Mystic London, Charles Maurice Davies [best novels of all time TXT] 📗

This last clause has, I believe, been modified to suit certain members of my profession who were a little staggered by its apparent patronizing of Christianity. For myself (but then, I am unorthodox) I care little for these written or printed symbola. Having strained my conscience to join the Dialecticians, I allow my name, without compunction, to stand on the Council of the Association,—and shall be really glad if it does them any good. The fact is, I care little for formal creeds, but much for the fruit of those creeds. I stand by that good old principle—"By their fruits ye shall know them;" and that reminds me that to my shreds and patches of "experience" I am to append some pros and cons of this matter. They have cropped up incidentally as we have gone on: but I could with advantage collect them if my limits admitted of sermonizing.

As to the fruits of Spiritualism, I can only say that I have never witnessed any of these anti-Christianizing effects which some persons say arise from a belief in Spiritualism. They simply have not come within the sphere of my observation, nor do I see any tendency towards them in the tenets of Spiritualism—rather the reverse.

Then again, to pass from practice to faith, Spiritualism professes to be the reverse of exclusive. In addressing the Conference of 1874, and defending my position as a clerical inquirer, I was able to say:—"On the broad question of theology I can conceive no single subject which a clergyman is more bound to examine than that which purports to be a new revelation, or, at all events, a large extension of the old; and which, if its claims be substantiated, will quite modify our notions as to what we now call faith. It proposes, in fact, to supply in matters we have been accustomed to take on trust, something so like demonstration, that I feel not only at liberty, but actually bound, whether I like it or not, to look into the thing.

Whether your creed is right or wrong is not for me to tell you; but it is most important for me that I should assure myself. And while I recognise that my own duty clearly is to examine the principles you profess, I find this to be eminently their characteristic, that they readily assimilate with those of my own Church. I see nothing revolutionary in them. You have no propaganda. You do not call upon me, as far as I understand, to come out of the body I belong to and join yours, as so many other bodies do; but you ask me simply to take your doctrines into my own creed, and vitalize it by their means. That has always attracted me powerfully towards you. You are the broadest Churchmen I find anywhere."

I am not writing thus in any sense as the apologist of Spiritualism. I am not offering anything like an Apologia pro vitâ meâ in making the inquiries I have done, am doing, and hope to do. I have elected to take, and I elect to maintain, a neutral position in this matter. All I have done is to select from the Pros and Cons that present themselves to my mind. If the Pros seem to outweigh the Cons—or vice versâ—be it so. I cannot help it. I have scarcely decided for myself yet, and I am a veteran investigator. Others may be more speedy in arriving at a conclusion.

Among the more obvious "Cons" are the oft-quoted facts that some people have lost their heads and wasted a good deal of their time on Spiritualism. But people lose their heads by reading classics or mathematics, or overdoing any one subject however excellent—even falling in love: and the ingenuity displayed in wasting time is so manifold that this is an objection that can scarcely be urged specially against Spiritualism, though I own Dark Séances do cut terribly into time.

Then again one is apt to be taken in by mediums or even by spirits. Yes; but this only imposes the ordinary obligation of keeping one's eyes open. I know spiritualists who believe in every medium quâ medium, and others who accept as unwritten gospel the idiotic utterances of a departed buccaneer or defunct clown: but these people are so purely exceptional as simply to prove a rule. Do not accept as final in so-called spiritual what you would not accept in avowedly mundane matters. Keep your eyes open and your head cool, and you will not go far wrong. These are the simple rules that I have elaborated during my protracted study of the subject.

"We do not believe, we know," was, as I said, the proud boast a spiritualist once made to me. And if the facts—any of the facts—of Spiritualism stand as facts, there is no doubt that it would form the strongest possible counterpoise to the materialism of our age. It presses the method of materialism into its service, and meets the doubter on his own ground of demonstration—a low ground, perhaps, but a tremendously decisive one, the very one perhaps on which the Battle of Faith and Reason will have to be fought out.

If—let us not forget that pregnant monosyllable—if the assumptions of Spiritualism be true, and that we can only ascertain by personal investigation, I believe the circumstance would be efficacious in bringing back much of the old meaning of the word πιστις which was something more than the slipshod Faith standing as its modern equivalent. It would make it really the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Even if the dangers of Spiritualism were much greater than they are—aye, as great as the diabolical people themselves make out—I should still think (in the cautious words of the Dialecticians) Spiritualism was worth looking into, if only on the bare chance, however remote, of lighting on some such Philosophy as that so beautifully sketched by Mr. S. C. Hall in some of the concluding stanzas of his poem "Philosophy," with which I may fitly conclude—