♦ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS.* '/ 'J lh fag*f; ! \ dJZ353'& II I UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. \ I = «&><%,<3Mgi Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2011 with funding from The Library of Congress http://www.archive.org/details/gadareneorspiritOObarr THE GADARENE OB, SPIRITS IN PRISON. By J. O. BAKKETT and J. M. PEEBLES. "Try the Spirits whether they are of God; for many false prophets have gone out into the world."— Apostle John. BOSTON: COLBY AND RICH, BANNER OP LIGHT OFFICE, 9 Montgomery Place. 1874. Entered according to Act oi Congress, in the year 1874, By BARRETT, PEEBLES, COLBY & RICH, In the ortice or tne .Librarian oi Congress, at wasnington. DEDICATED TO THE PURE IN HEART. Deab Keader: We have only briefly to say: That we write this book from a sense of solemn duty, indifferent alike to enco- mium and criticism. It is fact we are after ; and the truth we mean to speak at any hazard. The world is full of " seducing spirits and doctrines of devils speaking lies in hypocrisy." Our mission is to expose them ; explain the canses and suggest the remedies. AUTHORS. INDEX OF CHAPTEES AND SUBDIVISIONS. CHAPTER I. Moral Good and Evil 13-28 Ancient Morals 17-20 Are there Evil Spirits? : 20-26 Chrysalis of the Spirit 26-28 CHAPTER II. Demons and Gods 29-35 New Testament Demoniacs 34-35 Testimony of the Doctors 32-34 CHAPTER III. Mundane and Celestial Spheres 36-61 A Universal Elastic Medium 37-38 Contageous Madness 47-48 Color of Spheres 60-61 Healing Spheres 55-58 Human Spheres 40-42 Ignorant Injuries 54 Magnetic Currents of Spheres 42-43 Magnetic Penetrability 43-44 Magnetic Defilement 50-51 Odor of Spheres 60 Power of Magnetic Spheres 51-54 (5) 6 INDEX. Revivals - 54-55 Sound of Spheres 58-60 Spheres of Sects - - 44-45 Spheres of Things - 38-40 The Chinese Rehellion 45^6 Vaccination 48-50 CHAPTER IV. Obsessions 62-101 A Remarkable Case.. .84-90 Case of a Universalist Minister 90-92 Case of Religious Obsession 70-71 Development and Degeneration. .94-96 Divination 92-94 Hellish Orgies 96-101 How Spirits tormented Swedenborg 67-70 Jewish Obsessions 65-66 Murderous Spirits ..80-82 New Zealand Maoris ..82-84 The Morzine Obsessions 71 Unhappy Spirits 71-80 CHAPTER V. "Witchcraft and Hallucination 102-109 Biblical Witchcraft ...103-104 Ecclesiastic Persecutions _ . 104-106 Hallucination 108-109 Malay Witches ...106-107 The African Camma 103 CHAPTER VI. Effects of Association 110-121 A Licentious Medium 112-116 The Gambler's Den 116-121 INDEX. 7 CHAPTER VII. Psychology op Sentiment and Habit 123-140 Conceptive Immortality 136-137 Confounding of Virtue and Vice -.130-133 Correlation of Physical and Spiritual Forces 138-140 Social Disparities 137-138 The Evangelical Alliance .128-130 What shall we do to be Saved? 133-136 CHAPTER VIII. "Set Thine House in Order," 141-169 An Orthodox Spirit 158-162 Boy Reclaimed from an Evil Spirit ...142-144 Curanta Similibus — Insanities 144-149 Christian Exorcism 149-150 Curing by Music 168-169 Effects of Bigotry 157-158 Haunted Houses 151-153 Intemperate Spirits .162-166 Injury of Sudden Expulsions ...167-168 Superstitious Methods 150-151 Transfigurations 153-157 CHAPTER IX. MEDruMSHip— Orderly and Disorderly 170-185 A Plea for the Mediums 180-182 Abuses of Mediumship 175-176 Dark Circles 178-180 Disorderly Circles 177-178 Multiform Control 172-174 Natural and Acquired Mediumship 174-175 Orderly Circles. ...176-177 Unmediated Spirituality 182-185 8 INDEX. CHAPTER X. Shall we Worship Spirits? 186-199 Blending Deific Ideas 195-197 Hebrew Monotheism 194-195 Religious Mistake 197-199 The Transcendent Law 188-193 CHAPTER XI. Hope for the Bewildered 200-220 A Just Charity 215 Regeneration in the Spirit Life 216-219 Spiritual Vestures 219-220 Spirits may be better than they seem 202-211 Spirits Obsessed by their Media 211-213 The Poor Indian's Hope 201-202 The Shakers 213-214 CHAPTER XII. Registry of Life 221-232 ANALYTICAL INDEX. Abuses of Spiritualism 97 Abortions .135 Allan Kardec 154 Alger, Rev.W.R.,on Insanity 145 Anna Blackwell 156 Ancient Morals 17 Apollinaris 149 Assyrian Exorcism 141 Aztecs 189 Babbage 229 Beecher, H. W., on Spirits. 78 Beecher, Rev. Chas 37 Beecher, Dr. Edward 177 Bigotry, effects of 157 Blending Deific Ideas 195 Blood Corpuscles 95 Body Chrysalis of Spirit... 26 Boy reclaimed from Evil Spirits 142 Brittan's Quart. Journal 203 Brahminic Exorcism 166 Brown, Sir Thomas 158 Buddha Morality 133 Buddhistic Commandments, 19 Burges 30 Buchanan, Prof. J. R 41 Catholic Priests and Judge Edmonds 166 Case of Universalist Minister 90 Cerebral Ganglia 40 Chinese Rebellion 45 Christian Exorcism 149 Civilizations, Causes of 39 Clarke, Prof. J. F 150 Colby, Luther. 168 Color of Spheres 60 Conant, Mrs. J. H ..154 Conceptive Immortality 136 Confounding Virtue and Vice.. 130 Conventional Restraints 208 Correlation of Force 138 Correspondences 27 Cumsean Sybils 110 Curanta Similibus .144 Darwin and Laycock 94 Dark Circles 178 Death by Psychic Force... 55 Demons and Gods 29 Demoniacs of New Testa- ment 34 Delaarge's Living Fire 42 Depleted Spirits 206 (9) 10 ANALYTICAL INDEX. Depraved Ideas 123 Development and Degener- ation 94 Diakka 24 Diabolos and Satan 62 Ditson, G. L 141 Disorderly Spirits.. 177 Divination 92 Doten, Lizzie 217 Dreams 108 Duel a l'outrance 53 Ecclesiastic Persecution... 104 Effects of Association 110 Electricity— Reforms 146 Enlightened Media 112 Ether of the Universe 37 Essaeans ..146 Evans, F. W 214 Evangelical Alliance .128 Evil Spirits 20 Evolution of Matter 36 Evil Spirits— Belief in 22 Exorcism .141 Faith Principle 181 Fanny Green McDougal...203 Fetish Tribes ..103 Ferrier, Prof.. 146 Filthy Obsessions 153 Foeticide 134 French Communes 47 Gambler's Den 116 Gregory, Sir Wm 43 Hallucinations 108 Hardinge, Emma 71 Haunted Houses 151 Healing Spheres 55 Hebrew Obsessions 66 Hellish Orgies 96 Hesiod 30 Hope for the Bewildered... 200 How to form Circles 176 How to be Saved 133 Howitt, William 72 Ignorant Inj ur ies 54 Indians — Cause of Decay. _ 53 Infant Damnation 124 Indian's Hope 201 Injury of Sudden Expulsion 167 Insanity — Egyptian Cure ..148 Intemperate Spirits 162 Jamblichus 63 Jesus casting out Spirits. ..142 Jean Reynaud 221 Jewish Obsessions 65 Jung Stilling 174 Just Charity 215 Justin Martyr 149 Kabala 32 Last Hours of Life .232 Lecky .105 Libations to Spirits 103 Licentious Medium 112 Longfellow on Spirits 151 Longfellow, Rev. Samuel ..189 Love all-saving 219 Luther's Devils 110 ANALYTICAL INDEX. 