Our planet, Earth, is yet crude. Its soil, products, emanations, and auras are coarse and harsh. Though meliorated much since it first gave birth to man, it is not now fitted to nurture beings as refined as it will be centuries hence. It is being constantly softened, and is ever progressing toward the present ripened condition of older planets, whose embodied inhabitants easily and constantly commune with wise departed kindred, from whom they receive such instructions and aids as cause them to live in close harmony with the laws of animal health, and therefore nearly free from sickness and pains, and, when ripened for release, to pass painlessly out from their grosser integuments. From the days of remotest history, and our world over, spirits have often been transiently visible and palpable by some mortals. But the atmosphere in which humans live is measurably uncongenial and oppressive to most, and especially to purer and more advanced spirits; still it becomes less so from century to century, is ever gaining such conditions as lift a little higher its incarnate inhabitants, and is less oppressive to those disrobed of flesh. Its modifications prophesy that time will be when mortals and spirits may here more comfortably than now intercommune constantly and with mutual benefit. Terrific mental Great changes and advances of either a material, mental, political, social, or spiritual world are, like births, generally outwrought through anguish and sufferings. Even the entrance of spirits into mortal forms is usually painful to both parties. First and earlier reincarnations are almost necessarily attended by psychological action which forces spirits severally to manifest, and, moderatedly, to undergo, again their special sufferings during their last hours of earth-life. Mortals, too, shrink from, and are agitated by, and afraid of their nearest friends, if disrobed of flesh. Such fears are repulsive forces, making spirit approach arduous and often impossible. The boon of return, in most cases, is at the cost of suffering—but of suffering which pays well—suffering which purchases joy for both those who come and those who welcome them. Our earth and all who are born upon it receive or earn many of their greatest blessings through the sweats of convulsive throes or severe toil. The abolition of a wide-spread obnoxious creed was terrific in 1692. In civilized lands extensively, and especially in Protestant Christendom, possibility of the return of departed good souls from their invisible abodes has for centuries been doubted. Therefore a most copious source of valuable instruction and help has been unused. Resort to it has, or had, become horrific; it has been deemed by men the devil’s pool exclusively. But not so by spirits. Wise and friendly ones, unseen, have long and often sought and labored for such recognition and welcome, by survivors on earth, as would render demonstration of spirit presence widely practicable. Spirits have sought this because they have been seeing that free and extensive intercommunings between dwellers in flesh and enfranchised ones might greatly facilitate the advance of both classes in beneficence and happiness. The immense aid which the earth-embodied living, and only they, can give to many unhappy ones whom they call dead, is not yet dreamed of by the public. Knowledge that many departed ones are obliged to get aid from earth ere they can make an efficient start up the ladder heavenward, opens a wide and interesting field of labor to those who have carefully sought to learn the mutual dependences of the seen and unseen worlds. The methods of Providence have ever been homogeneous; and now that they have brought peoples to the dawn of a day when human hospitality is entertaining angels, not always unawares, but often consciously and joyfully, the beneficence of the witchcraft scenes at Salem Village, whereby Christendom’s thralldom to a factitious devil was effectually broken up, becomes conspicuous. Lapsed time reveals probability that the barbarisms of that day were availed of as instruments for procuring the freedom which now permits instructive, helpful, and gladdening intercourse between millions of devout and truth-seeking mortals and bright, beneficent spirits. What though the agitation of Christendom brings its latent iniquities and impurities to the surface? What though the counterparts of publicans, sinners, and harlots float numerously into view? Ascent of dross and scum to the surface is usually the first product in processes of clarification. Inexperienced observers are very liable to regard the unsightly stuff as a sample of all that underlies it. Others, who better comprehend the cause and object of bringing impurities into view, observe such first results complacently, knowing that subsequent effects will be most beneficent—will Great reformatory truths have seldom been first offered to or received by the worldly-wise and prudent. Not rulers and Pharisees, but common people, fishermen, humble women, publicans, sinners, and harlots were numerous among the first followers of Jesus; and these were the ones who heard him gladly. Like causes which made it thus of old, operate to-day, and the supplemental revelations and revealers of our time meet with like reception as did those centuries ago. It is well. Wide popularity and affectionate fondling might sap an infant ism of its best health-giving and reformatory powers. Comprehensive wisdom lets it harden and strengthen through buffetings with the leaders of prevalent theological and scientific decisions, opinions, and fashions. The boundless intelligence, which ever acts for good, is patient and long forbearing. It waits for seeds of reforms to take deep root in the masses, and thence, in time, pushes onward the force which overturns dynasties, hierarchies, and all effete institutions, creeds, and customs which are no longer fruitful of food suited to cultured man’s existing needs. Savage and barbarous nations, everywhere and