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vol. title: vol. period: 1879-1880 pages in vol.: 577 |
< Spirit Individuality (continued from page 10-429) >
degree) but the savage dwarfing his deity to a fetish—to something he can comprehend. Yet it would be rash to assert that a deceiving spirit communed with Swedenborg, for by spiritual revelation the latter launched upon the earth a magnificent system of philosophy, many points in which modern Spiritualism is slowly proving to be true. Perhaps, in conveying spiritual truths to the world through a physical organism, the laws are such that the said truths can only reach us by sign and by symbol, which the more egotistical of the recipients mistake for the reality. It is probably a process of mental telegraphy, in which both the spirit and the mortal believe the messages to and for to be direct and complete, whereas they are greatly altered in transmission, names included.
If, when judged upon their own merits, spirit messages are so valuable as to be palpably doing good work in the world, the medium need not trouble much whether they come to him accompanied by a great or little name. But if they prove to be common-place, the sooner he ceases to waste his time in receiving them the better, even though they be apparently attested by the names of all the saints in the calendar, who should then be told to go away, also to take up some other occupation calculated not to lower them in the estimation of intelligent mortals.
<Untitled> (By the latest American Spiritualist...)
By the latest American Spiritualist papers we learn that Signor Rondi, Dr. Mack, Mrs. Hardinge-Britten, Dr. Peebles, and Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher, are all at the Lake Pleasant Camp Meeting.
Man is the arbiter of his destinies. It rests with him whether, in the honest and conscientious discharge of the duties and obligations laid upon him, he will fit himself for future progress, or whether he will neglect his spiritual development and live a corporeal existence, which shall starve his higher nature and chain his spirit down by centring his affections exclusively on earth and earthly things.
Legal Decisions upon the Laws of Nature:— The Journal of Science says:—“Much as we honour Professor E. Ray Lankester for his achievements in biological science, we hold that in the Slade prosecution he committed a fearful mistake. To hand over to solicitors and counsel, to police magistrates and quarter sessions, a question which, if capable of solution at all, can only be decided by men of science, was a piece of renunciation or self-abnegation which cannot be too deeply deplored, and which is doubly to be regretted in a country where science is so little honoured as in England. However much Spiritualism may have been complicated by deceptions or delusions, it is the duty of scientific men to make sure that there is in the phenomena produced nothing more than is referable to jugglery or ‘unconscious cerebration.’ Till this has fairly been done, to call in the aid of such rough and ready tests of truth as courts of justice can supply is nothing short of a formal abdication and a confession of impotence.”
A Few Experiences of a Veteran
If the laws of nature be general laws, as held by the materialists and others, then, to prove the identity of but one single spirit returning to us after death, is sufficient to demonstrate to everyone of us now living that we also shall live after death. To prove incontrovertibly but one single case, is sufficient to overthrow all the arguments of the materialists against a future life, even by their own hypothesis. Thus, any new effort in this direction can never be a vain one, for they will not believe old stories of the same kind.
It is not, however, only the materialists pure and simple who doubt the identity of spirits who come among us, but there are those nearer ourselves who profess to believe in anything rather than that spirits other than those in the flesh are present at seances or come to us in private. To borrow the words of a leading member of a particular phase of Theosophism:—“Inasmuch,” he says, “as we, as spirits, know that we are present, but have no absolute proof that the spirits of the departed are present, the presumption is that our own spirits, known to be present, are the operators.” This authority adds that, “the medium is the chief operator.” This particular phase of Theosophy, we see, does not even take “elementals” or “elementaries” into account.
Let me draw a comparison. If a person gifted with sight, whom I have formerly known, should meet me in the street while walking with a mutual friend, he would not want our mutual friend to act as medium, to nudge him and say, “This is Mr. So-and-So,” but he would know me by the use of his own eyes. This very obvious common-place remark seems quite as applicable to spirits out of the flesh who have formerly lived in the flesh, which I do not doubt, as to those in the flesh.
Now, it had struck me that I could not get a much better test of the identity of a spirit, than by applying the above same rule to a spirit that I would to a man. Keeping in mind that, inasmuch as a person in the flesh who had never seen me before could not tell who I might be, unless prompted by another, such would be the case with a spirit out of the flesh; but that, on the contrary, if his identity had met me before, he ought no more to require either our mutual friend to hint to him who I was, or any other person, than a man in the flesh would.
With my mind full of this idea, through reading in the Spiritualist that John King was in the habit of coming to a new medium, Mr. C. Husk, with a voice remarkably like that with which he speaks through another medium, I thought it would be an excellent thing to seek a seance with Mr. Husk, to see if John King, who had seen and known me formerly with three mediums, would know me by his own power of recognition as a man in the flesh would, the new medium being a stranger to me.
As to regarding my own spirit as being in any respect the operator, or in any way the factor of so striking an individuality as is that of John King, I scouted the idea as preposterous altogether, and not to be taken into account for one single moment. I had heard John King speak first with the Marshalls, and neither through them nor the two subsequent mediums had I ever noticed any difference either in the tone of his voice or in his marked idiosyncrasy. All I wanted was to find out whether he would know me by sight without a prompter.
