A ]REVIEW OF'S THE "SPIIRITUAL MANIFESTATIONS." A REVIEW OF TIHE "04t rital +a feslat ins." READ BEFORE THE CONGREGATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN. BY CHARLES BEECHER, PASTOR OF TItE FIRST CONGREGATIONAL CHURCIIH, NEWARK, NEW JERSEY. G. P. PUTNAM & CO., 10 PARK PLACE. M h DCCC. LIII. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1853, by CHARLES BEECHER, In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York. BILLIN & BROTe1ERoS, Printers and Stereotypers, 20 North William street, New York. INTRODUCTORY NOTE. THE CONGREGATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF NEW YORK AND BROOKLYN, in order to increase "the interest and usefulness of associational meetings," are wont to assign topics, having either a general or a professional interest, to selected members of the body, upon each of which a paper is prepared, and read at the ensuing semi-annual meeting. These papers serve to introduce an informal and fraternal discussion, in which all may participate. The original "minute" provides that these exercises be: (1.) "An answer to some question in theology; (2.) A review of some published work, or some existing controversy; (3.) An exegesis of some passage of Scripture." In accordance with this usage, both the author and the subject of the following review were selected; and in its present form the review was read at the spring-meeting of the Association, April, 1853. The author desires it to be distinctly understood that the Association is in no sense responsible, either for the Vi INTRODUCTORY NO.TE. sentiments or the publication of this review. At the same time, it is proper to say that the members of the Association, as individuals, both those who agreed with, and those who dissented from the conclusions of the author, thought it altogether proper that the paper should be published, as a contribution towards the sober investigation of a subject which has gained such indisputable notoriety. No further explanations seem to be demanded by a work so unpretending as the following. It is so brief that its scope and character can be more easily ascertained by reading it, than by any outline description the author might affix to it in the shape of extended preface. NEW YORK, April, 1853. C O N TE N T S. PART I.-ORIGIN CHAPTER I. tIYPOTHESES STATED.-ODYLE..9-12 But two hypotheses possible-pneumatic and apneumatic. Odyle; is there such an agent? its properties. CHAPTER II. APNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-CEREBRAL AUTOMACY... 12-20 Hypothesis compared with the facts in question, viz.: Delirium, somnambulism, dreams, confused personal identity, rapping, tipping, pushing, drumming, effects at a distance from the agent, spiritual claims, knowledge of past and present, oracles, rhabdomancy, apparitions, nervous epidemics; —all accounted for without the aid of SPIRITS. CHAPTER III. APNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-MENTAL AUTOMACY... 20-22 A second form of Apneumatism, preferred by some. General verdict upon the entire "Spiritual Movement." CHAPTER IV. PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-PHILOSOPHIC ARGUMENT... 23-29 Rightfully reviews the apneumatic. Argument divided: (1) Philosophic and (2) Scriptural. Philosophic objections to the apneumatic argument:-It proves too much and drives the consistent reasoner into Materialism:-It involves a contradiction of terms:-It pushes the reasoner into scientific extravagance and absurd credulity. CHAPTER V. MENTAL AUTOMACY UNSATISFACTORY.. 80-37 Review of Apneumatism continued. Mental automacy no better than cerebral: -Involves the same contradiction:-Is not so thorough. The phenomena in question are wholly material or wholly spiritual-no half-way point. Why not accept the pneumatic theory? It accounts for all facts. Theory stated. Scepticism unreasonable, and even unscriptural. CHAPTER VI. TRANSITION TO SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT.... 87-89 Greek DAIMONION not identical with "nervous principle." Jamblichus —who he was. His testimony:-Oracles; Egyptian mediums; obsession? viii CONTENTS. CHAPTER VII. PNEUMATIC IIYPOTHESIS.-TEACIIINGS OF TIEE BIBLE.. 40-56 (1) Bible never seems incredulous. (2) Divine legislation examined (Deut. xviii. 10-11); import of the names used; found to be eight " aliases" of the same class; law and history concede the reality of odylic practices. (3) History of false prophets examined; the reality of the prophetic trance; the distinctive quality of true prophecy stated. (4) Ancient oracles explained; Pythoness of Philippi; Patristic testimony. (5) The DAIMONIA of the New Testament; meaning of the word; Paul at Athens; coincidences found in ancient mythology; CHRIST and the Sadducees. Demonic possessions not anomalous; their law stated. Theories upon this subject must make account of Biblical phenomena. Pneumatism an cecumenic conviction. Cicero. PART SECOND.-CHARACTER. CHAPTER VIII. THE CLAIMS, STANDARDS, DIVINE ORIGIN AND ETHICS OF "SPIRITUALISM."..... 5-65 (1) Does not accept Bible as authority, nor array itself against it. Eclectic in its aim. Proves immortality. Fulfils prophecy. Admits its own imperfection. (2) A true standard of judgment stated-the Bible. Alternative to this, a RITUAL the only resort. Ancient exorcisms and rituals. Modern tendencies in the same direction. (3) Alleged miracles. Inimitable quality of Divine miracles. Comparative meagreness of the modern alleged miracles. (4) Ethics of the movement. CHAPTER IX. TIHEOLOGY OF " SPIRITUALISM.".... 65-72 (5) Substantial unity amid great diversity. A small party professes orthodoxy. The doctrine of the Resurrection a test of the system. Remarkable coincidence between the Egyptian and the " spiritual" " theories of another life;"-" Zones" and "spheres." Possible truth in these theories. Isaac Taylor's views highly scriptural. Three orders or grades of spirits recognised; description and power of each. To which " order" do these modern spirits belong? CHAPTER X. PRACTICAL RESULTS.-CONCLUSION..... 2-75 A verdict. Probabilities very strong as to the character of the spirits. Their claims are magnificent, but they deny truths of revelation. An immense power and fascination in such pursuits. Possible prophetic future. How to meet the movement;-by argument; no harm in hearing what the spirits have to say. Personal courtesy due to all. Charity and humility appropriate graces. The good, that may result from the seeming evil. THE END. REVIEW. THE modern "Spiritual Manifestations" claim investigation, first, as to their ORIGIN; and second, their CHARACTER PART FIRST.-ORIGIN. CHAPTER I. HYPOTHESES STATED.-ODYLE. OMITTING as outgrown the theory of collusion, two hypotheses remain: I. PNEUMATIC; Natural Law with Spirits. II. APNEUIJMATIC; Natural Law without Spirits. The facts which constitute the pneumatic argument arrange themselves in four classes: Class 1. Mysterious intelligent sounds and movements. Class 2. Involuntary polyglott speaking and writings. Class 3. Apparitions. 10 APNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS. Odyle.-Demonstranda-A universal medium. Class 4. Doctrines, revelations, poems, prophecies and medical prescriptions, all delivered through the above instrumentalities. The apneumatic argument responds, that these may be the effects of automatic cerebral,a or of automatic mentalb action, through Odyle.c To show this, two things require proof, first, that Odyle exists, and second, that through it, automatic cerebral or mental action is adequate to the effects alleged. The existence of a universal medium was suspected by the ancients. It was the Qvat of Hippocrates, Aristotle, and Galen;d the anima (as opposed to animus) of the Romans; and the Sephiroth of the Jewish Cabala. From this "soul of the world" of the prePlatonic orientals all souls are emanations.e The " demons" of the Greeks, from Plato down to Jamblichus, were nothing but this.f 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 ~ Philosophy of Mysterious Agents, human and mundane: by E. c. Rogers. Boston, J. P. Jewett & Co. 1852. b " To Daimonion," by Traverse Oldfield. Boston, Gould and Lincoln. c Od, or Odyle, the name given by Baron Reichenbach of Vienna, to a new agent identified with animal magnetism. d ", To Daimonion," pp. 17, 18. f Ib. pp. 66, 6T, 91, 92. e Ib. p. 61. g Ib. Letters. ix. x. -,APNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS. 11 Modern discoveries.-Properties of Odyle. and profane.a This the true secret of the Protean wonders of Rhabdomancy, Clairvoyance, and Animal Magnetism. What the ancients suspected, the moderns have demonstrated. In every chemic, or vital function of the body, with electricity, another imponderable, diverse from electricity, is evolved.b Three independent courses of experiment, by Matteucci, Thilorier and Lafontaine, and Reichenbach, coincided with the report of Arago on Angelique Cottin, in establishing the discovery. Transmissible through electric non-conductors, capable of accumulation in unisolated bodies, possessing polarity, residing in the magnet with, but distinct from, magnetism, visible in darkness to sensitive organs, energising from the organism upon nature, and reacting from nature upon the organism, it pervades the earth and heavenly bodies, is diffused through space, and is the agent of the phenomena of clairvoyance.c Producing:when discharged, as in Angelique Cottin, by the sub-cerebral centres, unintelligent effects on heavy bodies, equal to any of the "manifestations," it simulates, when directed by the brain itself, all the characteristics of intelligence. Tested by Ashburner,d endorsed by Gregory of a " To Daimonion," pp. 77, 101, 105, &c. c Reich. Dyn. Mag. b Rogers, ~~ 226, 290. d Ib. pref. p. v. 12 AUTOMATON BRAIN. Good nomenclature.-Chapter II. Edinburgh, Hitchcock of Amherst,a and others of scientific note, the discovery has at least supplied a desideratum, by affording a nomenclature of singular appropriateness for almost all the anomalies that have ever afflicted science. CHAPTER II. AUTOMATON BRAIN. IT remains to consider the adequacy of automatic cerebral, or mental action. Instrumental representative of mind, the brain is capable of spontaneous action, without mind. Such spontaneous action will be indistinguishable from mental operations proper.b Musicians perform automatically. Printers set type mechanically. In revery, all manner of things are done unconsciously. A servant-maid, delirious with fever, recited passages of Hebrew heard many years before.c A somnambulic girl, before exhibition, rose by night and a Religion of Geology, p. 423-425. " The inquiry seems to have been conducted with great fairness and scientific skill, and the author has the confidence of several of the most distinguished scientific men in Europe." b Rogers, ~~ 423, 443. c lb. ~ 859. AUTOMATON BRAIN. 13 Somnambulism. —Mrs. Hauffe.-Inaccurate spelling. painted at her trial piece with surpassing skill.A somnambulic chess-player, defeated while asleep those who beat him when awake.a Every operation, from the highest rational to the lowest sensational, which brain performs, with mind as irritant, it can reproduce, without mind, under specific external irritants, not even excluding fictitious conscious personal identity.b Add the power of rapping and tipping at a distance, and one class of the manifestations is accounted for. Now Dr. Kerner, chief physician at Weinsberg in Germany, states that Mrs. Frederica Hauffe, when in the magnetic sleep, could rap at a distance, producing a hollow, yet clear sound, soft, but distinct.c And Dr. Binns mentions a gentleman, who, in a dream, pushed against a door in a distant house, so that those in the room were scarce able to resist the pressure.d Of course, if brain without mind can rap, and move bodies at a distance, it can so do it as to represent its own impressions in the shape of spelled communications. In confirmation, the spelling follows the cerebral habit of the medium, being correct or incorrect as the medium is educated or illiterate. Thus any impression, even though long dormant, or never consciously a Rogers, ~ 4389. c Seeress of Prevorst, p. 85; comp. Rogers, ~ 562. b Rogers, comp. ~ 433 and ~ 442. d Rogers, ~ 584. 