Mr. Merton’s conclusion did not precisely please me, although I had suspected it from the first. Yet it troubled me, and I would gladly have escaped it. The next day, when Mr. Merton called to see me, as he did every day, I told him that I did not like his conclusion, and I wished he would give me his real thoughts on the subject.
“Without recurring to the teachings of Christianity, which I have the happiness of believing, I could not,” said he, “explain these mysterious spirit-manifestations, and I should not know what to think of them. I might be tempted to deny them, as does our friend Jack—to believe them produced by some inexplicable jugglery, even against my better judgment; or I might try to acquiesce in the belief of our friend the “udge, that they are the souls of the departed. Most likely, I should treat them simply as inexplicable, and attempt to construct no theory for their solution.
“I am unwilling to suppose the supernatural, and will not, where I cannot satisfactorily demonstrate the insufficiency of the natural. The whole history of our race bristles with prodigies, with marvellous facts, clearly divisible into two distinct and even opposite orders. The one seem to have for their object to draw men towards God, and assist them in ascending to him as their last end and supreme good; the other seem to have for their object to draw men away from God, and to aid men in descending into the depths of night and darkness. Man has a double nature, is composed of body and soul, and on the one side has a natural aspiration to God, and on the other a natural tendency from God, towards the creature, and thence towards night and chaos. A supernatural power assists him to rise; a preternatural power assists him, so to speak, to descend. But whether in the ascending or in the descending scale, it is not easy to say where the natural ends and the supernatural begins, for in both cases the foreign power presupposes the natural, and blends in with it, and simply transforms the action.
“There is, no doubt, much in either order set down by the vulgar to foreign intervention, that is really explicable on natural principles. Good, pious people cry out ‘a miracle,’ not seldom where no miracle is; and I should be sorry to be obliged to make an act of faith in all the miracles recorded in the legends of the saints. I should be equally sorry to be obliged to believe every tale that is told of Satanic invasion. I have a deep and settled horror of scepticism, but also a horror no less of superstition. I would no more be credulous than incredulous. I do not like to undertake the refutation of those who explain the facts of the night-side of nature on natural principles, for it is hard to do it, without giving more or less occasion in many minds to superstition. It is only in cases, like the present, where the disease is an epidemic, more destructive than the cholera or the plague, that I am willing to do what I can to draw attention to their real character.
“In regard to the dark prodigies, if I may so call them, I think not a few included by the vulgar under this head should be dismissed as mere jugglery; others may be explained by animal magnetism, and imply neither fraud nor dealing with devils, but are not innocent, because produced not by a justifiable motive, and are in all cases to be discountenanced because of dangerous tendency; others still may, perhaps, be explicable by natural causes, which science has not yet investigated, and of which we are ignorant.
“But a residuum remains which it is impossible to explain without the assumption of Satanic intervention. Such are some of the cases which you have heard me relate. Such are many of the phenomena which you yourself must have witnessed, and perhaps been instrumental in producing. Such, too, is the inspiration of Mahomet, if we may rely on the account given us by his friends, as well as the demon of Socrates, and such are evidently the well known cases of the Camisards or Tremblers of the Cevennes in 1688, George Fox and the early Quakers, Swedenborg, and the trance or ectasy of the Methodists, and finally Joe Smith and the Mormon prophets. In all these cases there are evident marks of superhuman intervention, and which no man in his sober senses, and instructed in the Christian religion, can pretend is the intervention of the Holy Ghost, or of good angels. The perturbation, the disorder, the trembling, the falling backwards, the foaming at the mouth, the violence which always in these cases accompany the presence of the spirit, are so many sure indications that it is an evil, not a good spirit. The Lord was not in the strong wind that rent the mountain; he was not in the fire that wrapt it in flames; but in the still small voice that made the prophet step forth from his cave to listen. When the Lord comes in his gracious visitations all is sweetness and peace. No disturbance of the physical system, no whirling and howling, no storm or tempest, no wringing and twisting of the arms and legs, no violent or indecent postures, no abnormal development or exercise of the faculties, mark the incoming of the Holy Ghost. All is calm and serene; the understanding is illuminated, the heart is warmed, the will is strengthened, and the whole soul is elevated by the infusion of a supernatural grace. There is no crisis, no forgetfulness on awaking from a trance. But whenever it is the reverse, wherever there is violence, distortion, quaking, trembling, and disturbance, we know that if any spirit is present it is an evil spirit, which delights in violence and disorder, and displays power without love, force without goodness, knowledge without gentleness.
