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CONCERNING MIRACLES.
By THOMAS BREVIOR.
Reprinted from the “ Spiritual Magazine,” October, 1872.
---------- ♦----------“ Absolutely speaking, in the strict and philosophical sense, either nothing is
miraculous, namely, if we have respect to the power of God; or, if we regard
our own power and understanding, then almost everything—as well what we call
natural as what we call supernatural—is in this sense really miraculous; and it
is only usualness or unusualness that makes the distinction."—Dr. Clarke On
the Attributes, &c.
“ God’s miraculous interpositions may have been all along, by general laws
of wisdom." “ There may be beings to whom the whole Christian dispensation
may appear as natural as the visible known course of things appears to
us.”—Butler’s Analogy.
“ Miracles imply no suspension of the laws of nature . . The interposition
of superior power implied in a miracle, too, may be entirely natural.”—
Dr. Price, Four Dissertations.
“ A miracle may be said to take place when, under certain moral circum
stances, a physical consequent follows upon an antecedent which general
experience shows to have no natural aptitude for producing such a consequent;
or, when a consequent fails to follow upon an antecedent which is always
attended by that consequent in the ordinary course of nature.”—Smith's
Dictionary of the Bible.
The recent correspondence on Miracles in the Spiritual
Magazine is but one of many illustrations which this subject
presents of the truth of the statement of the late Professor De
Morgan, that the greater part of the controversies of mankind
are due either to ambiguity in the use of terms or to the
assumption of certain “ first principles” adopted as self-evident
truths. Indeed, it not infrequently happens, as in the subject of
the present inquiry, that these too fruitful sources of misunder
standing and of error run into each other; that the common
term is used in different senses by different writers because in
truth it does not simply represent an alleged fact, but the philo
sophy, theory, or belief which those writers severally entertain
concerning it. Hence, there are writers who, like Mr. Atkinson,
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�recommend that wo should abandon the term “miracle” altogether.
The suggestion, however, apart from all other considerations, is
impracticable; the term is too deeply rooted in our thought and
language to be voted out of use. It is true that, after all the
controversies on this question, no common agreement has been
reached as to what constitutes a miracle: it is vain in this matter
to appeal to the authority of lexicographers or to begin by
defining terms, for the term is the symbol we use to express
the outcome of the whole matter as it finally presents itself to
our minds; nor, as it seems to me, can we all use the same term
in the same sense, and in no other, so long as our conclusions on
the subject designated by it are so widely different.
Must then all attempt at agreement be abandoned as hope
less? Must this confusion of tongues ever prevail, so that, like
the builders of Babel, we may not understand each other’s speech,
and when we ask for brick receive a stone ? I hope we arc
not so shut up in this dilemma, but that some way out of it may
be found. Suppose that instead of defining our term at the
outset, and implying thereby a foregone conclusion, we in the
first instance consider whether or no there is reasonable ground
for believing that as a matter of fact any such events as have
been called miracles have taken place, apart from any theory or
inferences, or reference to the question whether they should be
called miracles or not;—questions to be reserved for subsequent
consideration.
And I suppose it will be generally conceded, and even
insisted on by the unbelievers, that we should if possible test
the question by reference to facts of the present, rather than
those of the past; as the former are more open to investi
gation : living witnesses can be confronted and cross-examined,
their qualifications ascertained, and their evidence compared and
sifted. There is also this further advantage, that whatever may
have been the case with regard to past ages, the present is cer
tainly not marked by excessive credulity on the subject, but is
by comparison scientific and enlightened. How are facts of this
class to be determined ? How are any facts of which our know
ledge depends on the senses to be determined? First, by
observation (which may include experiment), and secondly, by
testimony. All possible evidence of such facts may be comprised
under these two heads ; the former is evidence at first hand, and
can be had only by those who were present at the time and place
where the event took place, or could be witnessed. Their state
ments on the subject is testimony, and though this second-hand
evidence is inferior to the other, it may be so strong as to leave
us without reasonable doubt—so strong indeed, that the life or
death of men is determined by it.
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The evidence of modern u miracles” is of both kinds,
and of both in the strongest degree. Take, for example, the
recent Report of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society.
This Committee report that they received evidence from 33
persons who described phenomena which they stated had occurred
within their own personal experience. The Committee further
received written statements relating to the phenomena from 31
persons. These phenomena include nearly the whole range of
what is called “ spiritual manifestations,” and which need not
here be enumerated. No exception can be taken to the
witnesses, among whom arc persons of high social standing,
members of the learned professions, and men who have achieved
marked distinction in literature and science ; and their testimony
is corroborated by the Committee, who state that “ a large
majority” of their members “ have become actual witnesses of
several phases of the phenomena without the aid or presence of
any professional medium, although the greater part of them
commenced their investigations in an avowedly sceptical spirit.”
And this evidence is but a small fraction of the entire body
of evidence relating to the phenomena which has been pouring
in without intermission from every class and every land for the
past quarter of a century. In short, as Professor Challis has
said, “ the testimony has been so abundant and consentaneous
that either the facts must be admitted to be such as they are
reported, or the possibility of certifying facts by testimony must
be given up.” So far as concerns the facts in question, the last
alternative is indeed adopted by the sturdy, thorough-going
sceptic, for he feels truly that it is the only consistent ground
left for him to take. Why docs he prefer to occupy so ex
treme and desperate a position, rather than admit the alleged
facts, supported as they are by the testimony to like facts of men
of every age and creed ’? The answer is, that to admit them
would be to admit the existence of u miracles,” and that miracles
are impossible. If we ask why impossible, we are told that
they are contrary to the Order of Nature, that they are a violation
of the laws of Nature, that these laws are proved by the constant
and uniform experience of mankind, and that they are never
departed from.
Here we approach the heart of the question, the alleged facts
are rejected, not because of the insufficiency of the evidence, but
because it is thought they conflict with a preconceived theory of
the Order of Nature. Let it be shown that miracles, or spiritual
manifestations, belong to this established “ Order;” that like the
winds and tides and seasons they are subject to the operation of
natural laws; that, in fine, they are only a branch of natural
science, and the philosophy of our time would lay down its
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weapons of attack and welcome tills wido extension of tlie
domain of science.
In this temper of mind, however, we sec only the illustration
of that fallacious principle of reasoning pointed out by Professor
De Morgan, of testing alleged facts not by their proven evidence,
but by their supposed harmony or disagreement with assumed
“ first principles,” or “ self-evident truths ;” a principle always
arrayed against every new and great advancement of human
knowledge, for in every age men have regarded the established
theory of the universe as the Order of Nature, and as a conse
quence have held that whatever could not be brought into
harmony with such theory must be false. One would have
thought that in these days when the inductive philosophy is so
extolled, that its practice would not be so widely departed
from as it is when the evidence is presented of facts which run
counter to existing theories. The sceptical philosophy of our
time will not even entertain the discussion of a “ psychic force,”
still less of an invisible intelligence from behind the veil
which controls and governs it; in its view Spiritualism is a
strange portentous apparition, and our philosophers will not “ as
a stranger give it welcome,” lest they should “ entertain an
angel unawares.” Miracles, angels, spirits, these are terms the
sceptical philosophy would banish from its vocabulary. The
belief in these, and especially as having any place or part in our
midst now, is regarded as a vulgar superstition which science
has exploded, and philosophy is in no hurry to confess its
mistake in this respect and to read its recantation.
But here, to the wise caution given by an inveterate sceptic
to distinguish carefully between facts and inferences, I may add
that it is unphilosophical to reject any fact because of the
inference to which that fact may lead. The first essential to
determine is whether the alleged occurrences arc truly facts ;
and until this point is decided any question as to their cause or
as to the name by which they should be designated is premature,
and confuses the enquiry.
And if, divesting our minds for the time of all other con
siderations, we limit our enquiry to this single issue, the point is
surely not difficult to determine. The motion of heavy bodies
and the production of sounds without muscular contact or
mechanical contrivance, and the employment of these as a code
of signals by which questions arc answered and communications
spelt out, facts correctly given wholly unknown at the time to
any one present; the elevation of the human body, and its
suspension or movement in the air without visible or tangible
support; the introduction of fruits, flowers, birds, ice, snow,
and other objects into closed rooms previously searched and
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locked; the appearance of hands not appertaining to any human
being in the flesh, but life-like in appearance and mobility, and
which have been grasped by some of those who witnessed them;
the application of red-hot coals to the hands and heads of
persons without pain or scorching; the elongation and contraction
of the human body; the playing airs on musical instruments
with no person touching them; the speaking fluently in languages
utterly unknown to the speaker; the information of future events,
which have taken place at the very hour and even minute that
had been foretold; the production of writings and drawings
without human intervention, and “ in so short a time and under
such conditions as to render human agency impossiblethese
things and much more of the like kind are none the less matters
of observation because they arc unusual. It requires no great
scientific training to see whether a table is in motion or at rest;
whether a man is standing on the ground or in the air ; whether
in a closed room some object (sav for instance a cocoa-nut, as
happened to the writer of this article), is at your request placed
in your hand, and which you know was not there before ; and
though we have the testimony of an F.S.A., a barrister-at-law,
and other witnesses, that burning coal was placed on their heads
and hands without scorching or pain; yet we suppose Hodge
the ploughman could as well testify to such a fact if it occurred
in his experience as could the President of the lloyal Society.
Now, whether these things, are true is not a matter of
speculation to be settled on a priori grounds by a considera
tion of probabilities; the typical instances enumerated are not
hypothetical; they are all affirmed in evidence before the Com
mittee of the Dialectical Society, and as stated by the Committee,
u many of the witnesses of the more extraordinary facts arc of
high character and great intelligence;” and in this respect they
are representatives of hundreds of witnesses to facts of the same
kind all the world over. Moreover, many of these facts are
demonstrable, because reproducible.
In what other way can such facts be proved, nay, what kind
of proof can be imagined as applicable to them, save that of
observation and testimony? If this kind of evidence be not
valid, to what other court can the appeal be made? Am I
referred to the “ Laws of Nature?” What are these laws but
simply observed facts which, as we are told, “ a uniform
experience has established,” and which it is further said u are
never departed from?” This, indeed, is the standing philo
sophical objection to miracles and to Spiritualism. But if
observation, the evidence of the senses, and the testimony
founded thereon are impugned as delusive and untrustworthy,
what reliance can we place on these “ Laws of Nature,” which
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rest on the same foundation ? If it be replied that in this case
the evidence is so much stronger than the other, the principle of
our argument is conceded. It is then a question only of degree;
and if there is any insufficiency in the evidence, or any fatal
flaw in it, let it be pointed out after careful review (as far as
practicable) of all the evidence in the case. Till this is done, I
feel justified, both from many years’ personal investigation and
from careful survey of the evidence, in considering these startling
facts of our time as fully proved. At all events in reasoning with
Spiritualists (for whom this paper is chiefly written) I may with
out further reference assume them as the basis of my argument.
The “ Laws of Nature”—this phrase, so constantly dinned
into our ears,—is again a term used with such difference of
meaning, and with such difference in the ideas which underlie it,
as to cause much misunderstanding in controversies on this
question. What do we mean by Nature? I do not ask what
is Nature ? that is another question. I remember in my youth
to have met with a hymn to Nature in a Socialist hymn-book,
which began with the couplet:—
What Nature is no mortal knows,
And, therefore, none can tell.
But I suppose even our logical poet would admit that if we
employ the term Nature we may tell what we mean by it.