11 Luther's Table Talk 106 Lying Spirits -.100 Magnectic " Tractors," 152 Magnetic Defilement 40 Magnetic Penetrability 53 Magnetic Poison 58 Magic Stones, etc 39 Maylay Witches 107 Masterion. 24 Mediumship 170 Mediumship acquired 174 Mediumship abused ..175 Menu, Laws of 188 Milton on Lust 67 Miser in Spirit Life 23 Modern References 66 Moral Sensitiveness . 17 Morzine Obsessions 71 Multiform Control 172 Murderous Spirits 80 Necromancy, etc 62 Nervaura — Dr. Randolph . . 93 Nero — Responsible 16 New England Witchcraft. .106 New Zealand Maoris 82 Obsessions 62 Obsession in California 84 Obsession by Orthodox Priest... 158 Occult Science 38 Old and New Religion 196 Odor of Spheres. 60 Orthodox Obsession 73 Owen, Robert Dale 216 Pharisaical Spiritualism... 200 Physical Manifestations 155 Plea for Mediums 180 Plato's Testimony 31 Polytheism & Monotheism. 188 Priestly Superstitions 207 Progress of Heavens 16 Progress of Primaries 55 Promiscuity 97 Power of Psychic Force... 51 Procl us and Porphyry 64 Psychic Influence .222 Psychology of Habit 122 Qualification for Medium- ship 174 Ratios of Magnetic Life 204 Reichenbach 38 Regeneration in Spirit Life. 216 Rebold 38 Religious Obsession 70 Registry of Life ..221 Renan's Life of Jesus 65 Robes of Spirits 61 Ruskins on Rainbows 200 Saving Spirits 220 Sargent, Epes ..^ 112 Self Deception 109 Sexual Obsessions 96 Sexual Insanity 99 Set thine House in Order ..141 Severance, Dr. J. H ...159 Shall we Worship Spirits? .186 Shakers 213 Skin Grafting, etc 42 12 ANALYTICAL INDEX. Soldiers 95 Song of Life 199 Smell of Spirits 60 Social Disparities .137 Sound of Spheres _ 58 Spirit Building 139 Spirits Obsessed 211 Spirits better than they seeni202 Spiritual drunkard cured.. 210 " Spiritual Philosophy vs. Diabolism,". 22 Spirit Battery of Brain 42 Sphere of Things. 38 Spiritual Adultery 98 Spirit Materialization. 154 Spirit Flowers 156 Spiritual Vestures 220 Stars— Registry on 222 Superstitious Exorcism 150 Swedenborg's Obsessions ..68 Tappan, Cora L. V 57 Testimony of Spiritualists. 77 Temple of Diana 227 Theology Debasing 123 Theism ...189 Tilton, Theodore 196 Tiffany, Joel 132 Trail, Dr. R. T 133 Transcendent Law .188 Transfigurations 153 Trying Spirits 204 Two Recording Angels 230 Universalists — Evil Spirits. 32 Unhappy Spirits 71 Unmediated Spirituality... 182 Vedas 63 Weise, Dr. John A 145 "Wesley, John 67 Whipple, Edward .208 "Witchcraft 102 "Wolfe, Dr. N. B .179 "Worship of Spirits 198 Zoroaster's Morality 133 Zoroastrian Belief 191 THE GADAKENE. CHAPTER I MORAL GOOD AND EVIL. The common consciousness of the race admits a standard of moral rectitude. This is the transcendent law of humanity. Protagoras was a cunning sophist; Socrates, a philosopher. " Man is the measure of all things," said Protagoras; "and, as men differ, there can be no absolute truth." " Man is the measure of all things," replied Socrates; " but descend deeper into his personality, and you will find that underneath all varieties there is a ground of steady truth. Men differ, but men also agree: they differ as to what is fleeting; they agree as to what is eternal. Difference is the region of opinion; Agreement is the region of Truth: let us endeavor to penetrate that region." Pseudo-philosophers tell us there is no moral evil in the universe — only a graded good. Is a lie a lower degree of truth? hate a lower degree of love? rape a (13) 14 THE GADARENE. lower degree of chastity? To enunciate is to reveal the hideousness of such reasoning. The objection is mooted, that what we regard as good to-day may be our evil to-morrow. Admitted on the score of progress. But is moral distinction thus annulled? Do we not again have our contrasts — what we like and dislike — what to us is good and what evil? A simple fact in science — often used in argument against the existence of evil — will cover the whole ground in plain sight: There is heat in cold. True, but does this destroy our mental consciousness of the distinction between heat and cold? Do not our sensa- tions test them ? Divide and subdivide infmitesimally the two conditions. They are still related to each other as opposites. But, really, what has all this to do with moral qualities? The logician does not connect moral evil or moral good with fire and ice, stocks and stones — only by association; of themselves they have no intrinsic morality. None will dispute that the brain is the organ of the human mind. Phrenology, received into the pantheon of the sciences, admits man to be a moral being, hav- ing moral faculties. Moral being implies moral law, and moral law implies not only conscience and freedom, but moral government and compensation. Conscience in connection with moral judgment ever prompts to the right; but the reflective organs in connection with moral consciousness, must ever determine what the right is. This applies to every scale of human life. " Green apples are good," says a writer — " good in *fl MORAL GOOD AND EVIL. 15 their place as the ripened ones of October." The pro- position is a bald sophism. Neither green nor ripened apples are good. No moral quality inheres in apples. They are neither good nor evil, because moral quali- ties pertain to moral beings— not to unconscious fruit or blind forces. Good and evil are moral conditions, each positive according as it becomes the leading force in purpose or quality of character. Hate, that stirs the murderous intent, lifts the hand and sends the dagger into its vic- tim for a selfish end, is just as positive as love equally earnest in forgiving the murderer, under the law of reform. Malice, that, with cold foresight and deter- mination, plots to pursue innocence and gratify fiendish instincts, is just as positive as mercy that unfalteringly weeps over trespass and forgets the wrong. Nero's hellish fiddling over the crackling flames of burning Eome— was it good? Will you affirm that the deed steeled those Christians to greater vio-i lance, and here is the good? As if the contrast of moral righteousness, thus provoked to activity, were the apologist for such human malignancy! There stands the bare fact — murder! — was it good? But here comes the " old saw: " " Who made