< The Lengthy paper, by “M.A.” (Oxon.) (continued from page 4-143) >
“thought-reading” by spirits explains a very large variety of manifestations, it does not follow that I am to account for form phenomena or trance speaking by the same hypothesis.
“M.A.” asks, “How do we stand as Spiritualists in the face of the three Mentors who have been raised up to ‘smite us friendly, and reprove us?’” He supplies his own answer. Spiritualists are, to a great extent (particularly through clairvoyant mediums), the victims of my “masquerading spook,” and others of the genus. “Are we,” he wants to know, “befooled by the loose spirit of the medium?” I think I must also say, “Yes”—or how account for thefiasco at Blackburn? unless, indeed, you call in that unknown quantity, x, in the shape of a theosophic “elemental,” an even lower order of creation than my maligned “spook,” who has thrown a good deal of information upon a difficult subject, and rendered much that was hard easy of comprehension.
In reply to your contributor, Mr. J. Carson, I must say I should be prepared to accept his case as a genuine manifestation; but it is only another instance of a person recently deceased paying his final leavetaking. I have, in my own experience, met with two or three instances somewhat similar through different mediums. These cases are, however, I maintain, only oases in the desert of difficulty; but were it not for their friendly shelter, many of us in our spiritual progress might fall into “Doubting Castle,” or perish by the wayside of scepticism.
Ulverston, January 8, 1878.
Review of Our Foreign Monthly Spiritualistic Exchanges
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Cohasset Narrows–Head of Buzzard`s Bay
Letter from San Francisco, Cal.
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<... continues on page 4-145 >
Editor's notes