14 AUTOMATON BRAIN. Two brains.-Spiritual claims accounted for. recognised on the brain of the medium, may automatically reproduce itself. Moreover, as the human countenance photographs itself upon the sensitive silver plate, which it does not touch, so the human brain may odylise itself upon the sensitive cerebral plate of the medium which it does not touch. Or, as in every cranium two brains unite to form a double cerebral unit, so in space two brains filmily meshed together by odylic threads may virtually unite to form a double cerebral unit, the impressions of the stronger imparting themselves to and through the weaker. Thus things never known to the medium, apparently, or to any one in the circle, may be given forth by the distant automatic agency of some co-efficient brain. That such communications should affirm themselves to be of spiritual origin, is no more wonderful than the fictitious personality affirmed by the insane, the hypochondriac, or even the dreaming brain. Under pathematic treatment, the impressible subject becomes whatever the operator pleases, male or female, human, divine, or infernal. So by. the operation of drugs and philtres, as in the case of Madame Ranfaing,a all the phenomena of the demonic possession have been permanently established. a Rogers, ~~ 466, 471. AUTOMATON BRAIN. 15 Fictitious personality.-Knowledge of the past. Now the brain of the medium may be in odylic rapport with the brain of some inmate of a lunatic asylum, or of some visionary enthusiast or monomaniac, and thus apparently receive communications from Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine or any other remarkable individual. Or it may be en rapport with some brain dreaming, or drugged, or pathetised, or hallucinated, or intoxicated, or even highly poetic and enthusiastic, and thus receive the impress of a counterfeit personality. Thus any high-wrought cerebral excitement may telegraph itself across the globe, upon any other brain in due odylic ral)port, and communicate intelligence of then passing events. A As to events so far in the past that they cannot exist in the form of impressions on any living brain, it is only necessary to conceive that they have recorded themselves eternally upon the all-pervading odylic medium.a They may leave their impress, not cognizable indeed by sense, but real, just as if the shadow at which Eve gazed in the fountain had remained a fixed, though unsubstantial form of beauty, after she departed and for ever;-wor as a fixed star might shine for us years after passing from existence. The brain of the medium, or its odylic co-efficient, or other a Hitchcock's Religion of Geology, pp. 423-425. 16 AUTOMATON BRAIN. Oracles and " nmanifestations" local and variable.-Rappings. half, comes into such a susceptible state that all these phantoms held in odylic suspension, as it were, type themselves thereon, and are given forth as before explained in automatic discharge. And even future events, in some such way, may be sensed by the brain. In confirmation of this, it is found that as anciently oracles could be found only in certain localities; as only in some regions the divining-rod in the hands of the sensitive is affected; as in some localities only the phenomena of haunted houses occur, according as the mundane imponderable emanations vary; so in some localities the "manifestations" can be had with greater facility than others, the difference being appreciable sometimes in different apartments of the same house.a By these principles all communications received through rapping, tipping, writing, and speaking mediums are accounted for. There remain only voices, touches, and musical performances, under classes one and two.b Facts are at hand to refer these also to the category of automatic cerebral action. Mrs. Hauffe, while clairvoyant, seeing at a distance the corpse of a relative, exclaimed, "Ah, God!" so that the physician by the body heard the words, rose and searched the house.c a Rogers, ~~ 612, 650. b Supra, p. 9. c Seeress of Prevorst, p. 35. AUTOMATON BRAIN. 17 Rev. Joseph Wilkins.-Drummer of Tedworth.-Apparitions. Rev. Joseph WVilkins, in a dream, stood in his mother's bedroom and said: "'Mother, I am going a long journey, and am come to bid you good-bye." She.answered: "Oh, dear son, thou art dead!" A letter subsequently informed him that on that night his mother, awake, saw him enter, heard him speak, and replied as above.a Thus the brain, through the intermediate agency of the imponderable, produces effects at a distant point, as if the person's own physical presence were there.b Finally, the drummer of Tedworth, England, (in 1661,) though in jail, executed on his drum all his accustomed points of war, said drum being in the house of Mr. Mompesson, at a distance. On the same principle, then, all the mysterious performances upon guitars and other instruments, touches, voices, and writings of manuscripts, may be accounted for. The third classd -Apparitions may easily be accounted for as having an objective reality. "It is a remarkable fact," says Dr. Rogers, " which has been found exemplified in a great many instances, that when the brain and nervous system are brought into immediate relation to the points whence issues the mundane force, the odic flame or vapour at that point a Rogers, ~ 578. c Ib. ~~ 594, 607. b Ib. ~ 583. d Sup. p. 9. 18 AUTOMATON BRAIN. Apparitions, how produced.-Organic atoms. will assume the human form, and indeed will have its action repeated there, as if the living being were present instead of its ghost.", Now, the apparition of a dead person, is no more the veritable man himself than that of a living person.b It may either be objective, produced by chemical action in the corpse, as in cases where spectral forms and odic vapours are seen by sensitive persons over new-made graves,, or they may be accounted for as subjective. "Every particle, however minute, of every living being, is an exact representative of the whole organism." "Each particle of the brain is a representative of the state of the mind at the time the particle was organized." We are constantly giving off these" representative particles.' Whoever comes after us, who has the sense that shall be affected by them, shall have represented on the delicately sensitive brain all the sensuous peculiarities," and "'the exact mental state," " we exhibited at the time" " they were elaborated in the organism."d Thus, the phenomena of class four,e are also.accounted for, except the apparent systematic rise and progress of the movement, as if the result of design. This is accounted for on the ground of nervous epidemic. a Rogers, ~~ 544, 545. c Reichenbach's Dynamics, ~~ 156, 158. b Ib. ~ 568. d Rogers, ~ 596. e Supra, p. 9. AUTO MATON BRAIN. 19 Second-sight.-Nervous epidemics. It is a law of "second-sight," that whoever touches a seer during a vision, is enabled, if impressible, to see the same. Sensitive persons, by touching Mrs. lHauffe, when she had visions of spectres, were made to see them also.a "Specfic cerebral impress is the grand law of all nervous epidemics." This law is seen in the history of every nervous epidemic of past ages,-in the Tarantalia of Italy, the St. John's dance of Germany, the St. Vitus's dance of France, the preaching mania of Sweden, the witch mania of Salem and Europe, and the "Kentucky jerks." This law is seen throughout the entire present movement. Every thing has-been calculated to create, foster and develop the germs of a tremendous nervous epidemic. If, therefore, all the facts which constitute the pneumatic argument may be accounted for on purely natural principles, without spiritual intervention, then the supposition of such intervention is unphilosophical, and the whole fabric falls to the ground. According to this form of the apneumatic argument, all the phenomena of clairvoyance, dreams, insanity,.hallucination, witchcraft, second-sight, apparitions, haunted houses, divination, rhabdomancy, &c., in a Rogers, ~ 670. f20 W MENTAL AUTOMACY. True and false revelation.-Chap. III.-Mental automacy. all ages, are not properly spiritual, but physical products of organized matter alone. IHence the distinction between true and false revelations, that the former are of the brain solely, mere material produce, while the latter are of the spirit, and are properly spiritual products. CHAPTER III. AUTOMATIC OR INVOLUNTARY MENTAL ACTIVITY. AN argument radically different from this, though employing nearly the same induction of facts, is preferred by many. Admitting automatic cerebral action in part, they would unite with it automatic, or involuntary mental action. There is, they hold, an activity of the mental faculties, which escapes the notice of consciousness. There are impressions, not dormant in the brain, but stored in the memory.a Odyle, they speak of under the phrases "the nervous principle"-" an intermediate agent by which mind acts on matter, and which is itself neither mind nor matter,"-" neither spirit nor matter."b The phenomena of clairvoyance a "To Daimonion," p. 43. b lb. pp. 17, 25, 27. MENTAL AUTOMACY. 21 Hypothesis accounts for all to facts. are, in part at least, abnormal mental effects. The soul, being able to avail itself by clairvoyance of whatever is lodged in another mind with which it is en rapport unconsciously discharges it by alphabetic indications.a Some go so far as to suppose the soul by clairvoyance may have access to whatever is lodged in any mind, stored in books, or even to those forms of all things past, present, and to come, which are held in suspension, as it were, in the universal odylic sea, and can thus obtain whatever knowledge is necessary. That in this state, partly disembodied, as it were, the soul has power to rap, speak, hear, appear, and move material bodies, as in cases already cited. Now let the medium be a clairvoyant; or, if not, en rapport with a clairvoyant in the circle, or at a distance, and even if the phenomena are not all fully accounted for, at least a probability is created that they can, and will be, after maturer scientific investigation.b The movement, as a whole, is a "wide-spread excitement of a nervous nature." A "mental disease."c' A mental and moral epidemic. Many of the statements are no doubt unintentionally exaggerated. They show marks of superficial observation, rash unscientific experiment, excited imagination, easy credulity, and premature decision. a "To Daimonion," pp. 41, 42. b Ib pp. 12, 13. c Ib. p. 150. 22 NIME N TA L AUTOMACY. Disappointed seekers.-Cicero's verdict. Under rigid rules of experiment, the tone and hue of the picture is materially changed. The tint becomes neutral which was a moment before brilliant and blazing. Prodigious physical demonstrations, precise and startling intellectual communications, are abundant in bookcs. Yet, seek them, and they are like the desert mirage. Tests are eluded, experiment eschewed. An obsequious faith is demanded in developments confused, vague, and imbecile. Is it not more probable that manifestations so mediocre in talent, frivolous in character, contradictory in sentiment, inimical to evangelical religion, health, reason, and social weal, should be the results of mental disease, than of a new spiritual revelation? Nay, in view of their frequent mercenary character, and the contrast between their high-sounding promise and its slender fulfilment, may we not say with Cicero: " Now I own that I have no confidence in fortunetellers, mercenary soothsayers, nor CIRCLES.a Such are divine neither by science nor by art; priests of superstition, impudent prophets, imbecile, insane or hungerbitten. Ignorant of the road, they show it to others; promising riches, they beg a penny. From the promised store they appropriate their penny, the rest is yours."b a Psychomantia, "Places where one inquires any thing of the spirits of the dead." b De Divinatione, lib. i. cap. 58. [Le:verett's I,~t. Lewicon.] PNEUMATIC HYPOTH ESIS. 23 Chap. IV.