Our planet, Earth, is yet crude. Its soil, products, emanations, and auras
are coarse and harsh. Though meliorated much since it first gave birth to
man, it is not now fitted to nurture beings as refined as it will be
centuries hence. It is being constantly softened, and is ever progressing
toward the present ripened condition of older planets, whose embodied
inhabitants easily and constantly commune with wise departed kindred, from
whom they receive such instructions and aids as cause them to live in
close harmony with the laws of animal health, and therefore nearly free
from sickness and pains, and, when ripened for release, to pass painlessly
out from their grosser integuments. From the days of remotest history, and
our world over, spirits have often been transiently visible and palpable
by some mortals. But the atmosphere in which humans live is measurably
uncongenial and oppressive to most, and especially to purer and more
advanced spirits; still it becomes less so from century to century, is
ever gaining such conditions as lift a little higher its incarnate
inhabitants, and is less oppressive to those disrobed of flesh. Its
modifications prophesy that time will be when mortals and spirits may here
more comfortably than now intercommune constantly and with mutual benefit.
Terrific mental conflicts--moral tornadoes, agitations to the depths of
society, are used as instruments in advancing earth and its inhabitants to
states which will permit spirits to be our constantly recognized
attendants, and our helpful advisers and guides along the paths of
spiritual progression. Progress is hastened through intense tribulations.
Great changes and advances of either a material, mental, political,
social, or spiritual world are, like births, generally outwrought through
anguish and sufferings. Even the entrance of spirits into mortal forms is
usually painful to both parties. First and earlier reincarnations are
almost necessarily attended by psychological action which forces spirits
severally to manifest, and, moderatedly, to undergo, again their special
sufferings during their last hours of earth-life. Mortals, too, shrink
from, and are agitated by, and afraid of their nearest friends, if
disrobed of flesh. Such fears are repulsive forces, making spirit approach
arduous and often impossible. The boon of return, in most cases, is at the
cost of suffering--but of suffering which pays well--suffering which
purchases joy for both those who come and those who welcome them. Our
earth and all who are born upon it receive or earn many of their greatest
blessings through the sweats of convulsive throes or severe toil. The
abolition of a wide-spread obnoxious creed was terrific in 1692.
In civilized lands extensively, and especially in Protestant Christendom,
possibility of the return of departed good souls from their invisible
abodes has for centuries been doubted. Therefore a most copious source of
valuable instruction and help has been unused. Resort to it has, or had,
become horrific; it has been deemed by men the devil's pool exclusively.
But not so by spirits. Wise and friendly ones, unseen, have long and often
sought and labored for such recognition and welcome, by survivors on
earth, as would render demonstration of spirit presence widely
practicable. Spirits have sought this because they have been seeing that
free and extensive intercommunings between dwellers in flesh and
enfranchised ones might greatly facilitate the advance of both classes in
beneficence and happiness. The immense aid which the earth-embodied
living, and only they, can give to many unhappy ones whom they call dead,
is not yet dreamed of by the public. Knowledge that many departed ones are
obliged to get aid from earth ere they can make an efficient start up the
ladder heavenward, opens a wide and interesting field of labor to those
who have carefully sought to learn the mutual dependences of the seen and
unseen worlds.
The possible advent of instruction from unseen realms is now for the first
time receiving practical demonstration among a people, who, as a whole,
are able and disposed to scan carefully the nature and qualities of the
intelligences who impart it. Prior to 1692, the Christian world had long
been shrinking from conferences with unseen colloquists, deeming all such
diabolical in purpose and influence. Ignorance was mother of its fears.
The present age, more enlightened, more disposed to investigation, more
prone to believe in the reign of law always and everywhere, asks the
hidden teachers who they are, and whence and why and how they gain access
to our homes. Their responses affirm, and each lapsing year of
non-refutation confirms the allegation, that they are spirits now, but
once were mortals robed in flesh; and that they come, some from this
motive, some from that,--some for fun, frolic, and even revenge and wrong;
but more of them to give and to receive the pleasure and happiness which
visits to their former homes and friends will generate, and especially to
make known to their loved ones here the course of life which will best fit
them for joy and happiness in the mansions and scenes of the world to
which they all must come.
