Legend
A Ghostly Carnival
The millions of Spiritualists in the United States find their Mecca just now in a little farm-house which lies seven mites north of Rutland, Vt. It is the home of William H. and Horatio G Eddy, and it is haunted by hundreds of ghosts. The Eddys were tormented by spirits from their birth. Their father, a prosaic farmer, first essayed to cast out the devils by beating and starving the victims. When this failed, he used his children’s Spiritualistic gifts to make money. They gave exhibitions. He superintended the show, and pocketed the proceeds. The boys and their sister (now dead) were mobbed, stoned, beatened, burned, and shot. They were twisted into agonizing positions, and tied there for hours while the manifestations went on. When they came home, they would gladly have relinquished their inconvenient powers, but they could not. It is noteworthy, by the way, that these powers were inherited. Mrs. Eddy, the mother of the boys, was a clairvoyant. Her mother had the same faculties. Her great-grandmother was sentenced to death for witchcraft in 1694. but was rescued from Salem jail by friends, and secretly sent to Scotland. The children could not go to school, for they were accompanied thither by rappings that drove the other scholars wild with fear. They have consequently had little education. They are, and always have been unpopular. They are shy, gruff, sensitive men. Their reputation for integrity is good, but the neighbors think they are in league with the Devil. With this preface about themselves, we pass to what they or the spirits around them have done. There have been thousands of manifestations. Very many have consisted only of feats of clairvoyance, moving furniture, and rapping out communications. Two great classes of facts remain—the floating in air or human bodies 4ml the materialization of spirit forms. Horatio Eddy, when he was in his seventh year, was one night carried three miles through the air to a neighboring mountain-top and left to get home as he could. There is no authority given for this story, which may be founded on a mere case of sleep-walking, but the testimony of two out of three eye-witnesses is quoted to the fact that another brother, now dead, was carried out of a window and over the house. There are hundreds of instances to be given under the second grand division—the materialization of spirits. The ghosts of known and unknown persons have appeared in the house and in the neighborhood, in darkness and in light People have talked with them and have felt them. They have been distinctly seen. The spirit of an Indian girl. Honto, has been weighed twice. She stood on a Fairbanks scale and weighed 88 pounds the first time and 65 the next. The full force of a powerful battery upon her produced no apparent effect. Nearly all the phenomena attending the appearance of “Katie King” in London and Philadelphia have been repeated in and around the Eddy homestead. Very many persons have witnessed them. Since a correspondent began his investigation he has received innumerable letters from all over the country asking him to procure information on different points from the spirits. Most of the letters, it is needless to add, are very silly. They serve to show, nevertheless, how widespread public interest in this subject is. Is Spiritualism a cheat, or is it true? There are many, many people who would give a good deal to have that question definitely decided.—Chicago Tribune.
Jangled and Out of Tune
Whatever constitutes the surroundings of a man’s spiritual life is palpable. For instance, if he has followed on earth a line of exalted conduct, having upright lofty thoughts and noble impulses, he must have arrayed himself in the fibre and tissue of these thoughts. It is these which constitute the spiritual existence, and if they be lovely, the soul is arrayed in loveliness; if dark and sordid, the soul is arrayed in shadow and darkness.
When the soul leaves the external body, it is still clothed with the thoughts of its earthly life, and every aspiration of prayer, of holy desire, are interwoven into his spiritual brethren; and the angels and souls disenthralled from the material body see him. not as you do on earth. Init as be is in spiritual nature, adored, exalted, uplifted, and crowned by the deed' and words of his earthly life, and his habitation is composed of just such thoughts as those his life on earth has vouchsafed him to feel.
There are three distinctive states comprehended by human being,—(I) The terrestrial heavens, or the atmosphere surrounding the earth, the abode of the lower order of spirits. (2) The interstellar heavens, or those heavens removed from the distinctive atmosphere of the earth, and inhabited by spirits who approach the earth and hold converse with human beings (3) Beyond these the celestial spheres, in which exist those celestial angels, beings of love, some who have never perhaps lived on earth, and some who have risen from it with great radiancy and glory. What lies beyond these, only those know who have absolute contact with Divine Mind, and whose vibrations would be lost in contact with the material universe.
If a man. with earnest filth in God and goodness, seek to find truth, and having found it to use it for good ends, he will be led by our Lord into the most glorious realms, and he will meet there the Angels round the Eternal Throne. He will in time be permitted not only to communicate, but will have hi' own spirit raised to a state of bliss and glory even while still in the body, and he will dwell conscious in our world and in yours at once. This is what is meant by the promised millennium, and when it has come to pass the words of Christ come true,— “He that liveth and believeth on me shall never die.” This is what we are earnestly trying to bring about, and each of you on earth can help by seeking to meet us to the spirit we have portrayed. This is what was meant In Peter when he said, “What manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness, looking for hastening unto the coming of the day of God?” and by John, in Revelations. when he ejaculated, “Amen! even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
The Delights and Consolations of Spiritual Intercommunion
Washington Irving, near the close of his life, made the following acknowledgements: “What could be more consoling than the idea that the souls of those we once loved are permitted to return and watch over our welfare? that affectionate and guardian spirits sat by our pillows when we slept, keeping a vigil over our most helpless hours? that beauty and innocence which had languished into the tomb, yet smiled unseen around us, revealing themselves in those blessed dreams wherein we live over again the hours of past endearments? A belief of this kind would, I should think, be a new incentive to virtue, rendering us circumspect, even in our most secret moments, from the idea that those we once loved and honored were invisible witnesses of all our actions.
