PART III - ISIS UNVEILED -- PSYCHIC PHENOMENA in
Apr 12, 2004 12:47 PM
by Dallas TenBroeck
PART III - ISIS UNVEILED -- PSYCHIC PHENOMENA in
In cases of the most profound cataleptic clairvoyance, such as obtained
by Du Potet, and described very graphically by the late Prof. William
Gregory, in his Letters on Animal Magnetism, the spirit is so far
disengaged from the body that it would be impossible for it to reenter
it without an effort of the mesmerizer's will. The subject is
practically dead, and, if left to itself, the spirit would escape
forever. Although independent of the torpid physical casing, the
half-freed spirit is still tied to it by a magnetic cord, which is
described by clairvoyants as appearing dark and smoky by contrast with
the ineffable brightness of the astral atmosphere through which they
look. Plutarch, relating the story of Thespesius, who fell from a great
height, and lay three days apparently dead, gives us the experience of
the latter during his state of partial decease. "Thespesius," says he,
"then observed that he was different from the dead by whom he was
surrounded. . . . They were transparent and environed by a radiance, but
he seemed to trail after him a dark radiation or line of shadow." His
whole description, minute and circumstantial in its details, appears to
be corroborated by the clairvoyants of every period, and, so far as this
class of testimony can be taken, is important. The kabalists, as we find
them interpreted by Eliphas Levi, in his Science des Esprits, say that,
"When a man falls into the last sleep, he is plunged at first into a
sort of dream, before gaining consciousness in the other side of life.
He sees, then, either in a beautiful vision, or in a terrible nightmare,
the paradise or hell, in which he believed during his mortal existence.
This is why it often happens, that the affrighted soul breaks violently
back into the terrestrial life it has just left, and why some who were
really dead, i.e., who, if left alone and quiet, would have peaceably
passed away forever in a state of unconscious lethargy, when entombed
too soon, reawake to life in the grave."
In this connection, the reader may perhaps recall the well-known case of
the old man who had left some generous gifts in his will to his orphaned
nieces; which document, just before his death, he had confided to his
rich son, with injunctions to carry out his wishes. But, he had not been
dead more than a few hours before the son, finding himself alone with
the corpse, tore the will and burned it. The sight of this impious deed
apparently recalled the hovering spirit, and the old man, rising from
his couch of death, uttered a fierce malediction upon the
horror-stricken wretch, and then fell back again, and yielded up his
spirit this time forever. Dion Boucicault makes use of an incident of
this kind in his pow-
485 MAKING STATUES WALK AND TALK.
erful drama Louis XI.; and Charles Kean created a profound impression in
the character of the French monarch, when the dead man revives for an
instant and clutches the crown as the heir-apparent approaches it.
Levi says that resuscitation is not impossible while the vital organism
remains undestroyed, and the astral spirit is yet within reach.
"Nature," he says, "accomplishes nothing by sudden jerks, and eternal
death is always preceded by a state which partakes somewhat of the
nature of lethargy. It is a torpor which a great shock or the magnetism
of a powerful will can overcome." He accounts in this manner for the
resuscitation of the dead man thrown upon the bones of Elisha. He
explains it by saying that the soul was hovering at that moment near the
body; the burial party, according to tradition, were attacked by
robbers; and their fright communicating itself sympathetically to it,
the soul was seized with horror at the idea of its remains being
desecrated, and "reentered violently into its body to raise and save
it." Those who believe in the survival of the soul can see in this
incident nothing of a supernatural character it is only a perfect
manifestation of natural law. To narrate to the materialist such a case,
however well attested, would be but an idle talk; the theologian, always
looking beyond nature for a special providence, regards it as a prodigy.
Eliphas Levi says: "They attributed the resuscitation to the contact
with the bones of Elisha; and worship of relics dates logically from his
epoch."
Balfour Stewart is right scientists "know nothing, or next to nothing,
of the ultimate structure and properties of matter, whether organic or
inorganic."
We are now on such firm ground, that we will take another step in
advance. The same knowledge and control of the occult forces, including
the vital force which enabled the fakir temporarily to leave and then
reenter his body, and Jesus, Apollonius, and Elisha to recall their
several subjects to life, made it possible for the ancient hierophants
to animate statues, and cause them to act and speak like living
creatures. It is the same knowledge and power which made it possible for
Paracelsus to create his homunculi; for Aaron to change his rod into a
serpent and a budding branch; Moses to cover Egypt with frogs and other
pests; and the Egyptian theurgist of our day to vivify his pigmy
Mandragora, which has physical life but no soul. It was no more
wonderful that upon presenting the necessary conditions Moses should
call into life large reptiles and insects, than that, under like
favoring conditions, the physical scientist should call into life the
small ones which he names bacteria.