-Pneunmatic reviews the Apneumatic. CHAPTER IV. PNEUMATTC HYPOTHESIS. THE pneumatic argument is primarily a statement of facts,a and of a claim inwrought, of spiritual causation. To this the apneumatic argument appears as respondent. Now, then, the pneumatic enters, in turn, to review and defend. Acdmitting the odylic character of the phenomena, it is claimed, simply, that spirits act in their production by odylic law. Whatever, therefore, modifies the odylic conditions, modifies the access and operation of spirits. The discussion may be conveniently divided into the philosophic and the biblical. I.-Philosophic Argument. The theory of automatic cerebral action is objectionalole: 1. Because it is equally valid against the existence a Supra, 9 et seq. 24 PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-IREJOINDER. Apneumatic Hypothesis disproves all souls.-Materialism. of the soul as distinct from the brain. If God "has endowed that form of matter which composes the brain, the organs of the mind, with exactly those properties which enable it, under whatever irritant, to represent in its action precisely those characteristics which the mind possesses,"a then external "'irritants" alone can account for all mental phenomena. True, there may be an internal spiritual "irritant," a soul. Dr. Rogers believes there is one. But " a posse ad esse non valet consequentia." It is as unphilosophical to suppose a spiritual "irritant" or soul for all mental phenomena, as to suppose spiritual "'irritants" for the "manifestations," provided both can be accounted for without. This is precisely the argument of avowed materialists. "In all our inquiries as to the phenomena of mind," says a distinguished writer of this school,a " we should endeavour to ascertain how many of them are explicable from the mere phenomena of the body, and call in the hypothesis of a superadded principle ~of intellect then only when the known properties of organised matter will explain no more. So far as I can yet see, every intellectual fact, by whatever form or phrase it may be described, is no other than a Rogers, ~ 442. D Thomas Cooper, M. D., fornmerly President of South Carolina College. PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-REJOINDER. 25 Apneumatists and Materialists agree. the usual normal function or mode of action of the organ called the brain-some motion in, and modification of the cerebral or encephalic viscus."a Were there time, it might be shown that every point made against "the spirits" by Dr. Rogers-for example, from drugs, sickness, insanity, intoxication, hypochondria, hallucination, automatic action, &c., is made with equal force by Dr. Cooper against the soul. The same keen thrusts are made by both. Thus to a medium a physician "at once prescribed a few blue pills, and then a dose of calomel and rhei. It is sufficient to say, that through the medium of these smart cathartics, the spirits made their exit in high dudgeon."b With equal pungency, Dr. Cooper makes the same point against the soul: "Our ideas also are produced and modified by substances exhibited to us and acting medicinally; but as Judge C — has said in his medical jurisprudence,'Hfow can you exhibit a dose of glauber-salts to the soul?' "' Nor is Dr. Cooper alone. So reason Hartley, Cabanis, Destut -Tracey, Lawrence, and others of physiological fame —so the whole class of psychopannichists, from Priestley down to Dobney. Nor a Broussais on Insanity, translated by Thomas Cooper, M. D., to which are added two tracts on Materialism, and an outline of the association of ideas. Columbia, S. C. S. J. McMorris, 1831. p. 884. b Rogers, ~ 463. c "Arguments in favour of Materialism," p,.853. 2 26 PNEUMATIC HYPOTHES1S. -REJOINDER. "Automatic contingent" a contradiction. could the disciples of the latter school in any way more effectually promote their ends than by a republication of Dr. Rogers's book condensed, with Dr. Cooper's tracts on Materialism appended. The argument, therefore, proves too much, and falls to the ground. 2. The argument fails, because automatic contingent operations involve a self-contradiction. For brain to discharge sentences drilled in, is one thing; to adapt answers not drilled in, quite another. Maelzel never constructed automata to answer ad libitumr questions. Vaucanson- made a duck to quack, waddle, eat, digest, but not to be frightened. An automaton chess-player is impossible, and'a Babbage's calculating machine possible, because in the one case contingency can not, in the other can, be excluded. A musical machine might possibly be contrived to extemporise variations on themes given at will, since the laws of c.ounterpoint, as of figures, may exclude contingency; but it could never improvise an accompaniment to -an ad libitutrm vocal performer. Galvanic helices can give a reciprocating motion, and regulate speed by a governor, but not stop the motion altogether, and recommence it at contingent intervals. The telegraphic machine may be made to work by passing electric clouds, but not to arrange alphabetic marks into responsive colloquial phrases. Equally impossible is PNEUMATIC IHYPOTHIESIS.-REJOINDER. 27 George Inman's message.-Author a witness. it for the odic current (if there be a current) in the helix-circle (if it be a helix-circle)a to break and renew itself, so as to move a table contingently in reference to the emergencies of a shifting conversation. And if it were conceded possible,- its probability is infinitesimally small, not affecting the calculus. Thus in a circle,b the table addresses itself to a young man, A. B., and says, "I met you in Rome. George Inman." A. B. remembers no such person. The table is asked to assist his memory, and replies, "Cigars-not burn." Yet A. B. remains oblivious. Nor can any of his friends who travelled with him recall any person of that name, nor any incident suggestive of incombustible cigars. How improbable that automatic breaks of the odic current, one hundred and twenty-one in number, reckoning three to each letter, should happen to adjust themselves so as to bring out this particular one of the myriad impressions made on A. B.'s brains in the Eternal City; that this fictitious personality should obstinately reveal itself at several successive sittings, to the chagrin of all, and finally, that after a circuit through medium and table back to the brain whence it started it should still be unable to bring itself to its own memory. The ima "To Daimonion," p. 146. b The writer witnessed the fact now mentioned. 28 PNEUMATIC IHIYPOTIIESIS.-REJOINDER. Apneumatic hypothesis leads to extravagance and absurdity. probability is little less than infinite, and that is equivalent to an impossibility. 3. The attempt to carry out the principle consistently pushes the mind into extravagance. That mind, separating itself partially from the body, even during this life, should be able to energise at a distance, though mysterious, is not incredible. Cicero recognises it. Jamblichus builds on it. It is easy to conceive a law by which it should be. But to say that brain can push a door open at a distance, project odic spectra visible and audible to distant observers, perform on distant musical instruments, and, in short, do whatever the person would do if physically present; or that every particle of the body is a miniature of the whole, and that these, constantly exhaling, remain for years, and coming in contact with sensitive brains produce visions of the person, and his precise sensuous and mental state at the time the particle was elaborated-these, though stated as "facts" in a scientific treatise, are not only unsustained by evidence, but shocking to the common mind. The travellera who tells us that the tunes frozen into the horn from his postillion's lip, by the intense cold of a Russian winter, thawed themselves out at the inn, to the surprise of the company, might have ena Travels, by Baron Munchausen. New York, Nafss and Cornish. pp. 19, 20. PNEUMATIC HYPOTIHESIS.-REJOINDER. 29 Parallel hypothesis of early geologists.-Cicero. hanced the extravagance of his tale by affirming that the postillion's brain did it, automatically, to his own as well as the company's astonishment. Nor does it lessen the extravagance by alleging that it is done through the "mundane imponderable." So early geologists accounted for fossil marine shells, by fermentations of a certain "materia pinguis," or by the " lapidifying juice," or by a "plastic force," or by the "tumultuous movements of terrestrial exhalations." Fossil elephants' tusks were " earthy concretions," and the vases of Monte Testaceo, at Rome, were "natural i;npressions stamped in the soil."a If scientific men allow themselves to be carried away by such vagaries, they must expect to divide with philosophers the reproach of Cicero's remark. "Ilow it is, I know not, but there is nothing can be mentioned so absurd as not to have been said by some one of the philosophers. b n Principles of Geology, by Charles Lyell, book i. chap. iii, b De Divinatione, lib. ii. cap. 58. 30 PNEUMATIC HYPOTEIESIS. REJOINDER. Chap. V.-Objections to the theory ofr mental automacy. CHAPTER V. MENTAL AUTOMACY UNSATISFACTORY. 4. THE theory of autonmatic mentala action is objectionable, in part for the same reasons. Like the other, it may be summed up inl a word, as an attempt to prove that intelligent manifestations can be produced unintelligently. Thus overthrowing the foundations of all argument from design to a designer. And this, too, in regard to the most common manifestation, viz., "spelling." The contradiction between automatic or involuntary mental agency and contingent results is as great as between automatic cerebral and the same. But either there must be intentional deception, (which is not now pretended,) or else the spelling must be involuntary. Here there is the contradiction of involuntary contingent adaptation as before. Furthermore, this theory is far less thorough-going than the other. Admit that the phenomena are the work of spirits at all, and the conclusion cannot be rea Supra, Chap. III. passim. PNEUMATIC IIYPOTHIESIS.-REJOINDER. 31 Dreams, trances, &c.-Mrs. IIauffe, Gilbert Tennent.-Cicero. sisted that they are disembodied spirits. For what do the facts conceded imply that the embodied spirit can do? It can, by some means, appear at a distance from its own body, speak audibly, hear answers, move bodies, perform on instruments, and do whatever it would do through the body if that were present.a It can obtain access to the contents of other minds, reveal distant events, past, present, and future. But if so, the further concession of a temporary going forth of soul front body cannot long be withheld. Mrs. Hauffe firmly declared that her soul left the body and returned. Gilbert Tennent, to the day of his death, believed that during that long and death-like trance his soul left the body. All clairvoyants testify to the same. In this way Cicero accounts for prophetic dreams: " In dreams the soul hath a vigour free from sense and disenthralled of every care, the body lying death-like. And since she hath existed from all eternity, and been acquainted with innumerable minds, she beholdeth all things that are in rerum natura."b All the writings of antiquity are eloquent with this grand idea. But once admit this of the soul before death, and how can it be denied after? Take, for example, the instance given by Cicero, as a Rogers, ~~ 584, 562, 594, 607. Comp. Seeress of Prevorst, p. 35. b De Divinatione, lib. i. c. 51. 32 PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.- REJOINDER. Stoics' case.