"The feats of the ancient jugglers were many of them mere acts of deception. They were known to be such by those who performed them. And the same is true of many who practise the like things now. Their rappings and writings, and other strange performances, are secretly, artfully got up by themselves. I do not say that this is true in all cases; but in some cases we know it is true; because the matter has been fully investigated, and public confession has been made. For example: A young woman, who had been instructed by the Rochester rappers, and practised the art with them for a time, afterwards renounced it, and exposed the delusion to the world. 'All who saw her and heard her,' says my informant, 'were entirely satisfied of the truth of her statements, and that she had revealed the actual method in which the deception was effected and the deluded were blinded. Another young woman in Providence, Almira Beazely, who was noted for her rappings and revelations, and who murdered her brother to accomplish one of her own predictions, confessed, on her trial, that she made the noises herself, and explained the manner in which they were produced. She also confessed to the removal of certain articles in the house which had strangely disappeared, and which she pretended had been taken away by spirits. Drs. Lee and Flint, of Buffalo, assisted by two gentlemen by the name of Burr, have very thoroughly investigated the matter, and explained the manner in which the mysterious noises are made. Mr. Burr has himself made the rappings, and made them so loud as to be heard by a congregation of fifteen hundred people.

"These instances are sufficient to prove that the spiritual manifestations of our times, like those of ancient times, are in many instances a sheer deception—a vile trick, palmed off upon a wondering and credulous community, for the sake of money, or for other sinister and selfish ends. If there is any thing more than trick in these spiritual manifestations,—and I am inclined to think that, in some instances, there may be,—I should refer it, as in case of the ancient wizards, to the influence of occult natural causes—perhaps electricity, or animal magnetism, or something else, operating upon a nervous system of peculiar sensibility. I incline to this opinion for several reasons.

"In the first place, if the noises and other manifestations were really the work of spirits, why should they not be made through one person, as well as another? Why should not all mediums be alike? Whereas it is confessed that only persons of a peculiar nervous temperament are capable of becoming mediums.

"Again: if the disclosures which are made are really from the spirit world, it might be expected that they would, at least, be consistent with themselves. Whereas it is well known that they vary endlessly. In numerous instances, they are directly self-contradictory. 'Some of the communications,' says one who had been a medium, 'were orthodox; others were infidel. Some would acknowledge the truth of the Bible; others would condemn it. Some would be in favor of virtue; others would encourage the grossest crimes.'

"Another man, who had been a noted medium, but who was beginning to get his eyes opened as to the character of the proceedings, told his audience one night, 'Now, any one present ask a series of questions, and I pledge myself that the answer shall be, every time, yes.' Some one in the company asked, 'Is John Thompson alive?' The answer was, 'Yes.' 'Is John Thompson dead?' 'Yes.' 'Does John Thompson live in Vermont?' 'Yes.' 'Does he live in Massachusetts?' 'Yes.' And so the spirits went on contradicting themselves times without number. After this, a like series of questions were answered in the negative, exhibiting the most glaring contradictions, just as the operator pleased.

"But this brings me to another reason for supposing that the answers are not from departed spirits, but rather from the mind of the operator, or from some other mind in communication with his, under the influence of an electric or magnetic cause. It is an admitted fact that these answers coincide very generally with the opinions or wishes of the medium, or of some one present in consultation with him. I knew a very respectable man, who discovered that he was a medium, and who practised various experiments upon himself. Upon being asked what he thought of it, he replied, 'If the answers are from the spirits, they must be very silly spirits; for they always answer just as I wish to have them.' Another medium informs us that he can obtain any answer he pleases, by fixing his mind strongly upon it at the time. Now, does this look as though the answer came from spirits? If the spirits of the dead spoke, they would be likely to speak out independently; to speak just what they thought, and not what those thought with whom they were consulting.

"There is another circumstance to be noted in this connection. When the requisite preparation is made, there is no need of consulting the spirits at all, in order to secure answers. You may consult with the chairs or the table just as well. This experiment was tried, not long since, at Wilmington, Vermont. A Mr. Kellogg was the medium, and he had succeeded in consulting the spirits to the satisfaction of all concerned. At length he remarked that he was about to let the company into an important secret. 'We will interrogate the table,' said he, 'and have nothing more to do with spirits.' He did so; and the table talked and answered, just as the spirits had done before. At the same time the table was made to stand on one leg, and to move about, as is usual in such cases. This experiment demonstrated, to the satisfaction of all present, that the strange appearances could be produced just as well without the spirits as with them. 'The calling for spirits,' to use the language of my informant, 'is mere garnish and fog, by which the real agency in the case is concealed.'