And now, in connection with ancient miracle-doers and prophets, let us
bring forward the claims of the modern mediums. Nearly every form of
phenomena recorded in the sacred and profane histories of the world
486 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
we find them claiming to reproduce in our days. Selecting, among the
variety of seeming wonders, levitation of ponderable inanimate objects
as well as of human bodies, we will give our attention to the conditions
under which the phenomenon is manifested. History records the names of
Pagan theurgists, Christian saints, Hindu fakirs, and spiritual mediums
who have been thus levitated, and who remained suspended in the air,
sometimes for a considerable time. The phenomenon has not been confined
to one country or epoch, but almost invariably the subjects have been
religious ecstatics, adepts in magic, or, as now, spiritual mediums.
We assume the fact to be so well established as to require no labored
effort on our part at this time to furnish proof that unconscious
manifestations of spirit-power, as well as conscious feats of high
magic, have happened in all countries, in all ages, and with hierophants
as well as through irresponsible mediums. When the present perfected
European civilization was yet in an inchoate state, occult philosophy,
already hoary with age, speculated upon the attributes of man by analogy
with those of his Creator. Individuals later, whose names will remain
forever immortal, inscribed on the portal of the spiritual history of
man, have afforded in their persons examples of how far could be
developed the god-like powers of the microcosmos. Describing the
Doctrines and Principal Teachers of the Alexandrian School, Professor A.
Wilder says: "Plotinus taught that there was in the soul a returning
impulse, love, which attracted it inward toward its origin and centre,
the eternal good. While the person who does not understand how the soul
contains the beautiful within itself will seek by laborious effort to
realize beauty without, the wise man recognizes it within himself,
develops the idea by withdrawal into himself, concentrating his
attention, and so floating upward toward the divine fountain, the stream
of which flows within him. The infinite is not known through the reason
. . . but by a faculty superior to reason, by entering upon a state in
which the individual, so to speak, ceases to be his finite self, in
which state divine essence is communicated to him. This is ECSTASY."
Of Apollonius, who asserted that he could see "the present and the
future in a clear mirror," on account of his abstemious mode of life,
the professor very beautifully observes: "This is what may be termed
spiritual photography. The soul is the camera in which facts and events,
future, past, and present, are alike fixed; and the mind becomes
conscious of them. Beyond our every-day world of limits, all is as one
day or state, the past and future comprised in the present." *
Were these God-like men "mediums," as the orthodox spiritualists
* A. Wilder: "Neo-platonism and Alchemy."
487 THE HEAVENLY NIMBUS.
will have it? By no means, if by the term we understand those
"sick-sensitives" who are born with a peculiar organization, and who in
proportion as their powers are developed become more and more subject to
the irresistible influence of miscellaneous spirits, purely human,
elementary, or elemental. Unquestionably so, if we consider every
individual a medium in whose magnetic atmosphere the denizens of higher
invisible spheres can move, and act, and live. In such a sense every
person is a medium. Mediumship may be either 1st, self-developed; 2d, by
extraneous influences; or 3d, may remain latent throughout life. The
reader must bear in mind the definition of the term, for, unless this is
clearly understood, confusion will be inevitable. Mediumship of this
kind may be either active or passive, repellent or receptive, positive
or negative. Mediumship is measured by the quality of the aura with
which the individual is surrounded. This may be dense, cloudy, noisome,
mephitic, nauseating to the pure spirit, and attract only those foul
beings who delight in it, as the eel does in turbid waters, or, it may
be pure, crystalline, limpid, opalescent as the morning dew. All depends
upon the moral character of the medium.
About such men as Apollonius, Iamblichus, Plotinus, and Porphyry, there
gathered this heavenly nimbus. It was evolved by the power of their own
souls in close unison with their spirits; by the superhuman morality and
sanctity of their lives, and aided by frequent interior ecstatic
contemplation. Such holy men pure spiritual influences could approach.
