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vol. title: vol. period: 1881 pages in vol.: 439 |
< Messianic Pretenders (continued from page 11-329) >
Availing myself of an opportunity which presented itself while on a visit to a friend in the neighbourhood, I paid a visit to the so-called Shaker Settlement near Lymington, Hants. In company with a young friend, through whose kindness I obtained an introduction, I first saw one or two of the male principals, with whom I conversed, but finding I took them out of their depth, they said I had better see their “Mother,” Mrs. Girling, who would answer any question I might put. We then went into their meeting-house,—a miserable wooden shanty, covered over with a leaky canvas. It was service 'time, and we found about 60 people, chiefly females, and, for the most part, young, who were singing, and Mrs. Girling standing amongst them. While the singing, with music from a harmonium, was going on, three females rose up, apparently in a trance, or semi-trance, state, and commenced dancing round Mother Girling (who is a woman of strong features and great determination of character, about 50 years of age, as I should judge). I noted that these females bowed themselves to the ground—in fact, worshipped Mrs. Girling, and in a half singing tone addressed her thus: “Holy, holy, holy, art Thou, O King, for Thou, who wast dead, art alive again; and we worship Thee as the Lord our God;” and much more to the same effect. The reason for their bowing down to her feet appears presently.
At this point I asked Mrs. Girling why she allowed the women to prostrate themselves before her, and we held? conversation for fully half an hour. The substance and pith of her statement was that as to her personality she was no longer Mrs. Girling.
Said she: “I am not Mrs. Girling that am speaking to thee, but the Lord Jesus Christ: I am a man in the body of this woman.”
W.O.: Do you mean to say that you conceive yourself to be the veritable Jesus, the Christ?
Mrs. G.: I am He that came in flesh nearly 2,000 years ago, and was then crucified, and ascended into Heaven; but I am now come again, and am re-incarnated in the body of this woman. I bear upon my body the marks of the wounds of the nails which I received on Calvary.
W. O.: Am I to understand that there are literally corresponding nail marks on your feet? If so, it’s a case of stigmata.
Mrs. G.: Certainly, there are actually and literally the marks which were left on my feet more than 1,800 years ago. Believe me! For I am the Alpha and the Omega: the first and the last, and there shall be none other after me.
W. Ο.: Excuse me calling you into question; but the world is sick of pretended Men Saviours. They have developed only the masculine principle, and the result has been nothing but fightings and contentions. What the world of humanity now wants is a Woman Saviour, i.e., a religion of love, which can tame the contending and warring factions based upon creeds, faiths, and the like. I, therefore, meet you on your own ground, and declare in your hearing that most certainly you are not the last. For, as in Creation it was not good for the man to be alone, and to meet this, woman was evolved; even so, in redemption, it is not sufficient for the Man Saviour to be alone; the Woman Saviour must be evolved; and the last shall be first. But are you aware that there are others beside yourself making the same claim? You are about the twelfth that I have come in contact with, either directly or indirectly, and who is to decide between you all as to which is which?
Mrs. G.: It was prophesied that “false Christs” should come, and all others are false, for, “besides me, there is no Saviour.”
The conversation then turned upon the doctrine of celibacy, &c. Finding herself taken upon such unexpected ground, Mrs. Girling was nonplussed, and I felt that she had received more than calculated for.
I do not suppose that, in consequence of what I said to her, she will abate her pretensions; but! think some of her followers, who listened with breathless attention to our conversation, will have received an idea which will enable them to overcome the mesmeric spell under which Mrs. Girling evidently holds them; and to which power they are, or have been, quite passive. What ever may be the impelling force, there is little doubt that Mrs.
Girling and her followers are strong in their faith that Jesus Christ has actually made His Second Advent.
Many will treat this, and all other similar claimants, as cases of simple madness and blasphemy. It may, or may not be so, but one thing is certain, and that is, there is a “method in the madness,” and, after all, it is not more astounding than that rational people should profess to expect a literal fulfilment of the statement that “Christ shall come in the clouds and descend from the skies with thousands of angels, &c.” How could such (in event occur, and for “every eye” to see Him, when the earth is a solid sphere? For, in this case, if the descent were to take place to England, to the Australians the event would be invisible.
Notes by the Way
I have come upon a number of the-New York Sun, August 18th, 1875, which contains an account of the tests submitted to by Mrs. Thayer, in order to establish her mediumship. Colonel Olcott contributes the narrative, which is a model of lucidity. His investigations were so exhaustive, and his proofs so complete, that they will be of present interest to many who are presumably unacquainted with the record.
Colonel Olcott set himself to inquire, 1: As to Mrs. Thayer’s antecedents. 2: Her personal character. 3: The strength and regularity of her manifestations. 4: The conditions under which they could be produced. 5: Their reality as objective manifestations of Spirit power.