-Dying testimony of Mrs. Hauffe. a favourite with the Stoics: Two Arcadians stopped at Megara, one at an inn, the other at a friend's. At midnight, the former appeared to the latter, asking help, for the innkeeper was about to murder him. Roused in affright, the latter thought it a dream, and again slept. His friend again appeared, asking him, as he had not come to him alive, to avenge him dead; as the innkeeper had now slain him, and concealed his body in a cart under dirt. In the morning he met the cart as directed, found the corpse, and the innkeeper was executed.a Here, if it be admitted that the soul appeared at a distance from the body before death, how can it be denied that it did the same after? Furthermore, if the soul do after death come in contact with the spirit throngs that environ us, how deny that it does the same when severed from the body before death? lHow resist the firm persuasion of Gilbert Tennent, and others, that he did actually converse with spirits? Why should not a sleep so deep as to be like death produce in part death's results, in introducing the spirit to scenes behind the veil? Is there no weight in the impressive declaration of the almost dying Mrs. Hauffe, that while all sorts of a De Div. lib. i. c. 27. PNEUMATIC HYPOTIIESIS.-DEFENCE. 33 The dilemma, spirit or matter.-Pneumatism in defence. ocular illusions passed before her eyes, yet " it was impossible to express how entirely different these ocular illusions were to the real discerning of spirits; and she only wished other peoiple were in a condition to compare these two kinds of perception with one another, both of which were equally distinct from our ordinary perception, and also jriom that of the seconcd-sight.l"a Yet, if such converse with the dead be admitted, in even one well-authenticated instance, the whole apneumatic argument falls. With all the gross consequences, then, of the cerebral hypothesis, it is the only alternative. Its able author judged wisely, that the only effectual defence against pneumatic agency is to make the phenomena MATERIAL altogether. 5. If, then, such difficulties embarrass the apneumatic hypothesis, why not adopt the pneumatic? It is an admitted principle of science, that that theory is preferable which accounts most naturally for all the facts known. The pneumatic theory accounts for all facts alleged by the other theories as well as either of them; for some better; and for many which they cannot account for at all without absurdity. One of the facts most relied on by the apneumatic argument is the mis-spelling, which, it is asserted, always follows the habit of the medium. Such, however, is a Seeress of Prevorst, p. 118. 2* 34 PNEUMATIC HIYPOTHESIS.-DEFENCE. Mis'spelling explained.-Drugs, &c.-Nervous epidemics. not the fact. Cases are on record of mis-spelled communications coming through mediums who could spell correctly, much to their chagrin.a But even if the fact were as claimed, it might be accounted for either by supposing that illiterate mediums attracted illiterate spirits, or by supposing that spirits, in order to communicate, are obliged partially to incarnate themselves in the body of the medium, and to take on, in part, its organic and mental habits. So also of the influence of drugs, manipulatioi~s, diseases The pneumatic theory is, that as the soul may by these means be assisted, or disabled, in the use of its own brain, so disembodied spirits may, in the use of an invaded brain. WVhen the odylic conditions are by these means prepared, the spirit can insinuate itself; when they are by these means destroyed, it is compelled to forego its hold. So in regard to nervous epidemics. The theory is, that these may exist without the agency of disembodied spirits. But that whqen they exist, developing proper odylic conditions, spirits may be expected to take advantage of them. Hience, to find cases of nervous epidemics, where no indications of spiritual agency are apparent, proves nothing, except that the odylic conditions were not favourable. a A striking instance of this is given in The Sp iritual Telegraph. New-York, Charles Partridge. No. 34. "What manner of Spirit?" PNEUMATIC HIYPOTHESIS.-DEFENCE. 35 Scepticism is unphilosophic.-Isaac Taylor. While, then; the pneumatic hypothesis accounts for all the facts adduced by the other theories, as well as they, it also accounts naturally for other facts by which they are embarrassed. It is, therefore, probably the true hypothesis. - And before rejecting it, let that saying of Isaac Taylor's be well pondered, that we ought not to reject the almost universal belief of occasional. supernatural interference till we can. prove an impossibritty. "An absolute scepticism on this subject can be maintained only by the aid -of Hume's oft-repeated sophism, that no testimony can establish an alleged fact which is at variance with common experience; for it must not be denied that some few instances of the sort alluded to rest upon testimony in itself thoroughly unimpeachable; nor is the import of the evidence in these cases at all touched by the now wellunderstood doctrine concerning spectral illusions."" Now the apneumatic argument virtually implies an imjpossibility of establishing - the reality of spiritual communication by any amount of evidence. Suppose a departed spirit, the wife of Oberlin for example, were permitted to attempt to converse with her husband-not to establish a new revelation, not to display divine power, but merely to exercise such potentiality as might pertain to a disembodied spirit, for her own a Physlcal Theory of Another Life, p. 215. 36 PNEUMATIC IYPOTHESIS.-DEFENCE. Apneumatism implies that pneumatic evidence is impossible. and her husband's edification and satisfaction. How could she do it, in the face of the apneumatic theories under consideration? She speaks to him, moves his furniture, touches his dress, his person; —all automatic action of some brain en rapport with that locality. She sings, plays the guitar or piano, takes a pencil and writes, and he sees the pencil in free-space tracing his wife's autograph;-automatic still. She shows him a cloudy hand-nay, a luminous form, and smiles and speaks as when in life; that is an optical illusion, or hallucination, or a particle exhaled from her body has impinged on his sensitive brain, and created a subjective vision. She communicates facts, past, present, and future, beyond the scope of his knowledge; that might be clairvoyance or cerebral sensing. Alas! then, what could she do more? She must retire baffled, and complaining that he had become so scientific that all communication with him was impossible. But if the denial of the pneumatic hypothesis be unphilosophical, it is no less unscriptural. PNEUMATIC HYPOTHIESIS. 37 Chap. VI.-Nature of the "demon" of the Greeks. —Jamblichus. CHAPTER VI. TRANSITION TO SCRIPTURE ARGUMENT. BY way of transition, it may be well to consider a moment Traverse Oldfield's strange idea that the Greek datlcovtov was nothing but the nervous principle; and to give a little prominence to the ancient universal belief touching converse with the dead, for it is in the light of that belief that the language of the sacred writers may be best understood. Let us hear one into whom seems distilled the quintessence of Egyptian and Chaldee, not to say Hebrew, Greek, and Roman, doctrine on this matter. JAMBLICHUS, perhaps, had read those valuable manuscripts," on curious arts, burned at Ephesus in Paul's day, and those two volumes by Chrysippus, afterward edited in one by Diogenes Babylonius, in two by Antipater, and in five by Posidon, of which Cicero speaks.b Thus infiltrations of ancient occult lore, percolating clear a Ac. 19:19-valued at some say $7,500, others $28,000. b De Divinatione, lib. i. ch. 4. 38 P NEUMIATIC IYP OTIIESIS. Ancient Egyptian " mediums," like the modern. of sediment through manifold mental strata, sparkle at last in this Ccelo-Syrian cave. The arch-pagan, Porphyry, it seems, had written a sceptical letter to an Egyptian priest, Anebo, filled with sly questions on divination. Jamblichus, his own disciple, answered it inll the work before us.' After describing the epiphanies of the seven orders of superior beings, he thus speaks of the effects on the mediums. "Some are agitated throughout the whole body, others in some of their members, others, again, are entirely quiet. Sometimes there are pleasing harmonies, dances and according-voices, and sometimes the reverse. Again, the body either appears taller, or larger, or is borne aloft through the air, or is affected by the opposite of these."a From the characteristics here and elsewhere noted by this author, it is evident that the "mediums" now are like those of the remotest antiquity. Did Jamblichus, then, writing in the name of all antiquity, imagine these phenomena to result merely from a disturbance of the nervous principle? "If prophecy be' only the liberation of the diviner part of the soul," he answers, "or a sequestration or intensification of mind, or a more forcible and exaggerated a Jamblichus, De Mysteriis. Oxonii, E. Theatro Sheldoniano, A. D. 1678. Sec. iii. c. 5. PNEUMATIC HYPOTIIESIS. 39 Ancient phenomena not material but spiritual. grade of action or passion, or an acuter or more concentrated thought or fervor of soul, then might inspiration be accounted subjective." "Moreover, if the body, in virtue of temperament, e. g., bilious or other; or on account of innate heat, cold, moisture, or any quality composite of these; or by some ethereal fluid, or by excess or defect of all these; —be considered the cause of the inspired rapture, then it might be regarded as a corporeal phenomenon, and accounted for by natural causes. Or if it takes its origin from soul and body both, viewed as a compound, still it would be connected wvith both parts. "But, in truth, inspiration is the work neither of soul nor body, nor of their entire compound. The true cause is no other than illumination emanating from the very Gods themselves, and spirits coming forth firom them, and an obsession by which they hold us fully and absolutely, absorbing all our faculties even, and exterminating all human motions and operations, even to consciousness itself; bringing discourses which they who utter them do not understand, but pronounce with furious lip, so that our whole being becomes secondary and subservient to the sole power of the occupying God."a a Jamblichus, De Myst, sec. iii. c. 5. 40 PNEUMATIC ITYPOTIIESIS.-TIIE BIBLE. General tenor of Scripture.-Divine legislation. CHAPTER V11. TEACHING OF THE BIBLE. THIS doctrine of OBSESSION, being the universal faith of the Old World, we are prepared to understand the language of the Bible. II.-Scriptlre Argument. 1. The reality of necromancy being the universal belief, there is no vestige of incredulity in the Bible. It never inserts " pretended," or " so-called." A modern incredulist could not use its dialect of implicit confidence without a blush and an apology. Therefore it is evident that the Bible writers shared the cecumenical belief. 2. The divine legislation sanctions that belief. The law describes the class to be suppressed under various names or aliases.a (a) ttjlE.. ~S5 Diviners of divination. (b)'1.5~. Cultivators of occult arts. a Deut. xviii. 10, 11, PNEUMATIC HTYPOTHESIS. — TE BIBLE. 41 Examination of Deuteronomy xviii. 