Radiating around an atmosphere of divine beneficence, they caused evil
spirits to flee before them. Not only is it not possible for such to
exist in their aura, but they cannot even remain in that of obsessed
persons, if the thaumaturgist exercises his will, or even approaches
them. This is MEDIATORSHIP, not mediumship. Such persons are temples in
which dwells the spirit of the living God; but if the temple is defiled
by the admission of an evil passion, thought or desire, the mediator
falls into the sphere of sorcery. The door is opened; the pure spirits
retire and the evil ones rush in. This is still mediatorship, evil as it
is; the sorcerer, like the pure magician, forms his own aura and
subjects to his will congenial inferior spirits.
But mediumship, as now understood and manifested, is a different thing.
Circumstances, independent of his own volition, may, either at birth or
subsequently, modify a person's aura, so that strange manifestations,
physical or mental, diabolical or angelic, may take place. Such
mediumship, as well as the above-mentioned mediatorship, has existed on
earth since the first appearance here of living man. The former is the
yielding of weak, mortal flesh to the control and suggestions of spirits
and intelligences other than one's own immortal demon. It is literally
488 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
obsession and possession; and mediums who pride themselves on being the
faithful slaves of their "guides," and who repudiate with indignation
the idea of "controlling" the manifestations, "could not very well deny
the fact without inconsistency. This mediumship is typified in the story
of Eve succumbing to the reasonings of the serpent; of Pandora peeping
in the forbidden casket and letting loose on the world, sorrow and evil,
and by Mary Magdalene, who from having been obsessed by 'seven devils'
was finally redeemed by the triumphant struggle of her immortal spirit,
touched by the presence of a holy mediator, against the dweller." This
mediumship, whether beneficent or maleficent, is always passive. Happy
are the pure in heart, who repel unconsciously, by that very cleanness
of their inner nature, the dark spirits of evil. For verily they have no
other weapons of defense but that inborn goodness and purity. Mediumism,
as practiced in our days, is a more undesirable gift than the robe of
Nessus.
"The tree is known by its fruits." Side by side with passive mediums in
the progress of the world's history, appear active mediators. We
designate them by this name for lack of a better one. The ancient
witches and wizards, and those who had a "familiar spirit," generally
made of their gifts a trade; and the Obeah woman of En-Dor, so well
defined by Henry More, though she may have killed her calf for Saul,
accepted hire from other visitors. In India, the jugglers, who by the
way are less so than many a modern medium, and the Essaoua or sorcerers
and serpent-charmers of Asia and Africa, all exercise their gifts for
money. Not so with the mediators, or hierophants. Buddha was a mendicant
and refused his father's throne. The "Son of Man had not where to lay
his head"; the chosen apostles provided "neither gold, nor silver, nor
brass in their purses."
Apollonius gave one half of his fortune to his relatives, the other half
to the poor; Iamblichus and Plotinus were renowned for charity and
self-denial; the fakirs, or holy mendicants, of India are fairly
described by Jacolliot; the Pythagorean Essenes and Therapeutζ believed
their hands defiled by the contact of money. When the apostles were
offered money to impart their spiritual powers, Peter, notwithstanding
that the Bible shows him a coward and thrice a renegade, still
indignantly spurned the offer, saying: "Thy money perish with thee,
because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with
money." These men were mediators, guided merely by their own personal
spirit, or divine soul, and availing themselves of the help of spirits
but so far as these remain in the right path.
Far from us be the thought of casting an unjust slur on physical
mediums. Harassed by various intelligences, reduced by the overpower-
489 THE MYSTIC PASSWORD OF PROCLUS.
ing influence which their weak and nervous natures are unable to shake
off to a morbid state, which at last becomes chronic, they are impeded
by these "influences" from undertaking other occupation. They become
mentally and physically unfit for any other. Who can judge them harshly
when, driven to the last extremity, they are constrained to accept
mediumship as a business? And heaven knows, as recent events have too
well proved, whether the calling is one to be envied by any one! It is
not mediums, real, true, and genuine mediums that we would ever blame,
but their patrons, the spiritualists.
Plotinus, when asked to attend public worship of the gods, is said to
have proudly answered: "It is for them (the spirits) to come to me."
