PUBLIC MEDIUMSHIP AND THE HOME CIRCLE.

 

While I would not confine investigations to any one phase or method, I am partial to the family circle composed of sympathetic friends. I write this not in disparagement of the many mediums who in various spheres are helping to solve the mysteries of spirit. Many are earnest, devoted, honest and self-sacrificing, but the methods introduced and pursued are essentially vicious in tendency.

 

In no department of research does the investigator meet with greater difficulties than in that of spirit manifestations. The field is almost unknown, with scarcely a trail to guide the explorer, and the essential conditions on which success depends cannot with certainty be predicated. It has been approached by two classes, actuated by opposite motives, one prejudiced against everything claiming spirit origin, prejudging the case, and arrogantly blind to the facts which appear; the other too easily satisfied with partiality of credulity for the bizarre and incomprehensible. Then there is a middle class of students who discriminate, rejecting the false and accepting the true, and by so doing are distrusted by both extremes. The first regarding them as untrustworthy; the latter as suspicious allies, liable to desert the cause at any moment. As Confucius taught, the truth resides in the "golden mean," calm judgment and impartial reason having eliminated the sources of error.

 

The demand of a materialistic age for objective manifestations, has had a disastrous influence. It has gone on increasing in requirements until the most remarkable—if not impossible—have been asked for, and answered, for never incredulity so great but fraud can administer to its wants. Those who have disclaimed materializations as gross and unworthy, have reduced Spiritualism itself to the crudest materialism, and have been satisfied with nothing short of weighing their so-called spirit friends on platform scales and pocketing the yards of lace woven by their deft fingers.

 

Spiritual phenomena must be essentially spiritual and only touch the physical horizon. It was a blunder, fraught with disaster to the cause, when the purely spiritual phases were set aside for grosser forms of manifestation; the end being invariably the same. The sensitive or medium commences with an honest purpose. The manifestations are slight, occur at irregular times, and when least called for. If content to cultivate this sensitiveness and receive what is given, all is well. It may grow more and more, and have seasons of wonderful activity; but the possessor usually becomes a public vender of his or her gift. The eager public calls at certain hours and pays a fixed price. Every inducement is made to increase the manifestations and make them more remarkable. These cannot be predicated, and the chances are always against their recurrence. The intense desire of those awaiting responses, acts hypnotically on the medium. If he is sensitive to the thoughts of spirits, he is equally so to the thoughts and wishes of mortals. Impelled by the latter influence and the desire to win money, the manifestations are simulated, and this with more and more daring until at last the deception is too transparent to deceive the most credulous, and thus brings its own cure.