251. The evidence of the manifestations adduced in the foregoing
narrative does not rest upon myself only, since there have been persons
present when they were observed, and they have in my presence been
repeated essentially under various modifications, in many instances,
not specially alluded to.
252. The evidence may be contemplated under various phases: First,
those in which rappings or other noises have been made, which could
not be traced to any mortal agency; secondly, those in which sounds
were so made as to indicate letters forming grammatical, well-spelt
sentences, affording proof that they were under the guidance of some
rational being; thirdly, those in which the nature of the communication
has been such as to prove that the being causing them must, agreeably
to accompanying allegations, be some known acquaintance, friend, or
relative of the inquirer.
253. Again, cases in which movements have been made of ponderable
bodies, either without any human contact, or with such contact as could
not be productive of the resulting motion.
254. Cases in which such movements of bodies have been of a nature to
produce intellectual communications, resembling those obtained as above
mentioned by sounds.
255. Although the apparatus by which these various proofs were
attained, _with the greatest possible precaution and precision_,
modified them as to the manner; essentially all the evidence which I
have obtained, tending to the conclusions above mentioned, has likewise
been substantially obtained by a great number of observers. Many who
never sought any spiritual communication, and have not been induced
to enroll themselves as spiritualists, will nevertheless not only
affirm the existence of the sounds and movements, but also admit their
inscrutability.
256. But we have now, in a matter-of-fact, business-like publication,
by E. W. Capron, a record of the original manifestations at Hydesville
and Rochester, in New York; where, as it is well known, they produced
intense interest, excitement, and controversy; which gave rise to
successive town-meetings, and the appointment of committees by these
meetings for the purpose of ascertaining whether any other cause could
be discovered for the manifestations, except the spiritual beings who
assumed them to be their doings. Some of the persons appointed to make
the investigation, were prepossessed with the belief that the phenomena
were due to some juggling contrivance. One alleged that he would
throw himself over the Genesee Falls, or prove the knockings due to
humbuggery. Another alleged that the media, aware of his prepossession,
would not for one hundred dollars have him on the committee; yet both
these persons being put on the committee, the latter came out in favour
of the inscrutability of the noise; while the former neither accounted
for it, “_nor threw himself over the falls_,” as Mr. Capron pointedly
alleges.
257. Subsequently, in the city of New York, the mystery was subjected
to the ordeal of a public investigation by a number of distinguished
citizens, whose reports confirmed those of the Rochester committees.
Fennimore Cooper was among those appointed on the New York committee,
and was the means himself of obtaining an unequivocal test. His
sister’s death, which had resulted from being thrown from a horse, was
correctly stated by her spirit in every particular, in reply to mental
inquiries by him made.
258. Again at Stratford, Connecticut, at a house of a minister of the
gospel, manifestations were made fully as striking as those which had
occurred at Hydesville and Rochester, so as to establish in the mind of
this estimable clergyman, and in those of many others acquainted with
the facts, a belief in spiritual agency. (1667)
_Corroborative evidence by the Rev. Allen Putnam, of Roxbury, Mass._
259. As affording support to the testimony which I have given, I
deem it expedient to cite that of the Rev. Allen Putnam, formerly a
Unitarian clergyman and preacher in Augusta, Maine, having been in the
legislature of that State, and for some time editor of the New England
Farmer. Mr. Putnam had the advantage of a theological and collegiate
education at Harvard. I heard an able and erudite lecture from this
worthy spiritualist, at Boston last October.
260. Mr. Putnam entered upon the investigation of the manifestations in
July, 1852, nearly eighteen months before my investigation commenced.
Like me, he began as an unbeliever, and was converted by communications
received from the spirits of his wife and relatives, who had left this
life. In a company ignorant of the fact that he had married twice, his
first wife had made herself known to him, so as to create a conviction
of her identity.
261. In the next place, his ancestors communicated with Mr. Putnam, so
as to satisfy his mind that they were the beings they professed to be.