“ Oh, we all understand well enough what we mean by it,” says
the simple reader. Don’t be too sure of that, my friend. I
know of no term more elastic or more variously employed in
philosophical discussion. It is the master-word; understand
clearly what a writer means by it and you have a clue to his
whole system of philosophy ; it is the key-stone of the entire
edifice. This whole question of miracles, I am convinced, turns
upon the conception we entertain of Nature, and all our talk
about its laws and order, and about what is possible and im
possible, is so much beating the air until we arrive at some
common understanding on this point.
In particular there are two widely different conceptions of
Nature, with of course corresponding differences of signification
in their employment.
There are many, and even some Spiritualists, who by Nature
mean not alone the physical universe with all that appertains to
it, its solids, fluids, gases and ethers, its minerals and metals, its
flora and fauna, its elements, products, forces and phenomena,
however widely extended and variously distributed, which is the
conception of Nature commonly entertained, but who in their
idea of Nature include all existence, all being, all that is or can
be ; natural law with them means only that all things act
according to their own nature and constitution, whatever those
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may be. Of course in this view there can be no miracle, nothing
supernatural: all is Nature—Nature is the all.
Is there, then, no God? Or is God only a part of Nature ?
Are the lines of His being (so to speak) parallel, and con
terminous with it? Is His existence so bound up with Nature
that were it not, He, too, would cease to be? Or, while
imminent in Nature does He infinitely transcend it; Nature
being only the theatre of His operations, the one actuality shaped
by Him out of an infinite range of possibilities, and its laws but
the methods of His eternal wisdom?
*
The whole question of
Atheism or Theism is involved in the enquiry. The former
language is that of Atheism or of Pantheism, and in no other
sense can it be intelligently and consistently employed. Those
who inconsiderately adopt it should at least understand what it
implies and whither it is drifting them. Far from placing
Spiritualism on better terms with science and philosophy it is
alien to both, no less than to religion, and to the genius of
Spiritualism itself.
On the other hand the acknowledgment of God is the
admission of the supernatural, the cause and source of Nature,
• This is finely rendered by Mr. Palgrave in his poem, “The Reign, of
Law,” quoted by Dr. Hooker in his Presidential Address to the British
Association for the Advancement of Science. I give the concluding stanzas :—
To matter or to force
The All is not confined ;
Beside the law of things
Is set the law of mind ;
One speaks in rock and star,
And one within tho brain,
In unison at times,
And then apart again ;
And both in one have brought us hither.
That wo may know our whence and whither.
The sequences of law
We learn through mind alone;
We see but outward forms,
The soul the one thing known :—
If she speak truth at all,
The voices must be true
That give these visible things,
These laws, their honour due,
But tell of One who brought us hither,
And holds the keys of whence and whither.
O shrine of God that now
Must learn itself with awe!
O heart and soul that move
Beneath a living law !
That which seem’d all the rule
Of Nature, is but part;
A larger, deeper law
Claims also soul and heart.
'I'lie force that framed and bore us hither
Itself at once is whence and whither.
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its root and stay. Were Nature eternal and self-sufficient,—a
self-existing, self-adjusting machine, evolving its laws and forces
from itself as a spider spins its web out of its own bowels, and
with nothing superior to itself, a miracle were impossible; but if
it be derived and dependent, a divine picture-writing, a manifes
tation of the Great Creative Spirit, a vesture woven in the loom
of Time by which we visibly apprehend Him who is invisible,
and if miracle is an outbirth from the supernatural, an action
originating from a sphere beyond and above the range of natural
law,—then Nature is a perpetual miracle, and in this respect
the type of all miracle.
So much will perhaps be generally conceded, but there are
some who find the miracle not in the cause, but in the effect; to
them miracle is simply a synonyme for marvel; thus Carlyle, in
a burst of admiration, speaks of the human hand as “miraculous,”
and Mr. Atkinson insists that “ all Nature is miraculous,” which
it truly is in this sense also as in the other. Indeed (still speaking
in this sense), we may add that the common miracles of Nature
are more miraculous than any other. Moses saw a bush that
burned with fire and was not consumed, but in this glorious
summer time every bush burns with a divine fire and is not
consumed. ' Jesus fed a multitude with five loaves and a few
We may not hope to read
Or comprehend the whole
Or of the law of things
Or of the law of soul:
E’en in the eternal stars
Dim perturbations rise,
And all the searchers’ search
Does not exhaust the skies :
lie who has framed and brought us hither
Holds in His hands the whence and whither.
He in His science plans
What no known laws foretell;
The wandering fires and fix’d
Alike are miracle:
The common death of all,
The life renew’d above,
Are both within the scheme
Of that all-circling love;
The seeming chance that cast us hither
Accomplishes His whence and whither.
Then, though the sun go up
His beaten azure way,
God may fulfil His thought
And bless His world to-day ;
Beside the law of things
The law of mind enthrone,
And, for the hope of all,
Reveal Himself in One ;
Himself the way that leads us thither,
The All-in-all, the Whence and Whither.
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small fishes; but what is this to Nature’s daily miracle of
feeding all the countless multitude of men and the cattle on a
thousand hills ? The germination of seed, the growth of plants,
the building up of the human body from the almost invisible
nucleated cell, life and death, birth into the natural world, birth
into the spiritual world, we may call these the most miraculous
of miracles. Think of it; with every beat of the clock a child
is born, a man dies I What is the raising of a dead man in his
natural body to the resurrection of the spiritual man out of the
natural body, which occurs at the death of every man? Were
it not that custom dulls the fresh eye of wonder, every green
blade, every leafing tree would be a miracle. Goethe forcibly
expresses this when he represents Mepliistophiles tapping wine
from a table, with the exclamation to Faust:—Wine is sap, and sap is wood,
The table yieldetli wine as good;
Have faith, and here’s a miracle.
In the absence of experience both would seem equally miracu
lous. To the untutored savage a balloon, a comet, a steam ship,
an eclipse, are miracles. Are we, then, to conclude with some
that the miracle is simply the extraordinary and unexpected, and
of which the cause is to us unknown ? If so, the miracle lies
not in the outward fact, but in ourselves. It is relative only, a
synonyme for ignorant wonder. That which is a miracle to-day
may be no miracle to-morrow; as soon as we understand it it
ceases to be a miracle; so that beginning with finding miracle
everywhere, we may end by finding it nowhere. Or, without
pushing our conclusion so far, shall we take the middle course,
and say that a miracle is only the marvellous and exceptional—
that which so far transcends common-place as to excite astonish
ment, as when we say that the Apollo Belvidere is a miracle of
art, or Shakespeare a miracle of genius ? The bolder conclusion
seems the more logical and consistent, but neither is satisfactory ;
both alike empty the miracle of all significance; but we may
take the hint which they suggest, and see if we cannot find in
human nature a key which may unlock the mystery.
Man stands as the middle term between God and Nature;
by his body he is allied to Nature, by his spirit he claims kin
ship with God, for God is Spirit. In him the two worlds of
matter and of spirit meet and blend. Hemmed in by the limita
tions of his physical nature, subject to the laws of matter and the
conditions of time and space, he yet infinitely transcends them.
In vain does Nature oppose her barriers of mountain and of
wave; in vain hide her secrets in farthest star or deepest
mine; he sails the wave, pierces the mountain, aud links
together islands and continents.
Mightier magician than
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Prospero, he bids his faithful Ariel fly, and she outdoes the boast
to put a girdle round the earth in forty minutes. The old earth
unrolls for him the record of her history; the sunbeam yields its
secret; Orion and the Pleiades are known to him. Higher than
wing of bird ever soared, deeper than plummet ever sounded,
reaches and pierces the aspiring, penetrating mind of man.
He is the divine vice-gercnt on earth: Nature’s lord and king.
Even the grave holds not from him her secrets; he studies the
laws of intercourse with the spirit-world and holds converse
with the mighty dead. Is he not then essentially above Nature—
supernatural ? In this inquiry he and the laws of his being
must be taken into the account. In conquering Nature by his
so potent art does he violate her laws, or does lie harmoniously
co-operate with them ? In fine, is not man a free intelligence in
Nature, comprehending more and ever more of the elements and
forces around him, unharnessing them, yoking them together,
varying their combinations, arranging, directing, controlling
them ; knowing what they can do for him, and making them
do it? We do not, however, call this miracle, for he is still
operating from within the realm of Nature.
But, now,
Nature asserts her claim over all of him that belongs to
her, but even in this her final victory man gives the crowning
proof that he is not her thrall. Liberated from the bondage
of Nature and mortality he is now the free citizen of a
higher world, a member of that glorious company of im
mortals whom no man can number. Of the laws of that
spirit-country whither he has migrated; of the new powers he
is able to wield; of the new possibilities that lie before him,
we can know but little ; it may not be in our power to realise
them, till we, too, enter on our glorious inheritance. But this
we know, that he is free from the infirmities and limitations of
the body; from the illusions of sense; from subjection to those
laws of space and time which had chained him down to earth.
Even while a denizen of Nature, his achievements were all of
the spirit, the body simply being his instrument and organ of
communication with his fellows and with the outer world : the
true man, acting from behind the mask of clay, being invisible;
the spirit being known to us, as spirit can be alone known, by
its manifestations. How puerile, then, the objection that spirit
cannot act upon matter, when in every act and movement
of the body the contrary is demonstrated. The subtle links
between spirit and matter are indeed but imperfectly appre
hended, but from daily experience we know that they exist, and
many of us have like evidence that such links may be established
when the spirit is no longer a tenant of the mortal form.
Everywhere Science finds traces of the reign of law : in the
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winds and tides, in the spinning, weaving and building of insects, in
the flight of birds, in the path of comets, and of cosmic orbs. She
Looks through natural forms,
And feds the throbbing arteries of Law
In every pulse of Nature and of Man.
That the laws of Nature are universal and uniform in their
operation, that like causes produce like effects, are propositions
that need not the elaborate apparatus of argument and illustra
tion sometimes employed to set them forth. No one for example
disputes that oxygen and hydrogen always form water when
combined in certain proportions, and in none other. What
merchant would engage in foreign trade unless assured that his
ships would swim ? What husbandman would sow were he not
certain that every seed brought forth fruit after its kind ? If the
food of to-day might to-morrow be poison, what an agonising
uncertainty would be our daily lifeI If we are faithful to
Nature, Nature is faithful to us. But docs this beneficent
constancy of Nature preclude the agency of those who have
passed beyond Nature—an agency analogous to our own? How
is the Order of Nature hereby infringed? What law of hers
does this violate? Let us bear in mind that the laws of
Nature are not all on one common level, but move on
different planes of action, at different elevation, and by
gradual ascent—the principle or law which governs these
laws being that the lower is ever subordinate to the higher.
Thus the law of mechanical cohesion is overcome by the higher
law of chemical affinity ; and chemical affinity which resolves
the human body into its constituent elements is held in check by
the law of life, which maintains the physical structure in its
integrity; and as we have seen in man, the animal is subordinate
to the spiritual. It is this which constitutes him the roof and
crown of things, in apprehension so like a God. Our treasure,
however is contained in earthen vessels ; we here, as in a glass,
darkly see only the shows of things, but in its own proper realm,
emancipated from the body and from the bondage of sense, the
spirit discerns things as they truly are: it is in the world of
essences and causes. With larger knowledge, clearer vision,
freer movement, Nature lies below it; it deals with the laws and
forces of a higher world, and to which all laws of physics arc
subordinate; so that, working on the secret affinities and hidden
springs of Nature, with subtler chemistry, more potent magnetism,
with elements and forces at command, beyond our grasp, Nature
becomes plastic to the regulating and formative power of spirit;
it dominates matter, produces in it changes and transmutations
so confounding to previous ideas as to constitute what has
been called “ The Despair of Science.” Operating on lines
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of causation inaccessible to us, and forming new conjunctions
of causes, what we find impossible may be easy to the spirit,
and effects familiar to the scientists of the inner world, when
manifested in the material sphere, be as strange, startling, in
explicable to us, as are the highest exploits of science to the
untutored savage.
