about it ever since I was nominated,” and only two weeks after he was inaugurated, remarked: “I am sorry I was not in the Senate instead of being President.” These remarks convey the idea that he had a premonition that something of an unfortunate nature would eventually happen to him. More especially does it seem that this was the case as he subsequently said to a friend, “Remember always that this life is a battle where we struggle on to a beginning, but it is in the endless cycles of eternity that our lives must be rounded and perfected.
The New York Sun, of September 21st, contains the following concerning a strong impression on Mr. Garfield’s mind which events have unhappily verified:—Washington, September 20: “One of the peculiar incidents connected with the tragedy is the prediction made by Gen. R. B. Mussey, a well-known lawyer of this city, and a personal friend of the late President On Saturday, August 27th, when the physicians gave the President up, announcing to Mrs. Garfield and the Cabinet that he could not live, Gen. Mussey was asked about his opinion, he being on the evening of that day in New York. He said he did not think the President would die on that day, and that if he died at all it would be on September 19th. Being asked for an explanation of his reason for fixing the date of his death so far in the future, he said that on September 19th, 1863, Gen. Garfield was made a Major General for his gallantry at the battle of Chickamauga, and that he had frequently told him that he would die on the anniversary of his promotion. Gen. Garfield was a great believer in dates, and the verification of the prediction under the circumstances was regarded as one of the most striking of the many strange incidents connected with the case. Gen. Hussey is here now, and on being asked today in regard to his prophecy, which was printed the following day in several newspapers, said he did not claim that it was his; that he only repeated what Gen. Garfield had told him several times with an earnestness that impressed him so much that he never forgot it.”
Another curious circumstance is recorded. A certain sergeant, who, in the late war, was shot in the same part of the body as the President, and who had recovered from the effects of the wound, experienced considerable pain at the time Guiteau fired the murderous bullet: and it is further said that the woman who nursed the wounded sergeant died at the time of the assassination. A remarkable coincidence if placed on that footing.
Introduction to an Experiment Research
In a former paper published last year in The Spiritualist, I endeavoured to show cause why much of the difficulty presented by what is called Modern Spiritualism might be got rid of by the application of rational physical hypotheses, avoiding any dogmatic assertion as to the existence or non-existence of entities incapable of being defined in terms of recognized value.
On that occasion I laid great stress upon the necessity for assuming a dissociation of the muscular consciousness, leaving it an open question whether there might not be consciousness into which muscle did not enter as a factor.
In the present papers I lay special stress upon the absence of the muscular consciousness, for the subject of action at a distance is handled entirely from the physical standpoint.
It may be remembered that in my former paper I made free use of the conception of spirit, if not in so many words, for I then acknowledged, as I do now, that there is something transcendent, and it may be miraculous, in the manifestations of human weakness and human greatness that in the so-called Spiritualistic manifestations are being daily placed before us for our instruction—fruit for the pulling to some of us who are fortunate enough to yield, with an evenly balanced mind, to the forces of Nature which with the eye of faith we can see are ready to mould our lives as well as the Universe around us, by furnishing us with that food for the digestion of our reason, without which we are apt to settle down into an existence of mere mechanical routine, content if we live on from day to day, the day’s happiness and the day’s duty covering all human aspiration.
It may be of interest to Christians and other Spiritualists to be possessed of a method and a means of demonstrating the existence of a physical relationship between the bodies (and it may be souls, animal souls, for I say nothing about immortal spirits) of those individuals in sympathetic communion, and to provide them from the armoury of the physicist with a weapon, which, as we grow stronger, we shall be the better able to wield, for battering down the natural obstacles in the paths of truth behind which dogmatists of all creeds and denominations have entrenched themselves.
The subject of the Christian miracles is one which has always possessed a close interest for <... continues on page 11-289 >
Editor's notes
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 482, November 18, 1881, pp. 247-48
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London Spiritualist, No. 482, November 18, 1881, pp. 242-45