I do not enter into the detail of the facts which created conviction in
the mind of this respectable observer; my object is to show that other
minds have gone through the process which has influenced mine, in order
that sceptics may not “lay the flattering unction to their souls”
that ’tis my _madness_ speaks in _favour_, not their _prejudices_
that speak _against_, the conclusions in which investigators of sound
understanding have concurred.
262. Mr. Putnam alleges: “Some uncommon movements have occurred in my
presence. I have seen a table moved without any visible power applied
to it.”
263. The following narrative is taken from the pamphlet published by
the author in question. It is quite characteristic of the variety of
character found in the spheres. This juvenile spirit owed his education
entirely to his schooling in the spirit world. It will be perceived
that he died while yet an infant. (Page 34, Paragraph 3.)
264. “Entering a medium’s room one morning, I saw a gentlemanly,
intelligent man, apparently about thirty, sitting at the table and
putting questions. Soon a tiny rap was heard, and the name Natty was
spelled out. ‘Who are you?’ said the man. ‘I am your brother;’ was the
answer. ‘No,’ said the man, ‘I had no such brother.’ ‘You had,’ said
the rapper. ‘No,’ said the man. ‘Yes,’ said the other. ‘Well, let us
see,’ added the man. ‘How old were you, Natty, when you died?’ ‘Five
days,’ was the answer. ‘How long since you died?’ ‘Thirty-five years.’
The gentleman here bit his lip in thought, and said—‘I believe there
was an infant brother who died before I was born, but I thought they
called him Oliver.’ ‘No,’ was the response, ‘they called him Natty,
and I am he.’ ‘Natty,’ said the man, ‘how do you know that I am your
brother?’ ‘By love,’ he answered. ‘By love?’ said the questioner; ‘but
don’t you love others as well as relatives?’ Ans. ‘We like others, and
love relatives!’ ‘What,’ it was then asked—‘what is the difference
between love and like?’ The word LOVE was immediately written in large
letters, two or three inches long, and _like_ was traced under it in
_very small_ letters. ‘Natty,’ continued the man, ‘you are not my
brother, but are some one else, attempting to impose upon me.’ ‘I am
your brother,’ was the earnest rejoinder. ‘Then, will you tell me what
sphere you are in?’ ‘The fourth,’ he said. ‘The fourth, ah? Now I’ve
caught you—for as you died in infancy, you was fitted for the seventh
sphere when you left the earth.’ ‘I have been there;’ was the response.
‘Have been there, and yet are now in the fourth! how is that? are you
moving backward? coming down?’ ‘No, I am an adviser in the fourth.’
‘Adviser! what is that? a sort of superintendent?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Oh! you are
in office, then?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Do you get any pay? We pay well for such
things here.’ ‘Yes, I get pay.’ ‘What pay?’ ‘The pleasure of seeing
those under me progress.’
265. “I then said to the gentleman stranger, ‘Sir, you have found your
_match_, if not your brother. I think I would own the relationship;’
and in continuance I remarked, that this seemed to be a very bright,
cheerful spirit; when there was written—‘I am always laughing.’
266. “My next remark was—‘Natty, I should like to make your
acquaintance.’ ‘Hand out your card;’ was the instant response. Finding
no card in my pocket, I wrote, secretly, on a slip of paper—‘Mr. Allen
Putnam, Eustis St., Roxbury’—turned the paper over, placing the writing
down upon the table, kept my hand over the paper, and asked Natty to
make a copy. Instantly the medium’s hand wrote—Mr. A. P., U. St. Rox.
The writing on my paper had been seen by me alone, and I was looking
for a copy in full, but received only abbreviations, and those of
every word, Eustis being reduced to the letter U. This closed my first
interview with him.