Nero? Did he not act true to his conditions?" What do you mean by conditions? Do you mean that conditions compelled the murderous act? that con- ditions alone mechanically forced the fiddling? If this is the position of the objector, it virtually unmans Nero and transforms him into a human-shaped piece 16 THE GADAKENE. of mechanism, minus volition of will and a moral nature. As a Spiritual Philosopher, asking this question — Who made Nero? — you deny the fundamental princi- ple of your belief. As put, it implies a personal God who fashions arbitrarily as the potter does the clay. The very implication is a charge against a personal God for the existence of such a monster. If, with honest concession, you affirm that his parents or pre- ceding parents, together with his after surroundings, manufactured Nero's life into such a mold, you have only shifted the responsibility, making culpability lodge where it more naturally belongs. So there is, argue as you will, an evil still, and a moral responsi- bility somewhere. As God, the Absolute Energy, or Impersonal Spirit, governs the Universe by inflexible law, the divine effort must ceaselessly tend to the mitigation of evil — not as excusing, but as overcoming evil with good. An emi- nent New-Church writer affirms this : " It is therefore obvious that the condition of the whole, of all the human race considered as one, must be constantly and eternally improving. * * * As the heavens grow in their perfection, the earths receive through them more fully of the divine life, for the heavens are the mediums through which that life passes; and thus improvement, eternal progress, is the constant law of the universe." Character is the reflex action of soul-affection. " As a man thinketh, so is he." Those who have but MORAL GOOD AND EVIL. 17 little sense of moral responsibility are quite indifferent to moral conduct. When a man pronounces judgment favorable to vice, is lie not to be judged by his own judgment? Does not a careless apology, or argument for evil, implicate one as engulphed in the love of evil? The higher the moral altitude attained, the more exquisitely keen are the soul's distinctions between good and evil; and the more intense the pain at the discovery of the least moral taint upon the charac- ter. Not that such an individual's charity is less for the erring, but that his capacity for weighing the suf- ferings incidentally resulting from the commission of evils, is more sensitive and tender in sympathy, and better adjusted to the absolute relations of justice and love. ANCIENT MORALS. The distinction between good and evil, right and wrong, has ever marked the ages of human civilization, showing a common moral inheritance here which we of the nineteenth century can but cherish as the way to heaven. The testimony of the seers and moralists of ancient days, whose lives were self-abnegating and whitened by adversities in the struggle to attain the highest and best of character, unmistakably shows that man, in all ages, has discerned our law, requiring that moral evil must be overcome with the merciless rigor that a wise man removes a disease or physical evil from his body. From the great ocean of moral law in the past, let 2 y . 18 THE GADAKENE. us glean a few jewels, and learn not only charity, but purity, as the law of God written upon our hearts: " My doctrine is simple and easy to understand. It consists only in having the heart right, and in loving one's neighbor as one's self." — Confucius. "Generosity, liberality, and benevolence, are more conformable to human nature, than the love of pleasure, of riches, or even of life." — Cicero. " Whosoever wishes to be happy must attach him- self to justice, and walk humbly and modestly in her steps." — Plato. " Do what you know to be right without expecting any glory from it." — Demojphiles. "The virtuous man buries in silence his good deeds." — Plutarch. In Plutarch, and the yet later writers, Seneca and Epictetus, the like sentiments are found. Marcus Aure- lius, the philosophic Emperor, compares the wise and humane soul to a " spring of pure and sweet water, which, though the passer-by may curse it, continues to offer him a draught to assuage his thirst; and even if he cast into it mire and filth, hastens to reject it, and flows on pure and undisturbed." We are also reminded of the equally beautiful image in the Oriental apologue of the sandal tree, which, in the moment when it falls before the woodman's stroke, " gives its fragrance to the axe which smites it with death." And so the following Pythagorean and Brahminic precepts drift the grateful soul toward the same safe harbor of rest: MOKAL GOOD AND EVIL. 19 "Every soul is a repository of principles. In it centres the good of good things, and to it there clings the evil of things depraved." " Bodies are cleansed by water; the mind is purified by truth; the vital spirit, by theology and devotion; the understanding, by clear knowledge." " The resignation of all pleasures is far better than the attainment of them." " The organs being strongly attached to the sensual delights, cannot so effectually be restrained by avoid- ing incentives to pleasure as by a constant pursuit of divine knowledge." " Iniquity, once committed, fails not of producing fruit to him who wrought it, if not in his own person, yet in his sons; or, if not in his sons, yet in his grandsons." The five commandments of the Buddhist religion which was established centuries before the Christian era, and counts among its adherents more millions than any other church, are these: " 1. Thou shalt not kill. 2. Thou shalt not steal. 3. Thou shalt not commit adultery, or any impurity. 