The methods of Providence have ever been homogeneous; and now that they
have brought peoples to the dawn of a day when human hospitality is
entertaining angels, not always unawares, but often consciously and
joyfully, the beneficence of the witchcraft scenes at Salem Village,
whereby Christendom's thralldom to a factitious devil was effectually
broken up, becomes conspicuous. Lapsed time reveals probability that the
barbarisms of that day were availed of as instruments for procuring the
freedom which now permits instructive, helpful, and gladdening intercourse
between millions of devout and truth-seeking mortals and bright,
beneficent spirits. What though the agitation of Christendom brings its
latent iniquities and impurities to the surface? What though the
counterparts of publicans, sinners, and harlots float numerously into
view? Ascent of dross and scum to the surface is usually the first product
in processes of clarification. Inexperienced observers are very liable to
regard the unsightly stuff as a sample of all that underlies it. Others,
who better comprehend the cause and object of bringing impurities into
view, observe such first results complacently, knowing that subsequent
effects will be most beneficent--will present purified, and therefore
more precious views of the divine methods of bringing men to
righteousness, and will furnish more efficient helps to man's upward
progression than have been generally applicable heretofore.
Great reformatory truths have seldom been first offered to or received by
the worldly-wise and prudent. Not rulers and Pharisees, but common people,
fishermen, humble women, publicans, sinners, and harlots were numerous
among the first followers of Jesus; and these were the ones who heard him
gladly. Like causes which made it thus of old, operate to-day, and the
supplemental revelations and revealers of our time meet with like
reception as did those centuries ago. It is well. Wide popularity and
affectionate fondling might sap an infant _ism_ of its best health-giving
and reformatory powers. Comprehensive wisdom lets it harden and strengthen
through buffetings with the leaders of prevalent theological and
scientific decisions, opinions, and fashions. The boundless intelligence,
which ever acts for good, is patient and long forbearing. It waits for
seeds of reforms to take deep root in the masses, and thence, in time,
pushes onward the force which overturns dynasties, hierarchies, and all
effete institutions, creeds, and customs which are no longer fruitful of
food suited to cultured man's existing needs.
Savage and barbarous nations, everywhere and always, attain to more or
less faith in the presence and help of ancestral spirits; they seek
instruction from the departed. Broad and perpetual belief in a particular
fact is far from weak evidence of its positive existence. Uncultured minds
admit witnessed facts to be positive occurrences, and affect no need to
comprehend how they are produced before giving assent to their verity. But
the cultured are prone to deny the manifestation of any events whose
transpiration is not referable to the permission of some law whose
operations are familiar. They cannot account for a fact, and therefore it
does not exist, or, as Agassiz said, "it is not in nature." The greatest
of human scientists, however, falls far short of acquaintance with all the
forces and permissions enfolded within boundless, unfathomable,
incomprehensible _nature_. It is dogmatism--not science--which says that
facts observed by the senses of man continuously from the birth of his
race down to now, have had no positive existence.
Law reigns; and we know no law which permits return from beyond the
grave; therefore departed spirits cannot revisit their survivors on earth.
Such is often the position and argument of theology, science, and culture.
But our question to them is, Are you sure that you are acquainted with all
the laws, forces, agents, and permissions in the broad storehouses of
nature? Have you explored all realms in the universe, and qualified
yourselves to maintain that you have definitely learned that no forces
anywhere exist by which things anomalous to human science can be
manifested to human senses? Practically you say, Yes. And doing thus, you
foster and fast extend belief in non-immortality.
Are the results of your course to be lamented? Perhaps not. The oozing out
and disappearance of an old belief, and a consequent state of non-belief,
may be arranged for in the methods of Providence, because the latter state
may be the best possible for the induction of belief founded on
demonstration, where one previously lived which rested upon dogmatic
authority.
The skepticism of our generation pertaining to a future life is an
offspring of general and advanced education which asks for proofs as the
only proper foundation for belief. That education has fitted the thinking
masses to demand that teachers shall grapple with and either refute or
adopt sensible facts widely witnessed. Millions upon millions of
Christendom's inhabitants are having sensible demonstration, day by day
and hour by hour, that the spirits of departed mortals make known their
veritable presence among their survivors in mortal forms. They say to the
world's leading minds,--spirit return is a fact in nature: it is made
manifest to our physical senses; we know it to be true. Therefore, ye
sticklers for law and scientific methods, prove to us our mistake if we
are dupes.