If I am told that this is contrary to the Order of Nature, or
at all events a deviation from the ordinary course of Nature, I
shall not contest the point, which may prove only a question of
the nature and fitness of terms. A universal and consentaneous
testimony might be cited to show that at all events it is not
contrary to all human experience, not even in this enlightened
nineteenth century, and that therefore it must be accepted as a
part of that larger Order of the Divine Economy of which
Nature is but a subordinate member, and in which Nature and
the Supernatural arc included.*
If on the other hand, as some contend, miracles lie within
the Order of Nature, then we must so extend our conception of
Nature as to comprehend in it at least all ranks and orders of
created beings, including the great realm of spirit with all its laws
* The folly of dogmatising on the laws and possibilities of Nature, of
which we know so little, and assuming that these laws are a finality, is
humorously illustrated by Mr. Kingsley in his Hater Babies, which I cite for
the benefit of those “Land babies” for whom this charming fairy tale was
written :—“ And Tom?
“ In fact the fairies had turned him into a water baby.
“A water baby? You never heard of a water baby. Perhaps not.
That is the very reason why this story was written. There are a great many
things in the world which you never heard of; and a great many more
nobody ever heard of.
“ ‘ But there are no such things as water babies.’ How do you know that?
Have you been there to see ? And if you had been there to see, and had seen
none, that would not prove that there were none.
“ ‘ But a water baby is contrary to Nature.’ Well, but, my dear little man,
you must learn to talk about such things, when you grow older, in a very
different way. You must not talk about ‘ain’t’ and" ‘can’t’ when you speak of
this great wonderful world around you, of which the wisest man knows only
the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child
picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean. You must not say that
this cannot be, or that is contrary to Nature. You do not know what Nature is,
or what she can do ; and nobody knows ; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or
Professor Owen, or Professor Sedgwick, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or
Professor Faraday, or any other of the great men whom little boys are taught to
respect. They are very wise men ; and you must listen respectfully to all they
say, but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, ‘ that
cannot exist; that is contrary to Nature.’ You must wait a little and see; for
perhaps even they may be wrong.
“ Wise men are afraid to say that there is anything contrary to Nature,
except what is contrary to mathematical truth, but the wiser men are the less
they talk about ‘cannot.’ That is a very rash dangerous word that ‘cannot,’
and if people use it too often, the Queen of all the Fairies is apt to astonish
them suddenly by showing them, that though they say she cannot, yet she can,
and what is more will, whether they approve or not.”
�13
and forces and modes of existence and operation; a startling inno
vation, and leading to ambiguity and confusion. But if we con
ceive of the spiritual world as discrete from Nature, constituting
another and a higher Order, then we are justified in applying
the terra supernatural to that other-world Order, and to miracles
as acts proceeding from it; this being not only the more con
formable to common usage in thought and speech but also the
more correct and philosophical. Bushnell, confirming his defi
nition by reference to the etymology of the terms in question,
says “ Nature is that created realm of being or substance which
has an acting, a going on, or process from within itself, under
and by its own laws, . . . or, a scheme of orderly succession,
determined from within the scheme itself. . . . That is super
natural, whatever it be, that is eithei’ not in the chain of natural
cause and effect, or which acts on the chain of cause and effect in
Nature from without the chain. Thus if any event transpires
in the bosom, or upon the platform of what is called Nature,
which is not from Nature itself, or is varied from the process
Nature would execute by her own laws, that is supernatural, by
whatever power it is wrought.”
Our investigation then has conducted us to this point, that
a miracle is the intervention by supernatural agency in the
ordinary sequences of Nature producing effects which would
not otherwise have taken place. It is not, therefore, an effect
without adequate cause, but only of a cause operating from
beyond and above Nature, possibly by laws and through links
of connection with which we are either imperfectly acquainted
or wholly ignorant. As remarked by an eminent mathematician :
“ A miracle is not necessarily a violation of any law of Nature,
and it involves no physical absurdity. As Brown well observes,
4 the laws of Nature are surely not violated when a new antece
dent is followed by a new consequent; they arc violated only
when the antecedent, being exactly the same, a different
consequent is the resultso that a miracle has nothing in its
nature inconsistent with our belief of the uniformity of Nature.
All that we see in a miracle is an effect which is new to our
observation, and whose cause is concealed. The cause may be
beyond the sphere of our observation, and would be thus beyond
the familiar sphere of Nature: but this does not make the
event a violation of any law of Nature. The limits of man’s
observation lie within very narrow boundaries, and it would be
arrogance to suppose that the reach of man’s power is to form
the limits of the natural world. The universe offers daily proof
of the existence of power of which we know nothing, but whose
mighty agency nevertheless manifestly appears in the most
familiar works of creation. And shall we deny the existence of
�14
this mighty energy, simply because it manifests itself in dele
gated and feeble subordination to God’s omnipotence? . . .
If we define a miracle as an effect of which the cause is
unknown to us, then we make our ignorance the source of
miracles, and the universe would be a standing miracle.” *
From this view some important consequences would seem to
follow. It brings the whole question of miracles, past and present,
under one general and comprehensive view, and supplies their
law on general principle. It enables us to understand how they
may be associated with different and even conflicting religious
faiths. Able and learned men have thought it necessary to show
(often in spite of evidence to the contrary) that Roman Catholic
and Pagan Miracles must be spurious, because it has been thought
that miracles were evidence of the Divine authority of the worker
or visible agent, and of the truth of all his doctrines and teachings,
or at least of the general truth of the system in attestation of
which the miracle was considered to be wrought. But we may
now see that miracles furnish no such evidence. Were Pio Nono
suddenly endowed with the power of speaking in unknown
tongues—say in the Chinese language—what evidence could that
be of Papal infallibility, or of the dogma of transubstantiation ?
Were a Hindoo philosopher to walk upon the sacred Ganges as
upon dry land, what proof could that be of the metempsychosis ?
What miracle could prove two and two to be more than four, or
less than four ? Or how could it effect any belief we may enter
tain as to the duration of the world, or the origin of species, or
any theory either of physics or of metaphysics to which it does
not stand in immediate relation ? What proof or confirmation
of ethical or religious truth could we derive from witnessing a
miracle except in so far as it proved the reality of spirit existence,
or was in some way related to that belief? Could any heathen
miracle make it right to offer human sacrifices to appease the
anger of the gods ? Or could any miracle make the parable of
the good Samaritan more true, or endow it with more persuasive
efficacy ? The Bible itself exemplifies this : it shows that
miracles in themselves are no evidence of divinity or of truth,
but only of power: that they may be magical, demoniacal, and
even diabolical, as well as divine. The first miracle it records—
that of the talking serpent—was satanic, andoneof the latest visions
the New Testament records, is that of unclean spirits working
miracles. If Moses and Aaron wrought miracles before Pharoah,
“ as the Lord had commanded,” “ Pharoah also called the wise
men and the sorcerers and the magicians of Egypt; and they
also did in like manner with their enchantments.” Nor does it
* Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.
By Chakles Babbage.
�15
affect the point that in this trial of strength the wise men, the
magicians, and the sorcerers were ultimately vanquished. If
“ the spirit of the Lord caught away Philip,” it was “ the
Devil” who took up Jesirs “into an exceeding high mountain,
and showed him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of
them.”* The Evangelist who records this, represents Jesus as
saying, “ There shall arise false Christs and false Prophets, and
shall show great signs and wonders, inasmuch that were it
possible, they shall deceive the very elect,” and Saint Paul
speaks of “ Him whose coming as after the working of Satan,
with all power and signs and lying wonders.” If, then, miracles
are no certain credentials of a divine authority, no infallible
test of truth, what purpose do they serve ?
The New Testament speaks of miracles as “powers” or
“ mighty works,” “ wonders,” and “ signs.” The latter is the
more common and characteristic term. Miracles are the sign of
a presence and a power that is not of earth, of a world beyond
Nature, of a life beyond the present; they evidence that we are
indeed—
Moving about in worlds not realised.
Phenomena, otherwise the most trivial, acquire deep significance
when we realise them as spirit-manifestations, tokens and
greetings from those who have o’erlcaped this bank and shoal of
Time, and thus—
Shame the doctrine of the Sadducee.
They are voices of the night, messenger-birds that come to us
across the deep sea of Time, from the further shore, and tell us
of that miracle country—that spirit-world whither we are
bound. Miracles may have also other significations which we
need not here consider, but this I take to be their main, primary,
universal signification • and especially is this their chief value
and significance in our day of doubt and denial as to all
spiritual things.
Miracles are not the special product of any clime, race, creed,
or period ; they are not governed by considerations of geography,
or of ethnology. We cannot put up a fence anywhere and say,
“ This sacred enclosure is a magic circle in which miracles were
once common, but they have never occurred since, and never
have occurred, and never can occur outside it.” The spirit
world underlies Nature, and overlaps it; and wherever at any
time there are suitable conditions may sensibly manifest its
presence. We are now living in the midst of those experiences
in which the infant religions of the world were cradled. Trances,
* Whether these narratives are or are not historical does not affect the
present question. In any case they illustrate the Bible view of miracles—the
only point for which they are here cited.
�16
visions, healings, converse with spirits, communications from
the invisible world, and manifestations of supernatural power:—
these are familiar and avowed experiences in our time, as in
past ages. Their correspondence with those of the primitive
Christians is admitted even by those who believe in neither.
Renan in his Life of Jesus, says:—u For nearly a century
the Apostles and their disciples dreamed only of miracles.”
“ The disciples deemed it quite natural that their master should
have interviews with Moses and Elias.” “ The compilers of the
Gosepls were living in this respect in a world analogous to that
of the ‘ Spiritualists’ of our time.” Of, course, M. Renan does
not believe in any such world. In a later work, The Apostles, he
tells us, “ It is an absolute rule in criticism to deny a place in
history to narratives of miraculous circumstances. Such facts
have never been really proved. All the pretended miracles
near enough to be examined arc referable to illusion or imposture.
If a single miracle had ever been proved, we could not reject in
a mass all those of ancient history, for admitting that many of
these last were false, we might still believe that some of them
were true.” That is just the contention of “ the Spiritualists of
our time,” who from their own experience know that all miracles
arc not “ referable to illusion or imposture
and who find that
their experiences in the nineteenth century illustrate those of
“ the Apostles and their disciples” in the first century, that the
present and the past shed light upon each other.
11A miracle in Paris before experienced savans would put an
end to all doubt,” says Renan. I more than doubt it. To
say nothing of the Apostolic miracles, even the lesser' marvels
of Spiritualism in our own day, attested by such savans
as Alfred Russell Wallace, Professor De Morgan, and half-adozen Fellows of the Royal Society, backed by a crowd of
witnesses from the learned professions and from all ranks of
society, and from everv civilized land, does nothing of the kind.
Were an indubitable miracle to take place before a company of
the most experienced savans of Paris, as M. Renan suggests,
what would happen ? Simply this: that the Members of the
Institute, the Fellows of the Royal Society, and other learned
bodies, would tell them plainly it was all imposture or delusion.
If it were a miracle of vision it would be an hallucination; if
one of hearing, they would be told it was probably a disease of
the auditual nerve, or the miracle would be explained 'as a
nervous epidemic, or automatic cerebration, or past ideas
renovated, or possibly as due to hypnotism, oi' electro-biology.