10, 11. (c) rJ,:_. A general name for any kind of diviner; not, as Oldfield imagines,a Psylli, or serpent charmers,alone. For example, "Is it not this (the cup) in which my lord drinketh and whereby he divineth?" (n t;5:] t5,U:) But did Psylli charm serpents with cups? (d) nt:iz. Employers of magical formulas or incantations; whether dp/ajticot, as Oldfield, following the Septuagint, supposes,b or not. (e)'nn'.ti.. Fascinators, binders of magic knots. (f) ~r.:~. The knowing, or wise wizards. (g) =oi 5tx;. Consulters of a departed spirit. Observe here, that " Eyyaa-rp[i0Bot" is the Septuagint commentary on the Hebrew, not a translation; and " ventriloquist" is also a commentary as well as a translation of EyyaaTrpti[Vot. Hence, through this commentary on a commentary, the true sense of the original is lost. By ventriloquism, Oldfield understands the art as now practised.C By EyyaarpifbV0oo the Septuagint means obsessed persons, out of whose abdomen spirits spoke. The original Hebrew, however, means simply a consulter, or inquirer of a departed spirit. To show this, we transcribe from Robinson so much of his definition of ~am as relates to this subject.d "A necromancer, or sorcerer, a conjurer, who professes to call a "To Daimonion," p. 114. c Ib. pp. 114, 115. d Robinson's Gesenius' Heb. and Eng. Lexicon, artti. 42 PNEUMATIC I-IYPOTIESIS.- THE BIBLE. Examination of Deuteronomy continued. up the dead by means of incantations and magic formulas, in order that they may give response to future things.a Specially put for (a) the divining spirit, the foreboding demon, or pythlon, supposed to be present in the body of such a conjurer.b Thus,' the man or woman (=;I, t,7r,hr), -.) that hath the spirit of divination.'c English,'familiar spirit.' [Literally,'the man or womran that there is in them a spirit.'] Again, (n-z'~. xt-~:r )' divine unto me by the foreboding spirit.'d [Literally,'by the spirit.'] WVhence such a sorcerer is called (=n5 t~: hr:N)' A woman in whom is a divining spirit.'e [Literally,'A woman, mistress of a spirit.'] Put for (b) t/he dead, thle shade, or spirit evoked: thus,'Thy voice shall be (Yt7 i:) like a shade out of the ground.' ", Such being the definition, pass to: (h) ve:nr.5O 5~. Seekers unto the dead. The word t57.1. is used in the familiar phrase, "to seek the Lord." "Seekers of God," is a common expression for pious worshippers. Also in the passages "to inquire of the Lord," i. e., by the oracle. So also to inquire of Baal, and pagan oracles. Coupled with (.int.r75 I) "to the dead," its meaning is too obvious to require argua Compare 1 Sam. xxviii. 7; Is. viii. 19, and xxix. 8; 2 Kings xxi. 6; 2 Chron. xxxiii. 6; also, in plural, Lev. xix. 21, and xx. 6; 1 Sam. xxviii. 3, 9. b Comp. Acts xvi. 16. c Lev. xx. 27. e lb. d 1 Sam. xxviii. 8. f Is. xxlx. 4. PN EUIMATIC IIYPOTrESIS. -TIIE BIBLE. 43 Summary of exegesis.-Saul and Samuel. ment. And the two expressions, "consulters of departed spirits," and " seekers unto the dead," are seen to correspond. These, then, are not "eight different species of this control over nervous influence,"a as Oldfield declares, but eight descriptive titles, or aliases, of one and the same general class. They all, doubtless, were either odylic operators, or subjects, the hypothesis being that s2'drit.s can only obtacti access throlgh prepared odylic co'ditions. But that they were mere odylic adepts, pretenders, destitute of spiritual aid, can never be admitted on any safe principles of interpretation. The law denounced death against them, not for pretending to do what they could not, but for doing what they ought not; not for odylic arts, in themselves comparativelv harmless, but for those inevitable issues in converse with the dead, which reflected back upon them its hue of guilt. Saul so understood it. To him the evoking of spirits was no pretence. Else he would never in despair, have sought responses through the very impostors he had well-nigch exterminated. Nor would God have suffered one of Israel's most illustrious prophets to be "disturbed," and "called up" at the beck of a mock-sorceress, as if for the express purpose of confirma " To Daimonion," p. 113. 44 PNEUMATIC HYPOTTHESIS.-THE BIBLE. Reason for the severe penalty. —Prophetic trances. ing by a special case, not only Saul's, but the world's delusion. Both the law and the history therefore concede the reality of the practice doomed with death, and the reason of the penalty is manifest. Polytheism was the disease to be cauterised. The worship of the dead was the root of polytheism. Converse with the dead was the root of worship. Odylic arts were the root of converse. Therefore the law struck at the root, by prohibiting the whole on pain of death. 3. Connect with this the history of the false prophets. Rivals of the true, holding for ages their ascendency, in spite of genuine miracles, Scripture never denies them a supernatural inspiration, nor bases the distinction of true and false on physiological grounds. Hence, in passing, another fatal defect of the automatic cerebral theory. It cuts up by the roots large portions of the prophetic scriptures. It declares that "the true seer seeks not the divine in the TRANCE,"a and that "all revelation that pretends to come from the spiritual world, only on condition of its passage through an automatic medium, is impossible, and its pretension a libel on the name of spirit, and a reproach on the character of divine wisdom."b But was not "Saul also among the prophets"? And was he not an a Rogers, note to ~ 509. b Rogers, p. 207. PNEUMATIC HIYPOTIrESIS.-THE BIBLE. 45 Peter, Daniel, and Jolln. —Nature of inspiration. "automaton medium," when "the Spirit of God was upon him also, and he went on and prophesied till he came to Naioth in Ramah, and stripped off his clothes, and fell down all that day and that night"?a Did not Peter " fall into a TRANCE, and see heaven opened, and a certain vessel descending, &c."?b Was not Daniel a true seer, and an " automaton medium," when, after a three weeks' fast, he saw a vision his attendants saw not, lost all strength, and "heard the voice of his words, in a deep sleep, on his face on the ground"?c ~Were the sublime glories of the Apocalypse a reproach on the character of the divine wisdom, because John saw them for the most part while " in the spirit," and his body lying " a vb&pog" on the surf-beaten Egean shore?d Such a physiological test is crude and unauthorised, ruling out of the canon as it must a large portion of what holy men of God spake" vro 7rvevtza-ro9 a6yov sEp61Esvot." e True prophecy depended, not on the physiological conditions of the prophet, which were doubtless odylic, and the same in all, whether true or false, but on the Being or beings with whom by those conditions he was brought in contact. Thus, of the true prophet, it is written: " The hand of the LoaRD was upon him." And, a 1 Sam. xix. 23, 24. d Rev. i. 10, 17. b Acts x. 10, 11. e- 2 Pet. i,. 21. c Dan. x. 2-11. 46 PNEUMATIC I-YPOTIIESIS.-TIIE BIBLE. False propliets.-Oracles.-Pythoness of I'hilippi. whether by dream, vision, trance, or open converse face to face, it was the LORD who communicated with him. Of the false, it is written that the LORD put a lying spirit in their mouths, as in the case of Ahab's prophets, where, previous to their obsession, Micaiah saw the evil spirit and heard him speak.a 4. Here also we obtain the true theory of the ancient oracles. No doubt they were odylic, and employed whatever odylic excitements they could;-drugs, manipulations, local exhialations, with tricks and jugglery as collateral securities. But mark, whenever odylic conditions are right, spirits can no more be repressed from communicating than water from jetting through the crevices of a dyke. Some responses, doubtless, were cunning double-entendres; some, the result of mere clairvoyance, but some were genuine. The pythonessb of Philippi was such as the oracles employed. If she was genuine, they were. Now Paul addressed, not her, but the "r7veLaa 7rri'0ovof" (the =ix of the Old Testament). " I command THEE, in the name of Jesus Christ, to come out of her." Luke says it obeyed. Her masters, enraged, saw their gains at an end. Did, then; her power of deception, or her "nervous principle," or her odylic condition, forsake her? Either Paul, Luke, her employers, and the world, were deceived, or she a I Kings xxii. 19-23. b Acts xvi. 16. PNEUMATIC ItrYPOTIIESIS. -TIE BIBLE. 47 Patristic testimony.-New Testament " devils." was genuine. But if she was, the oracles were, and if they were, the mediums are. It may, perhaps, be interesting to some to know that the genuineness of the oracles was conceded by Justin Martyr, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Alexandria, Tatian, Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Eusebius, Athanasius, Chrysostom, Cyril Alexandrinus, and others of the Greek fathers, and by Minucius Felix, Cyprian, Tertullian, Lactantius, Maternus-Firnicius, Jerome, Augustine, and others of the Latin. Thus Augustine, "They [the spirits] for the most part foretell what they are about to perform; for often they receive power to send diseases by vitiating the atmosphere. Sometimes they predict what they foresee by natural signs, which signs transcend human sense; at others they learn, by outward bodily tokens, human plans even though unspoken, and thus foretell things to the astonishment of those. ignorant of the existence of such plans."a 5. Next, as bearing on the question, are the demons, (falsely translated " devils") of the New Testament. The first question is as to the meaning of the word. Plato's definition is, "every demon is a middle being between God and mortal men.7'b This definition ema Kiel Opuscula Academica. ch. iii. b Sympos. pp. 202, 208, tom. iii. ed. Serran. Cited by Kitto, vol. i. page 547, and by Bishop Newton on the Prophecies, p. 422. Apuleius, I)De Deo Socratis, p. 690, cited as before. Plato, Timceus, pp. 41, 42, 69, 67, 71, 75. 48 PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIs.- THE BIBLE. Demons of the New Testament.-Athenian superstition. braces: (a) Spirits that never were incarnate, good and bad:a (b) Departed spirits of the good,-thus HIesiod, of the men of the golden age, writes, "after death they. were by Jupiter promoted to be DEONS;" —and Plato, " when good men die, they attain honour and become DEMONS." (c) Of wicked men, deceased. " It was also believed," says Kitto, " that the souls of bad men became evil demons,b accordingly, datlz6vtog often occurs in ancient authors as a term of reproach." What, then, was the meaning of the word in the New Testament Greek? Philo says that souls and demons are different names for the same thing." The Epicureans and Stoics called Paul (6evwv datliovt&v Ka~ray-e'seg) a setter forth of foreign demons, viz., Ta-v'Ivaovv Ica'i rT1v'Avdaraatv, two defunct personages that had a somewhat foreign sound (Sevitovra tLva). Paul retorted that they were (6etaldatteoveasepovg,) too worshipful of demons, and mentions as proof, that among their altars he had found one inscribed, &iyvTarp Oet. But how did that show them to be detat(daqtoveaTrpov g? The answer is, because all their gods were demons, i. e., dead men. "All Pagan antiquity affirm," says Dr. Campbell, "that from Titan and Saturn, the poetic progeny of Ccelus a Cratylus, p. 858, tom. 1. ed. Serran. b Chalcid. in Platon. Tim. cap. 1$5, p. 880Q. Kc itto, vol. i. p. 547. PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-THE BIBLE. 49 The Baalim identical with the demons of the New Testament.-Oracles. 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." Hence that "unknown god" was but another demon, or departed spirit, and therefore they were justly called too worshipful of demons. These demons are the same with the Baalim of the Old Testament. The whole Greek mythology had an oriental origin. The Baalim were "lords," heroes, deified dead men. Hence it is said, "They joined themselves to Baal Peor, they ate the sacrifices of the dead;" —the two lines of the parallelism repeating the same idea in a different form. HIence, also, when Moses and Daniel affirm, "They sacrificed their sons and their daughters unto te.n (literally, "lords," "rulers,") the meaning is obvious,.7te being a synonym of Baalim, and- put for it, (hence well rendered by the Septuagint " datluovta.") They sacrificed their sons and daughters unto demons or deified dead men.b The Jews before Christ, and the Fathers after, believed that these departed spirits lurked in images, spoke in oracles, controlled omens, and in various ways encouraged men to worship them. Can there be any doubt, then, that the Apostle employs the word in this sense, when he significantly declares that the idol itself is nothing, and the offering nothing, a PS. cvi. 28. b Ps. cvi. 87; Deut. xxitt. 