4. Thou shalt not lie. 5. Thou shalt not intoxicate thyself with drink." And we would reckon in this same category of moral credit all that Christianity contains of the good. "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man the things which God hath prepared for them that love him." " The recollection of one upward hour," says Perci- 20 THE GADAEENE. val, " hath more in it to tranqiiilize and cheer the darkness of despondency, than years of gayety and pleasure." Our transcendent law ever in vogue, what is the moral profit of arguing in favor of a sophism which the ages of human wisdom reject? ARE THEKE EVIL SPIRITS? That man has a conscious existence in another life is demonstrated by the aspirations of his higher nature, by the logic of universal growth, by the testimony of the ages, by the tangible evidences of the spiritual phenomena. The spectral analysis rests upon the now established fact, that matter of a nature common to that of the earth, and subject to its laws, exists throughout the stellar universe. "What is thus true in a physical sense is true in a moral. As atom is conjoined with atom, as ether is composite, giving forth by motion its innate life, and light, and color, and transformation, so is the relation of mind with mind, allied telegraphically with all worlds, and the inhabitants of all worlds, intimately here as the physical body with its spiritual. As youth bears upon manhood, and thence manhood upon old age, so does the earth life bear upon the future charac- ter of the immortal spirit. As no physical force is lost, but only transferred, so no moral force can be neutral- ized by transitions from earthly to heavenly residences. Nature knows no spasms. A sudden leap from vice to virtue, from folly to wisdom, contrary to life's process MORAL GOOD AND EVIL. 21 of development, would be equivalent to annihilation. Only the coarsest logic will affirm that chemical changes of body will produce a moral regeneration. They may arrest or remove obstructions, like medicines, but moral cures, or growths, are the results of spirit influx and culture. Death, the dropping of the garment in which the spirit has lived, is, in the sense of change, continuously operative; but does this change moral character? Are we better for wearing off a little epidermis by the toils of life? Are we to-day sinners, but, having had a night's sleep, are we angels on the morrow? Does a walk through a college transfer a boor into a philoso- pher? If the deaths, or wastes of the body, thus far, have wrought no sequential regeneration, how can a future death do it, since it is the same in physical ratio as already experienced? If the theory of the Old School Universalists were true, that death regenerates, why not at once blow out the brains and sip the sweets of paradise? and enjoy what the poet sung of the Nazarene's betrayer: "Judas, with a cord, Outstripped his Lord, And got to heaven first! " The same clairvoyant and phenomenal evidences that prove the existence of spirits, prove the existence of evil, or unregenerate spirits. By the immutable law of spiritual gravity, these are here — here in the spirit world that heaves and laves all around us like an 22 THE GADARENE. ocean of ether. In old speculative India, in mystic Egypt, in sunny Syria (birthplace of the Old and New Testaments), in Persia among the star-gazers, in classic Greece and opulent Rome, among the stern Scandina- vians, sable Africans, South Sea Islanders, and wild Indians, together with the personal experiences of millions of Spiritualists in the present time, we have the same chain of testimony, the same willing, or unwilling, witnesses to the existence of evil spirits and their power over mortals. The wilderness of proof substantiating this position almost staggers us. We are at a loss what to reject from the mountainous pile of evidences which the accumulating ages have developed for the startled inspector. In a recent pamphlet, entiled " The Spiritual Philos- ophy versus Diabolism," the author attempts to argue away the perils of infestation on the hypothesis that " intelligence in the higher life so controls the law of intercourse of spirits with men in the flesh, that the evil disposed are restrained of this intercourse." This is virtually making a higher plane of spirits a police institution ! The author says : " No villain exists in the spirit world but who has a master there — one who is adapted to him, and can cast over him such a psychological influence as to restrain him at his will. This determines the subjection of the evil minded to control, in spirit life, and such control as robs them of the power to do the injury that is in their hearts to do to mortals and spirits." MORAL GOOD AND EVIL. 23 What better is this than earth's slavery revamped in the spirit world? The force of such a police cannot, of course, regenerate the wicked, but only restrain them, as in a prison. The arbitration of angels must be a fruitless business in those courts of higher law. We prefer to be excused from the office of watching devils, as picket guards in paradise. Attending to such business in this world is not considered a very exalted profession. It is just as possible for the evil minded to communicate through their thought and affec- tion as the reverse class; the law being the same. Even if arbitrarily restrained, the peril is by no means shut off. So long as evil continues, even if the perpe- trators are imprisoned, the spiritual part will act and go forth, seeking its own. Arbitrary restraint never regenerates. The common plea mooted by this class of reasoners is, that, as God is good, " His imperative will " would never permit " the depravity of one sphere to be propa- gated to a lower." By parity of reasoning, God, being good, He would never permit depravity to exist at all. Evil does exist in this world, and this of itself over- throws this begging philosophy. Coming to our senses, the point is this: We are in the universe, subject to the influences of mind from all possible sources, above and below, whose temptations and invitations test our strength and grade us, up or down, according to our innate affection and practice. This, attributed to William Denton, is decidedly pointed : " The miser returns cursing the fatal appetite 24 THE GADARENE. which binds him in the metalic chain forged by his own avarice; the sensualist lives in the agonizing retrospect of lost delights, for which the nature of spiritual exist- ence furnishes no satisfaction." Some of our prominent Spiritualists have taken the ground in their works impliedly averse to the continu- ance of evil beyond this life, maintaining that death is a " sieve," sifting out gross substances or adhering contamination, leaving the spirit innately pure. The idea is pleasant; and how much more pleasant, if our birth into this world were a " sieve," and all of us were holy. In Mr. Davis' Dtakka, a stirring work, he logically traces the ratio of worlds, and admits all we claim — that there are spirits " morally