The Vital Message | Page 8

can fearlessly
insist upon the whole of the truth. The movement which is destined to bring vitality to the
dead and cold religions has been called "Modern Spiritualism." The "modern" is good,
since the thing itself, in one form or another, is as old as history, and has always, however
obscured by forms, been the red central glow in the depths of all religious ideas,
permeating the Bible from end to end. But the word "Spiritualism" has been so befouled
by wicked charlatans, and so cheapened by many a sad incident, that one could almost
wish that some such term as "psychic religion" would clear the subject of old prejudices,
just as mesmerism, after many years of obloquy, was rapidly accepted when its name was
changed to hypnotism. On the other hand, one remembers the sturdy pioneers who have

fought under this banner, and who were prepared to risk their careers, their professional
success, and even their reputation for sanity, by publicly asserting what they knew to be
the truth.
Their brave, unselfish devotion must do something to cleanse the name for which they
fought and suffered. It was they who nursed the system which promises to be, not a new
religion--it is far too big for that--but part of the common heritage of knowledge shared
by the whole human race. Perfected Spiritualism, however, will probably bear about the
same relation to the Spiritualism of 1850 as a modern locomotive to the bubbling little
kettle which heralded the era of steam. It will end by being rather the proof and basis of
all religions than a religion in itself. We have already too many religions--but too few
proofs. Those first manifestations at Hydesville varied in no way from many of which we
have record in the past, but the result arising from them differed very much, because, for
the first time, it occurred to a human being not merely to listen to inexplicable sounds,
and to fear them or marvel at them, but to establish communication with them. John
Wesley's father might have done the same more than a century before had the thought
occurred to him when he was a witness of the manifestations at Epworth in 1726. It was
only when the young Fox girl struck her hands together and cried "Do as I do" that there
was instant compliance, and consequent proof of the presence of an INTELLIGENT
invisible force, thus differing from all other forces of which we know. The circumstances
were humble, and even rather sordid, upon both sides of the veil, human and spirit, yet it
was, as time will more and more clearly show, one of the turning points of the world's
history, greater far than the fall of thrones or the rout of armies. Some artist of the future
will draw the scene--the sitting-room of the wooden, shack-like house, the circle of
half-awed and half- critical neighbours, the child clapping her hands with upturned
laughing face, the dark corner shadows where these strange new forces seem to
lurk--forces often apparent, and now come to stay and to effect the complete revolution
of human thought. We may well ask why should such great results arise from such petty
sources? So argued the highbrowed philosophers of Greece and Rome when the
outspoken Paul, with the fisherman Peter and his half-educated disciples, traversed all
their learned theories, and with the help of women, slaves, and schismatic Jews,
subverted their ancient creeds. One can but answer that Providence has its own way of
attaining its, results, and that it seldom conforms to our opinion of what is most
appropriate. We have a larger experience of such phenomena now, and we can define
with some accuracy what it was that happened at Hydesville in the year 1848. We know
that these matters are governed by law and by conditions as much as any other
phenomena of the universe, though at the moment it seemed to the public to be an
isolated and irregular outburst. On the one hand, you had a material, earth-bound spirit of
a low order of development which needed a physical medium in order to be able to
indicate its presence. On the other, you had that rare thing, a good physical medium. The
result followed as surely as the flash follows when the electric battery and wire are both
properly adjusted. Corresponding experiments, where effect, and cause duly follow, are
being worked out at the present moment by Professor Crawford, of Belfast, as detailed in
his two recent books, where he shows that there is an actual loss of weight of the medium
in exact proportion to the physical phenomenon produced.[1] The whole secret of
mediumship on this material side appears to lie in the power, quite independent of oneself,
of passively giving up