< The Russian Investigation (continued from page 3-123) >
first offer made by M. Mendeleyeff, nor will they satisfy those who certify to the existence of such manifestations. The committee forgets that the mediumistic power has its origin, force and support in domestic circles and in their own experiments against which the policy of negation and fraud is powerless. Such questions which have attained a social importance, can not be solved by negation and an ignorance of them. Let Science and knowledge be on the side of the negators and skeptics, but upon the other side we have the conviction in the reality of facts; which conviction we have obtained by the evidence of our senses and by reason.
St. Petersburg, March 4, 1876.
Madame Leymarie Replies to Home
To the Editor of the Spiritual Scientist:
Dear Sir:—I beg you to allow me to oppose through the columns of your impartial paper, an absolute contradiction to the malicious falsehoods of the letter inserted by M. Home in the Sunday Herald of March 12, 1876, in which he seeks to injure my husband—M. Leymarie, editor of the Revue Spirite of Paris—by statements that are completely and utterly untrue.
I reaffirm for myself and for my daughter Jeanne Leymarie, what we stated to M. Van Raalte of Amsterdam, namely, that Firman is a medium of much power, and that Jeanne had seen “the little Indian” several times sufficiently materialized to be touched by her, to take her hand, and then to slip quickly back behind the curtain, like a child playing with another child, and addressing her on each occasion as “Little Jeanne.”
I reaffirm for the satisfaction of our brethren in America, that M. Leymarie and I have seen the same spirit, not as M. Home falsely asserts “in a dark seance” but in a subdued light, sufficiently strong to allow of his being distinctly seen by all present.
After Firman’s Return from Amsterdam, he received several charming letters of thanks and congratulations from the persons who had been present at his seances, in that city; letters, which are still in his possession. M. Van Raalte was I believe, the only one who was not convinced of the reality of the manifestations, because in a seance, which was held in his house, the accordeon, trumpet, bell, &c., used at the seance, were found to have been marked by teeth. But all who are conversant with the subject will doubtless agree with me that such marks are not a conclusive proof of fraud, for two reasons; 1st, because we are my no means sure that spirits may not as easily use their teeth for such manifestations as their hands ; and 2nd, because it is impossible to prove that such marks may not have been made by the teeth of someone among the company assembled.
But as, even with the best mediums, it is impossible to be too warily on our guard, and in order to insure the utmost precaution in the management of future seances, M. Leymarie inserted in the Revue Spirite of April, 1875, two notices, one by Count de Bullet, affirming the fact of materialization obtained by Firman, the other calling attention to the necessity of prudence and circumspection in regard to reputed phenomena of this character, in order that both opinions might be fairly represented.
When we last saw M. Van Raalte, in Paris, (about the beginning of April, 1875) the trial of Buguet was still in the future. No one, among the friends here, had the faintest idea of what was about to happen; and no one, consequently, could have had any intention to offer pecuniary aid to my husband, as M. Home insinuates in his letter; an insinuation equally gratuitous and false.
Having replied to the first of the falsehoods so imprudently put forth by Mr. Home, I now assert that his second statement is equally false; one that Mr. Leymarie never stated to Mr. Van Raalte (as asserted by Home again) in speaking of Firman: “We know nothing of that American fellow. We never saw what he calls his Indian.” There is not one word of truth in the assertions, which are, on the contrary, the opposite of the truth. Both my daughter and myself declare the statements of Mr. Home in regard to the denial he puts into her mouth respecting the “little Indian” to be entirely false and untrue.
I heartily regret that Mr. Home should resort to the use of poisoned weapons in attacking, those who, holding different opinions from his own, are devoted to the great cause to which his remarkable physical mediumship has in'' ''the fast done good service. It is evident that he cannot forgive Allan Kardec for having been chosen as the channel of communication for ideas that were not transmitted through him; but even from that point of view, could Mr. Home not find some mode of attacking those ideas, opposed as they are to the views which have taken him over to the Church of Rome, more honorable, more manly, than the dissemination of calumnies against those who differ from him?