267. “Some weeks afterward, when he was forgotten, the medium’s hand
wrote, ‘Mr. A. P., U. St. Rox.—I have used your card.’ ‘Natty,’ said
I, ‘as you left the earth when very young, I would like to know how
you learned the English language.’ He answered, ‘My mother knew it,
I think;’ and asked, ‘Will you let my mamma come?’ ‘Certainly, with
pleasure.’ And the following was written:
268. “‘My friend, you must not be angry with my darling boy. It
ofttimes grieves me to have him, so pure, use such wild phrases. I am
your friend, as a soldier in the cause. ELIZABETH Y-—-.’
269. “Very often this little bright spark comes out with something
unexpected, amusing, or witty; but at all times he manifests a
very marked disposition to be obliging and kind. Once, when his
communication seemed to be closed, I said, ‘You are not going, Natty?’
‘Yes—gone—don’t you see the dust fly?’ ‘Where,’ I asked, ‘do you pick
up such phrases?’ ‘Hear ‘um.’
270. “On another occasion he said, ‘My friend, you must not put on a
long face when you come to talk with supposed ghosts. You must not
believe all they tell you to. You must not go to the end of the world
and jump off, because they tell you to.’
271. “When once I said to him, ‘How do you go to work, Natty, to use a
medium’s hand?’ He said, ‘Why, you see, we just passes a chain of light
around the wrist, and that sets it to shaking. The next operation is
to make it write, of course. Sometimes the words are allowed to pass
through the brains. We now have such a power over this medium, that we
can make her shake awfully.’ ‘Try my wrist, Natty,’ said a lady who
was present. ‘Dear, beloved aunty, I’ve got a peck of love for you, but
I can’t make you trace my purified thoughts on the clean paper.’”
For those who endeavour to get rid of the evidence of respectable
witnesses, such as Mr. Putnam, by representing them as dupes, and the
media as impostors, it may be well to quote the following passage from
the same publication: (Page 44.)
272. “Within the last fourteen months I have seen twenty-two or three
different mediums—all but four of them private ones—taking no pecuniary
compensation; and more than half of them are our own citizens, several
of whom are now present in this assembly. I have spent very many hours
in their presence. Have seen them at their homes—at my own home—and in
the parlours of neighbours and friends. I have met and watched them
in the broadest sunlight and at evening. Every desirable opportunity
has been furnished me for detecting machinery, jugglery, or imposture,
and I have faithfully, but in vain, strove to find something mundane
a sufficient cause for all these wonders. That trick or humbug is
sometimes attempted by pretenders to uncommon susceptibilities, no one
will have a wish to deny. But very many of the mediums, private ones,
are as much above these things as are the very best persons among the
witnesses.
273. “One medium, an active, energetic business man, of more than sixty
years, has submitted himself to be used by me at any time, however
suddenly called upon, whether in his counting-room or in mine,—whether
called in his shirt sleeves from the woodpile, or coalbin, or dressed
up and ready for company; and I have used him and watched him daily
almost, and that through several successive months. Many mediums have
been watched for long periods, and under quite varied circumstances;
and, though the power exerted through any of them is very far from
being uniform, and though the mode of manifestation is in no two alike,
yet I have seen no sign of its being anywhere applied by machinery; or
of its being varied by any preparation or act of the mediums themselves.
274. “They deny, one and all, young and old, educated and ignorant
alike—they all deny, and that, too, in the most private and friendly
circles, where all the thoughts flow out,—they all deny that they
exercise their wills at all in the production of these wonders. And I
cannot rate that fairness very high which, in the face of such a fact,
will persist in saying that all of it is trick, imposture, humbug. More
than one hundred thousand witnesses have looked on, and yet are unable
to prove to any extent the cheats alleged. More than five thousand
mediums in this country unitedly and persistedly declare that they use
no machinery and practice no trick.”
275. This charge is utterly futile when we see persons in affluence
converted by their own mediumship, as in the case of two of my most
esteemed friends.
