ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY
       FOUNDED 1636

WASHINGTON, D.C. 

1 
 
                                THE




                   HISTORY




                              OF  t n E




SUPERNATURAL




                IN  ALL  AGES  AND  NATIONS  AND

          IN  ALL CHURCHES CHRISTIAN  ANB  PAGAN

             DEMONSTRATING A UNIVERSAL FAITH.




               BY   WILLIAM   IIOTVITT.
                                         r-» r


                   ' Tit <5<ifttnwlt ift nid>t wtMlcitcn,
                    £«in Sinn ift  (",  frin %t:\ ift toft.'
                                                 Ooetcie, Faust.

   'There are two courses of Nature—.ihe ordinary and the extraordinary.'
                                                 Butler's Analogy.

   'Thou canst not call that madness of which thon art proved to know nothing.'
                                                 Tirtuluas,  A\xAngy I.



                          IN  TWO VOLUMKS.


                              VOL.  I.




                          PIIIL A D K L P HI A:

                J.  B.   LIPPINCOTT  &  CO.

                                 1803.



                            :.   ;*v •*.   .«.
                            •    ••«   •      •  • 
                       VY6





                        "H863h




                            v,\


         Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, hy

                 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Eastern
                       of Pennsylvania.- 
PREFACE.
nTHE Author of this work intends by the Superna-
    tural the operation  of those  higher  and more
recondite laws of God with which, being yet but most
imperfectly acquainted, we either denominate their
effects miraculous, or, shutting our eyes firmly, deny
their existence altogether.  So far from holding that
what  are called miracles  are interruptions, or viola-
tions  of  the course of nature, he regards  them ouly
as the results of spiritual laws,  which in  their occa-
sional action subdue, suspend, or neutralize  the  less
powerful physical  laws, just  as  a  stronger chemical
affiinity subdues a weaker one, producing new combi-
nations, but combinations strictly in accordance with
the collective laws of the universe, whether under-
stood or  not yet understood  by us.  At a  time when
so many objections are raised  to portions of the Scrip-
ture narrative, which unsettle  men's minds and haunt
them with miserable  forebodings, the Author  has
thought it of the highest importance to  bring into a
                                        (iii) 
IV                    PREFACE.
comprehensive view the statements of the most emi-
nent historians and philosophers of all ages and na-
tions on the manifestations of those spiritual agencies
amongst them, which we, for want of farther knowl-
edge, term supernatural.  It will be seen that he has
assembled  a mass of evidence from every age  and
people, even down to  our own times, as recorded by
their greatest and most accredited authors, so over-
whelming, that we are thereby reduced to this di-
lemma;—either to reject this universal evidence, by
which we inevitably reduce  all history to a gigantic
fiction, and destroy every appeal to its decision on
any question whatever; or to accept it, in w7hich case
we find ourselves standing face to face with a princi-
ple of the most  authoritative character for the  solu-
tion of spiritual  enigmas and the stemming of the
fatal progress  of infidelity.  What is more, — to the
history of the  total past  the Author brings  the evi-
dence of a large  body of intelligent persons in nearly
every country of Europe, as well as in America, where
they count by millions, who confirm the verdict of
all history on this point by their own familiar experi-
ence.   The Author adds his  own conclusions from a
practical  examination of these  higher  phenomena
through  a course of seven years.
  Thus all past  history being supported by a vast
present experience, the  Author  deems  the  candid
consideration  of this  aggregate of historic evidence
as the highest duty of the day for all who regard the 
PREFACE.                    V
most sacred hopes and the moral progress of humanity.
If this evidence be found  conclusive — and it cannot
be found otherwise except at the cost of all historic
verity — then it presents an impassable barrier to the
ultimate and dreary object of skepticism, and renders
easy the acceptance of the marvellous events  of the
sacred  Scriptures.   Once admitted as historic and
present truth, it  furnishes of necessity the only con-
ceivable antidote to the great psychologic malady of
the time; for nothing can ever effectually arrest the
now age-long conflict of words and opinions but the
blunt and impassable terminus of fact.
   Theologic critics in England, when they have stated
that everything is subject to law, think they have ex-
 ploded all miracle, as if miracle were not itself a law.
 These gentlemen presume that they know all the laws
 of God, or of  Nature, as they prefer to call the infi-