“It would take away, too, from that loneliness and destitution which we are apt to feel more and more as we get on in our pilgrimage through the wilderness of this world, and that those who set forward with us lovingly and cheerily on the journey have one by one dropped away from our side. Place the superstition in this light, and I confess I should like to be a believer in it. I see nothing in it that is incompatible with the tender and merciful nature of our religion, or revolting to the wishes and affections of the heart.”
“There are departed beings that I have loved as I never shall love again in this world, that have loved me as I never again shall be loved. If such beings do ever retain in their blessed spheres the attachments they have felt on earth, if they take any interest in the poor concerns of transient mortality, and are permitted to hold communion with those whom they loved on earth. I feel as if now, at this deep hour of night, in this silence and solitude, I could receive their visitation with the most solemn but unallayed delight.”
Phrenology Does Not Support Materialism
Henry William Dewhurst, F.M.W.S.. thus vindicates Phrenology from the charge of leading to and supporting Materialism: “The opponents of Phrenology have charged this science with propagating the doctrine of Materialism, which is not the case; and, therefore, to refute it, I will relate the opinions of the ancients who actually believed the soul to have a material existence in the brain. Among whom I may mention Solomon, St. Paul, the fathers of the Church, heathen philosophers, and most Christian moralists. Some call the soul the power by which the body grew and was maintained, and supposed it to be diffused in every limb and artery, in every atom of which we are composed. Some divided the soul, and allotted to its parts different regions, analogous to its particular functions in those parts; placing some of it in the thorax, some in the abdomen, some in one part of the head and some in another. Pythagoras and Plato fixed it in the brain; the Stoics and Aristotle in the heart; Eristratus in the maninges; Herophilus in the great ventricles of the brain; Serveto in the aqueduct of Sylvius; Suranti in the third ventricle; Van Helmont in the stomach; Descartes in the piveal gland; Schellhammer at the origin of the spinal marrow; Drelincourt in the cerebellum; Lancisi in the corpus collosum, or in the great commissure; Willis in the corporia striata; Viensseus in the centrum ovale; Ackermann in what he calls the sinneshiigel or tubercles of the senses; Psorri in a very subtle fragrant juice, which, according to him, is found to exist in the brain.
“All these ridiculous theories only prove that we are unacquainted with the soul, or its residence; and every system of philosophy has attached to it some material organ. Yet, none of them are accused with materialism; and why then should phrenologists, who have attempted no bolder charge than merely to proclaim what are the innate faculties of man, and what are the organs by means of which they act. be falsely accused of saying that the soul is matter. They never made such an assertion any more than anatomists, who tell us that motion depends on the apparatus of nerves and muscles, say that motion is matter. In the phrenological doctrines, there is not a tenet which alters the position either of fatalism or materialism; and yet futile minds accuse us of wishing to establish loth these heresies.”—A Guide to Human and Comparative Phrenology.
<Untitled> (Dr. G. Bloede, No. 287)
Dr. G. Bloede, No. 287 Schermerhorn Street, Brooklyn. N. Y., describes a boy medium, in whose presence the spirits cause articles of food to disappear in an inexplicable manner. Under strictest test conditions, excluding “every possibility, of the medium’s using his fingers, hands, arms, mouth, teeth, jaws, and head,” an apple was handed into the cabinet, and soon after was hurled out, but minus a good portion of it, which, as the indentations showed, had been bitten out by— somebody's teeth! Dr. Bloede is one of the most intelligent of our German investigators, and everything from his pen may be received with confidence in his sagacity and sincerity.
Editor's notes
- ↑ A Ghostly Carnival by unknown author, Spiritual Scientist, v. 1, No. 9, November 5, 1874, pp. 104-5. Signed: Chicago Tribune
- ↑ Jangled and Out of Tune by unknown author, Spiritual Scientist, v. 1, No. 9, November 5, 1874, p. 101
- ↑ The Delights and Consolations of Spiritual Intercommunion by unknown author, Spiritual Scientist, v. 1, No. 9, November 5, 1874, p. 101
- ↑ Phrenology Does Not Support Materialism by unknown author, Spiritual Scientist, v. 1, No. 9, November 5, 1874, p. 101. Signed: A Guide to Human and Comparative Phrenology
- ↑ Dr. G. Bloede, No. 287 by unknown author, Spiritual Scientist, v. 2, No. 9, May 6, 1875, p. 99
Sources
-
Spiritual Scientist, v. 1, No. 9, November 5, 1874, pp. 104-5
-
v. 1, No. 9, November 5, 1874, p. 101
-
Spiritual Scientist, v. 2, No. 9, May 6, 1875, p. 99