They would be reminded that anyhow it could not be a
miracle, because a miracle is impossible, and not to be estab
lished by any amount of testimony. Finally, it would be insisted
�17
that if the miracle was to be believed, it must be done over
again, and as often as might be required, and under such test
conditions as the more experienced savans should impose. When
M. Renan tells us “ miracles never happen,” he may be right
if he means only that they never happen before some collective
body of “ experienced savans” for they never place themselves
in the way of their happening; and if brought before them by
one of their number they refuse to even listen to such matters,
as did the American Association for the Promotion of Science
when invited by Professor Hare and the Spiritualists of
AA ashington, and as the Royal Society has done more recently in
refusing even to hear a paper on “ Pyschic Force” read before it
by Mr. Crookes ; but if M. Renan means that no experienced
sayans in our day testify to such facts as were formerly called
miracles, then he manifests an ignorance of the subject that
would be strange in so learned a man, were it not, alas! so
common.
Dr. Littledale, writing in the Contenrporary Review for August,
1872, on “ The Rationale of Prayer,” in reply to Professor
Tyndall, says on this point:—
u I employed myself some time ago in speculating as to what
would be the practical result on modern unbelief of a public revival
of miracles. I have put before me the hypothesis of my being
myself invested with a supernatural power of healing, and have
asked myself what would come of it, assuming that the number and
notoriety of the cures forced the physicists to take the matter up
and inquire into it, instead of dismissing it with contemptuous
incredulity. And I became satisfied that unless the power were
universal and persistent in me, that is, that no case failed under
any conditions, its evidential value would be superciliously
disregarded. The objectors would insist on God’s working so
as to please them. They would require a variety of specified
conditions to be fulfilled in every instance, bargaining for the
nature and duration of the disease, the character and number of
the witnesses to be present, the uniform repetition of the cure
under carefully diversified circumstances, and the like. Then,
if God did not choose to submit Himself to such critics, or with
drew after a time the power conferred, they would look to the
cessation of the miracle, not to its previous persistence, and
reject it accordingly as a mere abnormal phenomenon not de
serving of serious attention. While, on the other hand, even if
it did continue, they would, I am convinced, ascribe it to the
discovery on my part of some hidden pathological law, and
would deny the existence of any superhuman causation. The
Evangelists are careful to let us know that the miracles they
ascribe to Christ were so far from converting His chief opponents
B
�18
that they merely embittered their hostility. And I consequently
do not believe for a moment that even if the proposed experi
ment (a ward in an hospital to be specially prayed for) were one
which is lawful for a Christian to try, if it were carried out to
the letter as suggested, and if the tabulated result exhibit an enor
mous percentage of cures in the favoured ward, that the hyperdogmatic asserters of the impossibility of miracles would be
convinced. They would whisper about that one of the physicians
had got a secret specific somehow, and was in league with the
parsons to palm off his success as theirs. And they would
probably point their remarks by showing how very conceivably
that trick might have been played when chloroform was dis
covered but not yet currently known.”
In terms almost identical with those of Renan, Strauss
assures us, 11 There is no right conception of what history
is, apart from a conviction that the chain of endless causation
can never be broken, and that a miracle is an impossibility. ”
But, now, are we quite sure that miracle is a breach in the
continuity of causation? Do we know the whole chain from
end to end? or, Do we see only a few of its lower links, the
higher, invisible to mortal ken, reaching, it may be, beyond
the realm of Nature, and producing effects we term miraculous?
Biishner sneeringly asks, “ Do not the table-spirits belong to the
order of miracles?” and in a very different spirit, Cudworth
argues, “ Though all miracles, promiscuously, do not immediately
prove the existence of God, nor confirm a prophet, or whatso
ever doctrine; yet, do all of them evince that there is a rank
of invisible, understanding beings, superior to men, which
atheists commonly deny.” The sneer of the atheist, and the
argument of the philosopher might alike suggest to the brilliant
Frenchman and the learned German that their objection to
miracle is based on an entire and fundamental misapprehension
of its nature, that it is not a synonym for a break in the chain
of endless causation; and with the rectification of that fatal
error their objection to miracle disappears: it has no longer a
foothold on the earth.
The supernatural is as much in harmony with law as is the
natural. The intervention of spiritual agency in Nature, acting
upon forces and in ways unknown to us and thereby producing
effects contrary to common experience, as when what we call
solid matter is made to pass through solid matter, is no more a
violation of law, or a break in the chain of endless causation,
than when man intervenes in Nature and employs the electric
current to transmit a message to the Antipodes.
That mistrust and doubt, especially when these are of the
will, rather than of the understanding, are real powers of
�19
hindrance in all spiritual working; and that such powers are
intensified by union and brought to a focus, is certain. Even
the Master Miracle-worker, in the midst of a sceptical com
munity, “could do no mighty works because of their unbelief.”
So far were His miracles from being acts of omnipotence, that He
expressly insists on their limitations, and on the conditions—
spiritual and physical—necessary to their performance,—faith,
prayer, fasting, unity, harmony. No doubt it was to the
observance of these divine laws, to His habits of solitude,
meditation, and prayer; His perfect trust in God, and His
oneness with the Father, that He was able to perform those
beneficent mighty works that were indeed a sign to that
faithless and perverse generation. Doubtless there was also
conjointly in Him what may be called an organic fitness—a
harmony of the entire nature, an openness to the highest influx,
the natural body itself being pre-eminently a temple for the
Divine Spirit; so that both spiritually and physically, and in an
especial manner, He was thus constituted the living organ and
medium of its communication and power. And if now, as we are
told, “ such things never happen,” let it, among other things, be
remembered that such a personality is never found, that such a
life is never lived. When our “ experienced savansn are thus
open to influx from the Heavens, and attain that moral and
spiritual union with God which Christ exemplified, and to which
His true disciples aspire, they may realise the truth of His words,
“ The works that I do shall ye do also, and greater than these ;”
and of His promise to be in the midst of those who were gathered
together in His name; and understand how the great Pentecostal
outpouring occurred, when “ the disciples were all with one
accord in one place.”
To our “ experienced savans” however, I am aware such
language is like talking in an unknown tongue.
Spiritual
insight indeed is rarely found in men profoundly penetrated
with a sense of their own learning and wise in their own
conceit. It is true now, as of old, that spiritual mysteries are
often hidden from these wise and prudent persons and revealed
to fishermen, and even unto babes. Scholarship may teach us
of the past, and science of the facts of Nature and her methods,
but spiritual arcana are beyond their province. Philology and
mathematics will not help us to any knowledge of the laws,
forces, and relations of the spiritual world, and the most
experienced savant may be stone-blind to the simplest facts
concerning it; as indeed he is when he seeks to test and gauge
those facts by the laws and methods of purely natural science,
except in so far . as they relate to phenomena and effects of
spiritual action within the range of physics.
�20
While we contend that there is no antecedent impossibility
in miracles; that, like other facts, they may be established on
sufficient evidence ; that they violate no law of the Divine Order,
when we take a comprehensive view of that Order as including
both the natural and the spiritual universe with which they may
be coeval and co-extensive; they at the same time become
divested of that false and superstitious character which in a
scientific age has so impeded their reception.
I trust that the time is not far distant when this whole
subject will be reconsidered on larger grounds than those on
which it is now generally discussed, and apart from any bearings
it may be supposed to have on theories and systems on either
side. It may be that our definitions may have to be corrected
and our theories revised, and that our systems may be found
partial and incomplete; but let us take all facts into the
account and resolve to follow Truth whithersoever it may lead
us, and I apprehend we shall be on the high road to a better
understanding of the rationale of miracles, past and present.
Note.—I have abstained from direct discussion of the New Testament
miracles (to which, in consideration of this subject, our thoughts naturally
revert) as their adequate discussion would demand much fuller treatment than
is here possible. I would, however, recommend the reader desirous of prosecu
ting this enquiry to Trench’s Notes on the Miracles, especially to the Introduction,
which gives a historical and critical review of the objections to them. It is a
pity this Introduction is not published as a separate essay in a cheap form for
more extensive circulation.
In reply to Hume and more recent objectors to miracles, see an able paper
by Alfred Russell Wallace, read before the Committee of the London Dialectical
Society, and published in The Spiritual Magazine, No. 3, Vol. VII., New Series.
Printed by Thomas Scott, Warnick Court, Holborn.
�
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Concerning miracles
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Brevior, Thomas
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Collation: 20 p. ; 21 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Reprinted from the Spiritual Magazine, October, 1872. Includes bibliographical references. Printed by Thomas Scott, Holborn. Author is pseudonym of Thomas Hooper.
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Conway Tracts
Miracles
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Text
MTOETALITY IN HARMONY WITH MAN’S NATURE
AND EXPERIENCE—CONFESSIONS OF SCEPTICS.
Br THOMAS BEEVIOB.
“ Strangers born on mountains and living’ in lowland places, pine in an incurable homesickness. We belong to a higher place, and therefore an eternal longing consumes us.”
Jean Paul Richter.
The universal belief in a Future Life among all races of men
through all the historic ages, and even, as is now known, in
pre-historic times, is a broad fact of human experience of which
materialistic and sceptical philosophies can give no adequate
explanation. They have two favourite methods of dealing with
it. They first seek to disallow its alleged universality on the
ground of certain exceptions. We are told that there are whole
tribes of men who have no such belief, and that in almost
every community there are individuals and sometimes entire
sects who disbelieve or doubt of any life after death; and secondly,
that the belief has. its origin solely in human ignorance and fear,
in baseless hopes and poetic fancies.
We at once admit that there are exceptions to the belief in
question, though these are of so limited a range that they no
more affect the conclusion deduced from a general survey of
mankind, than the elevations and depressions of the earth’s
surface affect its spherical form. They are far less numerous
than has been supposed. Many tribes, who were once thought
destitute of this belief, have been found on more careful enquiry
and with a more intimate knowledge of their language and
customs, to share in some form in this common belief of man
kind. The few real exceptions are of a kind which fairly
considered rather confirm than invalidate the rule.
If the belief was simply due to human ignorance, we should
naturally expect to find it most inveterate where that ignorance
was most nearly absolute, and that it would pale its ineffectual
fire under the advancing sunlight of knowledge. Is this so ?
So far as its absence from any entire tribe of men is concerned,
quite the contrary. The tribes so triumphantly appealed to by the
Materialist are the very lowest in the scale of humanity. If there
is any truth in the theory of the development of man from some
lower form of animal life, it would be just among those tribes, if
anywhere, that we should expect to find “ the missing link,”
,
�2
In tribes whose intelligence and moral nature is so unde
veloped that they cannot count their fingers, and have no word
expressive of thanks or gratitude, we can scarcely expect that
a spiritual belief of any kind is possible. It would seem that
the very faculties to which such belief makes appeal were not
yet sufficiently developed to receive it, and we might as rea
sonably contend from these instances that the powers of
numeration or the sense of gratitude were not common to
mankind, as from these examples to impugn the belief in
question as a universal faith.
The doubt and denial of a Future Life in civilized com
munities, and especially the prevalence of modern unbelief, is a
grave and far more complex problem.
In the official Report on Religious Worship, 1853, we read:—
There is a sect, originated lately, called “Secularists,” their chief tenet
being that, as the fact of a Future Life is (in their view) susceptible of some
degree of doubt, while the fact and necessities of a present life are matters of
direct sensation, it is prudent to attend exclusively to the concerns of that
existence which is certain and immediate, not wasting energies in preparation
for remote and merely possible contingencies. This is the creed which,
probably with most exactness, indicates the faith which, virtually though
not professedly, is held by the masses of our working population.
And the report, speaking specially of artisans and other
workmen, adds:—
It is sadly certain that this vast, intelligent, and growingly important
section of our countrymen is thoroughly estranged from our religious institutions
in their present aspect.