deficient and affection- ately unclean " — a good round million of them residing in the constellation Draco Major — whose chief busi- ness in our world is " jugglery and trickery, witticisms, invariably victimizing others — secretly tormenting mediums, causing them to exaggerate in speech, and to falsify by acts ; unlocking and unbolting the street doors of your bosom and memory; pointing your feet into wrong paths; and far more. Nevertheless, the good physicians of love and ministers of truth labor among the Diakka * * till all are reached and delivered from the dense wilderness of discord." In a recent work, entitled the " Masterion," the author says: " If spirits are wicked, we should know it. If our kindred in immortality, our fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins, have degen- j MORAL GOOD AND EVIL. 25 erated, or have been denuded of common sense, as a consequence of their transition to another condition of existence, then certainly it behooves us to make our stay upon earth as long as possible; nor should we yearn to know of a state of being which degrades our happiness, or bemeans our intelligence. * * * No, no; such opinions are as ficticious as the fleeting wind. We may simplify the honor, the goodness of the Divine Being by circumlocution in thought and expression; may barter away our joy and hope in a raid of words upon the godliness of spirits because they rap their notes of warning to the world ; because they tip tables and make mock faces to establish the fact of their exist- ence and prove their identity." These writers who expect all the heavens to be clean, though the earth be foul, are like children who estimate spirits, as they did mortals, to be perfect, on the prin- ciple that " distance lends enchantment to the view." A closer contact with the people of both worlds, evolv- ing conflicts and sorrows, tones such fancies to stern fact — that evil is, and we must overcome it to be angels indeed. What means this moral sentiment that sounds the deeps of our characteristic worth — " He that over- cometh shall inherit all things?" Does it not cite to what we feel is true, that there is temptation to resist and good, to attain? and when such a conquest is gained, that the victors, whether they are our relatives or not, on this side or the other, are ministrants of holy services? Such writers ever argue the non-existence of falses 3 26 GADAKENE. in the other world, because it is not like God! As if the Divine were any more there than here! This leg- ging for universal purity of the All-Pure is a sign of a deficiency in the devotee. It dates from the defunct dogma of an organized personal Deity, who, being infinitely good, could not create evil. What is the use to build on fancy? The unsubdued, the unbalanced, the selfish, the oppressive— look at these as facts, right in the face, and fight the battle of life like a moral hero. This were far better. Stoical Philosophy never grasps the problems of life as they are. This making a personal God responsible ! Rid the bewildered mind of the personality, and this ignis fatuus vanishes into thin air. Consider God as the esse of things, imper- sonal, subject like us to law, over us, in us, of us; and that as we use or abuse our privileges, so is our weal or woe; then have we legun to know something of the necessity of " overcoming evil with good." CHKYSALIS OF THE SPIRIT. The spiritual man lays aside the physical body at death, as the butterfly does its chrysalis. As the chaff envelopes the wheat, and the pulp of the wheat envel- opes the germ, so the physical body envelopes the spiritual body, and this in turn centres or holds the eternal principle which we call spirit. Death is but the severing of the outer envelope— the physical body; and it can no more change the moral character than the dropping of chaff can change the nature of wheat. The office of death, therefore, is simply the emanci- MORAL GOOD AND EVIL. 27 pation that affords the liberty of spiritual growth. It is the ever-attendant angel of progress; but progress itself is the tenure of life — life's nnfoldiiigs. It is not a " sieve," as by comparison is vaguely used, straining out human imperfections; but the dismantling of earth's garment that the spirit may clothe itself anew according to its moral altitude attained by growth incident to obedience to all the laws of its being. All moral acts pertain to the intellectual and spirit ual, and not to the body except medially. Is it the foot that sins when treading on forbidden grounds? the hand that steals? Are not these, rather, the imple- ments of conscious force operating in and by them? Without this force, or spirit, man is but a corpse, and a corpse never violates law. The dogma that a debauched sensualist, steeped in crime, crimsoned in blood, principled in life-long evils, is not the same man — the vicious spirit — when first awakened to con- sciousness in the future life, finds no parallel in this life's experiences, in moral philosophy, or the teachings of angels. Everything physical has its counterpart in the spir- itual. The physical body is but the soul's instrument of use for a season. All sensations, all thought, reason, moral responsibility, pertain to soul — the inner man. When the twin brother of life — death — puts its frosty seal upon the forehead, fortunes and all else are left behind, save our unmasked selves. Rank and honors avail nothing " over there." Even reputation clings to us no more. Stripped of staff and scrip, we enter .