276. My conversion was effected before I attended any public medium. To
the ladies by whom it was effected my requisitions could only have been
onerous, had not the desire for truth to oblige me been a strong motive
for the pains which they were made to take.
277. It does not seem sufficiently understood by those who object to
Spiritualism, upon the ground of the inconsistency of the opinions
given by spirits, that our next state of existence is one of
progression, and that we go there with all our imperfections, which are
removed more or less slowly.
278. “Many men, many minds,” is an old adage: it is equally true as
respects the inhabitants of the spirit world, excepting that as their
elevation in that world is higher, accordance in opinion is more
prevalent. In the spirits of the fifth sphere, and those above that
sphere, I find little diversity in important facts or doctrines.
279. Allusion is made to this diversity in some communications from
Franklin, to Mr. Putnam, which are as follows:
280. “The mortals of earth expect truth from the spirit land; they
think that it is perfect, and that the angels are omnipotent. Oh, how
far do they wander in the darkness of their own minds! The spirit home
is _progressive_, like unto this: the canting hypocrite passes into the
heavens with the same thoughts; the simple babe too passes into this
new-born life with all its childlike innocence. Each one has to mount
the ladder of progression.”
281. “There are millions in the spirit world that know not of the
existence of this planet, even as the children of this earth know not
of the starry world above. But on beholding angels descend to this
hidden planet, they follow, and in wonderment behold a new world, and
that world inhabited. Then do they find whence they originated.
282. “Allusion has been made to the one-sided support given to
Spiritualism on the part of those who admit many of the most important
facts, yet do not ascribe them to the spirits of the departed. These
opponents were alleged to be of different features; one ascribing
them to Satan, the other disputing their spiritual origination,
because agreeably to their _imperfect_ information, certain traits
were found to be deficient which should exist, were the intellectual
communications due to the spirits of our departed fellow-creatures.
The idea of these spiritual manifestations owing their existence to
Satan has already been noticed, (88,) but from the communications which
will be given in this work must appear still more untenable than they
have, as I trust, been proved to be. As one of the most respectable of
these, who deny the existence of spirits, the distinguished Dr. Bell,
of Somerville, Massachusetts, has been noticed. (110.)
283. “It is conceived that Dr. Bell’s positive evidence in favour of
phenomena which he has seen, gives so much more weight in favour of
the existence of spirits than his arguments on negative grounds, as to
what he happens not to have seen or learned, that I will quote here
his account of the manifestations which he has described, after having
observed them with great circumspection:
284. “Dr. Bell commenced (at a meeting of hospital directors) by
expressing his surprise that at the meeting, last year, of so large
a number of persons whose lives were spent in investigating the
reciprocal influences of mind and body, scarcely a single member had
given a moment’s attention to a topic directly in their path, which,
whether regarded as merely an epidemic mental delusion, or as a new
psychological science, was producing such momentous effects upon the
world. It was now said to number over two millions of believers, had
an extended literature, a talented periodical press in many forms, and
had certainly taken fast hold on many minds of soberness and power. He
was well aware how easily it was turned to ridicule, and that there
were many who would be ready to ask, when they saw hospital directors
seriously discussing the spiritual phenomena, _Quis custodiet ipsos
custodes?_
285. “But if there was any class of men who had duties in this
direction, it was those of our specialty. Our reports contain the
record of many cases of insanity said to be produced by it. It was
important, whether true or false, or mixed, that its precise depth,
length, and nature should be studied out. As is well known, mystery
always loses its terrific character when boldly met and opened to the
light of noonday.
286. “Dr. Bell remarked, that on his return home from our meeting at
Washington, he had a peculiar wish to verify his previous observations
on what are technically known as the physical manifestations of this
new science. He could not pretend that he could doubt his repeated
personal observations, addressed to his sight, hearing, and touch, and
separated, as he believed, from any possibility of error or collusive
fraud. Yet the offer, by Professor Henry, of a large sum to any
person who would make one of _his_ tables move _in_ the Smithsonian
Institution, and the obvious incredulity of many of the ‘brethren,’ had
induced the desire again to see some full and unequivocal experiment in
_table-moving_.