17. 3 50 PNEUMATIC HIYPOTIIESIS.-TiIE BIBLE. Concurrent testimony.-JosephuLs, Justin Martyr, Lnctantius, and others. but that (da' OveLt -r eOv7 aqLtovotL Ovet,a) what the Gentiles sacrifice they sacrifice to demons, not to God. Thus far the term in the New Testament is used, then, for departed spirits. As to the cases of possession, let Josephus indicate the popular belief: " Demons are no other than the spirits of the wicked, that enter into men and kill them unless they obtain help against -them." Compare with this the patristic uses: "Those persons who are seized and thrown down by the souls of the deceased," says Justin Martyr, " are such as all men agree in calling demoniacs."e Lactantius, speaking of the fruit of angelic amours,d says that after death "they were not received ad zinferos, and thus were produced terrestrial demons." Tertullian says the same. Athenagoras says, "the souls of the giants are the demons wandering over the world."e Indeed, it is generally admitted even by the opponents of the reality of demonic possessions, "that it was the general belief of the Jewish nation, except the Sadducees, and of most other nations, that the spirits of dead men, especially the wicked, were permitted to enter the bodies of men."f Nor is the word in the'New Testament ever applied to Satan, or to fallen a 1 Cor. x. 19, 20. d Gen. vi. 4. b De Bel. Jud. vii. 6, ~ 8. e Kiel Opusc. Academ. De Angelis Malls, &c. c Apol. i. 2, p. 65. f Kitto, vol. i. p. 549. PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-THE BIBLE. 51 Attitude assumed by Christ.-" Oldfield's" view an assumption. angels. Such, then, being the meaning of the word, what inference is to be drawn from the facts ofthe narrative, as to the truth of the popular belief? Christ stood between the Sadducees on the one hand, an earnest minority, and the Pharisees and populace on the other, a powerful majority. Had the weaker party had truth on their side, Christ, "born to bear witness to the truth," would havie stood by them. He did not do so. All his words and acts sustained in the fullest manner the reality of that against which the Sadducees protested. Either, therefore, Christ was deceived, or a deceiver, or the popular belief was correct. If the popular belief was correct, the apneumatic argument is overthrown. Oldfield, indeed, says these demonic possessions were an anomaly, and that the evil spirit that afflicted Saul was a nervous malady; vaunting thus his anonymous authority against the testimony of Josephus, the cecumenical belief of that day, the Catholic faith of Christendom since, and the explicit declaration of the word of God.a For " the Spirit of-the Lord (rnirl U') departed from Saul, and an evil spirit (tn?-r) from the Lord camne upon him suddenly," (._n=:) or, "seized ]himn suddenly."b a "To Daimonion,' p. 137. b 1 Sam. xvi. 14, 15, 16, 23, and xviii. 10; Comp. Zech. xiii. 2; 1 Kings xxii. 21. 52 PNEUMATIC I-YPOTEIIEIS.- 1 HE BIBLE. Law of demonic possession stated.-New Testament corroborates it. But the wish is father to the thought. And even if it were an anomalous concomitant of the first advent, nmight there not be an equally anomalous antecedent of the second? But it is not anomalous. Demonic possessions, as really as eclipses, have their law. And their law is, that spirits of the departed, restless and miserable, and longing to get back into life, will thrust themselves in whenever and wherever odylic conditions of the organism will let them. To this every thing said about them in the New Testament corresponds. Christ speaks of them as " wandering through dry places, seeking rest, and finding none;,la and at length, through very weariness, returning to the victim they had left. They ask not to be sent "out of that country,"b as if lingering about the scenes of their earthly life. They dread the abyss.c Rather than be exiled from life's scenes, they harbour in the organism of swine. They ask not to be tormented before the time, as those that must appear at the judgment-seat to give account of deeds done in the body. The presence of Christ agonises them, "Sa!' they cry, "'i -l}tv cait aot'IrlaoV NaapwnvE;" (" Away! what have we to do with thee, Jesus of Nazareth?") "Art thou come.to destroy us? I know thee who thou a Matt. xii. 43. b Mark Y. 10. c Luke viii. 81. PNE UMATIC HYPOTHESIS.-TTHE BIBLE. 53 Pew Testament continued.-Phenomena various but not anomalous. art, the HIoly One of God!i77 They confess that there is naught in common between them and their Judge; forlorn, lost, they seek connection with the living to escape, not to inflict, suffering. Hence they seek impressible subjects, those, namely, in whom the odylic bond between soul and body is less firmly fastened, and capable of partial disadjustment. Having been once incarnate, they retain vestiges of odylic adaptation. They invade, they dispossess, in part, the rightful occupant, and prey upon his odylic energy. Around such "subjects" they throng eagerly. Out of one went seven.b Out of another a legion.c And cases are mentioned of those who came to Christ, (06o2ovlevol vrr0 rrvevflaTrwv -%aOaprwTv,) " swarming with unclean spirits."" Abnormal (yet -not anomalous) effects result, varying according to the kind of spirit, the part of the organism invaded, and the degree of occupancy established. " THIs kind," says Christ, "goeth not out but by prayer and fasting."7e-(ToVro 68,\ yTvoS-This race, or class.) In some the hold was local and limited, affecting particular classes of nerves, e. g., visual, producing blindness. Perhaps the invading spirit enabled hima Mark i. 24. d Luke vi. 18. b Luke viii. 2. e Matt. xvii. 21. c Mark v. 9; Luke viii. 80. P54 PNEUMATIC ITYPOTHESIS.-TIIE BIBLE. Two kinds of lunacy.-The pneumatic hypothesis the true one. self to see, and the rightful tenant became blind. So of the auditory, vocal, sensational, or motive nerves, producing deafness, dumbness, palsy, contractions, &c; or the whole brain and nervous system, producing fierce and furious delirium. Thus two classes of lunatics are mentioned, those of the ordinary kind, and those whose lunacy was produced by spirits.a Thus the pneumatic theory, established by the facts of the Bible, supplies to them a law by which they are seen to fall within the scope of mental and physiological science. HIence it is the better theory. It is not enough that a theory can by great effort embrace the phenomena of clairvoyance, rhabdomancy, apparitions, oracles, haunted houses, rappings, &c., it must also take in the facts of the Bible. It must give to the Bible its natural meaning, not explaining away, by fatal accommodation principles, its demonic possessions, its pythonesses, its laws, its history of the evoking of Samuel, and of the fallse prophets, nor yet excluding them as anomalous. Whatever pllysiological law accounts for odylic phenomena in all ages, will in the end inevitably carry itself through the whole Bible, where it deals with the phenomena of soul and body as mutually related, acting and reacting. A large portion of the Bible, its prophecies, ecstasies, visions, trances, theophaMatt. iv. 24, and xvii. 15. PNEUMATIC IIYPOTHESIS. -THE BIBLE. 55 No other theory consists with the Bible. —Apneumatic solutions impossible. nies, and angelophanies, are more or less tinged with odylic characteristics. The physiology, the anthropology of the Bible is highly odylic, and must be studied as such. As such, it will be found to harmonize with the general principles of human experience in such matters in all ages. If a theory be adopted every where else but in the Bible, excluding spiritual intervention by odylic channels in toto, and accounting for every thing physically, then will the covers of the Bible prove but pasteboard barriers. Such a theory will sweep its way through the Bible and its authority, its plenary inspiration will be annihilated. On the other hand, if the theory of spiritual intervention through odylic channels be accepted in the Bible, it cannot be shut up there, but must sweep its way through the wide domain of " popular superstitions," as they are called, separating the element of truth, on which those superstitions are based, and asserting its own authoritative supremacy. As to the alleged probability of accounting for all those "superstitions" on purely apneumatic grounds, it is infinitesimally small. The probabilities are that science will approximate nearer to the line in odylics which divides between the effective agency of embodied and disembodied spirits. At present, the phenomena blend in a penumbra, and form a land of shadows and of debate. It is only at a distance from the line that effects 56 PNEUMATIC HYPOTHESIS. -CONCLUSION. Effect of further research.-Probable future.-Cicero's appeal. on either side can be with certainty referred to causes. That science will, in clearing up this dimness, ever expel spiritual agency from all physical share in human intercourse, is in the last degree improbable. The progress of odylic research and experiment is increasing the probability of an opposite result. Conditions of spiritual interference are being multiplied. And all things betoken that we are entering on the first steps of a career of demonic manifestation, the issues whereof man cannot conjecture. This part of the discussion, then, may well conclude with the appeal of Cicero: "Why, then, doubt the certainty of' this argument'? If reason consent, if facts, people, nations, Greeks, barbarians, our ancestors, and the universal faith'? If chief philosophers, poets, the wisest of men, founders of republics, builders of cities? Or, discarding the united consent of the human kind, shall we wait for brutes to speak?,,a a De Div. lib. i. cap. xxxix. PART SECOND.-CHIIARACTER. CHAPTER VIII. THE CLAIMS, STANDARDS, DIVINE ORIGIN, AND ETI-IICS OF " SPIRITUALISM. 1. CLAIMS of the movement. Disowning alike submission to the autthority and antagonism to the spirit of the Bible, assailing not the Churches, but their corruptions, the PNEU:MATIC MOVEMENT claims a divine mission, to inaugurate the millennium. Alloyed in its incipiency with frivolous and fallacious elements, through imperfection of medium and circle; abused by rashness to the production of some cases of insanity and evil obsession;-it promises, by better regulated processes and perfected conditions, to develop results of teaching and healing, apostolic in kind if not in degree. Accepting with eclectic optimism the truth mixed with all philosophic and religious systems, especially the Christian, it claims to supply atheist and infidel 3* 58 THE CLAIMS OF SPIRITUALISM. Proves immortality.-Fulfils prophllecy.-Clairns stoutly advocated. with the lacking evidence of immortality. Exempt by the new dispensation from the odylic prohibitionsa of the old, it proclaims a new pentecost, an ultimation of the prophecy of Joel,b a realization of the "signs" promised by Christ, to follow all believers.c Gifted with "discerning of spirits,"" obeying the command to "try the spirits, "e subjecting the spirits to the prophets,f it frankly concedes that "some have, through neglect of such directions, departed from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of demons,"* subjects of a deceptive energy coming "with all power, and sicns, and lying wonders."h But while conceding that "unclean spirits of demons, working miracles,"T are abroad, as foretold, it claims that through reliable spirits the heavens are opening, and the armies of heaven riding forth in white raiment to the rescue.' Whoever, ignorant of the publications of the movement, imagines that these claims are not forcibly wielded, with ingenuity, candour, popular adaptation, and success, is egregiously mistaken. The movement is rapidly advancing, and becoming one of the signs of the times. a Dent. xviii. 