"On the point now under consideration, viz., the possibly electric character of these manifestations, I am happy to introduce the testimony of Dr. Samuel Taylor, a respectable physician of Petersham, Massachusetts, whose article on the subject may be found in a late number of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. Dr. Taylor discovered accidentally that he was a medium, and he proceeded to make experiments upon himself. The manifestation, in his case, was not by rapping, but by writing—a much more convenient mode of communicating with the spirit world. On taking his pen, and holding himself in a peculiar attitude, and proposing mentally some question to the spirits, his pen would begin to oscillate in his fingers, and very soon would write out an answer; and this without any voluntary effort of his own. And what is particularly to be noticed is, the pen would always write an answer which accorded with his own opinion or wishes, that is, if he had any wish on the subject. For example: Dr. Taylor inquired of one of the spirits about the different forms of religion. 'I asked which was the best religion, at the same time fixing my mind sternly on the word Protestant. My hand immediately wrote Protestant. In the same manner, and by direction of the same spirit, my hand wrote successively, Methodist, Unitarian, and I believe one or two others. While in this state,' Dr. Taylor says, 'I felt a sensation like that of a light galvanic current passing through me. Sometimes it appeared to be a steady thrill, and sometimes it was intermittent, resembling light shocks of electricity.'

"After numerous experiments, Dr. Taylor comes to the conclusion, that the strange phenomena of which he was the subject were not tricks of his own, neither did they come from the spirit world, but were the result of what he calls detached vitalized electricity. When this conclusion had been formed in his own mind, it occurred to him that he would put it to the test of the spirits themselves. 'Accordingly I asked them,' says he, 'if this was the work of departed spirits. The answer was, "No." I asked if it was the work of the devil. Again the answer was, "No." I asked if it was the effect of detached vitalized electricity. The answer was, "Yes."' So the spirits confirmed the conclusion to which the doctor had come, as they did, in fact, all his conclusions.

"We have the testimony of another medium, of the same import with that of Dr. Taylor. Mr. Benjamin F. Cooley, who had long been a believer and operator in the spiritual rappings, states that his mind is now entirely changed. This change was brought about in consequence of 'a deep and earnest study of the nature, power, and application of electricity, and of the susceptibility of the mind to electrical or psychological changes.' These things, he says, will produce the same mysterious and startling phenomena which have been produced throughout the country, and attributed to the operations of departed spirits. (Mr. Cooley has recently published a work entitled An Exposition of Spiritual Manifestations, to which we would refer the reader.)

"A part of what is done by those who claim to have familiar spirits, may be the result of unknown natural causes. This is the most plausible and excusable view which can possibly be taken of these practices; and yet, even in this view, they are frightfully evil. The persons who alone are susceptible to the influence of these natural causes are generally those of a diseased or delicate nervous temperament; and the effect of experimenting upon their nervous system is usually to shatter it the more. They become excitable, fantastic, and often insane. Diseases are engendered, both of body and mind, which lead on to the most fearful consequences. But a short time ago, the papers gave an account of a man in Barre, Massachusetts, who had been much given to the rappings and other spiritual manifestations, who became, in consequence, a raving maniac, threatening the life of his family, and was committed to the Lunatic Asylum at Worcester. Other like instances are occurring frequently, from the same cause. Almira Beazely, the Providence rapper, who murdered her brother in fulfilment of one of her own predictions, was cleared on the ground of her insanity.

"But this is not the only evil of the practices in question, when viewed as the result of natural causes. For the truth is, that, in most cases, they are not so viewed by those who engage in them. They regard them as the work of spirits. They are, therefore, deceived; and those who follow them are deceived. Both suppose they are receiving utterances from the other world, when nothing is uttered but vain fantasies from their own minds and hearts. Such a deception is, manifestly, a hurtful one. It is full of danger to all concerned. To mistake one's own fancies for divine revelation, and feel conscience-bound to obey them as such, is the very essence of fanaticism. It is fanaticism in its most frightful form. Under the influence of such an impression, persons may be led to perpetrate the greatest cruelties, and the most horrid crimes, and vainly think that they are doing God service. The wretched man in Barre was led to attempt the life of his family, in obedience to a supposed revelation from the spirit world.

"The practices which have been considered are of heathen origin. They originated with the ancient heathen; they were spread over a greater part of the heathen world; and they continue to pervade and curse it to the present time. Among numerous heathen tribes at the present day, scarcely a calamity occurs—a death, a flood, a fit of sickness, or an instance of death—but some poor creature (and often more than one) is accused and put to death, as being the cause of it. 'The sick man is bewitched: who has bewitched him? His death (if he chance to die) has been brought about by evil spirits: who has sent the spirits upon him?' To get an answer to these questions, some old hag or conjurer is consulted; the cause of the mischief is quickly discovered, and an innocent person is put to death. Probably hundreds die every year after this manner, among the heathen, even in this nineteenth century! And the case would soon be no better among ourselves, if we were to go, extensively and confidently, into the practice of consulting with familiar spirits. The spirits would unravel all mysteries for us; they would reveal all secrets; and not a man, woman, or child would long be safe from their malicious accusations.

"Something more than a year ago, the Lunatic Asylum in Maine took fire, and a portion of its inmates were smothered and consumed. And there are hundreds of persons now in the state, who affirm that the building was set on fire by the keepers, with a view to cover up and conceal their own wickedness. These persons know it was so; they have not the shadow of a doubt on the subject. Why? Not that they have a particle of evidence to this effect from our world, but because the spirits have so informed them. Now, let these utterances become common, and be commonly received, and in three months' time those keepers might every one of them be dragged to the gallows, or the stake, while they were as innocent of the charge laid against them as a child unborn.

