第18章 PROBLEMS AND LIMITATIONS(3)

One thing I can truly say, and that is, that in spite of false messages, I have never in all these years known a blasphemous, an unkind, or an obscene message.Such incidents must be of very exceptional nature.I think also that, so far as allegations concerning insanity, obsession, and so forth go, they are entirely imaginary.Asylum statistics Page 93do not bear out such assertions, and mediums live to as good an average age as anyone else.I think, however, that the cult of the seance may be very much overdone.When once you have convinced yourself of the truth of the phenomena the physical seance has done its work, and the man or woman who spends his or her life in running from seance to seance is in danger of becoming a mere sensation hunter.Here, as in other cults, the form is in danger of eclipsing the real thing, and in pursuit of physical proofs one may forget that the real object of all these things is, as Ihave tried to point out, to give us assurance in the future and spiritual strength in the present, to attain a due perception of the passing nature of matter and the all-importance of that which is immaterial.

The conclusion, then, of my long search after truth, is that in spite of occasional fraud, which Spiritualists deplore, and in spite of wild imaginings, which they discourage, there remains a great solid core in this movement which is infinitely nearer to positive proof than any other religious development Page 94with which I am acquainted.As I have shown, it would appear to be a rediscovery rather than an absolutely new thing, but the result in this material age is the same.The days are surely passing when the mature and considered opinions of such men as Crookes, Wallace, Flammarion, Chas.

Richet, Lodge, Barrett, Lombroso, Generals Drayson and Turner, Sergeant Ballantyne, W.T.Stead, Judge Edmunds, Admiral Usborne Moore, the late Archdeacon Wilberforce, and such a cloud of other witnesses, can be dismissed with the empty "All rot" or "Nauseating drivel" formulae.As Mr.Arthur Hill has well said, we have reached a point where further proof is superfluous, and where the weight of disproof lies upon those who deny.The very people who clamour for proofs have as a rule never taken the trouble to examine the copious proofs which already exist.Each seems to think that the whole subject should begin de novo because he has asked for information.

The method of our opponents is to fasten upon the latest man who has stated the case -- at the present instant it happens Page 95to be Sir Oliver Lodge -- and then to deal with him as if he had come forward with some new opinions which rested entirely upon his own assertion, with no reference to the corroboration of so many independent workers before him.This is not an honest method of criticism, for in every case the agreement of witnesses is the very root of conviction.But as a matter of fact, there are many single witnesses upon whom this case could rest.If, for example, our only knowledge of unknown forces depended upon the researches of Dr.

Crawford of Belfast, who places his amateur medium in a weighing chair with her feet from the ground, and has been able to register a difference of weight of many pounds, corresponding with the physical phenomena produced, a result which he has tested and recorded in a true scientific spirit of caution, I do not see how it could be shaken.The phenomena are and have long been firmly established for every open mind.One feels that the stage of investigation is passed, and that of religious construction is overdue.

For are we to satisfy ourselves by observing Page 96phenomena with no attention to what the phenomena mean, as a group of savages might stare at a wireless installation with no appreciation of the messages coming through it, or are we resolutely to set ourselves to define these subtle and elusive utterances from beyond, and to construct from them a religious scheme, which will be founded upon human reason on this side and upon spirit inspiration upon the other? These phenomena have passed through the stage of being a parlour game; they are now emerging from that of a debatable scientific novelty; and they are, or should be, taking shape as the foundations of a definite system of religious thought, in some ways confirmatory of ancient systems, in some ways entirely new.

The evidence upon which this system rests is so enormous that it would take a very considerable library to contain it, and the witnesses are not shadowy people living in the dim past and inaccessible to our cross-examination, but are our own contemporaries, men of character and intellect whom all must respect.The situation may, as it seems to me, be summed up in a simple Page 97alternative.The one supposition is that there has been an outbreak of lunacy extending over two generations of mankind, and two great continents -- a lunacy which assails men or women who are otherwise eminently sane.

The alternative supposition is that in recent years there has come to us from divine sources a new revelation which constitutes by far the greatest religious event since the death of Christ (for the Reformation was a re-arrangement of the old, not a revelation of the new), a revelation which alters the whole aspect of death and the fate of man.Between these two suppositions there is no solid position.Theories of fraud or of delusion will not meet the evidence.It is absolute lunacy or it is a revolution in religious thought, a revolution which gives us as by-products an utter fearlessness of death, and an immense consolation when those who are dear to us pass behind the veil.