10, 11; also supra, pp. 40-43. f 1 Cor. xiv. 32. b Acts ii. 16, 21. g 1 Tim. iv. 1. c Mark xvi. 17. h 2 ThLess. ii. 9. d I Cor. xii. 8, 10. 1Rev xvi. 13, 14. e 1 John iv. 1. k Rev. xix. 11, 14. STANDARDS OF SPIRITUALISM. 59 The Bible the only true standard.-Westminster Confession. 2. Standard of judgment. In passing upon these claims, a standard of judgment is needed..When Paul says, "the SPIRIT speaketh expressly" of apostates in latter times "giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of demons,"a or dead men, he probably refers to Isaiah's prediction of men who should say,-" Seek unto them that have familiar spirits,.... should not a nation seek unto their gods, for the living to the dead?" Hence the prophet's injunction is peculiarly appropriate to our situation,"TO THE LAWVr AND TO THE TESTIMONY,-if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."') A better statement of the matter cannot be found in uninspired language, than that forged from the furnaces of the Reformation, on the anvils of AWestminster:c "The supreme Judge, by whom all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other than the Holy Spirit, speaking in Scripture." The only alternative of this, is, a priestly ritual of art magic. a 1 Tim. iv. 1. b Is. viii 16. c Conf. of Faith, ch. i. sec. x. 7 60O STANDARDS OF SPIRITUALISM. Magic formulke and exorcisms the only alternative.-Testimony of Jamblichus. It is conceded that there are "multitudes of low undeveloped, deceptive spirits,"a and that men out of the body are, at least those nearest us, like men in; and if so, honest spirits must be few.b Jamblichus, also, confesses that " inferior divinities assume the guise of the superior, and falsely declare themselves to be those whose form they bear, and vaunt glorious speeches, and arrogate unreal powers."~ How, then, can we detect the counterfeit? " The genuine deities," answers Jamblichus, " communicate with good men alone, and such as are properly purged by sacred rites. But if any, themselves impure, insolently invade sacred things contrary to the ritual, they cannot attain unto the Gods." " Debarred by their own iniquity from pure spirits, they attract evil spirits by affinity, by whom they are impelled to iniquity. Impious and irreligious, introducing irregularities, and transgressing the ritual, they make one divinity appear for another, wicked demons for Gods."" One would almost imagine Jamblichus wrote this yesterday, rather than twelve centuries ago, so exactly does it exhibit the modern theory of the Circles. The consequence must be the same in all ages. A RITUAL of invocation, adjuration, charm, a Spiritual Manifestations, A. Ballou, p. 8. c De Mysteriis, ii. c. 10. b See especially Ibid. pp. 61, 62. d lb. iii. c. 81. STANDARDS OF SPIRITUALISM. 61 The process already begun.-Vegetable regimen.-Amulets. periapt, and spell, will gradually construct itself with all the devices of the magic art, nor can the good advice of the more sensible men connected with the movement prevent it.a Already the process is begun. Already Pythagorean regimen for mediums is hinted at.. Already interrogations are heard,-" Is this a happy spirit?" or, "Is this an unhappy spirit?" and hymns are sung, and other means employed to detain the one and expel the other. Exorcisms abound in Cahagnet's Celestial Telegraph.b Mrs. Hauffe employed them, and wore an amulet which ran about her person like a living thing.c And scarce a circle but has its own counterfeit-spirit detector. ~With naive simplicity we are directed to demand of spirits a token of recognition, " whether by a particular sign, a jewel, or aught else, God never suffering evil spirits to counterfeit in this respect.'" At the rate things are now moving, a very few years must suffice to generate a RITUAL as elaborate as that to which Jamblichus refers. Declining all such expedients, while allowing to a Spiritual Manifestations, pp. 95, 96. b See pp. 88, 64, 66, 72, 99, 164, 165, 168, &c. c Seeress of Prevorst, p. 22. Dr. Kerner found it to contain assafcetida, sabina, cyanny, two stramonium seeds, a small magnet, and a paper written " The Son of God caine to destroy the works of the devil." d Cahagnuet's Cel. Tel. p. 100. 62 DIVINE ORIGIN. -MIRACLES. Paul's test for truth.-Evidence derived from miracles. invisible powers the largest liberty of utterance, we fall back to the challenge of Paul-" If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto you are of the Lord."a And if any spirit, rejoicing in the name of Paul, appear to tell us that lie has progressed, and altered his opinions since writing his Epistles, let us reply in his own words, "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you, than that ye have received, let him be accursed."b 3. Divine origin, evidenced by miracles. If the miracles of this movement, it is asked, do not evince a divine origin, how could it be done? We answer: —When God would found a dispensation, Egypt bowed beneath his stroke. Sinai quaked and blazed. Two millions of fugitives ate manna forty years, clad in undecaying vestments, led by a fiery cloud through a howling wilderness, where the awe-stricken traveller confesses their prolonged existence a perpetual miracle.c When God would abolish the old dispensation, he became flesh, died, rose, ascended. And when he shall end the present, " the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel a 1 Cor. xiv. 37. b Gal. 1. 9. c Robinson's Researches, vol. ii. p. 613. ETHICS OF SPIRITUALISM. 63 The inimitable greatness of God's miraculous interpositions. and the trump of God."a Those who would parallel the porteAts of our time, with these divine sublimities, might learn humility even of Jamblichus. Having described certain effulgent epiphanies, he adcls,-" but those who, unable to obtain these blessed visions, bring down spirits whom they cannot see, grope altogether in the dark, perceiving only a few manifestations through the body of the medium, or disconnected with it in the mnidst."'b And when gifts of healing are brought to shake the AUTHORITY of the Bible, they must at least equal those of Christ, who, in the north of Galilee, energised throu~gh twelve, and seventy disciples, all over Palestine, raising the dead, and healing all diseases at a word. At least, we shall wait till these apostles have vindicated their commission, by drinking poison unharmed,C before we accept of them another, or an improved gospel. 4. Ethics, and Scripture citations. The Ethics of the system, being confessedly common to all schools-papal, pagan, or Christian-prove nothingy for a divine origin. All its texts of Scripture, arguing at most that some manifestations may be, not that these are divine, imply an equal possibility of an a 1 Thess. iv. 16. b De Mysteriis, iii. ch. vi. c Mark xvi. 18. 64 SCRIPTURE USED BY SPIRITUALISM. The modern circle perhaps as sinful as of old. opposite origin. Its defence against the denunciations of the law1 is inconclusive. If the mental attitude of the circle, viz., submission to unseen guidance, is essentially like that of the old devotee, idolatrous and contaminating; then God's word will stand, " I will set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from his people."b But from the admitted character of the spirits next behind the veil, and from the very conditions necessary to obtain communications, such idolatrous contamination is inevitable. For this reason, probably, the touch of a corpse, or of a grave, was made to communicate ceremonial uncleanness,c to impress, by association of ideas, the national mind with the profound feeling that mental contact with the dead must be analogously demoralising. The fascination of such intercourse, having been the life of Baal worship in its original pagan, as well as in its baptised papal form, must be equally corrupting under a third and more popular development. That element, but for which the putrid carcass of old sacerdotal mummery must have sunk loathsome to dust, let but a century pass, will animate a priesthood of the CIRCLE, ruling benighted myriads as despotically as its prototype of the grove and of the cloister. a Deut. xviii. 10, 11. c Lev. xxii. 4; Numb. v. 2, and xix. 11-22. b Lev. xx. 3. THEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM. 65 If idolatrous it cannot escape.-chap. IX.-Orthodoxy. If so, the same stamp of divine abhorrence which rested on that will be found branded on this. Nor will the virtue and piety, nay, perhaps, the Christian experieiice, of individuals connected with the movement, invalidate this judgment, for it was one of the most astonishing marks of both papal and pagan systems, that they could: entice to their support so many of the true worshippers of Jehovah. CHAPTER IX. THEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM.-THE RESURRECTION. 5. THEOLOGY of the movement. In the midsi of much diversity and contradiction, there is a substantial unity of doctrine. Individual mediums have contradicted one another. Among them all, every doctrine of the Evangelical system might be found conceded, first or last. In one instance, at Mountain Cove, Va., a small party exists, professing the usual orthodox creed, but claiming direct plenary inspiration, and denouncing the movement at large as smoke fromi the bottomless pit. These exceptions apart, the average scope and tendency of their doctrine is one. 66 THEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM. Doctrine of resurrection a test.-Coincidence with 7Egyptian mythology. Rejecting the Bible as authority, claiming for all men inspiration in common with Christ and the Apostles, and of the same kind; regarding sin as immaturity of development; eschewing all received ideas of a fall of angels and men from original holiness, of total depravity, atonement, regeneration, pardon, &c.;-the system is in its last analysis, though but half developed, a polytheistic pantheism, disguising, under the name of SPIRIT, a subtle but genuine materialism. A full discussion of the subject being of course impossible in our narrow limits, we select, as a test of the system, a single first principle of Christianity, on which the movement is most unanimous-the resurrection of the dead. It is remarkable that the spirit-world of this system, unlike that of Christendom, and like that of ancient Egypt, is substantially the same, whether described by a Western medium, or a Paris clairvoyant, by the seer of Poughkeepsie, or the seeress of Prevorst. "The Egyptians," says Spineto, " divided the whole world into three zones;-the first was the earth, or zone of trial; the second was the zone of the air, perpetually agitated by winds and storms, and was considered the zone of temporal punishment; the third was the zone of rest and tranquillity, which was above the other two. The first zone was divided into four departments, the second into twelve, and the third into sixteen; so that the THEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM. 67 Mr. Ballou's theory.-Possible truth in them all. sum total of the regions in which the souls of the dead were to be distributed, was in fact thirty-two." "Souls on leaving the body were thrown into the second zone, to be whirled about by winds through the regions of the air, till they were called upon either to return to the first zone, to animate a new body, or to be removed into the third, where the air was perpetually pure and tranquil."a Compare with this Mr. Ballou's account:-"- There is a series of grand spheres commencing with man's rudimental sphere in the flesh, and ascending in just gradation to the highest heavens. Each grand sphere comprises several secondary spheres or circles, and each secondary sphere or circle has several degrees, &c., &c."' Now there may be some element of truth in all this. Paul was caught away to the third heaven.c Christ ascended "7Fre6Vpabw aVJ 7 Tv-v -v o{vpa9 vd (literally, above all the heavens); and we well know that in our "Father's house are many mansions."e But that which specially characterises the theory under question, is its elimination-at-death theory of resurrection, and subsequent progress. The objection to this theory is, that it is not taught, but, on the contrary, severely censured, in the New Testament. St. Paul declares, that those who say that the resurrection is past already, make shipwreck of n Encyc. Am. art. Egyptian Mythology. c 2 Cor. xii. 2. e John xiv. 2. b Spiritual Manifestations, pp. 46, 47. d Eph. iy. 10. 