Iamblichus asserted and proved in his own case, that our soul can attain
communion with the highest intelligences, with "natures loftier than
itself," and carefully drove away from his theurgical ceremonies * every
inferior spirit, or bad daemon, which he taught his disciples to
recognize. Proclus, who "elaborated the entire theosophy and theurgy of
his predecessors into a complete system," according to Professor
Wilder, "believed with Iamblichus in the attaining of a divine power,
which, overcoming the mundane life, rendered the individual an organ of
the Deity." He even taught that there was a "mystic password that would
carry a person from one order of spiritual beings to another, higher and
higher, till he arrived at the absolute divine." Apollonius spurned the
sorcerers and "common soothsayers," and declared that it was his
"peculiar abstemious mode of life" which "produced such an acuteness of
the senses and created other faculties, so that the greatest and most
remarkable things can take place." Jesus declared man the lord of the
Sabbath, and at his command the terrestrial and elementary spirits fled
from their temporary abodes; a power which was shared by Apollonius and
many of the Brotherhood of the Essenes of Judea and Mount Carmel.
It is undeniable that there must have been some good reasons why the
ancients persecuted unregulated mediums. Otherwise why, at the time of
Moses and David and Samuel, should they have encouraged prophecy and
divination, astrology and soothsaying, and maintained schools and
colleges in which these natural gifts were strengthened and developed,
while witches and those who divined by the spirit of Ob were put to
death? Even at the time of Christ, the poor oppressed mediums were
driven to the tombs and waste places without the city walls. Why this
apparent gross injustice? Why should banishment, persecution, and death
be the portion of the physical mediums of those days, and whole
* Iamblichus was the founder of the Neo-platonic theurgy.
See the "Sketch of the Eclectic Philosophy of the Alexandrian School."
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490 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
communities of thaumaturgists like the Essenes be not merely
tolerated but revered? It is because the ancients, unlike ourselves,
could "try" the spirits and discern the difference between the good and
the evil ones, the human and the elemental. They also knew that
unregulated spirit intercourse brought ruin upon the individual and
disaster to the community.
This view of mediumship may be novel and perhaps repugnant to many
modern spiritualists; but still it is the view taught in the ancient
philosophy, and supported by the experience of mankind from time
immemorial.
It is erroneous to speak of a medium having powers developed. A passive
medium has no power. He has a certain moral and physical condition which
induces emanations, or an aura, in which his controlling intelligences
can live, and by which they manifest themselves. He is only the vehicle
through which they display their power. This aura varies day by day,
and, as would appear from Mr. Crookes' experiments, even hour by hour.
It is an external effect resulting from interior causes. The medium's
moral state determines the kind of spirits that come; and the spirits
that come reciprocally influence the medium, intellectually, physically,
and morally. The perfection of his mediumship is in ratio to his
passivity, and the danger he incurs is in equal degree. When he is fully
"developed" perfectly passive his own astral spirit may be benumbed,
and even crowded out of his body, which is then occupied by an
elemental, or, what is worse, by a human fiend of the eighth sphere, who
proceeds to use it as his own. But too often the cause of the most
celebrated crime is to be sought in such possessions.
Physical mediumship depending upon passivity, its antidote suggests
itself naturally; let the medium cease being passive. Spirits never
control persons of positive character who are determined to resist all
extraneous influences. The weak and feeble-minded whom they can make
their victims they drive into vice. If these miracle-making elementals
and disembodied devils called elementary were indeed the guardian angels
that they have passed for, these last thirty years, why have they not
given their faithful mediums at least good health and domestic
happiness? Why do they desert them at the most critical moments of trial
when under accusations of fraud? It is notorious that the best physical
mediums are either sickly or, sometimes, what is still worse, inclined
to some abnormal vice or other. Why do not these healing "guides," who
make their mediums play the therapeutists and thaumaturgists to others,
give them the boon of robust physical vigor? The ancient thaumaturgist
and apostle, generally, if not invariably, enjoyed good health; their
magnetism never conveyed to the sick patient any physical or moral
taint; and they never were
491 KING PHARAOH'S MAGICIANS.
accused of VAMPIRISM, which a spiritual paper very justly charges upon
some medium-healers. *
If we apply the above law of mediumship and mediatorship to the subject
of levitation, with which we opened our present discussion, what shall
we find? Here we have a medium and one of the mediator-class levitated
the former at a seance, the latter at prayer, or in ecstatic
contemplation. The medium being passive must be lifted up; the ecstatic
being active must levitate himself. The former is elevated by his
familiar spirits whoever or whatever they may be the latter, by the
power of his own aspiring soul. Can both be indiscriminately termed
mediums?
But nevertheless we may be answered that the same phenomena are
produced in the presence of a modern medium as of an ancient saint.
