The case against spiritualism

Modern Spiritualism has its roots in Necromancy, a practice hated in all ages by sober and reverent minds. It was only the worst type of sorcerer, according to Mr. Waite, who attempted to communicate with the spirits of departed men and women. Mediæval magic had a by-path leading towards the abyss, “an abhorrent and detested branch, belonging exclusively to the domain of black magic.” The alchemist was bidden by his rules to pray as well as work. The astrologer was taught that in the last resort there is a law of grace by which the stars are governed, that “Christ rules all things, even the stars.” Though poisoning alchemists, like Alasco, in “Kenilworth,” or star-gazers, like Galeotti, in “Quentin Durward,” deceived Courts and peoples with a pretence of superior knowledge, there was nothing actually odious to the human mind in their professed and ostensible business. Necromancy, as Sir William Barrett points out, incurred the reprobation of Hebrew prophets, the statesmen and men of science of their day. From Moses to Isaiah, says this writer, we find them united in warning the people against any attempts to peer into and forecast the future, or to meddle with psychical phenomena for this or any lower purpose. “These practices,” he says, “were condemned … irrespective of any question as to whether the phenomena were genuine or merely the product of trickery and superstition. They were prohibited … mainly because they tended to obscure the Divine idea, to weaken the supreme faith in, and reverent worship of, the One Omnipotent Being, whom the nation was set apart to proclaim.” Sir W. F. Barrett quotes with approval the words of Sir George Adam Smith in his “Isaiah”: “Augury and divination wearied a people’s intellect, stunted their enterprise, distorted their conscience. Isaiah saw this, and warned the people: ‘Thy spells and enchantments with which thou hast wearied thyself have led thee astray.’ And in later years Juvenal’s strong conscience expressed the same sense of the wearisomeness and waste of time of these practices.”

It is fair to add that Sir William Barrett is convinced that the perils which beset the ancient world in the pursuit of psychical knowledge do not apply to scientific investigation to-day. Enough for our purpose that he lays emphasis on the warnings of Holy Scripture against intrusion into unhallowed realms.

How shall we explain the deep repugnance of the human mind, at its best and sanest, against any attempt to summon back the souls of the departed?

I

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, in “The New Revelation,” admits that the opponents of Spiritualism are guided in part by that strange instinct which warns men and women to keep off forbidden ground. The man who would violate a grave is naturally regarded with loathing. Dickens, in “A Tale of Two Cities,” has drawn such a person in Tellson’s outside porter, Jerry Cruncher. Jerry’s good wife looks with horror on the night work of the body-snatcher, and Mr. Lorry says sternly to his employee: “You have had an unlawful occupation of an infamous description.” With even deeper aversion does the unsophisticated mind turn from those who seek to rend the veil which hangs between this world and the next.

II

If the stern voice from Sinai says “Thus far and no farther,” a tenderer reproach, breathed from earliest ages, warns presumptuous intruders who would disturb the dead. Here, again, we venture to quote the words of Mr. Waite: “There was a very strong and prevailing impression that the dead were at rest, and that the attempt to disturb that rest was a monstrous profanation.” Tennyson’s lines express the feeling of bereaved hearts, even where there was no hope of survival, in lands where Christianity was unknown:

Many sayings of Scripture confirm the Christian’s assurance that the faithful dead, having passed the waves of this troublesome world, are at rest in their desired haven. Newman’s words on the calm of Ascensiontide belong in part not only to the exalted Saviour, but to each of His brethren now absent from the body: “He is in the very abyss of peace, where there is no voice of tumult or distress, but a deep stillness—stillness, that greatest and most awful of all goods which we can fancy—that most perfect of joys, the utter, profound, ineffable tranquillity of the Divine essence. He has entered into his rest.”

Jesus said: “Our friend Lazarus sleepeth; I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” St. Paul wrote: “I would not have you ignorant, brethren, concerning them that are asleep.” The Church does not interpret these and other passages as teaching that the dead are wrapped in profound unconsciousness, or that they are wholly unconcerned with dear ones left on earth. New activities may claim their interest, while old memories remain alive.

But the New Testament use of the word “sleep” ought at least to warn us against meddling with their sacred rest.

III

Spiritualist teachers are not without a sense of the impropriety of such attempts, when pressed on grounds of curiosity alone. Sir William Barrett advises that those who have attained the assurance of survival by means of the séance should not pursue the matter further, but rather learn more of the spiritual world and spiritual communion from the Christian mystics of all countries. He recommends especially a study of the writings of Swedenborg. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, unlike Sir W. F. Barrett, regards Spiritualism as a religion, but he advises his readers to get away from the phenomenal side, and learn the “lofty teaching” from such books as those of Stainton Moses. The cult of the séance, he says, may be very much overdone. “When once you have convinced yourself of the truth of the phenomena, the physical séance has done its work, and the man or woman who spends his or her life in running from séance to séance is in danger of becoming a sensation-hunter.” In all such writing there is a note of uneasiness. The séance is not regarded as a “means of grace” for the believer in Spiritualism, therefore the outsider should avoid these dark and perilous ways. “Not for nothing,” says the Rev. Cyril E. Hudson, “has the Church throughout her history discouraged the practice of necromancy, the morbid concern with the dead which must inevitably interfere, and does in fact interfere, with the proper discharge of our duties in that plane of existence in which God has placed us.”[2]