The letter to which I am replying has led me to think that there may be truth in the remark which has so frequently been made of late. “Mr. Home is'' ''no longer a'' ''friend to the cause of Spiritualism; since he became a Catholic he has become an enemy to the movement with which he was at first identified, and would fain undo his own work.” But it needs not the gift of prophecy to announce to him that the only result of the employment of such weapons as those to which he has recourse will be worthy of those weapons and those who use them.
I beg to add that I assume for myself the entire responsibility of this reply, which I request you, Mr. Editor, to do me the favor of inserting entire in your earliest number, and remain, Yours cordially in the great cause,
Rue de Lille, Paris, France, March 31, 1876.
Appearances of the Holy Virgin in France
Roman Catholic Spiritualism is a subject on which William Howitt write-in interesting paper, which appears in the Spiritual (London) Magazine for January. We make the following extracts of the phenomena:
La Salette owes its celebrity to a much earlier prodigy—the visions of Mary Alacoque of the burning heart of Jesus; but at Lourdes it was a little girl to whom the blessed Virgin is said first to have revealed herself. So also here in Alsace she is said graciously to have appeared to four children. The place where this occurred is in the Vosges mountains, just where the former departments of the Haut-Rhin and Bas-Rhin divided, in a valley called the Weilerthal. There, on opposite hills, stand two ruined castles, Hoch-Konigsburg and Frankenburg. On the hill near the ruin of Frankenburg. on a Sunday night, July 7, 1872. four little girls from the village of Kruth, or as called by the French, Neubois, just below, went up to the ruin and into the adjoining wood, called Kastenholz, or Chestnut-wood. These little girls were Leonie and Odilie Martin, Maria Marcot anti Filomena Atzenberger. The youngest was seven, the eldest eleven years of age. They were gathering bilberries. These children had already heard much talk of the persecutions of the Catholics in their families. The sad, sanguinary events of the last war had also given to the children a quicker feeling and understanding of things. In the school of suffering, people speedily become acute, but at the same time magnanimous. These children talked together of the persecutions to which the people of Alsace would probably be subjected by the Prussians; and they declared they would rather lose their lives than abandon their religion. “Let us,” they said, “pray to the Mother of God to defend us.” As they wandered in the wood, they repeated the “Memoria,”—“Think of us, O sweetest Virgin.”
Suddenly the little Leonie, who had been stooping down, saw a White Lady, who, she said, wore a golden crown. on which stood a cross. On her breast, she also wore a cross, but that was black. She pointed to the apparition, and then all the children saw it, with the cross on the crown and the cross on the breast. The two youngest children were frightened, and ran away. Odilie Martin and Filomena Atzenberger remained. They now saw the White Lady threateningly wave a sword over the heads of soldier-forms which flocked beneath her. Then they too, were seized with terror, and ran home. There they related what they had seen, but got little credit for their story, least of all from their school-sister, a nun who was their school-mistress.
[Such is the opening account of this affair; other visits on subsequent days developed similar results.— Ed.]
The girl Bernadine, at Lourdes, declared that Indore the appearance of the Virgin there blew a wind; these children at Kruth also declared that every appearance of the White Lady was preceded by a wind. At Lourdes. too, the people saw first a light, and out of this light stepped forth the heavenly figure. When the apparition was about to ceases first the figure disappeared, and then the light died away. At Kruth, the same phenomena exactly took place. Spiritualists will recognize these as facts familiar to them; the cool wind, so often announcing the approach of spiritual presence, and the figure issuing from a mass of light, as in the case of Mr. Livermore’s spirit-wife. So far these circumstances give an air of reality to the phenomena. But it will be asked, how did these children know that it was the Madonna? How did they recognize their own mothers? From their earliest perception of anything at all. Catholic children are as familiar <... continues on page 3-125 >
Editor's notes
Sources
Spiritual Scientist, v. 4, No. 8, April 27, 1876, p. 93
Spiritual Scientist, v. 1, No. 21, January 28, 1875, p. 245