-..'; nuw HHBHBB a 28 GADARENE. the next state of existence the real men and women we are, bearing with us the plans, purposes, achieve- ments, and deeds done, as records. These determine the commencement of future destinies. This an unreal, that is a real life; this a shadowy, that is a substantial existence of activity and progression. Swedenborg tells us he frequently met " new-born spirits, that could not believe they had died." Their bodies, forms, limbs, were perfect in shape. Every- thing was real — familiar even, only more etherialized. And then their affections, their attractions, being earthly, they still lingered in and around their mortal homes. J CIIAPTEK II. DEMONS AND GODS. The terms gods, lords, angels, demons, spirits, were used interchangeably by Egyptian, Phoenician, Persian, and the more ancient Grecian writers. This under- stood, much of the mysticism connected with God and Jehovah, Lord and Angel, as used by theologians, is cleared away. In the Old Testament we read: "In the beginning Gods (Elohim, plural) created the heaven and the earth." Hesiod has a poem entitled Theogo- nia, giving the " generation of the gods." " In the book of Moses," says that learned church authority, Calmet, " the name of God is often given to the angels. * * * Princes, magistrates, and great men are called gods. If a slave is desirous to continue with his master, he shall be brought to the gods. The Lord (an exalted angel) is seated amidst the gods, and judges with them." The testimony of the truly eminent Philo Judceus, relative to the identity of god, lord, angel, spirit, etc., is exceedingly important. We quote from Yonge's translation: "Those (referring to gods) of the most divine nature are utterly regardless of any situation on earth, but are raised to a greater height, and placed in the ether itself, being of the purest possible character, (29) 30 THE GADAKENE. which those among the Greeks that have studied phi- losophy, call heroes and demons, and which Moses, giving them a most felicitous appellation, calls angels, acting, as they do, the part of ambassadors and mes- sengers. Therefore, if you look upon souls and demons and angels as things differing indeed in name, but as meaning in reality one and the same thing, you will thus get rid of the heaviest of all evils — superstition. For as people speak of good demons and bad demons, so do they speak of good and bad souls; and also of some angels as being by their title worthy ambassa- dors * * . * from God to men, being sacred and inviolable guardians; others as being unholy and unworthy. Hence, the Psalmist David speaks of the 1 operation of evil angels.' " In harmony with the above, from a different source, yet in confirmation of the same general idea, we quote from the third volume of Plato, by Burges, Trinity College, Cambridge: " They are demons, because pru- dent and learned. * * * Hence, poets say well, who say that when a good man shall have reached his end, he receives a mighty destiny and honor, and becomes a demon according to the appellation of pru- dence." Concurring with the general belief of those ages, the Grecian poet Hesiod, in his "Works and Days," says: " But when concealed had destiny this race, Demons there were, called holy upon earth, Good, ill-averters, and of men the guard." DEMONS AND GODS. 31 Plato, in the Timceus, says: "That between God and man are the daimones, or spirits, who are always near us, though commonly invisible to us, and know all our thoughts. They are intermediates between gods and men, and their function is to interpret and convey to the gods what comes from men, and to men what comes from the gods." In Plato's "Apology and Republic," (pages 31 and 40, book ten) that great master Grecian says: "The demons often direct man in the quality of guardian spirits, in all his actions, as witness the demon of Soc- rates. * * * There are two kinds of men. One of these, through aptitude, will receive the illumina- tions of divinity, and the other, through inaptitude, will subject himself to the power of avenging demons." i * They (the poets) do not compose by art, but through a divine power; since, if they knew how to speak by art upon the subject correctly, they would be able to do so upon all others. On this account, a deity has deprived them of their senses, and employs them as his ministers and oracle singers, and divine prophets, in order that, when we hear them, we may know it is not they, to whom sense is not present, who speak what is valuable, but the God himself who speaks, and through them addresses us. We are not to doubt about thole beautiful poems being not human, but divine, and the work, not of men, but of gods; and that the poets are nothing else but interpreters of the gods, (that is, 32 THE GADAKENE. spirits,) possessed by whatever deity they may happen to be." The Kabala, containing a comprehensive account of magic among the Jews, teaches that, besides the angels, " there is a middle race of beings usually called Ele- mentary Spirits. These are the dregs, or lowest of the spiritual orders. Their head is Asmodeus. They are of a wicked disposition, deceive men, and delight in evil." TESTIMONY OE THE DOCTORS. Egyptian Jews, most German rationalists, and not a few Universalists, who theorize outside of facts and the recently well-established principles of psychologic science, regard " demons," all the spiritual beings of the spirit world, as perfect and holy. The orthodox, who believe in a semi-omnipotent devil — sectarists, the superstitious and ignorant, consider all demons " evil spirits^" that is, irredeemable, fallen angels. The truth lies between these extremes. Demons are simply the immortalized men of the other life — spirits, occupying various planes or mansions in that " house not made with hands " — the temple of the Eternal. " Demons were of two kinds: the one were the souls of good men, which, upon the departure from the body, were called heroes, were afterwards raised to the dig- nity of demons, and subsequently to that of gods.''' 1 — Kitto. Demon, "the spirit of a dead man." — Jones. Demon, "a spirit, either angel or fiend." — Cudiuorth. DEMONS AND GODS. 33 "Demons and gods were considered the same in Greece. " — Grote. "The heathen authors allude to possession by a demon (or by a god, for they employ the two words with little or no distinction) as a thing of no uncom- mon occurrence." — Archbishop Whately. " All Pagan antiquity affirms that from Titan and Saturn, the poetic progeny of Coelus and Terra, down to ^Esculapius, Proteus, and Minos, all their divinities were ghosts of dead men, and were so regarded by the most erudite of the Pagans themselves." — Alexander Campbell. " The notion of demons, or the souls of the dead, having power over living men, was universally preva- lent among the heathen of those times, and believed by many Christians." — Dr. Lardner. Worcester, in his synonymes, says: "Demon is sometimes used in a good sense; as, ' The demon of Socrates, or the demon of Tasso ' " — and then, to illus- trate, quotes from that fine author, Addison: "My good demon, who sat at my right hand during the course of this vision," etc. That learned