The members of the .Evangelical Alliance, during their
recent session, admitted and deeply deplored the increase and
wide range of Materialism, and sought means to arrest it.
Mr. Farrar, in his Witness of History to Christ, 1871, tells us
that in the previous century the attacks on Christianity were
rare : “ It is not so now ; we are, as it were, in the very focus
of the storm. It is not that every now and then there is a burst
of thunder and a glare of lightning, but the whole air is electric
with quivering flame.”
Dean Goulbourn, of Norwich, writes :—“ The frightful
prevalence of sceptical views among all classes of the community,
and the alarming fact that even among the clergy themselves
insidious objections to the things which are most surely believed
among us are gradually winning their way, seems to make it
imperative upon all persons and societies entrusted with the
guardianship of the faith to make some definite effort to stem
the evil.” The Hon. Robert Dale Owen, in a letter to the
New York Tribune, writes :—“ A bishop, who is held in deser
vedly high estimation by the orthodox body to which he belongs^
stated to me his conviction that evidences of infidelity are daily
�3
multiplying among intelligent men ; adding that he had lately
heard a Professor of Harvard College express the opinion that
Ehree-fourths of our chief scientific men were unbelievers.”
No doubt similar testimonies might be quoted in regard to
every nation of Christendom, where a spirit of free enquiry
prevails, and free speech and writing are allowed. Many who
entertain these views are men of much information and ability,
some even of eminence, and generally, I doubt not, their doubts are
as honest as the faith of those who subscribe to the orthodox creed.
To deal adequately with, the problem thus presented would
require far more space than is at my command; but there are
some obvious considerations which I think may greatly help us
in its solution.
Very much of our Modern Scepticism is but the natural,
and on the whole wholesome, reaction against the excessive
and unenlightened credulity and superstition of former ages;
the protest of the human reason and conscience against certain
representations of the nature and conditions of that life re
volting alike to both. These crude! and cruel conceptions
of a barbarous and ferocious time, from which the human
mind has not yet fully emancipated itself, require to be
separated and distinguished from the essential belief with, which
they are associated, and which they so cruelly disfigure and
discredit. The wonder is, not that so many rejeet the doctrine
of a Future Life when so presented, but that any can accept it.
It is a striking proof of the vitality of this belief as a perma
nent element in human nature that ft is able to survive at all
under the weight of so oppressive and terrible a burden. Let
the Future Life be but presented as Spiritualism reveals it,
and it will neither shock the intellect nor the heart, but will be
found entirely consonant with both; and I am fully persuaded
that when its teachings are better understood it will be hailed
by thousands who, repelled by the crude, false and gloomy
representations of theologians, now reject it as incredible.
There are crises in individual life, especially of the sensitive
and thoughtful, when we must pass through the wilderness of
doubt to the Canaan of our rest; when the heavens above us
are as brass, and a thick palpable darkness broods all around,
when we reel and stagger under an unwonted burden; when
thought and feeling are painful from their intensity, and old
forms of faith shrivel in their glowing fires, by which however
the dross is finally purged from the pure gold of a diviner faith.
■ Again, it is to be noted that the human mind advances not •
equally and simultaneously on all sides, but as it were by
irregular leaps and movements, now in one direction, now in
another; one period is pre-eminently an age of faith, another
�4
of philosophical speculation, in a third, art is in the ascendant.
The philosophers of Greece and Rome despised the mechanical
arts as base and unworthy of philosophers. When learning
and culture were almost exclusively confined to ecclesiastics!
theology and scholastic philosophy were deemed all-important,
and any curious prying into the secrets of nature was regarded
with suspicion, and denounced as magic. During the last cen
tury physical science has made greater progress than perhaps
in any cycle of human history. Its progress has been so
rapid and startling, and it has conferred such vast benefits
on mankind, that it need excite small surprise that, dazzled
and fascinated, its votaries should occupy themselves almost
exclusively with its objects and methods, and that they should
be sceptical as to the existence of a spiritual world not to
be discovered by the telescope, or of a soul in man which
eludes all chemical analysis and physiological research. We are
naturally tempted to set a disproportionate value on our own
favourite study, and to attach comparatively slight regard to
studies of an opposite kind, jin like manner in our own day,
men preoccupied and engrossed with the study of the contents
and phenomena of the material universe, neglect and slight the
study of psychology (properly so called), and of that larger
spiritual universe, which though infinitely transcending it in
importance, yet does not admit of verification by their, instru
ments and tests, and which they therefore hold to be either
non-existent, or at best, incapable of proof. I fail to see how
this materialistic tendency of science is to be arrested save by
those sensuous and palpable demonstrations of spiritual existence
which may now be found on every hand, meeting the sceptical
scientist on his own ground, by presenting those experimental
proofs of a life beyond death which alone he is prepared to
accept as satisfactory and conclusive.
A still more potent cause of Modern Scepticism is, I think,
to be found in the position which has generally for now upwards
of a century been taken with increasing boldness and tenacity
by Protestant churches and theologians.
To make this more clear^ let us briefly enquire what has
been the origin of this universal belief in a Future Life? and
by what means has it been chiefly sustained? It did not, we
may be sure, originate in b priori reasonings on the subject.
It was not born into the world after long gestation in the brains
of subtle metaphysicians^ nor was it the idle creation of poetic
fancy. The long elaborate chain of metaphysical argument
now employed against unbelievers was the product of a later, a
more critical and sceptical age; and whatever influence it may
at any time have had over a few speculative and thoughtful
�5
•
»
r
minds, it has never had any considerable weight in determining
the general belief of mankind on this great question.
“ Man goeth down into the grave, and where is he ?” would
indeed have been a doleful enquiry had the response come
from no other oracle than this. When all that had been
visible of friend or kinsman was buried or burned to ashes,
what but the most positive evidence, the most absolute proof,
could establish the belief of his continued existence ? 11 This
opinion, which perhaps prevails as far as human nature is
diffused, could become universal only by its truth. Those that
never heard of another world would not have agreed in a tale
which nothing but experience could render credible.” The
united testimony of travellers, and the history and literature
(sacred and secular) of all peoples, show that this belief has its
root in actual knowledge; in direct experience of spirit-appear
ance, manifestation, intercourse, and revelation; and that
it is mainly by these direct proofs, responding to our in
tuitions or natural tendencies, that the faith in immortality is
kept alive and nourished, conquering the incredulity which
otherwise would probably have remained invincible.
Even John Stuart Mill, in his posthumous essay On Theism,
just published, urges that—
“ The argument from tradition, or the general belief of the
human race, if we accept it as a guide to our own belief, must
be accepted entire; if so we are bound to believe that the souls
of human beings not only survive after death, but show them
selves as ghosts to the living; for we find no people who have
had the one belief without the othe^. Indeed, it is probable
that the former belief originated in the latter, and that primitive
men would never have supposed that the soul did not die with the
body, if they had not fancied that it visited them after death.”
I do not mean by these remarks to disparage the value of
those moral facts and considerations usually appealed to in this
controversy. But however these may be appraised, they con
fessedly raise the argument no higher than probability; and
even among believers there are many’, like Dr. Johnson, who
want more evidence, and more direct and conclusive evidence
than this. In default of obtaining it, they may indeed content
themselves with the assurances of Revelation; but to un
believers in a Future Life, who do not recognise its authority,
any appeal to it would be manifestly futile.
The Christian Church was not founded on a set of Articles,
or a bundle of propositions voted by the majority of a council;
but on the recognition that as a fact one among them had risen
from the dead, and had as a spirit frequently been seen by, and
held converse with, his disciples and friends. This was the
�6
cardinal doctrine of the early Christians, the central fact the
acknowledgment of which was their common bond of union.
This was their common faith and hope; they had an un
doubting assurance that as He lived they should live also. This
inspired the joyful paean, “O death, where is thy sting!”
This inspired them with enthusiasm, and a courage to brave
torture and death. It was the apparition of Christ—the risen,
the glorified spirit, that converted Saul the persecutor into Paul
the apostle, and transformed the heresy of an obscure provincial
sect into a universal faith. And this faith was confirmed by
manifold signs and wonders: by manifestations of supernatural
power, and the outpouring of spiritual gifts—the discerning of
spirits, speaking in unknown tongues, casting out evil spirits,
healing by the laying on of hands, visions, trances, and revela
tions. The Greek and Latin churches maintain the continuance
of these gifts and their perpetuity, and especially as the accom
paniment of pre-eminent sanctity and Divine favour. The
fathers of th® Reformation—Luther, Melancthon, Calvin, Knox ;
the founders of churches—Fox, Swedenborg, Zinzendorf,
Wesley, Irving; the most learned and able divines of the
sixteenth and ^seventeenth centuries—Glanville, Cudworth,
More, Baxter, maintained the continued exercise of spiritual I
powers, both good and evil, visibly intervening in the affairs of
men; and like the Spiritualists of to-day they appealed to-these
facts in confutation of Atheists and Sadducees. “ Many,” says .
Baxter, “ are convinced by these arguments from sense, who can
not yet reach, and will not be persuaded by, other demonstration.”
But as the sceptical philosophy of Hume and Middleton,
Douglas and Farmer, has penetrated the churches, and per
vaded their theology, Ithey have become powerless against
the advancing hosts of unbelief. Their admissions have been
fatal, and the truth has suffered in consequence more from its
defenders than its assailants. The province of the supernatural
m human affairs was first circumscribed within a small geograph
ical area; then its duration was limited; the age of miracles
ceased, we were told, after five centuries of Christianity, the
limit was soon reduced to three centuries, and then to the
Apostolic age; and now, as might have been expected, divines and
learned professors are finding out that even this last small reserve
must be abandoned with the rest. No wonder that unbelievers
regard their victory as Complete, and that writers like Frances
Power Cobbe now contemptuously dismiss the New Testament
narratives of Christ’s resurrection and visible appearance as
c , ,ewish Ghost-Stories”—the last lingering rag of prejudice
folded around an effete superstition.
How dim, shadowy, and uncertain are the ideas of the
�7
Future Life of its professed believers. How much unconscious
and practical infidelity concerning it prevails among them I
How little they realise the strength, the joy, the consolation it
should impart I Enter a Christian cemetery, see the mourners
draped in melancholy black; the sombre cypress and the weep
ing willow overshadowing the tombs; the broken pitcher, the
shattered column, the inverted torch, all around you I Were
it the avowed conviction that death is an eternal sleep, what more
fitting symbols could be devised? Words indeed are read over
the grave expressing a solemn hope of the resurrection and the
life, and this is often all that reminds us we are not in a burial
place of Pagans. Frances Power Cobbgiin Dawning Lights thus
depicts the general tone of thought andjfeeling on this subject.
11 We have contrived to banish our own immortality to a
twilight limbo, which we place nowalfe in the universe of space,
. anc|j conceive of as nowise affected by.the limitations of time.
We believe, indeed, that we shall exist hereafter; and that in
some unknown existence our moral sense will be satisfied by the
reward of suffering virtue and the punishment of vice unchas4:tised upon this planet. But iDeyonclfeSO
telleth a tale of
unspeaking death?’ Who ventures so much as to cast an
image from the magic-lantern of fancy upon that dread 1 cloud’
which receives all the dead out of our sight, and whereon our
fathers fearlessly threw the phantasmagoria of the Divina Commedia^ and the triumphal vision with which closes the Pilgrim!s
Progress?..........................The world®, enveloped in mist, are
fading away into comparative insignificance. We do not think
of them as we once did. We cannot measure the latitude of
our voyage over life’s ocean by orbs hidden behind the clouds.
