The narrative here takes us to a portion of the shadowy perturbation
which any who have turned these pages as a fictitious rendering of the
grotesque in experience will do well to omit. Only a mortifying, though
perchance salutary, sense of human infirmity comes from beholding one
set over the people as intercessor and counsellor struggling in the
meshes of that snare which the Enemy had spread for the undisciplined
and wandering multitude. No, not even struggling now. That Clifton had
fought through solitary days against the wretched enervation which
invited him, I had reason to know. But he had dared to tamper with the
normal functions of mind and body, to try fantastic tricks with that
mysterious agent through which the healthy will commands the organism.
And when the mental disorder, mocked at and preached against in happier
years, at length ran through Foxden, the morbid condition of his system
was powerless to resist the contagion.
And let us not overlook the fact that in these manifestations there was
to be found a palpable reality, a positive marvel, well calculated to
lay hold of a skeptic like Clifton. His early associations with the
Transcendentalists had undermined his faith in all popular presentations
of Christianity. But his peculiarly emotional nature could never dwell
in that haziness of opinion upon august subjects in which sounder men
among the brethren made out to live cheerfully and to work vigorously.
While Clifton madly sought a position of intelligence and satisfaction
beyond the reach of humanity, the necessary abstraction enlarged and
stimulated his reasoning powers. But the penalty was to be paid. For
with terrible recoil from its tension his mind contracted to far less
than normal limits. Then came a listless vacuity, a tawdry dreaminess.
And this poor minister, who flattered himself that he had outgrown every
graceful and touching form with which human affection or human infirmity
had clothed the Christian idea, stumbled amid the rubbish of an effete
heathenism, with its Sibylline contortions and tripod-responses, which
the best minds of Pagan civilization found no difficulty in pronouncing
a delusion and a lie.
I knew Dr. Burge for one of those most useful instructors who will
patiently examine with the intellect what the instinct teaches them to
condemn. He seldom helped the doctrine he assailed by denying it such
facts as were true and such attractions as were real. He had cheerfully
accepted whatever reproach came to him from frequenting circles in the
attempt to see the mystery from the believers' point of view. I was not
surprised at finding him upon one of the back benches in the Town Hall.
"Nothing noteworthy," he said, as I joined him. "Only women have
spoken,--the excited nervous system careering without restraint,--no
spirits yet."
"They pretend inspiration, I suppose."
"Oh, yes; and it is not surprising that semi-educated people, ignorant
of analogous phenomena, should take the _omne ignotum pro magnifico_."
"Yet you are said to be a believer in the possession which the mediums
claim?"
"Certainly," replied Dr. Burge, "and to just this extent:--I do not
doubt the possibility of intercourse between man and the lower grades of
immaterial life, and I am willing to adopt this hypothesis to explain
any occurrence where the facts demand it. That, in rare cases, such may
be the most simple and natural supposition, I readily admit. The
ordinary performances, however, may be accounted for without calling in
god or demon to untie the knot."