“Everybody has heard, I suppose, of the prodigies wrought by touching the tomb of the Deacon Paris, the famous Jansenist saint, and the violent controversy they occasioned between the Jansenists and the Jesuits, the former trying to magnify them into miracles to the honor of their sect, and the Jesuits very unnecessarily and very unwisely, in my judgment, laboring to disprove or discredit them as facts. The prodigies are well authenticated, and I see no way of denying them without throwing doubt on all human testimony. Among them I select those which indicate, on the part of the affected, a surprising power of physical resistance, and among these I select only one, that of Jeanne Moulu, a young woman, from twenty-two to twenty-three years of age, given by the Dictionnaire des Sciences Médicales. This young woman, in her convulsions, was placed with her back against a wall, and a man of great strength took an andiron weighing some twenty-five pounds, and struck her on her stomach several blows in succession with all his strength, sometimes to the number of one hundred blows and over. A brother gave her sixty blows, and afterwards, trying his blows against the wall, it gave way at the twenty-fifth blow. It was in vain, says Carré de Montgeron, a grave magistrate, that I struck with all my force, the convulsionary complained that my blows brought her no relief, and obliged me to place the andiron in the hands of a large and very strong man found among the spectators. He spared nothing, but put forth all his strength, and dealt such terrible blows on the pit of her stomach that they shook the wall against which she was supported. She made him give her the hundred blows which she had demanded at first, counting for nothing the sixty she had received from me. When the andiron sunk so deep into the pit of her stomach as to seem to reach her back, the young woman would exclaim, ‘That relieves me. Courage, my brother; strike harder, if you can.’ The blows were struck on the naked skin, but without bruising or breaking it in the least. The convulsionary, after this, lay on the floor, and there was placed upon her a heavy plank on which stood a score or more of persons, weighing all together at least four thousand pounds. Then a flint stone, weighing twenty-two pounds, was hurled with full force a hundred times in succession upon her bosom. At each blow, the whole room shook, the floor trembled, and the spectators shuddered at the sound of the frightful blows.
“There were other phenomena of a character no less extraordinary, but I pass them over, all of which were notorious, and witnessed by half, one writer says, all Paris. Hume says that they have all the authenticity that human testimony can give, and that we can deny them only on the ground that such things are absolutely impossible. Humanly impossible I concede, but, as they are not of a character to come from God, I must believe them to be Satanic, and that the persons were really possessed and sustained by evil spirits.
“The case of frequent occurrence among the lower class of the Lamas, related by M. Huc in his travels in Mongolia, Thibet, and China, is one that cannot be explained save on the ground of Satanic intervention,—that of a Lama, a sort of Boudhist monk, who opens his belly, takes out his entrails, and places them before him, and then returns immediately to his former state.
“‘When the appointed hour has arrived,’ says M. Huc, ‘the whole multitude of pilgrims repair to the great court of the Lama convent, where an altar is erected. At length the Bokte makes his appearance; he advances gravely amid the acclamations of the crowd, seats himself on the altar, and taking a cutlass from his girdle, places it between his knees, while the crowd of Lamas, ranged in a circle at his feet, commence the terrible invocations that prelude this frightful ceremony. By degrees, as they proceed in their recital, the Bokte seems to tremble in every limb, and gradually fall into strong convulsions. Then the song of the Lamas becomes wilder and more animated, and the recitation is changed for cries and howlings. Suddenly the Bokte flings away the scarf which he has worn, snatches off his girdle, and with the sacred cutlass rips himself entirely open. As the blood gushes out, the multitude prostrate themselves before the horrid spectacle, and the sufferer is immediately interrogated concerning future events and things concealed from human knowledge. His answers to these questions are regarded as oracles.
“‘As soon as the devout curiosity of the pilgrims is satisfied, the Lamas resume their recitations and prayers; and the Bokte, taking up in his right hand a quantity of his blood, carries it to his mouth, blows three times on it, and casts it, with a loud cry, into the air. He then passes his hand rapidly over his stomach, and it becomes whole as it was before, without the slightest trace being left of the diabolical operation, with the exception of an extreme lassitude.’
“Occurrences like these are not rare, and I could fill volumes with phenomena equally extraordinary, which I cannot deny, and which cannot be explained without the assumption of a superhuman agent, and I may add, a diabolical agent. Dupotet exhibits, by means of his magic ring, almost daily in Paris, the most extraordinary magic wonders, and he confesses that he does it by means of a mental evocation, and by virtue of a PACT.
“Now these, and facts like these, instructed as I am in the Christian faith, and holding it without any doubt, prove to me that the Satanic invasion, demonic possession, and obsession, are no fables, but facts not to be denied, though each particular case must stand on its own merits, and be received or rejected according to the evidence. In general I am slow to believe this or that particular case is diabolic, and I require clear and irrefragable proof, strong and perfectly reliable testimony.