68 THEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM. The resurrection not yet passed.-Isaac Taylor on the intermediate state. the faith, and that their word eats like a canker.? Yet this system affirms that the resurrection of all former generations is past.b The Apostles always throw the view forward to the simultaneous resurrection of all the just, at the second coming of Christ. "And we are also taught," says Mr. Isaac Taylor, " to think of the state of souls, not as a state of unconsciousness indeed, but of comparative inaction, or of suspended energy..... A transition state in which the passive faculties of our nature, rather than the active, are to be awake; and throughout which probably those emotions of the moral nature that have been overborne, or held in abeyance by the urgent impulses of animal life, shall take their free course, and reach their height as fixed habits of the mind." Hence:'" It is plain that a more attenuated corporeity may be held to belong to the intermediate transition state of human nature, than shall befit its ultimate condition of full energy and activity. Powers latent do not need a structure which has relation to the exertion of powers upon an external world. The chrysalis period of the soul may be marked by the destitution of all the instruments of active life, corporeal and mental."~c This Scripture idea is singua 1 Tim. i. 19; comp. 2 Tim. ii. 18. b A small community of Spiritualists at Mountain Cove, Fayette County, Virginia, are an exception to this statement. c Physical Theory of Another Life, pp. 212, 213. TIHEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISMi. 69 Imbecile spirits.-Scripture theory of spiritual orders. larly verified by the whole style of the current " manifestations." Spirits impotent, bankrupt per se, borrow odylic energy of the living for their least operation on matter. Intellectually insane, their mediocre wares are all the cast-clothes of living minds of small calibre, or mummy-wrappings from the catacombs. Of the CIRCLE, we may say as Mr. Taylor does of the polytheistic temple of all ages: "Colourless daylight does not enter that fane: a sepulchral taint sickens the atmosphere, and he who has not by effort and practice gained command over himself, exclaims,' If I stay long in this place I shall lose my senses, let me escape from it while I can.' I"a The claim of such teachers to celestial rank, invalidated already by Jamblichus, grows more and more precarious; and the probability is proportionately enhanced of their appropriate reference to an opposite category of existence, if such can be found. Now, when Scripture would indicate the universal jurisdiction of Christ over all intelligent orders of the universe, it classifies them in a threefold distribution: "at the name of Jesus every knee should bow,'rrovpavicov ai ca /rtyeov iai Ka'raOovhov."b (Literally, of celestials, terrestrials, and stlbterrestrials.) When it would reveal the object of Christ's death and resurrection, it is "~ va a Loyola and Jesuitism, p. 200. b Phil. ii 10. 70 ThIEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM. Scripture theory continued.-Three classes.-Isaac Taylor. icat veicpgv cati'r)vwv ICvtpev7."a (Literally, that he might lord it over the dead, and the living.) AVhen it would bring before us a vivid vision of the anticipated reality, it causes us to hear a universal anthem of praise from every creature, (Ev -~ ovp9avw icat e7Ti 1rqg yjg iati v'roc'a-rw i-i 7jy,) "in heaven, upon earth, and under the earth."b "This classification of intelligent beings," says Mr. Taylor, "it must be confessed, by no means corresponds with the distribution we are most accustomed to think of, namely, that which arranges all rational beings into the three classes-the inhabitants of heaven holy and happy, the inhabitants of earth who are on their probation, and the condemned and infernal spirits. For, on the one hand, certain classes of celestials, (the 1Trovgaviot,) are spoken of by St. Paul as being in open opposition to the divine government." "Our wrestling," Paul says, " is not with flesh and. blood," (the 7tT/etot, or terrestrial combinations,) "but aps idpXa', rpog -rag e ovotamg iop -rovS ioo'aoKpa-opoag -roi a6c6r'ovf i-oTrov, 7Trbf -ra rvevta-rtLcd T'g 7rovrtpia- Ev -rog e7rovqavtoLt."~C (Literally, against principalities, against powers, against the cosmocrats of this darkness, against na Rom. xiv. 9. b liev. v. 13, comp. v. 3; also Lyell's Geology, vol. 1. ch. xviii. and xix., and Physical Theory of Another Life, 184, 185, 210, &c. c Eplih. vi. 12. TIIEOLOGY OF SPIRITUALISM. 71 Condensed view of the three spiritual orders. the " pneumatics" of wickedness among the celestials.) " WThile on the other hand," continues Mr. Taylor, " the infernals, or inhabitants of the nether region, or of Ilades, are represented as subjects of Messiah's kingly function, and also as joining with celestials and terrestrials in an anthem of praise to God and the Lamb."a According to this view, which is based upon a correct exegesis of the original Scriptures, the "E'ro'aviol," or celestial orders, good and bad, are pdtentially above matter, supremely administrative over all mechanical, chemical, and vital processes.b The "I T7yeiot" are in matter, controlling, yet controlled; ruling, yet enslaved by bodies weak, dishonoured, corruptible, animal-bodies "4 7g,-aretve as9g" of humiliation.e The "t caraxOovtot," subterrestrials, are beneath matter, (potentially if not locally, as Mr. Taylor supposes,) incapable of swaying it, unless by abnormal, and somewhat piratical trespass upon the odylic powers of their superiors.d Hence they seek a quasi re-incarnation among the "Errtyetot," or living; and to conciliate them to grant the necessary odylic facilities, charm them by the fiction that they are " r7ovpavto1," empyreal. Thus, complacent mortals bestow favours on needy mendicants from below, while a Physical Theory of Another Life, pp. 184, 185. b Comp. 2 Kings xix. 385; Job i. 12-19; Luke ii. 9; Acts v. 19, and xii. 238. c Ronl. viii. 23; 1 Cor. xv. 42, 44; Phil. iii. 21. d Is. xiv. 10; Ezek. xxxii. 19-32. 7-2 PRACTICAL PRESULTS. CONCLUSION. Wicked " celestials."-Chap. X.-A verdict. fancying themselves in receipt of exalted condescension from above. Or, it may be, that some of those cosmocratic archons, (of whom Jamblichus speaks in terms almost identical with those of Paul,) some of those "wicked spiritualities among the celestials," may impose on the living, by the fond dream that all celestials are of necessity holy. Or, employing the services of the "' Ica-r-aOovtot," their too willing serviles, they may oppress the living by a double delusion. CHAPTER X. PRACTICAL RE S ULT S.-C O N C L USION. IF, then, the present PNEUMATIC MOVEMENT is to be referred either to the category of Rev. xvi. 14, or of Rev. xix., the probabilities are strongly toward the former. Nor is this probability weakened by their lofty claims. If they have healed more diseases-more than they have generated by confirmed obsession-it proves no more than the Sisters of Charity prove for Rome. While, in claiming to supply the lacking evidence of immortality, needed to convert infidels and atheists, they indirectly deny that the resurrection of PRACTICAL RESULTS.-CONCLUSION. 73 The movement denies the doctrines of Scripture. Christ "-brought life and immortality to light,"a and gave proof to all mankind of an appointed day of judgment;b and that the Holy Ghost, by regenerating and sanctifying the elect, gives proper evidence of the divinity of Christianity. Invoking the presence of many mediators, they revive the essential element of both Pagan and Papal apostacy; denying the One Mediator Christ, by whose blood alone we live, and by whom alone we approach unto God. Claiming to be the avant-couriers of millennial glory, yet denying, with few exceptions,'" that blessed hope, even the glorious appearing of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ," they incur the almost certain stigma of false Christs which should precede his coming. All who bow to the AUTHORITY of the Bible, who know in their own hearts the work of the Holy Ghost, and who love Christ's appearing, must feel instinctively that here moves a mighty antagonistic influence. Mighty as the deep yearning of mankind in all ages to penetrate the tremendous secrets of the dead; mighty as the conception of departed worth, the unutterable longing of bereaved hearts for the unforgotten, and the ecstatic delight 6f souls suddenly restored to con2 Tim.. 10. b.Acts xvi 4 74 PRACTICAL RESULTS.-CONCLUSION. Fascinations of Spiritualism.-H-ow to meet the movement. verse with the idolised whose loss made life a desert; — they-weave —the spell of exciting novelty; they excite the vague presentiment of boundless discovery, and unveil a dazzling horizon of an elysium without a Cross, where mankind shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Drunk with this elixir, the millions surrender themselves to the implicit sway of- WHAT POWERS'? Powers unseen, powers aerial, under the masterly guidance of some one mind of fathomless ability, and fathomless guile. If, then, the nations of this unhappy planet, before their ultimate redemption, are to be rallied to a moral Armageddon battle-field against the simple Gospel of Christ; if nominal Christendom must be semi-paganised, to prepare for the fraternal embrace of Pagandom semi-christianised, here is one agency, which, with others, is eminently adapted to do the work. Whether such be its character and its destiny time will show, and every man must judge for himself. The question of practical moment for us is, how shall the movement be met? Obviously with kindly courtesy. Whatever be the character of the powers communicating, there is no objection to, hear all they have to say. If they can logically destroy the authority of the Word of God and':the truth of evangelical doctrine, let them do it. In wrestling,' h'owever, against the aerial host,- railing CONCLTUSION. 75 Railing, not a weapon.-Treatment of individuals.-TIE END. or vituperation are not mentioned by the Apostle as forming any part of the panoply of God. On the contrary, even Michael disputing with on& of the celestial orders, about the body of Moses, "durst not bring a railing accusation against him, but said,'The Lord rebuke thee.' "a As to the gentlemen and ladies engaged enthusiastically in what appears to them a good cause, they are to be met with respect and Christian consideration. If they are in error, it is an honest one; the evidence before their mind is very specious, very strong. If it be a delusion, it is certainly a very strong delusion. Christian humility should teach us that if we have not been deluded, it is of grace, and that we be not high-minded, but fear. We should meet them with argument. We should admit all facts sustained by proper evidence, and show them that the Word of God has a deeper foundation, and a broader basis in the nature of things, than they, or we have hitherto been aware. And if the result shall be to lead Christians to a more patient and profound re-investigation of the doctrine of the resurrection and future life, and connected themes, God, who brings good out of evil, may bring benefit out of even this. a Jude 9.