"I refer to this instance just to show the sin, the evil, the exceeding peril, of indulging in those practices which have been exposed. Let all those who read these things, then, beware of them and shun them. If any of us are capable of becoming mediums, as they are called, we had better not know it; or, if we know it, we had better refrain from all experiments. To tamper with such a power is to tamper with an already shattered nervous system, the only effect of which will be to shatter it the more.

"There is nothing more striking than the difference between those representations of the future world which are made known in the Bible, and which we know are true, and those which are put forth by the revealers of our own times. The former are solemn, exciting, impressive, some of them awfully so, others gloriously. While the latter, as Professor Stowe says, are 'so uniformly and monotonously silly, that we are compelled to think, if these are really the spirits of the dead, in dying they must have lost what little of common sense they ever possessed. If these are actual specimens of the spiritual world, then this world, hard and imperfect as it is, is altogether the most respectable part of God's creation.'

"In the Bible, we have frequent accounts of persons who were raised from the dead—who actually returned from the spirit world to this. But they returned uniformly with sealed lips. In not a single instance did they make any disclosures. But our modern revealers pursue a very different course. They practise no reserve. They go into the minutest particulars,—sometimes into the most disgusting details,—and publish, as one expresses it, 'a penny magazine of the spiritual world.'"

In the language of the Puritan Recorder, "The worst of the evil is the soul-hardening familiarity they produce with the most awful subjects ever offered for human contemplation. We know of nothing in human experience so fatally destructive of all that reverence for the spiritual, that awe of the unseen, that tender emotion, as well as solemn interest, which connect themselves with the idea of the other life. Who, that has a Christian heart, would not prefer the silence of the grave to the thought of the dear departed one in the midst of such imaginings, and such scenic associations as are usually connected with the performances of the spirit rappers? 'They are not dead, but sleep.' 'They enter into peace,' says the prophet. And then the precious and consoling addition—'They sleep in Jesus;' meaning, beyond all doubt, a state of rest, of calmness, of security, of undisturbed and beatific vision—far removed from all resemblance to this bustling life—a state in all respects the opposite of that which fancy pictures as belonging to the scenes presented in the manifestations of spiritual rappings, and spiritual table liftings and all those spiritual pantomimes, which seem to be becoming more and more extravagant and grotesque in proportion to the infidel credulity with which they are received."

Should any think, by reading what we have offered upon this subject in the preceding pages, that we have imputed guilt and deception to mediums, who are believed to be, many of them, above such trickery, we would merely refer such to page 29 of the Reply of Veriphilos Credens to the communications supposed to have been written by Dr. Enoch Pond, professor in the Bangor Seminary, as published in the columns of the Puritan Recorder. The reviewer says, "To suppose that mediums could practise deception on men of shrewdness and caution implies a greater credulity than does a faith in the most startling of their performances." "There is not the slightest degree of evidence," says this writer, "that such a case has ever occurred;" and yet on the selfsame page he says, "There is no doubt that some mediums, when the sounds and motions have failed to come in the usual mysterious way, have counterfeited them by some sly motions of their feet and hands. I have seen such things done, in some instances!"

The same author says, page 63, "I have not attempted to justify any reliance on disclosures made to us in the way of rappings. I think it altogether unsafe to do so, for the declaration has already come to us, from what purports to be the spirits themselves, that all these manifestations are of a low order, and are produced by the lowest grade of spirits."

As to the plea that "spirits must make the sounds," to account for the intelligence communicated, it being impossible for mere "electricity to originate facts," we reply by affirming that there is no intelligence given beyond a certain limit; i.e., the mind of some one or ones in connection, either present or absent, for it makes no difference. For available purposes, a person a thousand or ten thousand miles distant may yield all the amount of intelligence required in a given case. Distance is no obstacle whatever. Electricity counts neither time nor space. For instance, the transmission of electricity through a conducting substance is instantaneous. A wire, or other conductor, may have motion communicated to its whole length at the same moment, whatever that length may be; and it is stated that an electro-magnetic impulse may be transmitted at the rate of one hundred and eighty thousand miles in a second, thus outstripping the sun in its march!

A large number of intelligent individuals, who, for a year or two past, have instituted a series of experiments upon this matter of "intelligence," have found that in no case has information been imparted beyond what existed in their own minds or that of some kindred or friend. Finding this to be the case, they have wisely come to the conclusion that spirits have never originated a solitary idea; that is, disembodied spirits; and as to the spirit within a man, in his corporeal state, why cannot it command as much influence over vital electricity as in its disembodied existence? Since both parties claim to perform by the same agent, and both claim this agent to be that of vital electricity, we have also come to the same conclusion, with a host of others, that the "calling for spirits is mere garnish and fog, by which the real agency in the case is concealed."