Without denying, or even gravely doubting, we allow the
future to pass into dim distance, and the present to fill the whole
« foreground of our thoughts.”
With, on the one hand, men of science affirming that there is
nothing more supernatural than matter, in which we are to seek
all the potencies and possibilities of life and mind; and on the
other, theologians resting the belief in immortality on uncertain
reasonings, and on waning authority and ancient traditions which
on their own showing are ouwof harmony with all later and
present experience, what wonder that there is an “ eclipse of
faith,” and that men generally, even when not avowed
Materialists or Sceptics, should seek to content themselves with
the certainties of the present world, and “jump the life to
come ? ”
But this condition and temper of mind, whether due to
general causes or special experience, or their conjoint operation,
is in its nature exceptional and transitory.
�8
“ Thanks to the human heart, by which we live,” it is not
possible as a finality in which the soul can rest; nor can it find
its full satisfaction in merely secular good. Those who have
tried its capacity to the utmost, who have sounded the depths
and shallows of life, and its possibilities of enjoyment, have in
proportion to their own largeness of nature felt its insufficiency,
and confirmed the old sorrowful conclusion of the preacher, “All is
vanity !” Professor Tyndall acknowledges that science does not
satisfy his emotional nature; and in speaking of the charge of
Materialistic Atheism brought against him, he says:—“ I have
noticed during years of self-observation that it is not in hours of
clearness and vigour that this doctrine commends itself to my
mind; that in the presence of stronger and healthier thought
it ever dissolves and disappears,' as offering no solution of the
mystery in which we dwell, and of which we form a part.”
At the recent Church Congress at Brighton, in its discussion
on Modem Scepticism, Professor Pritchard read a paper in
which he says:—
“ Savages have brains and capacities far beyond any use to
which, in their present condition, they can apply them. And
we too possess powers and capacities immeasurably beyond
the necessities of any merely transitory life. -There stir
within us yearnings irrepressible,^ longings unutterable, a
curiosity unsatisfied and insatiable by aught we see. These
appetites, passions, and affections come to us, not as Socrates
and Plato supposed, nor as our great poet sang, from the dim
recollection of some former state of our being, still less from
the delusive inheritance of our progenitors; they were the
indications of something within us, akin to something immeasur
ably beyond us; tokens of something attainable, yet not hitherto
attained; signs of a potential fellowship.with spirits nobler and
more glorious than our own; they were the title deeds of our
presumptive heirship to some brighter world than any that had
yet been formed.”
One of the foremost intellects of the modem world, who
knew it well from large and long experience, gives us the
following as his Curriculum Vitce^ or—
SONG OF LIFE.
I’ve set my heart upon nothing you see; I set my heart first upon wealth,
Hurrah J
Hurrah!
And so the world goes well with me.
And bartered away my peace and
Ha! ha!
health,
And who has the mind to be fellow <of
But, ah!
mine,
The slippery change went about like air,
Why, let him take hold and help me And when I had clutched me a handful
drain
here
These mouldy lees of wine.
Away it went there.
�9
I set my heart upon woman next,
Hurrah!
For her sweet sake was oft perplexed,
But, ah !
The False one looked for a daintier lot,
The Constant one wearied me out and
out,
The Best was not easily got.
I set my heart upon travels grand,
Hurrah!
And spurned our plain, old Father
land ;
But, ah!
Naught seemed to be just the thing it
should,
Most comfortless bed and indifferent
food,
My tastes misunderstood 1
,.
*
I set my heart upon sounding fame;
Hurrah!
And, lo! I’m eclipsed by some upstart’s
name;
But, ah I
When m public life I loomed quite high,
The folks that passed me would look
awry;
Their very worst friend was I.
And then I set my heart upon war,
Hurrah!
We gained some battles with ficlat,
Hurrah 1
We troubled the foe with sword and
, flame,
(Andgsome of our friends fared quite
the same,)
I lost a leg for fame.
Now I’ve set my heart on nothing you
see ;
Hurrah 1
And the whole wide world belongs to
Hurrah!
The feast begins to run low no doubt,
But bat the old cask we’ll have one
goqdabout.
Come, drink the lees all out.
Such, according toM®. many-sided Goethe, is human life;
a round of sensual pleasures and? defeated aims; and the idea
of a deeper purpos^j or of a life to whihmthis is but the prelude
and preparation, is tossed off with a cup of wine and a hurrah!
The pale face of Death, j withu moggB eyes, lurks at the
bottom of every wine cup, and looks ou^ftom behind every
garland; therefore brim the purple beaker higher, and hide the
unwelcome intruder under more flowers.
Heine is perhaps the chief apostle of this gospel of the
senses, “ his pages reek with a fragrance of pleasure through
which sighs, like, a fading wail Wm the solitary string
of a deserted harp struck by a lonesome breeze, the per
petual refrain of Death! death! death! His motto seems
to be, ‘ Quick ! let me enjoy what there is, for I must die.
0, the gusty relish of life! O, tfhei speedy mystery of
death!’” But, though Riding to the enchantments of the
siren, he could not but feel deeply the degradation, and in one
of his better moods, contrasting his later experience with the
noble faith and aspirations of his. yo®M he sadly confesses,
“ It is as if a star had fallen from heaven upon a hillock of
muck, and swine were gnawing at it.” Great talents and even
noble virtues sometimewo-exist with Materialism, but they are
not its product; all its tenderfcies are of the earth, earthy.
Turning from the gross idoTators of sense and pleasure, shall
we consult the leading oracle of Western transcendentalism? His
sentences are often instinct with the life of thought; and if he
cannot create a soul under the ribs of Death, he casts over its
�10
bare bones a detent garment of fine fancies and poetic similes.
Shall we enquire of him the mystery of being—the purpose of
life, the riddle of man ? If we may accept his own account, no
one is better qualified to satisfy our doubts either as to the
present or the future. Nature in familiar tones thus addresses
him as her votary :—
I taught thy heart beyond the reach
Of ritual, Bible, or of speech ;
Wrote on thy mind’s transparent table
As far as the incommunicable.
Taught thee each private sign to raise,
Lit by the super-solar blaze:
Past utterance and past belief,
And past the blasphemy of grief,
The mysteries of Nature’s heart;
And though no mu^e can these impart,
Throb thine with Nature’s throbbing breast,
And all is clear from east to west.
Let us then listen reverently to one whom Nature has so
highly favoured, to whom all is clear from east to west. Here
is his response:—
Alas ! the spirit that haunts us
Deceives our rash desire:
It whispers of the glorious gods,
And leaves us in the mire.
We cannot learn the cypher
That’s writ upon the wall;
Stars help us by a mystery
Which we could never spell. ’
If but the hero knew it,' |
The world would blush in flame,
The sage, tell he but the secret,
Would hang his head in shame.
But our brothers have not read it,
Not one has found the key;
And henceforth we are comforted—
We are but such as they !
Cold comfort, indeed, from one who sees so clearly, and
knows so much, to be told that we are all deceived by the spirit
that haunts us, and that we are all alike hopelessly in the dark.
Let us hope it is no u super-solar blaze” which has thus revealed
to the seer only darkness visible—that after all it may be only
a poor will-o’-the-wisp he has been following, and which thus
leaves him in the mire.
Sir Thomas Browne remarks u It is the heaviest stone that
melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him that he is at the
end of his beingand the general experience of mankind
confirms the truth of his observation. There may be some men
(though such instances are rare), who, like Professor Newman,
profess that they have no wish for the perpetuation of life
�beyond the grave. Whether such exceptional indifference springs
from natural defect (as some men are indifferent to the charms
of music and of poetry), or whether, as I incline to think, it
is due to accidental causes and morbid conditions, physical and
mental—such for instance as those which tempt men to the
unnatural act of suicide, a transient mood rather than a faithful
reflection of the soul—abundant evidence might be cited from
the most confirmed and eminent Materialists and Sceptics to show
how repugnant even to them^^jt^yidea of annihilation, how
eagerly they would welcome any conclusive evidence of immor
tality; how gladly their spiritual nature, starved and shrunken
a/it is, would welcome the revelation of a future life, if it were
proved to them to be in harmc^^Mmi the divine laws of man’s
being, and stript of those barbaric conceptions which have
perverted the gracious assurance of immortal life into what
Professor Kingsley, with grim irony, has called “ the gospel of
damnation.” Byron, when his scepticism was at full tide and at
its best, checks his scornful
—
Yet, if as holiest men have deem’d, therebe
A land of souls beyond that sable shore,
To shame the doctrine of the Sadducee
And sophists, madly vain of dubious lore ;
How sweet -it werd in concert to adore
With thosamM made HmfeMjfaadaE&s MBmBTO,.
To hear eaclie^oe laMMb MgaisMra? rjMK
Behold each mighty shade reveal’d to sight,
The Bactrian, Samian sage, and all who taught the right.
And in another poem, written in aavei^lifferot, though not
less sceptical mood, aftcj^^^gr
wi^P<^bnW'^—
That in
years,
All nations have believed that from the dead,
A visitant at intervals appears.
He significantly adds—
And what is strangest UDonjffi^stBange head
Is, that whateven|K®ithe reasonrears I I
’Gainst such belief, therestronger still
In its behalf, leaalwe^^^^m|«Mag|^'
Shelley, in his early poem of “Queen Mab,” startled the
still air with his wild shriek of Atheism; yet even at this
time, as is evident from his pomaorp1 D (SOME felt how grim
and ghastly, in his philosophy, was the pale spectre of which
he wrote:—
This world is the nurse of all we know,
This world is the
all we feel,
And the coming of death is a fearful blow,
To a brain unencompassed with nerves of steel;
When all that we know, or feel, or see,
Shall pass like an unreal mystery.
�12
The secret things of the grave are there,
Where all but this frame must surely be,
Though the fine-wrought eye and the wondrous ear
No longer will live to hear or to see
All that is great and all that is strange
In the boundless realm of unending change.
Who telleth a tale of unspeaking death ?
Who lifteth the veil of what is to come ?
Who fateteth the shadows that are beneath
The wide
w
* indin.g
eaves of the peopled tomb ?
Or uniteth the hopes of what shall be
With the fears and the love for that which we see ?
As however his min^matured, we see increasing indications of a
more ideal—a more spiritual philosophy—which, did the limits
of this essay permit, it would be interesting to trace. In his
conclusion to j£ The Sensitive Plant,” he says :—
It is a modest creed, and yet
Pleasant if one Considers it,
To own that death itself may be
Like all the rest a mockery.
*
He seems indeed to have had an intuitive belief in immortality;
and his spirit intensely yearned for proofs of kinship with
another world!, and his mind was ever filled with spiritual
imaginings. He even cherished the hope of holding communion
with the departed. At the time he was defying the learning of
Oxford to refute his “ Plea for Atheism,” he was the subject of
the wondering belief of which he speaks in the “ Hymn to In
tellectual Beauty”:—
WWle yet a boy, I sought for ghosts, and sped
Through many a listening chamber, cave and ruin,
And starlight wood, with fearful steps pursuing
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead.
And he thus concludes his “ Adonais;” an elegy on the death of
his friend the poet Keats g—
I am borne darkly, fearfully afar
Whilst burning through the inmo^^fof Heaven,
The soul of Adonais, like a star,
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal are.
Robert Burns, writing of the Future I Life to his esteemed
friend Mrf. Dunlop, exclaims | Would to G od I as firmly believed
it as I ardently wish it!” Thomas Cooper, when his scepticism
was at its climax, was so appalled at the thought of annihilation
that in his great epic, The Purgatory of Suicides, apostrophizing
the sun, he exclaims with passionate fervour :—
Farewell, grand Sun ! How my weak heart revolts
At that appalling thought—that my last look
At thy great light must come! Oh, I could brook
The dungeon, though eterne ! the priests’ own hell,
�13
Ay, or a thousand hells, in thought unshook,
Rather than Nothingness! And yet the knell
1 fear is near, that sounds—to consciousness, farewell!
may be said these are only the idle fancies of poets,
influenced by emotion rather than by reason. Well, I believe
there are times when—
The heart may give a useful lesson to the head.