As to the first two points, he very soon satisfied himself that Mrs. Thayer was a person of good repute. One lady, who had known her for 12 years, testified “that a more transparently honest woman she never knew.” Was she a true medium? Mr. Lloyd Garrison, “a partner in one of the greatest mercantile houses in Now England;” Mr. Chas. Houghton, “the well-known lawyer,” and others, affirmed that she was. Colonel Olcott, thus fortified, proceeded to test for himself. He soon found that through her mediumship manifestations occurred with great regularity, that they were produced under the most stringent test conditions, and that the objective reality of the phenomena was beyond question.
Here are Borne of the tests and results obtained. Colonel Olcott records that he sat with Mrs. Thayer, in daylight, at the house of Mr. Charles Houghton, in West Roxburg, where both she and he were guests, “and where fraud or collusion was impossible.” While he held both her hands, “a fragrant crimson rose was dropped in his lap.” While under the light of a chandelier in the hall, while Colonel Olcott stood within two feet of her, he says, “a young canary suddenly sprang from my head towards the closed door, where I caught him.” “It was apparently one of a young brood from the cage of a friend in Philadelphia, brought by the invisibles in compliance with my secret request, and since identified by the lady as the bird which suddenly disappeared from the cage some days previously.” This is Colonel Olcott s testimony, and the fact is very striking.
His first public seance with Mrs. Thayer was on July 4th, 1875, and on that occasion stringent precautions were taken against fraud. Eighty-two various plants and flowers, “fresh, unrumpled, and the petals covered with dew,” lay on the table, in variety and bulk which put fraud or collision out of the question. In front of one lady lay a “begonia, with a potful of dirt attached. This lady informed the company that it was a perfect test to her, as her Spirit-sister had told her the day before, that, if she would come here, she should receive this plant as a present from her, and she had come two hundred miles to make the experiment.”
Another gentleman, “an engineer by profession, and brother- in-law of one of our most eminent astronomers, Mr. McMurtrie, told Colonel Olcott a very remarkable fact. One day, in a private stance with some Boston medium, he received a communication from the alleged Spirit of a relative who died in Scotland, of which country he was a native. This Spirit told him that, if he would go to Mrs. Thayer, he would bring him a whole living heather plant from his native mountains. It happened that Mrs. Thayer was to hold a stance at a private house with a picked company; so, keeping his own counsel, Mr. McMurtrie obtained permission to make one of the party. The first thing that was dropped on the table was a full-grown heather in bloom, with a clod of dirt on the roots, and three worms wriggling in the same.”
Here is the product of one public seance, at which Colonel Olcott made a list on the spot. It was held on July 11th, 1875. “The doors were carefully locked, the window shutters fastened, and the premises searched.” The list, made in order from left to right round the circle, is this:—“One monthly rose; one ripe orange, on its branch; one tea rose; one Bonne Celine rose; one sprig of honeysuckle; one branch of cypress; one of brown heather; two white and carnation pinks; a stalk of three crimson rosebuds; one tea rose; a plant of ivy, thirty-seven inches long, with a potful of dirt attached to its roots, the whole weighing 41bs.; a Scotch heather and spray of honeysuckle (both mentally asked for by Mr. McMurtrie); a heliotrope; several pansies; a Bonne Celine rose, mentally asked for; a fem leaf (Onychium Auratum); one white pink, one carnation, and one pansy; mignonette and oxalis; one pansy and two ferns (Pellaeca Viridis and Adiantum hispidulum of the East Indies); four tea roses; one carnation; one wax begonia, with dirt and all, as lifted out of the pot; one crimson rose; a patch of short moss with dirt; one fem, one honeysuckle; one Callao lily, placed in Colonel Olcott’s bosom, and a largo bunch of smilax, that fell from a height on his face as he was looking up to the ceiling.”
This is pretty well for once. The list, remember, was made by Colonel Olcott on the spot, after he had satisfied himself that fraud was impossible: and some of the articles were brought by the invisible operator in answer to mental request. What more do we want to establish the whole Spiritualist theory? Colonel Olcott claims for himself that he “generally makes thorough work of his Spiritualistic investigations,” and on this occasion he certainly did so. Not content with what he had experienced, he set himself to work to get a personal test. One afternoon, without premeditation he visited Forest Hills Cemetery, and on the spur of the moment devised an excellent test “Passing through the greenhouses, my attention was struck by a curious plant, with long narrow leaves striped with white and pale green. It was the Dracaena Regina. With my blue pencil I marked on <... continues on page 11-331 >
Editor's notes
- ↑ Notes by the Way by M.A. (Oxon), Light, v. 1, No. 52, December 31, 1881, pp. 416-17
Sources
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Light, v. 1, No. 52, December 31, 1881, pp. 416-17