A PARTICULAR INSTANCE
I have been in touch with a series of events in America
lately, and can vouch for the facts as much as any man can vouch
for facts which did not occur to himself. I have not the least
doubt in my own mind that they are true, and a more remarkable
double proof of the continuity of life has, I should think,
seldom been published. A book has recently been issued by
Harpers, of New York, called "The Seven Purposes." In this book
the authoress, Miss Margaret Cameron, describes how she suddenly
developed the power of automatic writing. She was not a
Spiritualist at the time. Her hand was controlled and she wrote
a quantity of matter which was entirely outside her own knowledge
or character. Upon her doubting whether her sub-conscious self
might in some way be producing the writing,
which was
partly done by planchette, the script was written upside down and
from right to left, as though the writer was seated opposite.
Such script could not possibly be written by the lady herself.
Upon making enquiry as to who was using her hand, the answer came
in writing that it was a certain Fred Gaylord, and that his
object was to get a message to his mother. The youth was unknown
to Miss Cameron, but she knew the family and forwarded the
message, with the result that the mother came to see her,
examined the evidence, communicated with the son, and finally,
returning home, buried all her evidences of mourning, feeling
that the boy was no more dead in the old sense than if he were
alive in a foreign country.
There is the first proof of preternatural agency, since Miss
Cameron developed so much knowledge which she could not have
normally acquired, using many phrases and ideas which were
characteristic of the deceased. But mark the sequel. Gaylord
was merely a pseudonym, as the matter was so private that the
real name, which we will put as Bridger, was not disclosed. A
few months after the book was published Miss
Cameron
received a letter from a stranger living a thousand miles away.
This letter and the whole correspondence I have seen. The
stranger, Mrs. Nicol, says that as a test she would like to ask
whether the real name given as Fred Gaylord in the book is not
Fred Bridger, as she had psychic reasons for believing so. Miss
Cameron replied that it was so, and expressed her great surprise
that so secret and private a matter should have been correctly
stated. Mrs. Nicol then explained that she and her husband, both
connected with journalism and both absolutely agnostic, had
discovered that she had the power of automatic writing. That
while, using this power she had received communications
purporting to come from Fred Bridger whom they had known in life,
and that upon reading Miss Cameron's book they had received from
Fred Bridger the assurance that he was the same person as the
Fred Gaylord of Miss Cameron.
Now, arguing upon these facts, and they would appear most
undoubtedly to be facts, what possible answer can the materialist
or the sceptic give to the assertion that they are a double proof
of the continuity of per
sonality and the possibility of
communication? Can any reasonable system of telepathy explain
how Miss Cameron discovered the intimate points characteristic of
young Gaylord? And then, how are we afterwards, by any possible
telepathy, to explain the revelation to Mrs. Nicol of the
identity of her communicant, Fred Bridger, with the Fred Gaylord
who had been written of by Miss Cameron. The case for return
seems to me a very convincing one, though I contend now, as ever,
that it is not the return of the lost ones which is of such
cogent interest as the message from the beyond which they bear
with them.