"I speak to you, my fallen brother, as I cannot speak to the foolish
people who grope in this miasma of delusion. Silly women, yielding to
the natural vanity of their sex, may mistake hysterics for inspiration.
Vacillating and vacant men may seek a new sensation by encouraging a
revival of the demoniacal epidemics of heathendom. But you, who have
been a preacher of the gospel, though, as I must now more than ever
believe, after a devitalized and perverted method,--you, to leave the
honest work of a dweller upon earth, to chatter of immensity, to weaken
the brain that it may no longer separate the true from the
false!--believe me, Clifton, you have been bought by the shallowest
promises which the King of Evil ever exchanged for a sacred and
inviolable soul."
"You have spoken according to your business," replied Mr. Clifton,
impatiently. "You, who begin by assuming the impossibility of
spirit-intercourse since Bible times, with what candor can you examine
the facts we build upon?"
"I make no such assumption," was the rejoinder. "Has it not been
foretold that 'in the latter times some shall depart from the faith,
giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines of devils'? Have we not
aforetime been vexed with them in this very New England? For I almost
justify Mather's words, when he stigmatizes the necromancy of his day as
'a terrible Plague of Evil Angels,' or, in still plainer speech, as 'a
prodigious descent of devils upon divers places near the centre of this
Province.' And how better can we characterize this confused and
distracting babblement which gives no good gift to man?"
"It has given him this," exclaimed Clifton, advancing towards Dr. Burge,
and seeming for a few moments to resume his old personality,--"it has
given him the knowledge of a life to come! You think it, preach it,
believe it,--but you do not _know_ it. A susceptibility to impressions
from the inmost characters of men has been mine through life. It has
been given me to perceive what facts and feelings most deeply adhered in
the mental consciousness. And I tell you, Burge, ministers both of your
communion and of mine repeat the old words of sublimest assurance, sway
congregations with descriptions bright or lurid of future worlds, yet
behind all this glowing speech and blatant confidence there has
lurked,--oh, will you deny it?--there has lurked a grovelling doubt of
man's immortality."
"I will not deny it," said Dr. Burge, with slow solemnity. "Sinners that
we are, how can we ask that faith be at no moment confused by the
thousand cries of infidelity which our profession requires us to answer?
Let my soul be chilled by transient shades of skepticism, rather than
dote in a blind and puerile credulity! If I am not at all times equally
penetrated by the great fact of man's conscious immortality, it is
because of my undesert. A way to _know_ of the doctrine has been
revealed: it is by doing the will of the Father: who of us has fulfilled
the condition? But I can meet you on lower ground, and declare, that,
according to our human observation, it is not well for man to _know_ the
destiny of his being in all its details until the trials and victories
of life have taught him to turn such knowledge to elevating use. It is
the deplorable sinfulness of our nature which seeks to obtain without
deserving, to possess the end and despise the appointed means."
Some reply would doubtless have been made to these pertinent
considerations, had not the confused tramp of a committee been heard at
the door. The professors of the "New Dispensation" had come to conduct
the Reverend Charles Clifton to their platform. The distinguished
convert shuddered, as if affected by some incorporeal presence, and
suffered himself to be led away.
"I can do nothing more," murmured Dr. Burge; "and why should I stay to
hear diluted rhetoric, or inflated commonplace, from lips which, however
unworthily, once proclaimed the simplicity of the gospel?"
"Because it is not well to prejudge what may offer some possible variety
in this credence," I ventured to suggest.
"You are right; we will stay."
A murmur of applause followed the appearance of Clifton upon the
platform,--yet it was only a murmur; for the flock, long pastured upon
delicate delusions, received as matter of course whatever shepherding
chance offered. Did not the face of the medium wear an expression of
earthly disappointment at this slender recognition? Could it be that
there was needed the hot-house heat of a carnal "success" to favor this
exquisite flowering of the spirit? Can we suppose that this whole matter
was no other than some Yankee patent to avoid the awful solitude in
which each human soul must enter into relations with the unseen?
Slowly and in dreamy heaviness the discourse began. The inspirational
claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's
cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as
the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at
work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer
abundance. The meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whenever
some commonplace truth or plausibility protruded from the general
washiness, it was seized upon and beaten and stretched to the last
degree of tenuity. Phrases upon phrases of gorgeous dreaminess. A
soothing delight,--yet such delight as only the bodily senses demanded.
A joyful deliverance from the bondage of intellectual life. Hints that
our human consciousness of sin was a vain delusion from which the
"developed" man was happily delivered. "Come up here," said the
preacher, in substance, "and escape from this moral accountability which
sits so heavily upon you. Here is a sensuous paradise, sweet and
debilitating, offering varied delights to the eclecticism of personal
taste. All angular and harsh things may be dissolved in copious floods
of words, and washed into a ravishing, enervating Universe."
An hour--two hours--passed. The air was thick and poisonous. Attention
had been strained to the utmost. Other things were to be noted by those
accustomed to regard mental disorder from a physiological point of view.
And now, by some abnormal mode of cerebral activity, the trance-speaker
won strange sympathies from his auditors. Certain faculties in Clifton
had reached an expansion not permitted to the healthy man. A plastic
power came from him and took the impress of other minds. Old experiences
groped out of forgotten corners and haunted the discourse. At one time
it seemed as if all that was potential in the culture of the medium or
his audience might be stimulated into specious blossom. Phenomena were
exhibited which transcended the conscious powers of the human
soul,--nay, which testified of its latent ability to work without
organic conditions. Our unemployed brain-organs, as Hamilton and others
have clearly proved, are always employing themselves. And from this
self-employment--or was it demon-employment?--there swept through the
consciousness a vague delirium of excitement. In all that assembly a
single pulse beat feverish measures. The climax was reached. Without was
the soft spring night veiling the scarcely touched range of knowledge
and beauty offered to the healthy energies of man; within were dazed
wanderers in a region of morbid emotion, seeking to intensify the colors
of Nature, willing to waste precious vitality in conjurations of the
dead.
The wretched thraldom was over,--and what had it left?
An exquisite sensitiveness of the nerves of sense, imagination exalted,
memory goaded, reason and judgment overthrown.