The case against spiritualism

Spiritualism, a recent writer[26] says, is more and more proving itself a rival to Christianity. Its votaries cease, almost invariably, to be Christians in any traditional sense of the word. It grips the mind of “dabblers” with an extraordinary fascination, and “seems to demand a self-surrender as great as that which Christianity itself involves, a surrender of the whole personality.”

We propose to ask in this chapter, “What is the attitude of Spiritualist teachers towards the Christian faith?” An exceptional position, let us remark at the outset, is occupied by two of the leaders, Sir W. F. Barrett and Sir Oliver Lodge. The former regards the evidence afforded at the séance as “a handmaid to faith,” and warns beginners “against making a religion of Spiritualism.”[27]

Sir Oliver Lodge, as we know from his writings, has a sincere reverence for the Person of our Lord. He is convinced that grades of being exist, not only lower in the scale than man, but higher also, grades of every order of magnitude from zero to infinity. Among these lofty beings “is One on whom the right instinct of Christianity has always lavished heartfelt reverence and devotion. Those who think that the day of the Messiah is over are strangely mistaken; it has hardly begun.… Whatever the Churches may do, I believe that the call of Christ himself will be heard and attended to, by a large part of humanity in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth.… My own time down here is getting short; it matters little; but I dare not go till I have borne this testimony to the grace and truth which emanate from that divine Being.”[28]

There is something characteristic in the question asked by the bereaved father at an “automatic” séance reported in “Raymond”:

“O. J. L.: Before you go, Raymond, I want to ask a serious question. Have you been let to see Christ?”

“Father, I shall see him presently. It is not time yet.”

Intercourse with the departed means for Sir Oliver Lodge “nothing less than the possibility some day of a glance or a word of approval from the eternal Christ.”

I

A different world opens upon us as we examine the general literature of Spiritualism. Its “Seven Principles” have been set forth as follows:[29]

1. The Fatherhood of God.
2. The Brotherhood of Man.
3. Continuous Existence.
4. Communion of Spirits and Ministry of Angels.
5. Personal Responsibility.
6. Compensation and Retribution Hereafter for good or ill done on earth.
7. A path of endless progression.

The name of our Lord is not mentioned, yet these “principles” would be words of little meaning but for His life on earth, His death, His resurrection, and His glorious reign. It was He who taught us to say “Our Father.” New ideas were poured by Him into the Roman world. “One is your teacher, and you are all brothers.”[30] “The King will answer them, ‘I tell you truly, in so far as you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even to the least of them, you did it to me.’”[31] The Risen Saviour said on Easter morning, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and yours, to my God and yours.’”[32] Though exalted far above all heavens, “He is not ashamed to call them brothers.”[33] His followers believe in the communion of saints. The ministry of angels is not strange to them, since “angels came and ministered to Him.” His teaching on responsibility, compensation and retribution is the highest yet vouchsafed to mankind. If continuous existence is the master-chord of Spiritualism, it was He who brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, who showed to dying men the path of life. Why, then, is His name omitted from the “Seven Principles” of Spiritualism? The challenge cannot be put aside. The question goes sounding through the ages to every new discipleship, “What think ye of Christ?”

II

Impatience and annoyance seem to be roused in certain Spiritualists when the question is put to them. Mr. J. Arthur Hill, in the concluding pages of his best-known volume,[34] refers to the complaint of “a clerical reviewer of a recent book of mine … that I nowhere stated my belief regarding Christ.”

“It seemed a curious objection,” he goes on, “and it had not occurred to me that anyone would expect Christology in a book mainly describing psychical investigations.” He refers to “technical theological details on which I am incompetent to pronounce,” and adds that “Spiritualists seem for the most part to be uninterested in the subtleties of the Trinitarian doctrine. All venerate the person and teaching of Jesus.”

The writer expresses his own belief that “Jesus may have belonged to some order higher than ours.” “I admit,” he says, “that I have felt this about Emerson.… Consequently, I sympathise with those who, being rightly humble about their own persons, but rating others and human possibilities in general too low, feel the necessity of regarding Jesus as more than man.”

