The case against spiritualism

Canon Barnes, in his excellent pamphlet, “Spiritualism and the Christian Faith,” warns the clergy against a line of opposing argument which would commit them to an acceptance of the mediæval system of demonology. We can confirm the testimony of Dr. Barnes that it is not uncommon to hear in Christian pulpits an admission that the medium can receive communications from another world, and to find this admission coupled with the suggestion that these communications are sent by evil spirits. We entirely agree with Dr. Barnes that the worst way of attacking Spiritualism is to admit its fundamental claim that communication with “spirits” can be set up, and then to assert that the “spirits” with whom intercourse is established are evil. “Such teaching attempts to combat Spiritualism by a revived belief in demonology.” The “danger from the other side” is of a different and more subtle nature. “No one at the present day,” writes Mr. Arthur E. Waite, “would desire to submit that a Spiritualist who receives at a séance that which, so far as his knowledge extends, is satisfactory evidence that he is holding some kind of communication with, let us suppose, a departed relative, is in reality being imposed upon by any satanic intelligence according to the conventional view; but it remains that he is assuming throughout the good faith of the other side of life, and that it is incapable of utilising particular means of knowledge in an unscrupulous way.” Trustworthy teachers of Spiritualism do not, in their own investigations, “assume the good faith of the other side of life.” The most serious warnings as to possible dangers to the inquirer come from men of high character and responsible position, who accept the tenets of Spiritualism.

I

The Church has taught in every age that man’s soul is engaged in warfare with unseen powers. St. Paul’s words in Ephesians vi. 11, 12, are impressively rendered by Dr. Moffatt: “Put on God’s armour so as to be able to stand against the stratagems of the devil. For we have to struggle not with blood and flesh, but with the Angelic Rulers, the Angelic Authorities, the potentates of the dark present, the spirit-forces of evil in the heavenly sphere.”

There is no stranger, more disputed, passage in Dante’s “Purgatorio” than that in which the poet represents the evil serpent seeking to gain access to the penitents on the lower slopes of the Mount. Sinless they are, but they have not reached the terraces of suffering; they are waiting, pale and humble, for permission to move upward at daybreak, and they sing the compline hymn.

Guardian angels come at once to the defence of those whose rest in the flowery dell is disturbed by thoughts of the adversary. These angels, as Maria Rossetti says, are “green-winged and robed for hope, golden-haired and radiant-visaged for glory, with fiery swords against the lurking serpent, with blunted swords towards the reposing elect, falcons to watch, falcons to fly, moved swifter than seen to move.”

Those penitents of Dante’s “Dell of Princes” would have echoed the words with which John Bunyan closed the first part of the “Pilgrim’s Progress”: “I saw that there was a way to hell even from the gates of heaven, as well as from the city of destruction.” Would they not, as the dawn-light guided them upward to St. Peter’s gate, have warned Christian souls on earth against any tampering with “spirit-forces of evil”?

II

Mental and moral wreckage may be the fate of those who surrender the will in a vain attempt to lift the curtain of unseen realms. It was an ancient belief that evil spirits could not obtain a footing in any house unless the inmate gave them a deliberate invitation to enter. “Reverend father,” says Magdalen in “The Abbot,” “hast thou never heard that there are spirits powerful to rend the walls of a castle asunder when once admitted, which yet cannot enter the house unless they are invited, nay, dragged, over the threshold?” We remember how Coleridge uses the same superstition in the mysterious fragment, “Christabel”:

“It is prudent,” says Camille Flammarion, “not to give oneself exclusively to occult subjects, for one might soon lose the independence of mind necessary to form an impartial judgment.”

III

Impressive warnings as to possible dangers from the other side have come from leading spiritualists who have not separated themselves from the Christian faith. It will not be the fault of Sir William Barrett if foolish and credulous séance-haunters get into deep waters. In the latest edition of his standard book he reprints, with slight modification, an often cited passage which he wrote more than ten years ago.

“Certainly,” he says, “the Apostle Paul, in the Epistle to the Ephesians, points to a race of spiritual creatures, not made of flesh and blood, inhabiting the air around us, and able injuriously to affect mankind. Good as well as mischievous agencies doubtless exist in the unseen; this, of course, is equally true if the phenomena are due to those who have once lived on the earth. ‘There are as great fools in the spirit world as there ever were in this,’ as Henry More said over 200 years ago. In any case, granting the existence of a spiritual world, it is necessary to be on our guard against the invasion of our will by a lower order of intelligence and morality.”

It is the danger to the will, fully recognised and acknowledged, which leads Sir Oliver Lodge and others to press on students of Spiritualism the need for a primary absorption in worldly affairs. Camille Flammarion, the chief French authority, urges the same view. “There are foods and drinks,” he says, “which it is most wholesome to take only in small quantities.” After a lifetime devoted to the study of mediumship, this brilliant Frenchman thought that three principles only were established:

(1) The soul exists as a real entity independent of the body.

(2) It is endowed with faculties still unknown to science.

(3) It is able to act at a distance without the intervention of the senses.

IV

Passing, then, from the first part of our subject, we may summarise as follows:—

(1) The past of Spiritualism is deeply tainted with fraud, and the present is “clouded with a doubt.” There may have been unconscious cheating, but there has been much deliberate roguery.

(2) Even where fraud seems to be eliminated, it is probable that the unexplained phenomena of mediumship will become clear as a wider knowledge is gained of man’s physical and mental powers. “I hold,” says Dr. Barnes, “that all the well-attested evidence, on which the theory of spirit-communication is based, will ultimately be explained by a fuller knowledge of the interchange of consciousness between living persons.”

(3) We reject the crude theory that mediumistic phenomena are caused by diabolic intervention.

(4) We believe that mental and moral ruin may result from “borderland” studies, because in these the personality is peculiarly liable to the loss of will-power and self-control. “We shall do well to keep the doors of the soul shut until we can open them to God.”