Undoubtedly; and so it was in the days of Moses; for we believe that the
triumph claimed for him in Exodus over Pharaoh's magicians is simply a
national boast on the part of the "chosen people." That the power which
produced his phenomena produced that of the magicians also, who were
moreover the first tutors of Moses and instructed him in their "wisdom,"
is most probable. But even in those days they seemed to have well
appreciated the difference between phenomena apparently identical. The
tutelar national deity of the Hebrews (who is not the Highest Father)
forbids expressly, in Deuteronomy, his people "to learn to do after
the abominations of other nations. . . . To pass through the fire, or
use divination, or be an observer of times or an enchanter, or a witch,
or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a necromancer."
What difference was there then between all the above-enumerated
phenomena as performed by the "other nations" and when enacted by the
prophets? Evidently, there was some good reason for it; and we find it
in John's First Epistle, iv., which says: "believe not every spirit, but
try the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets
are gone out into the world."
* See "Medium and Daybreak," July 7, 1876, p. 428.
In Volume II., we will distinctly prove that the Old Testament
mentions the worship of more than one god by the Israelites. The
El-Shadi of Abraham and Jacob was not the Jehovah of Moses, or the Lord
God worshipped by them for forty years in the wilderness. And the God of
Hosts of Amos is not, if we are to believe his own words, the Mosaic
God, the Sinaitic deity, for this is what we read: "I hate, I despise
your feast-days . . . your meat-offerings, I will not accept them. . . .
Have ye offered unto me sacrifices and offerings in the wilderness forty
years, O house of Israel? . . . No, but ye have borne the tabernacle of
your Moloch and Chiun (Saturn), your images, the star of your god, which
ye made to yourselves. . . . Therefore, will I cause you to go into
captivity . . . saith the Lord, whose name is The God of hosts" (Amos v.
21-27).
Chapter xviii.
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492 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
The only standard within the reach of spiritualists and present-day
mediums by which they can try the spirits, is to judge 1, by their
actions and speech; 2, by their readiness to manifest themselves; and 3,
whether the object in view is worthy of the apparition of a
"disembodied" spirit, or can excuse any one for disturbing the dead.
Saul was on the eve of destruction, himself and his sons, yet Samuel
inquired of him: "Why hast thou disquieted me, to bring me up?" * But
the "intelligences" that visit the circle-rooms, come at the beck of
every trifler who would while away a tedious hour.
In the number of the London Spiritualist for July 14th, we find a long
article, in which the author seeks to prove that "the marvelous wonders
of the present day, which belong to so-called modern spiritualism, are
identical in character with the experiences of the patriarchs and
apostles of old."
We are forced to contradict, point-blank, such an assertion. They are
identical only so far that the same forces and occult powers of nature
produce them. But though these powers and forces may be, and most
assuredly are, all directed by unseen intelligences, the latter differ
more in essence, character, and purposes than mankind itself, composed,
as it now stands, of white, black, brown, red, and yellow men, and
numbering saints and criminals, geniuses and idiots. The writer may
avail himself of the services of a tame orang-outang or a South Sea
islander; but the fact alone that he has a servant makes neither the
latter nor himself identical with Aristotle and Alexander. The writer
compares Ezekiel "lifted up" and taken into the "east gate of the Lord's
house," with the levitations of certain mediums, and the three Hebrew
youths in the "burning fiery furnace," with other fire-proof mediums;
the John King "spirit-light" is assimilated with the "burning lamp" of
Abraham; and finally, after many such comparisons, the case of the
Davenport Brothers, released from the jail of Oswego, is confronted with
that of Peter delivered from prison by the "angel of the Lord"!
Now, except the story of Saul and Samuel, there is not a case instanced
in the Bible of the "evocation of the dead." As to being lawful, the
assertion is contradicted by every prophet. Moses issues a decree of
death against those who raise the spirits of the dead, the
"necromancers." Nowhere throughout the Old Testament, nor in Homer, nor
Virgil is communion with the dead termed otherwise than necromancy.
* This word "up" from the spirit of a prophet whose abode ought
certainly to be in heaven and who therefore ought to have said "to bring
me down," is very suggestive in itself to a Christian who locates
paradise and hell at two opposite points.
Ezekiel iii. 12-14.
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493 WHAT SPIRITS LOVE FRESH-SPILT BLOOD.
Philo Judζus makes Saul say, that if he banishes from the land every
diviner and necromancer his name will survive him.