savant, Cardan, honored with the friendship of Gregory XIII., says: "No man was ever great in any art or action, that did not have a demon to aid him." Traverse Oldfield entertained the idea that the Greek (laimon was nothing but the nervous principle; and is not this a close approximation to the office of spirits? The "nervous principle" is certainly the implement 31 THE GADAEENE. of the gods, and can be used for good or evil, as the will of the spirit determines. NEW TESTAMENT DEMONIACS. Aware that the demoniacal possessions of the New Testament have been the subject of much discussion for centuries by the learned, we present certain logical facts for candid consideration. The position of " Ra- tionalists " and " Universalists " that these demons were nothing more than lunacy, epilepsy, and sundry diseases, must seem to every sound thinker exceedingly weak and illogical. If -demons were simply natural, physical diseases, was it not a matter of the highest importance that Jesus should have undeceived his cotemporaries, Jews and Greeks, upon this vital point, thus correcting the erroneous and pernicious philosophy of the age? But he did not in a single instance. To say, as some have, he accommodated himself to the prevailing notions of the times, is simply to say, in the language of another, " He who came to bear witness to the truth, accommo- dated himself to a lie." Suppose we were to substitute diseases for demons, in the scriptural accounts. Take, as an illustration, Mark xvi: 9, reading, "Now when Jesus was risen, * * * he appeared first to Mary Magdalen, out of whom he had cast seven devils " — daimonia, demons. Who, with any scholarly reputa- tion at stake, would assume the responsibility of giving us such a rendering and exegesis as the following: " Out of whom he had cast seven devils " — that is, DEMONS AND GODS. 35 seven diseases, lunacy, lumbago, dyspepsia, rheuma- tism, colic, pneumonia, and the measles! These obsessing demons could not have been diseases and lunatics alone, because they conversed intelligently with Jesus, uttering propositions undeniably correct, and such as were happily adapted to the occasion. On the other hand, Jesus addressed these demons — spirits — as thinking, conscious individualities, and commanded them, as beings distinct from the obsessed or psychologized parties, to leave. CIIAPTEB III. MUNDANE AND CELESTIAL SPHEEES. Whether matter be gaseous or gross, it is one and the same in essence. Dissolve the granite into its orig- inal elements, summarily they are still granite. Form is only the crystallization of primal ether — what an ingrained law constructs. " The scheme of things with all the sights you see Are only pictures of the things that be. What you call matter, is but as the sheath Shaped ever as bubbles are by spirit-breath. The mountains are but firmest clouds of earth, Still changing to the breath that gave them birth. Spirit aye shapeth matter into view, As music wears the form it passes through. Spirit is lord of substance, matter's sole First cause, and forming power, and final goal. ,, It was a doctrine of Leucippus and Democrites — the masters of Epicurus — several centuries before the Christian era, that matter is composed of invisible, but indestructible corpuscles, diffused through all space; that they are endowed with shape and motion; that they have an evolution and differentiation by means of relationship; that a central principle, or instinctive intelligence, causes these phenomena. Descartes, Leib- nitz and other modern thinkers, reproducing the (36) MUNDANE AND CELESTIAL SPHERES. 37 ancient philosophers for a basis, have discovered by closer analysis the chemical and ethereal constituents of these corpuscles; that by their own innate, affini- tive and repellent motions, each evolves around itself a refined sphere, which, blended together, constitutes a universal medium that was suspected by the ancients. A UNIVERSAL ELASTIC MEDIUM. This medium is elastic, so attenuated as to elude our physical senses, or even the spectroscope which recog- nizes the most infinitesimal gaseous atoms. It performs for the universal worlds in space what our nervous system does for its grosser body. It transmits the impressions of solar light, heat, magnetism, electricity, and atinic force. All-pervading, it is the nerve organ- ism, the esse of things, the material out of which is developed our spiritual bodies. Rev. Charles Beecher, as if to undermine the basis of Spiritualism, but thus virtually acknowledging it, says of this ethereal medium: " It was the Qoaiq of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen; the anima (as opposed to animus) of the Romans; and the Sephiroth of the Jewish Cabala. From this ' soul of the world ' of the pre-Platonic Orientals, all souls are emanations. The ' demons ' of the Greeks, from Plato down to Jam- blichus, were nothing but this. By this the magicians of the Nile, and the jugglers of the Ganges, wrought their wonders. This was the true Python, source of all divination, magic, and witchcraft, in annals sacred and profane. This is the true secret of the Protean 38 THE GADARENE. wonders of Rhabdomancy, clairvoyance, and animal magnetism." "The occult science," says Father Rebold, "des- ignated by the ancient priests under the name of regenerating fire, is that which at the present day is known as animal magnetism — a science that, for more than three thousand years, was the peculiar possession of the Indian and Egyptian priesthood, into the knowl- edge of which Moses was initiated at Heliopolis, when he was educated; and Jesus, among the Essenian priests of Egypt or Judea; and by which these two great reformers, particularly the latter, wrought many of the miracles mentioned in Scriptures." Baron Eeichenbach, detecting these elemental spheres around objects, which he termed " odylic," made many interesting experiments, indicating by what subtle influences we are all moved. Thus, seizing upon the very soul of this spiritual atmosphere, he was able to trace the photographing of mineral and metalic sub- stances upon each other, of animals on animals, of man on man. He found that stars and clusters of stars have a magnetic influence peculiar to their aura. SPHERES OF THINGS. The experiments of many media have revealed a new magnetic science, of the greatest utility to the world. As every atom, every pebble, every mineral, every metal, every vegetable, every animal, is in sphered with its own aura, there is here a talismanic line of invisible communication, detectable always by sensitive MUNDANE AND CELESTIAL SPHERES. 