With regard to the tone of John King’s voice, it is interesting to compare the opinion of others with one’s own. The late Mr. Benjamin Coleman wrote in the Spiritual Magazine, as far back as in January, 1868, “John King’s voice is precisely the same in tone—is in fact, the very same voice,” whether Mr. Marshall or his mother is the medium, and he tried them separately. Mr. Coleman expressed his surprise at this. But John King answered, “Oh, Marshall and his mother are the same, you know.” Mr. Coleman also said in the Spiritual Magazine of October, 1867, speaking of the voices of John King and Kate, “They appear to be the same voices as those I have twice heard in the presence of the Davenports, the tone and articulation, however, being clearer and more natural then when I heard them before.” All spirits find difficulty in speaking with the direct voice when they first begin, but to get the same tone from a man’s organism as from a woman’s, is of itself a strong mark of a spirit’s identity. In order to carry out my object, I obtained an introduction during the present summer, to Mrs. Woodforde, whom I had then the pleasure of seeing for the first time, and asked permission to attend her seance on the following Tuesday; I also asked her to be so good as not to mention my name to Mr. Husk until the seance was over, giving my reason for the request. To this Mrs. Woodforde kindly agreed, but added, “Why not seek out Mr. Husk at once, as he is to hold a seance this evening in lieu of Mr. Williams, who is out of London.” Nothing could have better suited my purpose, so I went early to 61, Lamb’s Conduit Street, and begged my old friend Mrs. Andrews, (Mr. Williams’s landlady), not to mention my name to Mr. Husk, giving her the reason why. When Mr. Husk arrived, just before the seance, I was not introduced to him; but hoping to have met a complete stranger, I was disappointed in seeing, in Mr. Husk, the nearly blind gentleman whom I had met at Mr. Williams’s on the three last occasions, when I had attended Mr. Williams’s seances, namely, twice in 1877, and once in 1878. Those however who knew Mr. Husk’s affliction will not be likely to suppose that he could have known me by sight.
When John King came to the seance he addressed others on going round the circle; but when he came to me, he exclaimed in a much louder voice than before: “Ah! Why, you are my old friend whom I used to visit in------,” naming a particular part of a county where I used to live, but which I had left more than six years.
Be it remembered the words were not, “I have met you at seances in London,” but they were addressed to one whom he “used to visit” many miles from London. Now, that these visits did occur I am as confident as I am of my own existence; visits not of my own seeking, but spontaneous visits of the spirit during my hours of sleep, brought about by my having met him at seances and from other causes, and elicited by my own powers of clairaudience.
At the first seance with the Marshalls, at which I ever met John King, on December 17th, 1867, having been already clairaudient for several years, and knowing the power of spirits to travel a long way in a very short space of time, I said to the spirit, John King, “You will speak to me sometimes, will you not?” meaning that he should speak to me when at home, spontaneously. His answer was, “I will speak to your heart.” I did not at that time understand the full meaning of that expression, but I did afterwards most assuredly from experience. That experience was, I believe, afforded partly to show me different phases of clairaudience and the spirit’s power to wake me from sleep, by a voice audible alone to myself, either with small or no perceptible change at all of the heart’s pulsation; or, on the contrary, with violent beatings of the heart. Their power to make the hearing appear to be from the chest; their power to waken, now by gentle whispering, now by violent apparent vibrations on the drum of the ear, as though I were close to the firing of a cannon, and yet by sound entirely unheard by one sleeping at my side; and as if to show that it were really hearing by a sixth sense—is something uncommon but real.
Let me add that at the few seances I attended in London at that time, John King would allude to these visits. For instance, at my first seance with Mr. Williams, a private one, on May 4th, 1871, this is partly what passed. I copy consecutively from my note book of that time: “John King said, ‘I was with you when you wrote that.’ I said, ‘I know your voice, it is stronger than others.’ I said, ‘I sometimes wish my time was up.’ He said, ‘You are not going yet, you have a deal more work to do before you go.’ I said, ‘Have I the power to be a medium for the audible voice?’ He answered, ‘You are not strong enough.’” These answers were certainly not in my own brain, nor, I think, in that of the medium. Here is another reason why John King should have visited me, besides his implied promise at my own request, given at my first seance with him. I had written more than once, in very sceptical days, of my undoubted belief in his identity and in the bona fides of his mediums. I had written, too, in sympathy with his sufferings at that time, sometimes expressed by himself, as testified by Mr. Coleman and by my own observation, sufferings through having to return to earth for our instruction, and as a probation for former failings of his own on earth. I had written in a spiritual periodical, long since discontinued, under the heading of Voices at Mrs. Marshall’s, the following: “I had read so often of spirits speaking audibly in the scriptures, that when I heard of a recurrence of such prodigies in our days, instead of being shocked I praised God. I thought, here is something to convince sceptics if nothing else will.” But I was mistaken, strange though it still appears to me; I wrote the above after my first seance with the direct voice on December 17th, 1867; and after describing the seance, I wrote: “It must be no slight penance, one would imagine, for these spirits day after day to submit to the curiosity, the weaknesses and impertinences of spirits in the flesh for a long time together. It must be done, one must suppose, for their own advantage, or for the good of humanity, or for both combined.”
Moreover, I think that John King knew that I had suffered on his account, especially at a later period, after I had early in 1871 described in a publication another seance with him through a then new medium, giving also specimens of my own clairaudience, that occurred during the night after the seance, and when, in consequence of that article, open attacks upon myself, which had been going on for some time, culminated.
Years have passed away, and much that I had hoped for has not yet been realised, but these identical voices and idiosyncrasies of the same spirits, heard through different mediums, are among the most convincing and encouraging proofs still, to my mind, of spirit identity, and of the fact of the dead once living upon earth coming back to assure us that we too shall live on after death. On this point, which would be of inestimable value, in these sceptical, materialistic days, to the clergy, if they would utilise it, as St. Paul did the resurrection of Jesus, my opinions are not a whit changed.*
*The general tendency of this article seems to be slightly in favour of the personal individuality of John King, and not of his identity as a person who once lived on this earth. The similarity of the powerful voice of John King, through the mediumship of Mr. Williams and Mr. Husk, is very striking.— Ed.
Editor's notes
Sources
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London Spiritualist, No. 420, September 10, 1880, p. 122