One of the greatest reasons for it was the doctrine of the ancients,
that no soul from the "abode of the blessed" will return to earth,
unless, indeed, upon rare occasions its apparition might be required to
accomplish some great object in view, and so bring benefit upon
humanity. In this latter instance the "soul" has no need to be evoked.
It sent its portentous message either by an evanescent simulacrum of
itself, or through messengers, who could appear in material form, and
personate faithfully the departed. The souls that could so easily be
evoked were deemed neither safe nor useful to commune with. They were
the souls, or larvae rather, from the infernal region of the limbo the
sheol, the region known by the kabalists as the eighth sphere, but far
different from the orthodox Hell or Hades of the ancient mythologists.
Horace describes this evocation and the ceremonial accompanying it, and
Maimonides gives us particulars of the Jewish rite. Every necromantic
ceremony was performed on high places and hills, and blood was used for
the purpose of placating these human ghouls. *
"I cannot prevent the witches from picking up their bones," says the
poet. "See the blood they pour in the ditch to allure the souls that
will utter their oracles!" "Cruor in fossam confusus, ut inde manes
elicirent, animas responsa daturas."
"The souls," says Porphyry, "prefer, to everything else, freshly-spilt
blood, which seems for a short time to restore to them some of the
faculties of life."
As for materializations, they are many and various in the sacred
records. But, were they effected under the same conditions as at modern
seances? Darkness, it appears, was not required in those days of
patriarchs and magic powers. The three angels who appeared to Abraham
drank in the full blaze of the sun, for "he sat in the tent-door in the
heat of the day," says the book of Genesis. The spirits of Elias and
Moses appeared equally in daytime, as it is not probable that Christ and
the Apostles would be climbing a high mountain during the night. Jesus
is represented as having appeared to Mary Magdalene in the garden in the
early morning; to the Apostles, at three distinct times, and generally
by day; once "when the morning was come" (John xxi. 4). Even when the
ass of Balaam saw the "materialized" angel, it was in the full light of
noon.
We are fully prepared to agree with the writer in question, that we find
in the life of Christ and we may add in the Old Testament, too
* William Howitt: "History of the Supernatural," vol. ii., ch. i.
Lib. i., Sat. 8. Porphyry: "Of Sacrifices."
§ Genesis xviii., i.
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494 THE VEIL OF ISIS.
"an uninterrupted record of spiritualistic manifestations," but nothing
mediumistic, of a physical character though, if we except the visit of
Saul to Sedecla, the Obeah woman of En-Dor. This is a distinction of
vital importance.
True, the promise of the Master was clearly stated: "Aye, and greater
works than these shall ye do" works of mediatorship. According to
Joel, the time would come when there would be an outpouring of the
divine spirit: "Your sons and your daughters," says he, "shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions." The
time has come and they do all these things now; Spiritualism has its
seers and martyrs, its prophets and healers. Like Moses, and David, and
Jehoram, there are mediums who have direct writings from genuine
planetary and human spirits; and the best of it brings the mediums no
pecuniary recompense. The greatest friend of the cause in France,
Leymarie, now languishes in a prison-cell, and, as he says with touching
pathos, is "no longer a man, but a number" on the prison register.
There are a few, a very few, orators on the spiritualistic platform who
speak by inspiration, and if they know what is said at all they are in
the condition described by Daniel: "And I retained no strength. Yet
heard I the voice of his words: and when I heard the voice of his words,
then was I in a deep sleep." * And there are mediums, these whom we have
spoken of, for whom the prophecy in Samuel might have been written: "The
spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, thou shalt prophesy with them,
and shalt be turned into another man." But where, in the long line of
Bible-wonders, do we read of flying guitars, and tinkling tambourines,
and jangling bells being offered in pitch-dark rooms as evidences of
immortality?
When Christ was accused of casting out devils by the power of Beelzebub,
he denied it, and sharply retorted by asking, "By whom do your sons or
disciples cast them out?" Again, spiritualists affirm that Jesus was a
medium, that he was controlled by one or many spirits; but when the
charge was made to him direct he said that he was nothing of the kind.
"Say we not well, that thou art a Samaritan, and hast a devil?"
daimonion, an Obeah, or familiar spirit in the Hebrew text. Jesus
answered, "I have not a devil."
The writer from whom we have above quoted, attempts also a parallel
between the aerial flights of Philip and Ezekiel and of Mrs. Guppy and
other modern mediums. He is ignorant or oblivious of the fact that
* Daniel x. 8. I Samuel, x. 6.
Gospel according to John vii. 20.
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