39 persons. Our clothes are pervaded with our spheres. Some one says that the sick consumptive weaves in the garment she makes a sickly element. Every one knows that food in some houses tastes better than in others — even if cooked by the same person. Why is food eaten out of doors, as in picnics, more palatable than even in palaces? Is it not because a freer, better magnetism has infused itself through it, out in the broad sunlight, under the electric trees? Philosophers have been long puzzling their brains about the secret causes of civilization and national characteristics. Let them study the philosophy of spheres, and they will have positive data. Locali- ties produce like characterestics on their inhabitants. There are places where no exalted spiritual community can possibly be generated or developed. Every village and city has its peculiar character, by virtue of the blended atmospheres of the natural and animal mag- netic forces locally exhaled there. Certain stones and plants possess a peculiar mag- netic power of extracting diseases from the human body. Hidden springs of water and mines of oil, and minerals and metals, are detectable with certain persons of mediumistic powers. The animals and reptiles have a power of charming their prey. Man is generally the psychological master of the creation. All cower before him, when he understands and applies his art. Even the vegetable and mineral kingdoms assume new phases of being in his cultivated presence. All these strange possessions and transformations are due to the 40 GADARENE. electrical action of spheres acting on spheres, the superior ever controlling. HUMAN SPHERES. Mr. Buskin, writing to a friend in the North of England, says: "Yon most probably have heard of the marvelous power which chemical analysis has received in recent discoveries respecting the laws of light. My friend showed me the rainbow of the rose, and the rainbow of the violet, and the rainbow of the hyacinth, and the rainbow of the forest leaves being born, and the rainbow of the forest leaves dying. And, last,, he showed me the rainbow of blood. It was but the three-hundredth part of a grain, dissolved in a drop of water; and it cast its measured bars, forever recog- nizable now to human sight, on the chord of the seven colors. And no drop of that red rain can now be shed, so small as that the stain of it cannot be known, and the voice of it heard out of the ground." The better to comprehend the source and nature of our magnetic spheres, and their uses, we quote the fol- lowing physiological and psychological analysis of the human brain, with its nervous system: " The cerebral ganglia," says a writer, " constitute the wdiole upper and outer portion of the brain, found in all the higher animals. They are composed of globulous matter, from which innumerable fibres or threads extend toward the centre of the brain. In this globulous matter of the cerebrum all psycho-nervous action orig- inates, and to it all communications are made that in MUNDANE AND CELESTIAL SPHERES. 41 any way affect the psychical agent. It is this portion of the brain that constitutes nearly all the oryans assigned to man in the science of Gall; and, according to Baellarger, its entire surface, when its convolutions are unfolded, is six hundred and seventy square inches. Moreover, the cerebral hemispheres of man include an amount of nervous matter which is four times that of all the rest of the cranio-spinal mass; — more than eight times that of the cerebellum, or little brain, thirteen times that of the medulla oblongata, and twenty-four times that of the spinal cord. And when the cerebrum of different animals *is compared, it is found to be possessed in a superior degree by those animals most elevated in their physical developments. It is also found that for each additional convolution of the cerebrum some additional psychical function is found: thus showing that every particular centre of the cerebrum has a particular psychical function, whose law is to propagate its influence." Dr. J. K. Buchanan, author of several anthropolog- ical works of value, says: " Man is becoming more and more a being of nerve and brain — the spiritual is advancing into a more complete domination of the material, and the region of conjunction between the material and spiritual, would naturally become the dominant region of the brain; and they who, as seers or clairvoyants, or mediums, are cultivating these higher faculties now, are directly aiding the progress of humanity in its higher evolution. "Nature offers a coarser structure for coarser duties, 4 42 THE GADARENE. and a more refined one for subtler functions. The ganglion globules of the upper region of the brain are very different from the coarser and often multipolar structures of the base. The nerve fibre exhibits an ascending refinement of structure from that which per- forms the coarser muscular functions to that which has the more spiritual functions of the anterior lobe. Anatomists, without any pre-conceived theories, are struck with this fact, and find a difference of size, even as great in extremes as one to ten, between the highest cerebral fibres and those of the cerebro-spinal system, which are devoted -to muscular motion." MAGNETIC CURRENTS OF SPHERES. By delicate experiments it is ascertained that our magnetic spheres have their currental and polar action analogous with the electrics circulating around the earth; operating by similar laws, suscejDtible to the control of more positive forces, and correlated with physico-mental batteries in every part of the universe, thus allying spirits in the flesh and out of the flesh in indissoluble bonds. The ancient magicians called these currents, or " fluids," as some denominate it, " the living fire." Delaage, a French TJiawmaturge, gives it the name of V esprit de vie, and says " it has the color of fire on the electric spark, and is generative and plastic, inducing formation, and bending everything it touches into the forms prescribed by the directing intelligence. Soul of the world, spirit diffused through all nature, it is