Agnes Repplier

“ And what happens when a current of credulity sweeps a civilized land? A rank growth of superstition springs up in its wake, and men turn back with startling ease to the least desirable delusions of the Middle Ages. Apparitions have become the order of the day. Sick people are proffered ghostly prescriptions for their maladies. ”

“ And for that radical weakness of the human mind, credulity, there is no allowance made at all. That people see what they come prepared to see, and hear what they come prepared to hear, and believe what they come prepared to believe, is a truth as old as humanity. ”

“ The Church militant, suffering and triumphant, is united in a spiritual solidarity, and the links which bind all of her members together are invocation, intercession and veneration. When a Catholic dies, his friends follow him in spirit, praying for the repose of his soul. The fervor and insistence of these prayers prove the longing that lies in many hearts to reach the beloved dead. ”

“ Another truth, less taken into account, is that credulity strengthens with every indulgence. It becomes a habit of mind. The man who accepts insufficient evidence once or twice begins to lose his power of resistance. The walls of his mind give way.
This is what has befallen Sir Oliver Lodge. A scientist, trained in accurate thinking, and accustomed to sift evidence, he has little by little surrendered his intellect to a process of disintegration. He still clings to scientific term, and has a charming clarity of speech ”

“ It is hard for any one outside the pale of Catholicism to appreciate the sweetness and vitality which the Church triumphant infuses into the Church militant. Sixteen hundred years ago a child of thirteen was beheaded in Rome. Today, Catholic women bearing her name receive letters and flowers and gifts on the twenty-first of January, because that is the feast day of this little Roman saint. It is a long chain and a strong chain which binds us to our dead. ”

“ War, pestilence, violence, the sacking of towns, the savage cruelty of the law, the fate of unfortunates who languished in dungeons or died on the rack, failed to impair the vitality of the race, or dim its love for life. Men took their superstitions, as they took other picturesque and terrifying conditions, without more thinking than was necessary. ”

“ Men whom we deemed sane write that a wooden table applauded the music which pleased it, or "fluttered like a wounded bird, and dropped gently to the door." Young women devote themselves to automatic writing, and reel off spectral literature of surpassing fatuity. ”

“ In Sir William Barrett's On the Threshold, we find references to "mischievous and deceptive communications," as well as to the profane and obscene matter which occasionally intrudes itself into automatic writing. "Some who have taken the trouble to inquire," says Barrett, "have come to believe that Spiritism reveals the existence of a mysterious power which may be of a more or less malignant character. Granting the existence of a spirit world, it is necessary to be on our guard against the invasion of our will by a lower order of intelligence and morality." ”

“ But we, nervous, fretful, introspective, morbidly sensitive, imperfectly educated and ignorant of our ignorance, how shall we meet this tide of occultism, and keep our sanity and self-control? The horrors of the War destroyed our serenity, the sorrows of the War blighted our happiness. We believed vaguely in the goodness of mankind ”

“ We have discovered that nothing is more possible than the thing we called morally impossible. What wonder that with the downfall of familiar convictions, the cession of familiar thoughts, there shall come this onrush of superstition which is not the less hurtful for its folly. ”

“ A writer in the Nineteenth Century for March, 1919, asserts that Spiritism will in time be able to link "ordinary humanity with the Divine Hierarchy," and that it will do this by means of certain elect souls, "advanced leaders of our race, Masters of Wisdom and Knowledge." ”

“ This is the service rendered by the living to the dead. If we content ourselves with a spiritual bond, which is a real and vital thing, if we can dispense with rapping tables, and the spelling of words on a ouija board, and the intrusion of controls, then something stronger, sweeter, holier than the disjointed intercourse of the séance will unite us with the faithful departed. ”

“ HE great wave of Spiritism which is threatening the sanity of the world is based on a common, though by no means universal, desire to enter into some form of communion with the dead, to receive assurance of their survival, of their welfare, of the conservation of their human affections. There are men who do not feel this desire. There are men who love the light and who have no fear of the darkness ”

“ Professor Hyslop admits the existence of faith, but proposes to render it superfluous by offering direct evidence of survival. He will replace the Communion of Saints with the communion of spirits, and the invocations of the Church with mediums and controls. Because these mediums are sometimes frauds, and the controls often give indications of feeble-mindedness (as in the case of Raymond Lodge's Feda) , we are disposed to underrate the fast-growing influence of Spiritism upon a disturbed and sorrowful world. ”

“ Were he living now, and in active communication with the dead, he would intensify his language. The one thing made clear to us is that the spirits who manifest themselves by means of mediums, ouija boards, or rapping tables, are on a lower plane of intelligence than we are. Enamoured of trivialities, unconcerned about vital things, they exhaust what little rationality they possess in the laborious process of identification. ”

“ Not for nothing has the Christian Church throughout her history discouraged the practice of necromancy, the morbid concern with the dead which must interfere with the proper discharge of our duties in that plane of existence in which God has placed us. ”

“ Moreover, twentieth century superstition is far more dangerous than was eleventh century superstition, because we are less fitted, mentally and physically, to face it. In the Middle Ages, men and women had no nerves. ”

“ The painful lack of intelligence manifested by spirits, the puerility of their messages, and the apparent narrowness of their confines, are accounted for by the difficulty of intercourse, and by the number of middle men employed. ”

“ The Spiritists are logical in asserting that the nature of the communications received from the dead cannot disqualify their validity. If it be proven that the messages are genuine, our disappointment at their triviality is not a determining factor. It does, however, materially lessen the number of intelligent converts to Spiritism. Sensitive minds are repelled by the earthiness of souls who have escaped from earth ”

“ On earth these brilliant and versatile minds acquired with every year fresh ideas and increased knowledge; but, stranded by death in a stagnant land, they had apparently not taken one intellectual step. ”

“ And we cannot protest too strongly against the subjection of the medium to influences of which she and her clients are necessarily ignorant. If she is what she claims to be, she voluntarily surrenders the control of faculties of which she is the proper and the sole guardian, which have been given her for her own direction, and which it is the instinct of every sane man and woman to protect from assault.
If it be the mitigation of grief which Spiritists seek in their efforts to communicate with the dead, they are easily comforted. ”

“ More painful to contemplate than mere inanity is the evidence proffered us from time to time of the survival of physical and mental infirmities. Mr. J. Arthur Hill, writing in 1917, tells us of being present at a séance where one of the spirits was a very old and feeble man. The medium described him as "tottering with age," and having "a job to stand up;" ”

“ The sense of nearness, the devout belief that from the treasury of grace help may be drawn for the departed whose period of spiritual activity is over, fortifies the mourner by giving him a task to perform. ”

“ Without venturing to speculate too luridly on the nature of supernatural visitants, it is folly to assume that—if such visitants exist—they are necessarily benignant, or that evil spirits will not cross the threshold when the door is opened. ”

“ Gertrude Kingston, in a very able paper on telepathy and hypnotic suggestions, comments upon the general absence of ghosts in Italy. Every house in England or Scotland that has witnessed a crime of sufficient magnitude harbors its family spectre, who appears at appropriate intervals, and keeps alive ancestral traditions. ”