KWjen, as many have experienced—•
A warmth within the breast would melt
The freezing reason’s colder part;
And like a man in wrath, the heart
Stood up and answered,—' I have felt! ’
‘
When the natural language of emotion goei®b a truth, while
Beason—blinded by the sophistries of a false philosophy—misses
its way, and for a weary time
Finds no end in wandering mazes lost.
Like Christian
m an may
find a key in his bosom called Promise, which will unlock the
(dungeon doors of Doubting Castle ^^e will but use it. Or,
to quote a simile from dkgra Paul—IM^ep-lowiiw of the heat
relights the extinguished torch in the night of the intellect, as a
beast stunned by an electric shock in the head is restored by
an electric shock in t^i b^Basgjjgt
But let us turn to oW| witnesses! HjgeBM instance, is one
who claims to be governed solely by the severest rules of reason
and of logic,—to Comte, the founder of “ The Positive Philoso
phy,” and to whom indeed we might justly apply the remark
addressed by Friend Allen to Robert Owen, u Friend Robert,
thee ought to be very right, thee art so very positive I” Yet
when tlOpjrings of his emotional nature were touched, it was
to him a revelation which led him to see how defective was the
system of materialisms philosophy he had so laboriously con
structed; and his lateijviews on peligiom weremMsuch marked
contrast with it, that some of his followers deemed it evidence
of aberration of mind, and as such it was actually urged in a
court of law to set aside the' W.that he had made. Professor
Maurice, after quoting a sketch of his life, remarks :—“ From
this profoundly interesting narrative we learn that human love
awakened Comte to a conviction of the inadequacy of his
philosophical scheme J He must have a religion to graft upon
it. There is no help^or it; he must deny facts—facts which
he has realized—if he pretends that his notion of science is
sufficient to explain them. His followers perceived clearly—
and complained bitterly—that by taking this course he is giving
up the principles for which they had hailed him as the last
�14
great discoverer, as the man 1 who had grasped the true power
for the co-ordination of the sciences.’ ”
Voltaire in his article, “ Soul,” in the Philosophiacffl^^^
tionary, tells us that of “its origin, nature, and destiny Kill
know and can know nothing; that it is a subject on which we
must ever continue in a labyrinth of doubts and feeble con
jectures
and our questionings on the matter he says are
“ questions of blind men asking one another, ‘ What is light ”
Yet this prince of sceptics and scoffers in the article “Magic” of
the same work, writes, “ This soul, this shade, which existed,
separated from its body, might-'very well show itself upon
occasions, revisit the place which it had inhabited, its parents
and friends, • speak to them and instruct them. In all this there
is no incompatibility.”
Renan—the brilliant countryman of Comte and Voltaire—
goes even further, he dedicates his Life of Jesus, “ To the pure
soul of my sister, Henrietta, who died September 24, 1861J’
In the course of thildedication he thus invokes her:—“ Reveal
to me, O good Genius—to me, whom thou lovedst—those truths
which conquer death, deprive it of terror, and make it almost
beloved.” Mr. G. J. Holyoake, founder of “ Secularism,”
which, like “ Positivism,” denies or ignores God and a Future
Life, in a passage of great tenderness and pathos, describing the
death of his child, in his Last Trial by Jury for Atheism, avows
that even to him a pure and rational faith in immortality would
be more congenial than the cold negations and dreary platitudes
to which his life has mainly been devoted.
'
“My dada’s coming to see me,” Madeline exclaimed on the night of her
death, with that full, pure, and thrilling tone which marked her when in health.
“ I am sure he is coming to night, mama,” and then remembering that that
could not he, she said “Write to him, mama, he will come to see me}” and these
were the last words she w®fed—and all that remains now is tneunemory of
that cheerless, fireless room, and the midnight reverberation of that voice
which I would give a new world to hear again. * * * * Yes, though I
neither hope—for that wouffl be presumptuous—nor expect it, seeing no foun
dation, I shall he pleased to find a life after this. Not a life where those are
punished who were unable to believe without evidence, and unwilling to act in
spite of reason—for the prospect of annihilation is pleasanter and more profitable
to contemplate: not a fife where an easy faith is regarded as “ easy virtue” is
regarded among some men—but a life where those we have loved and lost here
are restored to us again—for there, in that Hall where those may meet who
have been sacrificed in the cg®se of duty—where no gross, or blind, or selfish,
or cruel nature mingles, where none sit but those whom human service and
endurance have purified and entitled to that high company, Madeline will be a
Hebe. Yes, a future life, bringing with it the admission to such companionship,
would be a noble joy to contemplate.
Well would it have been for him, and for the influence he
has exercised, had he in this matter fully realised the truth
expressed by himself in his essay on The Logic of Death
“ Plainly, as though written with the finger of Orion in the
�15
vault of night, does man read the future in his heart. The
impulse of fiction that leaps unbidden to his breast, which,
■rough suppressed in comparative strife, or withered by cankering cares, yet returns in the woodland walk and the midnight
musing, ever whispering of something better to be realised.”
Yes ! and the whisper is no “ fiction 5” the language of the heart
does not deceive us.
A late eminent English philosopher, whose autobiography
enables us to understand how it came to pass that, as he pro
fessed he never had
yet when his emotional
nature was stirred to its depths by the bereavement of a beloved
wife, felt so little the consolations of his own philosophy, that he
daily visited her tomb, sometimes, it is I said, remaining there
for hours together, in bitterness of spirit, at what he regarded
as an irreparable loss. O, that as he sat there, disconsolate,
he could have opened his sorrowing heart to the comforting
assurance of the angel, “ She is not here, she is risen !”
Hobbes confessed that to him death was “a leap in the
dark
and of Hume, the acutest of sceptics, and the influence
of whose philosophy has perhaps been the most penetrating and
persuasive, it has been truly
Sears, that
u Perhaps there is nmj a more significant passage in religious
literature than the supprSea passage of Mr. Hume, where he
describes the influence of his speculations. He surveys the
habitation whicu, withBnfiw^^)^M s^Wie has builded about
him, and he starts with horror ^j^gMb'of the gloomy and
vacant chambers.” The
is the passage referred to:—
I am astonished and affrighted at the forlorn solitude in which I am placed
by my philosophy. When I look about I see on every side dispute, contradiction,
and distraction. When I turn my eyes inward, I find nothing but doubt and
ignorance. Where am I, and what ? fca®® what causes do I derive existence,
and to what condition do I return ? jjl
with these questions, and
I begin to fancy myself- in the most dejgog^le
imaginable, environed
in the deepest darkness.
In Carlyle’s Life of
is a passage, remarkable for
its graphic force, which may
taken as‘ an epitome of the
sceptical philosophy^concpming a Future Life, and as such is
quoted with approval Bv M^Holy<awl|^ his Logic of Death.
It reads thus :—
What went before and what>v3]^o®Ww me, I regard as two black im
penetrable curtains, which hang down at the two extremities of human life, and
which no living man has yet drawn aside. Many hundreds of generations
have already stood before them with their -torche^gugssin g anxiously what
lies behind. On the curtain of Futurity many
own shadows, the
forms of their passions enlarged and put in motion; they shrink in terror at this
image of themselves. Poets, philosophers, and founders of states, have painted
this curtain with their dreams, more smiling or more dark, as the sky above
them was cheerful or gloomy ; and their pictures deceive the eye when viewed
from a distance. Many jugglers, too, make profit of this our universal
�16
curiosity : by their strange mummeries they have set the outstretched fan<5y'u3
amazement. A deep silence reigns behind this curtain; no one once within
will answer those he has left without; all you can hear is a hollow echo of your
question, as if you shouted into a chasm.
No doubt priests and jugglers have made profit of our
universal curiosity on a question in which we are so profoundly
interested, but that no one once within the veil will answer
those he has left without, is a statement in flat denial to known
experience in all ages, and most emphatically so to that of our
own age, in which we have the most ample and conclusive
evidence that death is no impenetrable curtain separating us
wholly from those who have gon$ before ; and it is moreover a
view as gloomy as it is false.
*
Great God! I’d rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on j^his pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn !
How far more cheering and ennobling is the faith enunciated
by Fichte:—
The world of nature, on which but now I gazed with wonder and admiration,
sinks before me. With all its abounding life and order and bounteous increase,
it is but the curtain which hides one infinitely more perfect—the germ from
which that other shall develope itself. My faith pierces through this veil, and
broods over and animates this germ. It sees, indeed, nothing distinctly; but it
expects more than it 'pan- conceive, more than it will ever be able to conceive,
until time shall be no more.
A prominent Sceptic, conversing on Spiritualism with a
mutual friend—a believer—remarked, “ I would give every
thing, could I but held your unfaltering convictions on this
subject.
What, indeed, has Materialism to offer us in exchange for
the faith in immortality it calls upon us to surrender ? When the
heart is lacerated
l°ss of wife, or child, of friend, to be
told that all must one-day suffer alike experience; that perhaps
time may blunt the edge of sensibility, and awaken new interests;
that the material atoms of the beloved form are imperishable,
and may re-appear in tigbes and grass and flowers, is but to mock
our grief. I do not argue that we are to accept this, or any
belief, simply because it is agreeable to us. Of course, the
primary question is, not what would be pleasant, but what is
true. If it can be proved that life, thought, feeling, conscious
ness perish with the body, let us bear our fate with what
fortitude we may. My present purpose is only to show that
the faith in immortafflty is congenial to the human heart; that
when it finds free utterance the most confirmed Sceptics, the
most obdurate Materialists, confess as much, despite the confirmed
and inveterate prejudice to” the contrary. It is not death,
but life for which we pant—that more and fuller life, eternal
�17
in the heavens" At least one entire side of our nature,
and that not the least trustworthy, responds to this belief,
and is- never fully reconciled to its contrary. And although
in this matter instances abound in which the other side of our
nature falters and is recalcitrant, yet it would surely be
irrational to conclude that even here this discordance is necessary
and final. Harmony is our normal condition, the true law of
our being, and we need never despair of its attainment, though
the evidence to co-ordinate with faith may have to be sought
elsewhere than in the jiommon Ftheology offehe pulpit or the
philosophy of schools.
Some of my readerswwilL doubtless smile when I affirm my
conviction that this evidence is supplied in the facts of modern
Spiritualism. YeO^^B no hasty conclusion, but my deliberate
and matured iudgmew^MMya^ years’ investigation and
experience. And now after more than a quarter of a century’s
contemptuous denial of these facts, and unmeasured scorn and
vituperation of those who asserted them, as within the range of
their own personal knowledge, the most distinguished scientists,
after full investigation and every application of crucial tests, are
fast admitting
scientists of
the highest reputation have expressed a contrary opinion; but
there is this difference, that while the latter speak without any
proper knowledge
subject, and have been at no pains to
inform themselves concerning it, the former have made it a
matter of deep research, and Ihave^^enWitl years of careful
experimental investigation. Wherever the inwstigation has
been most thorough, raonvStat has been most complete. And
it would be difficult to name any better test fef truth than this.
