< The History of the Movement Known As Modern Spiritualism and the Facts and Theories Connected With it (continued from page 8-185) >
why and the use in everything; so the matter is conned over and over in her little brain, till she has hit upon an experiment. If it is rats, it can’t speak; but it it’s the devil, he’s cute, and can. “Old Hornie” (rats are unaddressible), “when I knock my fingers together twice, you make two knocks, so.”* Two quite triumphant raps on the floor. “Well done, old Hornie. Now give three. Mother! mother! it will talk to me!” and every day followed long conversations with it, and it states its name, and tells how; it got murdered, and where the bones lie, subsequent diggings confirming the statements. But Farmer Fox has had enough of Hydesville and removes elsewhere; so do the knocks, and wherever Katie goes and Margaret, it goes too. rapping unceasingly till the scientific gentlemen are forced to listen, and the scientific ladies, and the religions gentlemen and the religious ladies, to find out the imposture and to oust the devil. But the gentlemen hold the hands of Katie and Margaret, and their feet, yet on go the raps all round the room; and the ladies undress them, but find no machinery, while the righteous can but lament over the coming of the latter days. But the common sense of America has got hold of the fact that the sounds are connected with these two children; and if so, why not with them or with their families may not similar power of evoking old Hornie also reside? and much of America is speedily sitting round tables to see if the “spirits” will oblige them; and the tables whirl and so do the brains; and raps, and noises, and lights, and “spirit messages follow.” Very heterogeneous these last. “Do you like cheese” (from Shelley), and “God bless you” (from Voltaire). The country swarms with “mediums,” the human channel through which such things happen apparently, since nought occurs during their absence, and the excitement grows ever wilder, and the blasphemy, and the dear spirits countenance and encourage (some of them) fearful things; but for weal or for woe mankind has got hold of a new power, or has begun to realise and comprehend an old one, and will by no means let the knowledge go.
From America the new doctrine spreads over the world, in England and France, Germany and Russia; the old table turning that had followed on the discovery by Mesmer and Deleuze and Reichenbach of forces in the human body, and in metals and crystals, before undreamed of, was succeeded now by table lifting and table rapping, people of sober judgment declared that they received intelligent replies to intelligent questions by means of such tiltings and rappings, till a general interest was created throughout our usually phlegmatic nation in phenomena, which, whether supernatural or not, were undeniably very interesting.
Matters had reached this stage when there came to England, from the other side of the Atlantic, a young man of Scottish descent and birth, whose family had settled in America, Mr. Daniel Dunglas Home, and of this young man strange things were reported in London a few weeks after his arrival. How at the time of the Hydesville manifestations to him also the unknown it had given signs of presence and of power, so much so that he had been forcibly driven forth from house and home because the Devil—as his family deemed the mysterious agent—had terrified and insulted a clerical prayer-meeting, called for the purpose of his ejection and entire suppression, by knocking more loudly as they exorcised more vehemently, shaking the very chairs at which they knelt—those suppliants. So Mr. Home and Mr. Home’s manifestations became the rage, increasing in marvellousness as time went on, conversions also becoming numerous. Robert Chambers, William Howitt, Lord Lytton, Mrs. Barrett Browning, Mr. and Mrs. S. C. Hall give credence to the new belief, which is simple enough as enunciated by the rather fascinating young prophet. “There is no death, the spirit world is all around us; under certain conditions we may communicate with it; there is no antagonism to any existing creed; this is not the attempt to set up a new religion, but is rather confirmatory of the doctrines taught by all religions. Faith in God and belief in the immortality of the human soul.” To this belief, in spite of the strange developments of the movement in England, and the wild fanaticism of certain Spiritualists, Mr. Home, the pioneer and founder of English Spiritualism, has ever clung. In broad light Mr. Home is floated in the air in the presence of many witnesses, among them Lord Dun- raven, Dr. Davies, and Lord Lindsay. He is elongated, contracted; in bis presence objects are moved without contact, and music is played on no earthly instruments. He handles red-hot coals, and is not hurt. This last manifestation I will describe in the words of an eye-witness, Mrs. S. C. Hall, the well-known and well-beloved lady, who has laboured so devotedly and so hard for the bettering of this poor earth.