287. “An opportunity was not long wanting. On the occasion of the
visit of a well-known gentleman, long connected with the insane, and
who never had seen any of these phenomena at the asylum, Dr. Bell
invited him to go to a family where a medium of considerable power
was visiting. The family was one of the most respectable of the
vicinage, the head of it being a gentleman intrusted with millions of
dollars of other people’s money, as the financial manager of a large
banking institution. He and his wife had for some years been perfectly
convinced of the spiritual character of these manifestations. The
medium was a young lady of eighteen or twenty, of very slight figure,
weighing eighty or ninety pounds, and had discovered herself to be
a _medium_ while on a visit to these distant relatives. A family,
from character and position, more entirely beyond the suspicion of
even winking at any thing like fraud or irregularity, does not exist
in the world. They were so fortunate as to find the medium at home,
and the circle was made of the five persons mentioned. The ordinary
manifestations of raps, beating of musical tunes, and responses to
mental and spoken questions, were very completely presented, as well
as the movements of the table under the mere contact of fingers’ ends.
Finding that things appeared very favourable to a full exhibition
of what he wished to see, as evinced by the very facile movements
of the table under contact, Dr. Bell proposed trying the grand
_experimentum crucis_ of the physical manifestations—the movement
of the table without any human contact, direct or indirect. He was
permitted to arrange things to suit himself, and began by opening
the table more widely, and inserting two movable table-leaves, which
increased the length from about six to perhaps nine or ten feet. This,
he felt, also gave him an opportunity to see and upset all wires and
mechanism concealed, or, at least, to answer positively as to their
non-existence. The table was a solid structure of black walnut, with
six carved legs, the whole of such a weight that when the castors were
all in the right line of motion, he could just start it by the full
grasp of the thumb and fingers of both hands.
288. “The persons stood on the _sides_ of the table, three and two, and
back from its edge about eighteen inches. As Dr. Bell is some six feet
two inches in height, he averred that he had no difficulty in seeing
_between_ the table and the persons of all present. The hands were
raised over it at about the same height, of a foot and a half.
289. “At a request, the table commenced its motion, with moderate
speed, occasionally halting, and then gliding on a foot or two at once.
It seemed as if its motion would have been continuous, if the hands
above it had followed along _pari passu_. On reaching the folding-doors
dividing off the two parlours, and which were open, it rose over an
iron rod on which the door-trucks traversed, and which projected half
or three-quarters of an inch above the level of the carpet. It then
entered the other parlour, and went its whole length until it came near
the pier glass at its end—a centre-table having been pushed aside by
one of the party to allow its free course.
290. “At request, for they during this time spoke as if to actual
beings, the motion was reversed, and it returned until it again reached
the iron rod. Here it stuck. The table hove, creaked, and struggled,
but all in vain; it could not surmount the obstacle. The medium was
then ‘impressed by the spirits’ to write, and seizing a pencil, hastily
wrote that if the fore legs were lifted over the bar, they (_i. e._ the
spirits) thought they could push the others over. This was done, and
the motion kept on. Once or twice Dr. Bell requested all to withdraw
a little farther from the table, ‘to see how far the influence would
extend.’ It was found that whenever a much greater distance, say two
feet, was reached, the movement ceased, and a delay of three or four
minutes occurred before it recommenced, giving the idea that, if broken
off, a certain reaccumulation of force was needful to put it in motion
again. The table reached the upper end of the parlour, from which
it had started, but was left some four feet from the medial line of
the room. Dr. Bell expressed the thanks of the company for the very
complete exhibition with which they had been favoured, but remarked
that the obligation would be enhanced if the ‘spirits’ would move the
table about four feet at right angles, so that the chairs would come
right for their late occupants. This was immediately done, and the
performance was deemed so perfectly full and satisfactory that nothing
more was asked at this session.
