Joseph McCabe

“ The essence of what we now know as Spiritualism is, both in popular opinion and in its own official literature, the claim of communication with deceased human beings. At one time a Spiritualist was any man who believe in the existence of spirits. ”

“ Books about Spiritualism have been so numerous of late that the reader with little leisure probably finds it more difficult than ever to form an opinion. The only new work that can be of real use is a short and clear historical sketch of the entire movement. Those who make history, the living actors, rarely see its significance. ”

“ He thinks that "modern Spiritualism really originated in the work of Swedenborg." Other writers go much farther back along the dim ways of history. Some take us amongst the savage tribes, whose practices represent the life of man long before the dawn of history. Spiritualism is as old as man, they say; and they draw a distinction between ancient and modern Spiritualism. ”

“ Philosophy and theology, the wings on which men had hitherto risen to higher spheres, were drooping. So, Spiritualists say, the living spirits of those who had "passed beyond" began to rap on the walls of our earthly home and prepare men for a direct revelation of the truth of immortality. ”

“ But the word Spiritualist is now generally used to indicate a member of an organised body or religion which is essentially characterised by communication with the dead.
In this, the correct sense, there was no Spiritualism before 1848, There were students of the occult, and they at times had many followers. There were religions in which a certain amount of communication with the dead was incidentally claimed. There were "seers" who professed to hold communication with spirits, and, like Swedenborg, some of them founded religions. ”

“ Franklin was himself one of the founders of the science of electricity, and there was naturally as much interest in these matters in America as in Europe. The Swedenborgians, Shakers, Rappites, etc, saw spiritual agency in all little-understood phenomena. The Churches were as yet imperfectly organised, and millions lay entirely beyond their influence and ready to entertain any religious novelty. Most of the population of twenty million people was distributed over the enormous area of the States, in small villages or towns which were very poorly controlled by the culture of the cities. ”

“ The events of to-day take on swollen and gigantic forms, while the events of yesterday and the day before shrink into almost indistinguishable shapes on the dim horizon. It spoils one's perspective and sense of values. ”

“ But the argument illustrates one of the great advantagesof Spiritualism over theChristian Churches, and it is far sounder in this connection. The genuine Christian doctrine of heaven, the theological doctrine, was never in the minds of the uneducated millions of Europe. They really belie ved in a material heaven : in winged and radiant angeb, in the glorified forms of their dead, if not in streets of gold and houses of topaz. The spread of education and criticism in the nineteenth century had a curious effect here. ”

“ One can survey its entire course in a quite modest work without omitting anything that is essential for understanding it. There is, moreover, no such work available; indeed, histories of Spiritualism are curiously rare in the vast literature of the subject. ”

“ In one respect the theological controversy had proceeded farther in America than in the old world, and a kind of new Christianity had appeared which gave many recruits to Davis. Large numbers resented the doctrine of eternal punishment and the idea that salvation was confined to any particular sect or religion. They organised under the name of Universalists, and they had churches and ministers in all the large towns. Davis found many supporters amongst these Universalist ministers, as we shall presently find Spiritualism doing. ”

“ Lehmann and Kiesewetter are even less helpful than Podmore to the man who wants a bird's-eye view of the development of Spiritualism. That is what I seek to give—a simple evolutionary interpretation of one of the most remarkable movements of modern times. ”

“ But the fact remains that until at least the middle of the nineteenth century the great majority of people believed that at any time spirits of the dead might rap on their doors at midnight, trail ghostly chains along the corridor, or make. ”

“ I should say that he was very gifted, and with training might have become a notable writer. There are very few youths of twenty-one who could have put together his crude mass of material in the rhetorical and pseudo-philosophical manner which he sustained day after day for several months. ”

“ The ancient Greeks and Romans were almost as vague and indifferent about the future life as the Babylonians. There is, in fact, only one of the older dvilisations — that of Egjpt — in which men concerned themselves materially about their life after death, or tried to frame a clear con- ception of it. ”

“ Universaliste found it just what they desired. Men and women who were on the point of quitting Christianity because of the more painful features of ite mediaeval theology discovered a religicm to which they could subscribe. ”