This “miracle” occurred in my own drawing room. I copy the following details from a letter written by Mrs. Hall to the Earl of Dunraven, and printed by him in his book:—“........ Mr. Home rose from his chair, walked slowly to the fireplace, held his hands over the fire, and then drew out of the fire with his fingers a largo lump of red and blazing coal—not from the top but from the middle of the lire; he held it in both hands, advanced to the table at which we were seated, and placed the coal, red and blazing as it was, on Mr. Hall’s head, ruffling his white hair about it. When it had remained there more than a minute lie removed it, and offered it to a lady, the wife of a clergyman who was present. She drew back; Home murmured, ‘Little faith.’ He then tendered it to me (Mrs. Hall), and placed it on my open hand; I felt it to be warm, but not hot. Ho did the same by one of our guests. Before he took it back to the fireplace, he put it on a sheet of paper on the table; the paper was singed through. There was not a hair of Mr. Hall's head singed; but when he combed it in the morning he combed out about fifty specks of cinder dust the blazing coal had Hung off. Two caudles were lighted on the chimneypiece, and gas was burniug in the next room, separated by folding doors that were open.”
Since the advent of Mr. Home, the number of media has increased yearly, and so has the folly and the imposture. Every spook has become, in the eyes of fools, a divine angel; and not even every spook, but every rogue, dressed up in a sheet, who has chosen or shall choose to call himself a materialised “spirit.” A so-called religion has been founded in which the honour of the most sacred names has been transferred to the ghosts of pickpockets. Of the characters of which divinities, and of the doctrines taught by them, I shall not insult you by speaking; so it ever is when folly and ignorance get into their hands the weapon of an eternal fact, abuse, distortion, crime itself; such were ever the results of children playing with edged tools, but who but an ignoramus would cry naughty knife. Gradually the movement is clearing itself of such excretions, gradually is it becoming more sober and pure, and strong, and as sensible men and educated men study, and pray, and work, striving to make good use of their knowledge, will it become more so. I shall speak of one more manifestation, recorded by Mr. Hall, to show that if there is the alloy there is also the true coin; it occurred only lately through the mediumship (so called) of Mrs. Everitt, and with it I leave the first division of my subject.
I will describe briefly an evening I passed at the house of Mr. and Mrs. Everitt. Ho is a respectable and respected tradesman of Bentonville; they are both teachers at a Sunday school, and estimable in all the relations of private life—as parents, friends, and neighbours. They are Christians, members of a Nonconformist church; and they never sit without prayer, singing a hymn, and a chapter read from the New Testament—always, I believe, suggested to them by some unseen spirit present. To suppose fraud under such circumstances would be to infer an amount of wickedness almost incredible; that they could blasphemously implore God’s aid and blessing, with the deliberate intention to perpetrate a cheat! They are in no way paid mediums; and I am sure they believe in the reality of those manifestations, as truly as Mary and Martha believed in the restoration to life from death of Lazarus their brother.
At that “sitting” (it was a “dark sitting’’) I held a conversation, continuing for more than half an hour, with a spirit who called himself “John Watt,” who told us much of his earth-life’s history, of his present condition and state, and of his hope and faith in progress to a higher and better. The voice was low; at parting ho said this prayer:—“May God and our Lord Jesus Christ bless you, comfort you, help you, and give you happiness in this world and in that to which, in duo course, you will come. May His light guide you, and His help be with you here and hereafter. Amen.”
At the beginning of this paper I reminded you of the sceptical and so-called scientific condition of the public mind at the time when this new movement arose in America. Earnest religious thought, where it existed, continued to run in the ancient grooves, and a great gulf remained unbridged between the men who saved souls by preaching the revelations of the past, and the men who dissected bodies to create a revelation for the future.
Such was the state of things that those pregnant knockings at Hydesville came to disturb. Gradually it was dis-<... continues on page 8-187 >
* I am giving the child b own mode of address. There Is something quite daring and pi’grim-father like in this lacing of Satan.