As remarked by a, Roman Catholic writer in the Dublin
Review :—
The invariable .law of a plausible lie is this—let it be received at first with
open arms; intelligeil^MaSlwho have no interest in supporting it and no
prejudice in favour of
and inquire;
it gradually, and,
as it were, day by day loses its hold on the credence of men, and at length
vanishes utterly and for ever.
opposite of this has been the fortune
of the phenomena we are speaking of. Among men of keen and cultivated
minds they were at first received, not only with disbelief, but with laughter and
derision: they were rejected as untrue, not because not proven, but because
incapable of proof, because they were impossible—and, Hfeed, impossible they
are, as we shall see, to mere human power and skill. Among the characteristics
of the world in modern times a tendency to
preternatural most
certainly can not be reckoned. The phenomena of Magnetism and Spiritism at
least appear preternatural: the
BjreMlSMilrainst accepting them:
it was predicted that, before the generation that witnessed their rise had died
out, they would hav^ffi^ppeared aaMBeen forgotten. Well, years have rolled
on, and men who formerly wo»smmM without impatience read or listen to the
accounts of these phenomena (the TOSaMiEBer was one of these), had at
length been led to examine what was making such a noise in the world, and
from mature, and for a time prejudiced, examination, have been led to conviction.
�18
In this way have been brought round several of the ablest and most learned
men m Europe, Catholic theologians, physicians, and philosophers and others,
Catholic, Protestant, and free-thinking. Authority does not necessarily nor
even. generally, prove an opinion: in a matter of mere opinion the mosl
enquiring and cautious men may be greatly deceived, and have been so
deceived. But here there is question of facts and of the testimony of the
senses—of facts sensible to the sight, the hearing, the touch—of facts and
testimonies repeated over and over again, beyond the possibility of calculation
in the greater part of.Europe and America, and recorded year after year down to
the present day. It is quite impossible that about such facts such a cloud of
such witnesses should be all deceived.
The spiritual nature and future life of man are then not only
within the range of the knowable, but have become actually
known to thousands of independent and qualified investigators,
including several of the ablest and most learned men in
Europeand we may add, of its most distinguished men of
science * Materialism has demanded plain palpable facts, and
by these it has been confuted. It has challenged sensuous and
scientific demonstration, and its terms have been accepted, and
the demonstration is complete and overwhelming. As with the
hammer of Thor the strong walls and towers of Materialism
have been broken by it into fragments.
We have seen by the confessions of its chief expounders
what a dismal outlook it presents; but this can only be fully
realised by those who have dwelt in and emerged from those
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades,
Where peace and rest can never dwell,
Hope never comes.
Dr. George Sexton, for twenty years one of the leading
advocates of Secularism, and by far its most learned and scientific
representative, after long and careful investigation into Spiritu
alism, fully satisfied himself of its truth, and is now one of its
most earnest. advocates. Speaking of the state of mind to
which Scepticism leads, he says :—
No man knows.better what this state of mind is than I do, having had many
years bitter experience of the doubts and uncertainties which it involves. To
be, as the poet says,
“ Haunted for ever by the Eternal Mind,”
and yet not to feel able to recognize the Divine in Nature and the spiritual in
man, is a condition which is easier felt than described. Gleams of light occa
sionally shooting through the dense darkness, serving only to make the darkness
a. erwards more intense; a few drops of rain on the parched and dried up
ground, the sight of food to the hungry, or water placed before the eyes as
c -° +F k° ?1°C7 ,e v,lsl0n
h™ wbo is dying of thirst, are similes which but
faintly shadow forth the state of mind of the Sceptic.
Q
4? th® “0SJ recent examples inEngland see “A Defence of Modern
bpintualism, by Alfred Russell Wallace, in the Fortnightly Review for
ay an June, 1874; and “ Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called
pin ua , unng the Years 1870-3,” in the Quarterly Journal of Science, for
nuary, 874, by its editor, William Crookes, F.R.S. The Report on Spiritugtism of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society, 1871, also gives a
m,ass of evidence on this subject.
s
(
�!T9
■ttffiRnSy manner Gerald Massey, in his admirable essay con
cerning Spiritualism, testifies:—
Spiritualism will make religion infinitely more real, and translate it from the
domain of belief to that of life. It has been to me, in common with many
others, such a lifting of the mental horizon and a letting in of the heavens—
such a transformation of faiths into facts—that I can only compare life without
it to sailing on board ship with hatches battened down, and being kept a
prisoner, cribbed, cabined, and confined, living by the light of a candle—dark to
the glory overhead, and blind to a thousand possibilities of being, and then
suddenly on some splendid starry night allowed to go on deck for the first time,
to see the stupendous mechanism of the starry heavens all aglow with the glory
of God, to feel that vast vision glittering in the eyes, bewilderingly. beautiful,
and drink in new life with every breath of this wondrous liberty, which makes
you dilate almost large enough in soul to fill the immensity that you see around.
One who has followed the Apostolic injunction—“ Add to
your faith, knowledge; ” and whose public ministrations as a
teacher of religion have, in consequencelbeen marked by an
intelligence, as well as a strength and fervour, which carry to
other hearts the conviction of his own, remarks:—
This doctrine of a God who is indeed our Father ; this glorious assurance of
everlasting life in Him ; this long line of witnesses who have caught some ray
of His divine beauty and shed it upon us—these things, which religion grafts
upon philosophy, make life rich indeed. We can fly for shelter from Infinite
Law, and take refuge and find peace in Infinite Love. . . . . And when
the fear of death comes on us, we can look through the darkness to the light
beyond, and lie down in hope, knowing in Whom we have believed, and confident
that He will keep that which, in life’s last act of renunciation, we commit to
Him. It is this tone of triumphant confidence, this enthusiasm of faith in the
truth of the Universe, this fanaticism of trust in the veracity of God, which
gives zest to life. It is this hope which brightens the eye and nerves the hand,
makes us strong and happy in the conflict of duty, and enables us to overcome
the world. It is this certainty of faith which turns belief into knowledge, and
is the everlasting Rock on which we stand secure amid the changes and
calamities of time.”*
When Dr. Tyndall in his celebrated Belfast address went
out of his way to speak of Spiritualism as “ degrading,” he
spoke not with the intelligent impartiality due to the high
position he occupied, but with the vehement prejudice of a
disciple of the Lucretian philosophy of which he appears
enamoured; but to which it seems to me the term he used might
fitly be applied. Mr. Alfred Russell Wallace, who has made
Spiritualism a special and careful study, and whose judgment
concerning it is therefore of far greater weight, remarks that its
phenomena combined with its higher teachings, “ constitute a
great moral agency which may yet regenerate the world.”
For the Spiritualist who, by daily experience, gets absolute knowledge of
these facts regarding the future state—who knows that, just in proportion as
he indulges in passion, or selfishness, or the exclusive pursuit of wealth, and
neglects to cultivate the affections and the varied powers of his mind, so does
he inevitably prepare for himself misery in a world in which there are no
physical wants to be provided for, no sensual enjoyments except those directly
associated with the affections and sympathies, no occupations but those having
* Scientific Men and .Religious Teachers, by P. W. Clayden.
�20
for their object social and intellectual progress—is impelled towards a pure, a
sympathetic, and an intellectual life by motives far stronger than any which
either religion or philosophy can supply. He dreads to give way to passion or
to falsehood, to selfishness or to a life of luxurious physical enjoyment, because
he knows that the natural and inevitable consequences of such habits are future
misery, necessitating a long and arduous struggle in order to develope anew the
faculties whose exercise long disuse has rendered painful to him. He will be
deterred from crime by the knowledge that its unforseen consequences may
cause him ages of remorse ; while the bad passions which it encourages will be
a perpetual torment to himself in a state of being in which mental emotions
cannot be laid aside or forgotten amid the fierce struggles and sensual pleasures
of a physical existence. It must be remembered that these beliefs (unlike those
of theology) will have a living efficacy, because they depend on facts occurring’
again and again in the family circle, constantly reiterating the same truths as
the result of personal knowledge, and thus bringing home to the mind even of
the most obtuse, the absolute reality of that future existence in which our
degree of happiness or misery will be directly dependent on the “mental fabric”
we construct by our daily though®^ and words, and actions here........................
The assertion, so often made, that Spiritualism is the survival or revival of
old superstitions, is so utterly ®u founded as to be hardly worth notice. A
science of human nature which ^^founded on observed facts, which appeals only
to facts _ and experiment,
takes no beliefs on trust, which inculcates in
vestigation and self-reliance as the first duties of intelligent beings, which
teaches that happiness in a future life can be secured by cultivating and develop
ing to the utmost the higher faculties of our intellectual and moral nature and
by no other method, is and must be the natural enemy of all superstition.
Spiritualism is an experimental science, and affords the only sure foundation for
a true philosophy and a puSEelieapn. It abolishes the terms “ supernatural”
and “ miracle” by an extenWjm of the sphere of law and the realm of nature ;
and in doing so it takes up and explains whatever is true in the superstitions
and so-called miracles of all ages.
Contrast the moral influence of thisPknowledge—not only as
Mr. Wallace has here done with that of the popular religion and
theology—but with that of the latest gospel of our high priests
of science that matter is the final cause of all things ; and that
man is but an automatic machine, the product of its atoms
evolved through the lower forms of organic life; and soonr
u like streaks of morning cloud, melting into the infinite azure
of the pastwhile religion, “ though valuable in itself, is only
man’s speculative creation,” concerning which “ ultimate fixity
of conception is here unattainable.” Look on that philosophyr
and on this ; and then let intelligent reasonable men determine
which is elevating and which degrading.
Mr. John Stuart Mill, while considering the evidence for our
hope of personal immortality to be but slender and dubious,
insists that it is a part of wisdom to let the imagination dwell
by preference on a possibility “ at once the most comforting and
the most improving.” Spiritualism enables us to read “ cer
tainty” for “ possibilityand when even the faint hope of a
nobler destiny is most comforting and most improving, what
must be the effect when we no longer walk with faltering
uncertain feet, but feel the ground firm under us ; and can look
upward to the heavens in the serene confidence of knowledge?
�
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Victorian Blogging
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A collection of digitised nineteenth-century pamphlets from Conway Hall Library & Archives. This includes the Conway Tracts, Moncure Conway's personal pamphlet library; the Morris Tracts, donated to the library by Miss Morris in 1904; the National Secular Society's pamphlet library and others. The Conway Tracts were bound with additional ephemera, such as lecture programmes and handwritten notes.<br /><br />Please note that these digitised pamphlets have been edited to maximise the accuracy of the OCR, ensuring they are text searchable. If you would like to view un-edited, full-colour versions of any of our pamphlets, please email librarian@conwayhall.org.uk.<br /><br /><span><img src="http://www.heritagefund.org.uk/sites/default/files/media/attachments/TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" width="238" height="91" alt="TNLHLF_Colour_Logo_English_RGB_0_0.jpg" /></span>
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Conway Hall Library & Archives
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2018
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Conway Hall Ethical Society
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Title
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Immortality in harmony with man's nature and experience - confessions of sceptics
Creator
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Brevior, Thomas
Description
An account of the resource
Place of publication: [s.l.]
Collation: 20 p. ; 22 cm.
Notes: From the library of Dr Moncure Conway. Includes bibliographical references. Pseudonym of Thomas Shorter. Date of publication from KVK.
Publisher
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[s.n.]
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[1875]
Identifier
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G5334
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Free thought
Immortality
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<a href="http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/"><img src="http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png" alt="Public Domain Mark" /></a><span> </span><br /><span>This work (Immortality in harmony with man's nature and experience - confessions of sceptics), identified by </span><a href="https://conwayhallcollections.omeka.net/items/show/www.conwayhall.org.uk"><span>Humanist Library and Archives</span></a><span>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</span>
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application/pdf
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Text
Language
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English
Conway Tracts
Future Life
Scepticism