always, attain to more or less faith in the presence and help of ancestral spirits; they seek instruction from the departed. Broad and perpetual belief in a particular fact is far from weak evidence of its positive existence. Uncultured minds admit witnessed facts to be positive occurrences, and affect no need to comprehend how they are produced before giving assent to their verity. But the cultured are prone to deny the manifestation of any events whose transpiration is not referable to the permission of some law whose operations are familiar. They cannot account for a fact, and therefore it does not exist, or, as Agassiz said, “it is not in nature.” The greatest of human scientists, however, falls far short of acquaintance with all the forces and permissions enfolded within boundless, unfathomable, incomprehensible nature. It is dogmatism—not science—which says that facts observed by the senses of man continuously from the birth of his race down to now, have had no positive existence. Law reigns; and we know no law which permits return from Are the results of your course to be lamented? Perhaps not. The oozing out and disappearance of an old belief, and a consequent state of non-belief, may be arranged for in the methods of Providence, because the latter state may be the best possible for the induction of belief founded on demonstration, where one previously lived which rested upon dogmatic authority. The skepticism of our generation pertaining to a future life is an offspring of general and advanced education which asks for proofs as the only proper foundation for belief. That education has fitted the thinking masses to demand that teachers shall grapple with and either refute or adopt sensible facts widely witnessed. Millions upon millions of Christendom’s inhabitants are having sensible demonstration, day by day and hour by hour, that the spirits of departed mortals make known their veritable presence among their survivors in mortal forms. They say to the world’s leading minds,—spirit return is a fact in nature: it is made manifest to our physical senses; we know it to be true. Therefore, ye sticklers for law and scientific methods, prove to us our mistake if we are dupes. During more than five and twenty years we have been putting forth that call, and you have thus long omitted to give any other response than dogmatic assertion that the appearances we witness are the productions of fraud, fancy, delusion, and the like. That is not satisfactory. Our claim is, that departed spirits of men are working marvels on the earth. That claim is good till it be shown that the marvelous events witnessed are the productions of other agents. Each lapsing year strengthens that claim. And if a check to such materialism as argues that man is devoid of any property which will consciously survive the death of his body, and if a positive demonstration of man’s survival beyond the tomb, be matters So welcome, efficient, and salutary an advent of invisible actors and teachers as we witness to-day, seemingly would have been impossible, had the witchcraft creed of our fathers retained abiding hold upon their descendants. The methods of Providence seem to have embraced both the abolition of that creed, and a sufficient lapse of time for the nurture and culture of a people up to such elevation that a large portion of it would be fitted and disposed to welcome back departed ones just when their proved presence would be the great fact at man’s command which would effectually deter advancing and beneficent physical scientists from inferring and teaching that life’s emigrants all take a plunge into the rayless abyss of nonentity. A continuous thread of the methods of Providence seems traceable through many of the darkest and most shocking scenes of human history. Many of man’s greatest advances have been outwrought through anguish and tortures whose inflictors we reprobate. Is it too much to say that such a thread ropes in, as instruments of good, Pharaoh, Pontius Pilate, Witchcraft, and many other notable personages and scenes, which have been made to further the deliverances of oppressed and suffering mortals? Permission of sins, sufferings, and wrongs comes from the Infinitely Benevolent. Fit instrumentality existed at Salem Village for demolishing that special creed of Christendom which closed and barred the gates that nature hinged for furnishing a way of egress back from beyond the grave; and wisest and kindest dwellers above were in mood then to let suffering and anguish enough come upon mortals there to awaken them out of their deep delusion, and sway them to set those special gates ajar. They broke the bars; but dust and In 1692, an unprecedented strain in its application effectually broke up Christendom’s long cherished and indurated delusion that devils unfleshed and devils incarnate are the only beings who can act and commune across the line dividing this from the life beyond. That rupture set Christians free to learn that duty called them to “try the spirits.” In time a generation came who met that duty. Spirits of God—good spirits—as well as others visit human abodes, and their presence itself is proof positive of man’s survival beyond the grave. Their widely conceded advent seems divinely opportune, for it occurs when their presence tends forcefully to check, and promises to stop the prevalent strong tendency of science and culture to divine that man’s doom is drear annihilation. The beneficent intensity of a special strain upon a specific delusion, nine score years ago, is due to the strength of faith, character, and action, and to the unwonted extent and excellency of medianimic instrumentality then existing at Salem Village, whose conspicuous action and use there made that spot lastingly memorable; and we deem it just to regard it as a point from which influences emanated whose fruits to-day are eminent blessings to the Christian world. The methods of Providence often educe choicest good from most direful evils. |