LETTER V.
Dear Charles,—And could you remain a witness of
such a scene as described in your last, and not rebuke the
gross folly and impiety? Surely you need no argument
against insanity so monstrous or hypocrisy so diabolical!
Charles, there is a short way for us of dealing with all
such matters, and that is this: “Let God be true and every
man a liar.” When I am well satisfied that any seeming
science, with all its array of seeming fact and wonder and
miracle, is opposed to the Bible, I coolly and most determinately
call it—a lie! Its believers and advocates and admirers
and professors, in return, may then call me what they
like—a bigot, a fool, a fanatic, a poor dawdling nincompoop
unworthy the age, or worse.
Do they call on me to look at the evidence in its favor?
I say, No; what is opposed to the plain, obvious, commonsense
view of the Scriptures, can have no evidence. This,
sir, is my philosophy, and this is all that can prevent us
plain folks from being “blown about with every wind of doctrine.”
For instance, I know there is a God. I know this
from reason, from revelation, from feeling. Now, when an
atheist comes into my neighborhood, I shun him as I would
hell. He may be learned, and bland, and argumentative;
and he may offer to show me most cogent reasons for his
atheism, if I will only listen. But I will
not listen: he is a
liar, and the truth is not, and
cannot be in him. All this he
may deem obstinacy, discourteousness, and the like; and he
may regard me as priest-ridden, and as afraid of the devil;
and he may sneer at me, as led by faith and not by reason,
—I am unmoved. I will not even
hear him advance proof
of a lie.
Does any one, therefore, say, “Mr. Carlton, do you not
believe that a person in the mesmeric trance can behold
things in the spiritual world?”—I interrupt him and say,
“Begone.” Does he offer me proof that the thing is possible?
I say, “Get thee behind me, Satan.” Does he then become
angry, and call me agreeable names? I say, “Bah!”
Not only does Scripture assure me of the impossibility of
such things, but my whole reason revolts at the idea; and
from my very soul, I either pity the frightful delusion, or abhor
the awful profanity.
Charles, clergyman as you are, I tremble at the possibility
of your being caught in the snare, if you go into the
way of the tempter. Have not many professedly good men,
yea, have not several ministers of the gospel been utterly befooled
by this outrageous nonsense? And what is usually
the result? Most neglect their clerical duties; and others
go wondering after the beast, till they get a mark to carry
with them to the grave. One, I am told, attributing all the
influences of religion to mesmeric influence, instead of a divine
influence, abjures not only his clerical character, but his
very christianity, and becomes an itinerant mountebank and
idler, selling phrenological charts and other gammons and
guzzles to the silly and the vain, while one—aye, Uncle
Toby's recording angel would have dropped a tear in writing
it—one, alas! noble and mighty in the intellectual and theological
world, thinks he expects, by the wondrous disclosures
of mesmerism, to introduce a religion vastly more ethereal
and sublimated than that of the Old Church! Animal magnetism
it is, most truly,—and of the earth, earthy!
Oh! Charles Clarence, the spirituality of the moral man
inwrought by a divine agent, is something measurelessly different
from the spirituel of French vivacity, German transcendentalism,
poetic elevation, papistical fervor, or Swedenborgian
vagaries. What pride and self-complacency is
that, which would make our refined earthly airiness equal,
or even superior to, a heaven-produced sanctification! Aye!
these profound and learned gentlemen say—“Blockhead!
your skull is too thick, you do not understand us—we are too
deep for your sounding-line—stick to your last.” Granted,
learned masters,—but if we understand the other, that is all
the light we crave—we know then that we are “of the light,
and the world—(in all its forms, and under all its names,)—
is in darkness.”
If any animal magnetic fluid be abroad, it surely is of an
intoxicating nature; for many completely saturated do cut
strange antics, and perform wonderful somersets.
Do, dear Charles, never again countenance such exhibitions
as tend to throw, directly or indirectly, discredit on our
holy religion. Amuse yourself, if you must, with the common
pawing or paw-wowing of phreno-mesmerism, clairvoyance,
and the like:—fumble about, in combed or uncombed hair,
for developments—put friends into gentle slumbers, and then
draw their old snags or cut their corns—make them tell, if
you can, where a pot of Kid's money is buried—or send
some well-travelled clairvoyant to Kaleidaville to see what
we may be a-doing—or touch the sleepy people off, first on
one organ and then on another, till sparks of mental and
moral qualities are drawn from all the conductors—do any
or all of these grave and solemn and dignified fooleries—
but do not, my dear fellow, ever again, in any shape whatever,
have to do with pretended disclosures respecting the
Spirit Land.
Let me tell you something that has just happened about
seven miles from Kaleidaville.
A friend of mine whom I occasionally visit, not exactly
in a professional way, but pretty near it, has a sick wife;
and as she has for a long time been an invalid, he is very
naturally inclined to quack nostrums and the like, as he despairs
of the regular treatment. For a long time, however,
he obstinately refused all proposals to try our village mesmerist
and his clairvoyant; but, at long last, after earnest
persuasion on the part of his wife's relatives, he consented
that the couple should come, and in his presence prescribe
for the sick in the neighborhood; agreeing, if convinced of
the truth, that the “grand medicine” should prescribe for
his wife.
Well, the conjurer and his imp came. At first they confined
themselves to the easier parts of the vocation; such as
describing the furniture in the room, and then venturing up
stairs and describing something square and flat against the
wall, with such oracular accuracy that it would answer for a
looking-glass, or a picture, or a box; then also something
longish and rather roundish like, hanging in a dark closet,
where certainly the parties never could have been, and
which compendious description would apply to a bag or a
breeches; till having got their hand in and the credulity of
the folks up to believe-all point, they ventured to peep into
the interior of several sick neighbors, brought thither for the
purpose.
With astonishing precision they told on which side was
liver and spleen, and the size and shape and situation of the
kidneys—finding in one a hole, in another something like a
worm, and in another something like gravel; then they described
the involutions and evolutions, and, indeed, all the
crinclecumcrancle of the intestines; and how this man's
articles had a wrong twist, and that one's had alternate layers
of unmentionable things packed within: and finally they
prescribed for the sufferers, in some cases, brandy and water—
(like Miss Harriet's seer,)—in some, three shads' heads and
two cats' tails boiled into a jelly, and to be taken ten mornings,
before breakfast; and, in one case of great danger,
the oil of forty weasels condensed and to be rubbed on the
part affected; till at last our friend, who was most essentially
bamboozled at the rattling fluency of the little sleeping rascal,
and his intimate acquaintance with his secret chambers
and the dark regions of the human frame, asked the seer if
he could tell any thing about Henry Gaddy?
Now said Gaddy, detected in certain criminal ways several
years before, had been forced to “make himself skerse in
these here diggins,” and after wandering about in different
parts of the world for a long time, had been reported dead.
Here was an unexpected question; and certainly no collusion
could have taken place between the mesmerist and the
clairvoyant; and yet the wonderful little fellow went on
without embarrassment and without delay: “Gaddy!—Oh!
I see a man a wanderin about!—there he goes—to France—
I see him in England—Oh! goody—there he's dead—and
now I see him in
heaven!”
My friend was convinced, and he resolved that next day
the par nobile should look into his wife, and see what did so
baffle the regular doctors. Well, the next morning bright
and early he went down to the Great River, a few rods from
his dwelling, and there met, coming from on board a small
coasting vessel, a man—and that was Henry Gaddy!
Charles, a malicious unbeliever would say the chaps told
a deliberate lie! It looked like it—didn't it?