It is strange that a writer of Mr. Hill’s intelligence should forget that we are living in a Christian land, and that Spiritualism professes to bring new certainties about the future life to those whose hope and anchor on futurity has hitherto rested wholly in the Christian faith. He goes as far as he possibly can to meet the inquiries of Christian readers, but evidently thinks it unfair that they should tease him. That is the surprising thing.

Take in contrast the language of James Smetham, when he was studying the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The great difference of such a subject from all others is that all the interests of Time and Eternity are wrapped up in it. The scrutiny of a title-deed of £100,000 a year is nothing to it. How should it be? Is there a Christ? Is He the heir of all things? Was He made flesh? Did He offer the all-perfect sacrifice? Did He supersede the old order of priests? Is He the Mediator of a new and better covenant? What are the terms of that covenant? There are no questions like these. All other interests seem low, trivial, momentary.”

III

Two affirmations meet us on the threshold of the Gospels. One is the assertion of our Lord’s Divinity, which Mr. Gladstone called “the only hope of our poor wayward human race.” “Immanuel, God with us,” has been the conquering cry of Christian ages. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”

The other is the proclamation that a Redeemer had come to Sion. “Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”

What is the attitude of Spiritualism towards these central truths?

IV
THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD

We need say little about the controversy on the Divine Nature of our Lord which has broken out in the ranks of Spiritualism. The difference was proclaimed in a letter to Light[35] by the Rev. F. Fielding-Ould, a London clergyman, who is himself a Spiritualist, and whose writings are recommended by Sir A. Conan Doyle. “No one,” says this clergyman, “has a right to call himself a Christian unless he believes in the Divinity of Jesus Christ. He may be a person of estimable character, and greatly developed spirituality, but he is not a Christian.” On the truth of our Lord’s Divinity the Church is erected. “Take it away, and the whole elaborate structure falls into ruins. It is upon that rock that the great vessel of modern Spiritualism is in imminent danger of being wrecked.… In the Spiritualist hymn-book the name of Jesus is deleted—e.g., ‘angels of Jesus’ reads ‘angels of wisdom.’ At their services His name is carefully omitted in the prayers, and the motto of very many is, ‘Every man his own priest and his own saviour.’ Christian Spiritualists, who rejoice in many of the revelations of the séance room, are alarmed. They are quite prepared to allow every man to make his own decision, but that the movement as a whole should be identified with Theism, and that they themselves should be considered as having renounced their faith and hope in Jesus Christ is intolerable.”

Mr. Fielding-Ould adds that Spiritualism is “utterly discredited and condemned” if it can be shown that “the communicating spirits are the authors of and responsible for this anti-Christian tendency.” His language is that of a man who has been misled through ignorance, and who has been brought up sharply on the edge of a precipice.

There never was a time when the Church of England, and all the Christian Churches of this country, accepted with firmer conviction the language of the Te Deum and of the Nicene Creed. “Thou art the King of Glory, O Christ. Thou art the everlasting Son of the Father.”

“I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of His Father before all worlds, God of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God.”

If mockers within the fold of Spiritualism cry contemptuously, “You are uttering language far beyond the range of mortal understanding,” the Christian knows that the reality is indeed far beyond his finite apprehension. He looks up and says with St. Thomas, “My Lord and my God.”

V
THE SAVIOUR FROM SIN

The witness of the Christian heart confirms the testimony of the human race in all ages that a Saviour is needed. It is not only the races influenced by Hebrew literature who have shared the consciousness of sin. A modern scholar quotes from an Egyptian hymn to Amon, Lord of Thebes, helper of the poor:

“Though the servant be wont to commit sin, yet is the Lord wont to be gracious. The Lord of Thebes spends not the whole day wroth. If he be wroth for the space of a moment it endureth not—turns to us in graciousness. Amon turns with his breath.”[36] The cry for mercy rises from the oldest literature of Hinduism. An ancient Vedic hymn has these words, “Without thee, O Varuna, I am not the master even of the twinkling of an eye. Do not deliver us unto death, though we have offended against thy commandments day by day. Accept our sacrifices, forgive our offences. Let us speak together again like old friends.”[37]

A saint of Buddhism, the noble Lama from Tibet, is represented by Rudyard Kipling as a pilgrim seeking for the River which washes away sin.

