Part 7

It is the danger to the will, fully recognised and acknowledged, which leads Sir Oliver Lodge and others to press on students of Spiritualism the need for a primary absorption in worldly affairs. Camille Flammarion, the chief French authority, urges the same view. “There are foods and drinks,” he says, “which it is most wholesome to take only in small quantities.” After a lifetime devoted to the study of mediumship, this brilliant Frenchman thought that three principles only were established:

(1) The soul exists as a real entity independent of the body.

(2) It is endowed with faculties still unknown to science.

(3) It is able to act at a distance without the intervention of the senses.

Passing, then, from the first part of our subject, we may summarise as follows:--

(1) The past of Spiritualism is deeply tainted with fraud, and the present is “clouded with a doubt.” There may have been unconscious cheating, but there has been much deliberate roguery.

(2) Even where fraud seems to be eliminated, it is probable that the unexplained phenomena of mediumship will become clear as a wider knowledge is gained of man’s physical and mental powers. “I hold,” says Dr. Barnes, “that all the well-attested evidence, on which the theory of spirit-communication is based, will ultimately be explained by a fuller knowledge of the interchange of consciousness between living persons.”

(3) We reject the crude theory that mediumistic phenomena are caused by diabolic intervention.

(4) We believe that mental and moral ruin may result from “borderland” studies, because in these the personality is peculiarly liable to the loss of will-power and self-control. “We shall do well to keep the doors of the soul shut until we can open them to God.”

Chapter VIII

SPIRITUALISM AND CHRISTIANITY

Spiritualism, a recent writer says, is more and more proving itself a rival to Christianity. Its votaries cease, almost invariably, to be Christians in any traditional sense of the word. It grips the mind of “dabblers” with an extraordinary fascination, and “seems to demand a self-surrender as great as that which Christianity itself involves, a surrender of the whole personality.”

We propose to ask in this chapter, “What is the attitude of Spiritualist teachers towards the Christian faith?” An exceptional position, let us remark at the outset, is occupied by two of the leaders, Sir W. F. Barrett and Sir Oliver Lodge. The former regards the evidence afforded at the séance as “a handmaid to faith,” and warns beginners “against making a religion of Spiritualism.”

Sir Oliver Lodge, as we know from his writings, has a sincere reverence for the Person of our Lord. He is convinced that grades of being exist, not only lower in the scale than man, but higher also, grades of every order of magnitude from zero to infinity. Among these lofty beings “is One on whom the right instinct of Christianity has always lavished heartfelt reverence and devotion. Those who think that the day of the Messiah is over are strangely mistaken; it has hardly begun.... Whatever the Churches may do, I believe that the call of Christ himself will be heard and attended to, by a large part of humanity in the near future, as never yet it has been heard or attended to on earth.... My own time down here is getting short; it matters little; but I dare not go till I have borne this testimony to the grace and truth which emanate from that divine Being.”

There is something characteristic in the question asked by the bereaved father at an “automatic” séance reported in “Raymond”:

“O. J. L.: Before you go, Raymond, I want to ask a serious question. Have you been let to see Christ?”

“Father, I shall see him presently. It is not time yet.”

Intercourse with the departed means for Sir Oliver Lodge “nothing less than the possibility some day of a glance or a word of approval from the eternal Christ.”

A different world opens upon us as we examine the general literature of Spiritualism. Its “Seven Principles” have been set forth as follows:

I. The Fatherhood of God. II. The Brotherhood of Man. III. Continuous Existence. IV. Communion of Spirits and Ministry of Angels. V. Personal Responsibility. VI. Compensation and Retribution Hereafter for good or ill done on earth. VII. A path of endless progression.

The name of our Lord is not mentioned, yet these “principles” would be words of little meaning but for His life on earth, His death, His resurrection, and His glorious reign. It was He who taught us to say “Our Father.” New ideas were poured by Him into the Roman world. “One is your teacher, and you are all brothers.” “The King will answer them, ‘I tell you truly, in so far as you did it to one of these brothers of mine, even to the least of them, you did it to me.’” The Risen Saviour said on Easter morning, “Go to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and yours, to my God and yours.’” Though exalted far above all heavens, “He is not ashamed to call them brothers.” His followers believe in the communion of saints. The ministry of angels is not strange to them, since “angels came and ministered to Him.” His teaching on responsibility, compensation and retribution is the highest yet vouchsafed to mankind. If continuous existence is the master-chord of Spiritualism, it was He who brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel, who showed to dying men the path of life. Why, then, is His name omitted from the “Seven Principles” of Spiritualism? The challenge cannot be put aside. The question goes sounding through the ages to every new discipleship, “What think ye of Christ?”

Impatience and annoyance seem to be roused in certain Spiritualists when the question is put to them. Mr. J. Arthur Hill, in the concluding pages of his best-known volume, refers to the complaint of “a clerical reviewer of a recent book of mine ... that I nowhere stated my belief regarding Christ.”

“It seemed a curious objection,” he goes on, “and it had not occurred to me that anyone would expect Christology in a book mainly describing psychical investigations.” He refers to “technical theological details on which I am incompetent to pronounce,” and adds that “Spiritualists seem for the most part to be uninterested in the subtleties of the Trinitarian doctrine. All venerate the person and teaching of Jesus.”

The writer expresses his own belief that “Jesus may have belonged to some order higher than ours.” “I admit,” he says, “that I have felt this about Emerson.... Consequently, I sympathise with those who, being rightly humble about their own persons, but rating others and human possibilities in general too low, feel the necessity of regarding Jesus as more than man.”

It is strange that a writer of Mr. Hill’s intelligence should forget that we are living in a Christian land, and that Spiritualism professes to bring new certainties about the future life to those whose hope and anchor on futurity has hitherto rested wholly in the Christian faith. He goes as far as he possibly can to meet the inquiries of Christian readers, but evidently thinks it unfair that they should tease him. That is the surprising thing.

Take in contrast the language of James Smetham, when he was studying the Epistle to the Hebrews: “The great difference of such a subject from all others is that all the interests of Time and Eternity are wrapped up in it. The scrutiny of a title-deed of £100,000 a year is nothing to it. How should it be? Is there a Christ? Is He the heir of all things? Was He made flesh? Did He offer the all-perfect sacrifice? Did He supersede the old order of priests? Is He the Mediator of a new and better covenant? What are the terms of that covenant? There are no questions like these. All other interests seem low, trivial, momentary.”

III

Two affirmations meet us on the threshold of the Gospels. One is the assertion of our Lord’s Divinity, which Mr. Gladstone called “the only hope of our poor wayward human race.” “Immanuel, God with us,” has been the conquering cry of Christian ages. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us; and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.”