291. “Dr. Bell was understood to say that this made some five or six
times in which he had seen the table move without human contact, and
all under circumstances apparently as free from suspicion as this
just related. He also stated that the Rev. Mr. P., a clergyman of
extraordinary sagacious perceptions and mechanical skill, took this
same medium to his own house, without previous thought, where she never
before had been, and where his own table, in the presence of his own
family alone, went through the fullest locomotion without human touch.
Dr. Bell mentioned that in his last experiment, that just narrated, the
entire space moved through was over fifty feet.
292. “Dr. Bell then passed to the topic of responses to mental and
verbal questions, and gave several narratives of long conversations
with what purported to be the spirits of persons dead for twenty-five
to forty years, in which every question he could devise relating to
their domestic history, and to events in it known only to them and
him, had been truly answered. Some of the subjects put mentally—_i.
e._, without speaking or writing—had half a dozen correct replies,
forbidding, of course, completely, on any doctrine of chances, the
contingency of accident or coincidence, as such _mental_ questions,
_per se_, negative the explanation of previous knowledge on the part of
the medium.
293. “A brief abstract of one of these will give a general idea of
their character: Dr. Bell had frequently remarked to his ‘spiritual’
friends, that if any medium could reproduce the essential particulars
of a final interview which had occurred between himself and a deceased
brother in 1826, he should be almost compelled to admit that it came
from his spirit; because he was sure that he (Dr. Bell) never had
communicated it to any living being. Hence, as it never had been known
to but two persons, and was of so peculiar, well-marked a character, as
not to be capable of being confounded by generalities, he should hardly
be able otherwise to explain it. A few weeks afterward what purported
to be the spirit of that brother narrated the essential particulars
of that interview, the place where, down to the well-recollected
fact _that he was adjusting the stirrups of his saddle_, preparatory
to a distant journey, when it was held! Pretty early, however, in
his investigations, Dr. Bell began to find that, however correct his
spiritual conferees were, in most of their responses, the moment a
question was put involving a response the truth of which was unknown
to him, uniform failure occurred. Sometimes, where he believed at the
time that his questions were truly answered, subsequent information had
shown him that he had been mistaken. He had answers which he believed
to be true, when the facts were decidedly otherwise.
294. “Pursuing this train of inquiry, he found the ‘spirits,’ while
averring that they could see him distinctly, ‘face to face,’ never
could read the signature to letters taken from an old file, and
unfolded _without his having seen the writing_. Yet as soon as he had
cast his eye upon the signature, without allowing any one else to
see it, it was promptly and correctly reproduced by the alphabetical
rappings. And again, when he had made a previous arrangement with his
family that they should do certain things every quarter of an hour at
home—he, of course, not knowing what—while he was to ask the ‘spirit’
what was done at the instant, uniform failure occurred. He proved, too,
that the theory of the ‘spiritualists’ to meet such difficulties—viz.,
that evil or trifling spirits interfered at _their_ end of the
telegraph—was not tenable. For the responses just before and after
these gross failures had been eminently and wonderfully accurate, and
the ‘spirits’ not only declared that they saw with perfect clearness
what was going on at his house, but denied that there had been any
interruption or interference.
295. “Dr. Bell also gave examples where test questions, involving
replies _unknown_ to the interrogator, had been designedly intermixed
with those which were known. The result uniformly was, that the known
responses, however curious and far remote, were correctly reproduced;
the unknown were a set of perfectly wild and blundering errors, the
responses often being obviously formed out of the phraseology of the
question, as a _stuck_ schoolboy guesses out a reply!