During more than five and twenty years we have been putting forth that
call, and you have thus long omitted to give any other response than
dogmatic assertion that the appearances we witness are the productions of
fraud, fancy, delusion, and the like. That is not satisfactory. Our claim
is, that departed spirits of men are working marvels on the earth. That
claim is good till it be shown that the marvelous events witnessed are the
productions of other agents. Each lapsing year strengthens that claim. And
if a check to such materialism as argues that man is devoid of any
property which will consciously survive the death of his body, and if a
positive demonstration of man's survival beyond the tomb, be matters
which the methods of Providence are employed to advance, then the unwonted
numbers of returning spirits recently and now, and the frequency of their
advent, together with the consequent daily and palpable demonstration of a
life beyond the present, come to man most opportunely--come to him both
when vast masses of mortals are prepared so meet and welcome them as
friends and kindred, and also, and significantly, when their presence
impairs the power of bright and leading minds to cause the thinkers of our
age to anticipate annihilation of themselves, their kindred, and their
race, and to suffer loss of the incentives and joys which attend
anticipations of a heaven in advance.
So welcome, efficient, and salutary an advent of invisible actors and
teachers as we witness to-day, seemingly would have been impossible, had
the witchcraft creed of our fathers retained abiding hold upon their
descendants. The methods of Providence seem to have embraced both the
abolition of that creed, and a sufficient lapse of time for the nurture
and culture of a people up to such elevation that a large portion of it
would be fitted and disposed to welcome back departed ones just when their
proved presence would be the great fact at man's command which would
effectually deter advancing and beneficent physical scientists from
inferring and teaching that life's emigrants all take a plunge into the
rayless abyss of nonentity.
A continuous thread of the methods of Providence seems traceable through
many of the darkest and most shocking scenes of human history. Many of
man's greatest advances have been outwrought through anguish and tortures
whose inflictors we reprobate. Is it too much to say that such a thread
ropes in, as instruments of good, Pharaoh, Pontius Pilate, Witchcraft, and
many other notable personages and scenes, which have been made to further
the deliverances of oppressed and suffering mortals? Permission of sins,
sufferings, and wrongs comes from the Infinitely Benevolent.
Fit instrumentality existed at Salem Village for demolishing that special
creed of Christendom which closed and barred the gates that nature hinged
for furnishing a way of egress back from beyond the grave; and wisest and
kindest dwellers above were in mood then to let suffering and anguish
enough come upon mortals there to awaken them out of their deep delusion,
and sway them to set those special gates ajar. They broke the bars; but
dust and rubbish long made a wide opening difficult and arduous. A
century and a half was needed for such liberation of mortals from the
crampings of delusion, and for such exercise of free thought in a land of
free schools, as would educate a nation up to courage which could calmly
ask any mysterious visitant whatsoever, who he was, whence he came, and
what he wanted. In the fullness of time, this could be and was done. When
culture and science were broadly producing conviction that there is no
hereafter for man, one came forth from the land of the departed, knocked
on cottage walls, gained the ear of common people, allured hosts of other
spirits to follow him to human abodes; and the numerous band of returning
ones is now the only host which can effectually stop the hope-crushing
advance of materialism, and furnish the world palpable demonstration of an
hereafter for the souls of men.
In 1692, an unprecedented strain in its application effectually broke up
Christendom's long cherished and indurated delusion that devils unfleshed
and devils incarnate are the only beings who can act and commune across
the line dividing this from the life beyond. That rupture set Christians
free to learn that duty called them to "try the spirits." In time a
generation came who met that duty. Spirits of God--good spirits--as well
as others visit human abodes, and their presence itself is proof positive
of man's survival beyond the grave. Their widely conceded advent seems
divinely opportune, for it occurs when their presence tends forcefully to
check, and promises to stop the prevalent strong tendency of science and
culture to divine that man's doom is drear annihilation. The beneficent
intensity of a special strain upon a specific delusion, nine score years
ago, is due to the strength of faith, character, and action, and to the
unwonted extent and excellency of medianimic instrumentality then existing
at Salem Village, whose conspicuous action and use there made that spot
lastingly memorable; and we deem it just to regard it as a point from
which influences emanated whose fruits to-day are eminent blessings to the
Christian world. The methods of Providence often educe choicest good from
most direful evils.