“The criteria of demonic invasion or obsession, as laid down by the Christian church, for the guidance of exorcists, are seven:
1. Power of knowing the unexpressed thoughts of others.
2. Understanding of unknown languages.
3. Power of speaking unknown or foreign languages.
4. Knowledge of future events.
5. Knowledge of things passing in distant places.
6. Exhibition of superior physical strength.
7. Suspension of the body in the air during a considerable time.
“Now I find all these in the recent spirit-manifestations, clearly and distinctly testified to by such occular witnesses as Dr. Dexter, Judge Edmands, and the Hon. N. P. Talmadge, not to mention any others. The Spiritualists or Spiritists do not deny, they assert that the manifestations they witness are strictly analogous to the class of facts which have been always regarded as Satanic. At first, the spirits communicated by rapping and moving furniture. But now, besides rapping mediums, there are writing mediums, seeing mediums, and speaking mediums. In these last three cases they admit the fact of spiritual invasion, and even call it possession. In the case of the speaking medium particularly, I find it contended that the spirit takes possession of the medium, generally a woman, maltreats her at times, throws her down, gives her convulsions, and forces her to do things which she is unwilling to do, and compels her organs to utter words to which she has the greatest repugnance.
“Hear Judge Edmands. ‘I have frequently known mental questions answered, that is, questions merely framed in the mind of the interrogator, and not revealed by him or known to others. Preparatory to meeting a circle, I have sat down alone in my room, and carefully prepared a series of questions to be propounded, and I have been surprised to find my questions answered, and in the precise order in which I wrote them, without my even taking my memorandum out of my pocket, and when I knew not a person present even knew that I had prepared questions, much less what they were. My most secret thoughts, those which I never uttered to mortal man or woman, have been freely spoken to, as if I had uttered them. Purposes which I have privately entertained have been publicly revealed, and I have once and again been admonished that my every thought was known to, and could be disclosed by, the intelligence which was thus manifesting itself.
“‘I have heard the mediums use Greek, Latin, Spanish, and French, when I knew that they had no knowledge of any language but their own; and it is a fact that can be attested by many, that often there has been speaking and writing in foreign languages and unknown tongues by those who were unacquainted with either.’
“Dr. Dexter is explicit to the same purpose. I need not multiply citations. The books of the spiritualists are full of instances in point. And as it is clear, from the phenomena presented, that the superhuman intelligence and power manifested are not Divine, I can, as a rational man, only conclude that they are Satanic. I believe the persons engaged in the unhallowed intercourse are, to a great extent, in good faith, and have no suspicion that they are really dealing with devils.”
“I believe you are right,” said I. “One thing is certain, that even in mesmerizing, there is always an implicit mental evocation, and without it, I venture to say, no one was ever able to exhibit the mesmeric phenomena. The effort of the will which the mesmerizer makes, whether he uses passes or not, is at bottom an evocation, a calling up of the mesmeric spirit; and he who set the spirits a rapping, you may be sure, had made a virtual, if not an explicit, a tacit, if not an express compact with the devil. But there is one thing farther I would have you explain, that is, the connection of spirit-manifestations with so-called animal magnetism.”
“That is a great subject, and would lead me too far for my time and for your strength. There are different spirits that besiege us or invade us, but those that usually do so probably, after the language of St. Paul, swarm in the air, and inhabit what the ancients called Ether. Many of the fathers, and some later doctors of the Church have believed that they are created with and inhabit fine ethereal bodies. However this may be, they no doubt, in their operation, assume such bodies, and consequently find their operations facilitated by a subtile material medium, such as the mesmeric fluid. Hence I do not regard mesmerism itself as Satanic, but as facilitating demonic invasion.
“There is also in man what the ancients called the umbra, the shade, which is not the soul, nor the body in its mere outward sense. It is, as it were, the interior lining of the body, capable, to a certain extent, of being detached from it, without however losing its relation to it. Hence the phenomena of bi-location, so frequently noticed in the annals of sorcery or witchcraft, can be conceived as possible. The body lies in a trance, and the soul with its umbra is able to carry on, by the assistance of the demon, its deviltry, even at a distance; and the wounds given to the shade will reappear on the body, as has been often observed.
“But you must excuse me from entering further into this intricate and mysterious subject. Many ingenious theories have been devised, but I wish to deal as little with them as possible. There is a laudable curiosity, there is also an unlawful curiosity, and there is a science which is not desirable. I have been obliged, in the way of my calling, to study it; but I never touch it, without regretting its necessity. Spare me. The knowledge that cannot enlighten, that cannot aid virtue, and only leads astray, should never be sought.”