296. “The result of the inquiries of Dr. Bell and his friends—for
several gentlemen of eminently fitting talents pursued the
investigation with him—was briefly this:—_That what the questioner
knows the spirits know; what the questioner does not know, the spirits
are entirely ignorant of_. In other words, that there are really no
superhuman agencies in the matter at all—no connection with another
state of existence; but that it bears certain strong analogies to some
of the experiences of _clairvoyance_, in that mysterious science of
animal magnetism, as it has been protruding and receding for the last
hundred years. Dr. Bell thought there was some reason to believe that
the matter reproduced may come not only from the questioner, but if in
the mind of any one at the circle, that it might be evolved. He made
some observations upon the evidences of spirit existence, drawn from
the character of the matter communicated by the mediums in a state of
_impression_, when, as it is believed, spirits express themselves
through the human agent. Of course, the quality of such composition is
more or less a question of taste. Much of it is elevated, indicating
high intellectual and moral capacities in the mind to which it owes
its origin. Much more is absurd, puerile, and disgusting, infinitely
below the grade of the human productions of the same persons from
whom it professedly comes. Yet the spiritual revelation has given us
nothing of such extraordinary value or novelty as to stamp it, in the
judgment of unprejudiced minds, as of supermundane production. Dr. Bell
alluded to a treatise which had been put into his hands by an earnest
spiritualist, purporting to be the work of Thomas Paine, the author
of the Age of Reason, &c., which was thought would carry conviction
to anybody, as it purported to be a full explanation of the formation
and changes of this earth, by one who, from his _situs_, must know all
about it. The truth was, that the work was the production of some mind,
celestial or mundane, ignorant of the very first rudiments of chemical
philosophy, in which the most ridiculous blunders were made on every
page in matters which are as demonstrable as mathematics, and where,
of course, the answer cannot be made that the revelation was too high
for common readers. Nor does Dr. Bell believe, from his observations,
that the waters from this fountain ever reach a higher level than their
source. The most elevated specimen of the spiritual literature would
no doubt be found in the communications from Swedenborg and Lord Bacon
in Judge Edmond’s and Dr. Dexter’s first and second volumes. Yet,
whoever reads the very elegant and powerful preliminary treatise of
these gentlemen, which Dr. Bell thought would compare favourably with
any writings of the kind ever published, would not be able to feel that
Swedenborg and Lord Bacon, after their nearly one and more than two
centuries’ residence, respectively, amid the culture and refined senses
of the superior spheres, had more than equalled their unpretending
amanuenses still in the ‘vale of tears.’
297. “Dr. Bell concluded by the expression of his full convictions
that, while the faith in spirits must be given up as being connected
with these facts, it was a topic, whether regarded as a physical
novelty or even as a delusion, cutting deeply into the very religious
natures of our people, which was worth our fullest examination. _There
were great, novel, interesting facts here._ They had not been treated
fairly and respectfully, as they should have been. The effect was,
that the community, knowing that here were _facts_, if human senses
could be trusted at all, went away from those who should have thrown
light upon the mysteries, but who would or could not, to those who gave
some explanation, even if it was one which uprooted all previous forms
of religious faith. He hoped that the members of this association,
who were as much required to examine this topic as any order of men,
except, perhaps, the clergy, would not be afraid of looking it in the
face from any apprehensions of ridicule or of degrading their dignity.”
298. After giving much evidence, showing that physical movements take
place without contact, and that communications were made to him which
could not have ensued without controlling reason, Dr. Bell finds that
in certain instances which have come to his knowledge spirits could
not communicate information nor ideas which did not exist in his
mind or that of some mortals present. Yet it appears that during a
manifestation which my learned friend witnessed, a request to lift the
legs of the table was given which did not occur to any mortal present.
299. I have already given a brief reply to these objections of Dr.
Bell. Under this head I will only add my regret that my letter to
the Episcopal clergy, with a sketch of the information derived from
my spirit friends, had not fallen under Dr. Bell’s notice before his
conclusions were published. It will be seen that the information thus
alluded to is irreconcilable with Dr. Bell’s inferences. I shall,
however, postpone this discussion until facts have been more fully
presented to the reader. (866)