As buried civilisations gradually yield up their treasures to the explorer, the cry is heard without need of sound or language: “If Thou, Lord, shouldest mark iniquities, O Lord, who shall stand? But there is forgiveness with Thee, that Thou mayest be feared.” How is it that Spiritualism cannot hear that De Profundis? Spiritualism is without a message for the penitent, for it knows nothing of a Divine Redeemer. There is a harshness and shallowness in its conceptions of the future state, except in so far as these are influenced by Christianity. General Drayson said to Sir A. Conan Doyle, “You have not got the fundamental truth into your head. That truth is, that every spirit in the flesh passes over to the next world exactly as it is, with no change whatever. This world is full of weak or foolish people. So is the next.”

Compare such words with the language of the Burial Service. Spirits do not always pass away at their best and truest. Long illness may have clouded the perceptions, infirmities of old age may deface the character, there may come at the last “fightings and fears within, without.” Père Gratry tells us that the young priest, Henri Perreyve, one of the bravest and best of men, cried twice in his dying hour, “J’ai peur” (“I am afraid”), as if he saw the Arch-Fear confronting him in visible form. Deep knowledge of the human heart lies behind the words of the Prayer Book: “Spare us, Lord most holy, O God most mighty, O holy and merciful Saviour, Thou most worthy Judge eternal, suffer us not, at our last hour, for any pains of death, to fall from Thee.” To the latest moment of life and beyond it the soul has no resting-place except in the Rock of Ages. “The souls of believers are at their death made perfect in holiness.” The burden of sin drops away, and the pilgrim, as he passes over, may say, as in the hour of his conversion, “He hath given me rest by His sorrow and life by His death.”

But Sir Arthur Conan Doyle thinks that in “conventional Christianity” “too much seemed to be made of Christ’s death.” “The death of Christ, beautiful as it is in the Gospel narrative,” he says again, “has seemed to assume an undue importance, as though it were an isolated phenomenon for a man to die in pursuit of a reform.” “In my opinion,” he goes on, “far too much stress has been laid upon Christ’s death, and far too little upon His life. That was where the true grandeur and the true lesson lay.”… “It was this most wonderful and uncommon life, and not His death, which is the true centre of the Christian religion.”[38]

Spiritualism, in a word, does not wish to face the Cross. The “spirit-guides” talk vaguely of a “Christ-Spirit,” whose special care is the earth. There is nothing in their report of Atonement or Redemption. As Dr. Jowett has pointed out, the “New Revelation” has much to say on our Lord Jesus Christ as a “medium.” It says nothing of Him as Mediator. It offers fellowship with discarnate human personalities, but has no longing for fellowship with the Risen Lord. The ideas of the “spirit-guides” on prayer are set forth by Sir A. Conan Doyle in “The New Revelation.” The “spirits” declare that “no religion upon earth has any advantage over another, but that character and refinement are everything. At the same time, they are also in agreement that all religions which inculcate prayer and an upward glance rather than eyes for ever on the level are good. In this sense, and in no other—as a help to spiritual life—every form may have a purpose for somebody.”[39]

The cardinal doctrines of the faith are rejected by Spiritualists. Man is not regarded in their creed as “a sinner saved by grace.” Many cannot understand, Sir A. Conan Doyle tells us, such expressions as “redemption from sin,” “cleansed by the blood of the Lamb.” But the Christian says from his heart:

“The mystic life leads no one from the life of the Church.” The contrary is true of Spiritualism.