 nite Power, when they are seeing every day still new
 laws discovered.  A miraculum,  or thing to be won-
 dered at, is only such from our ignorance; and what
 must be the ignorance of sound theology in England,
 when we see our teachers of divinity, who have been
 disciplined and educated in the highest national schools,
 reduced to the necessity of huckstering the sweepings
 of the studies of German professors,  and seizing as
 valuable  prizes on their old broken pipes and  cast-off
 boots.  It  is no disparagement  of the 'Essays and
 Reviews' or of Bishop Colenso's  book to say, that
 there is  not a single new argument or discovery in
        1* 
VI                   PREFACE.
them, because it is impossible to produce such.  The
Germans have wagon-loads of this species of criticism,
which leave all such brochures as these the most thread-
bare of commonplaces.
  Let us have free Biblical criticism by all means, but
let us at least have something new.  Have our theo-
logians  only  just heard the alarum of this  Biblical
warfare  which began with Ludovicus Capellus nearly
250 years ago ?   Are they ignorant that there  is not
a difficulty in the  chronology, the statistics, the pa-
laeology, the metaphysics, or historic statements of the
Bible, which has not been seized upon, hunted down,
turned over on all sides, and turned inside out, probed,
analyzed, and tested in all imaginable ways, by a long
line of the acutest mathematicians, logicians, linguists,
orientalists, and sharp-fanged critics, from Capellus to
Schleiermacher  and Bunsen; from  our own Hobbes
and Tindal to the miracle-scouting Hume; from  Spi-
noza to  what the Germans call their great generalis-
simo of unbelief— Strauss.  To say nothing of our
own Biblical critics from Kennicott to Hartwell Home,
nor of Michaelis, Griesbach, Semler, Bengel, Tholuck,
Neander, Kurtz, Hengstenberg, Havernick, Ewald, De
Wette, Bleek, Kuenen, more or less favorable to reve-
lation;  the  German metaphysicians,  Kant, Fichte,
Hegel, and the  rest, have come in to the aid of the
long line of skeptical  combatants,  and trodden the
arena of Biblical combat into  a mire of destruction
to every novelty in this  department.   And  what is 
PREFACE.                   Vll
the result?   Nobody doubts  that  there  are  weak
places in the ancient narrative of the Bible: nobody
supposes that it can be otherwise with the oldest book
in the world, wThose story ascends many thousand
years beyond all written histoiy.  Nobody can be ig-
norant, after so long and careful a comparison of
statement and  counter-statement, that the fabric of
Scripture  history stands  like  some ancient palace,
time-worn but sound in substance.  Its finials may
be weather-beaten; its carvings, here and there, may
have lost their sharpuess; ignorant hands may have
interpolated some barbarisms of sculpture, some dis-
cordant window-lights, but it stands grand and har-
monious as a whole; sound and deep in its founda-
tions, and unshakable in its strength.
   And as it regards the miraculous in the Bible—the
Author in his  work on Germany in 1842 wrote this
passage :—' Take away the miraculous portion of the
Jewish history, and you  take away the whole, for it
is built entirely on a miraculous foundation.   Take
away that and you  connect its  great actors — yes,
Christ Himself—with madmen and impostors. There
is no halfway-house on this path; and therefore the
Catholics find sufficient occasion to say, that "Protes-
tantism is  but  a slippery highway to  Deism."   The
German philosophers are so conscious  of this that
they tell  us  the English will  become  as  skeptical
when they become "as philosophical.'"
   It has then taken us twenty years to  become, not 
Vlll                  PREFACE,
philosophical, but merely to arrive at  the  ability to
rake over the dust-heaps of the German rationalists.
To such a condition  had this  spirit of negation re-
duced  those professors at  that time  that  Schelling
was lecturing against it, and said—'There comes now
from this  side, danger to philosophy itself.  Already
stand those prepared who profess only  to aim at a
particular philosophy, but at bottom mean all philos-
ophy, and in their hearts say, There shall be no more
philosophy at all.'
  And now as to the Supernatural ? The answer lies
in these volumes.  If you could crush it  in the Bible,
there remains yet a little  task for you  —you must
crush it in the whole universe, and to  do that  you
must crush the  universe with  it, for it  exists every-
where, and its  roots are  in the foundation of all
things. 
CONTENTS
                      OF

THE   FIRST  VOLUME.
                           CHAPTER  I.

      AN  APOLOGY  FOR FAITH  IN THE NINETEENTH  CENTURY.

Names of Great Men  who have held Faith in the Supernatural—Present
  Principles : The Residuum of the Atheistic School of the French Rev-
  olution— Men of Plain Sense the best Witnesses for Facts—St. Paul's
  high Estimate of Faith—Sir Thomas Browne's Faith in the Miracu-
  lous— The Rev. Dr. Maitland's Ridicule of the Materialism of Fara-
  day, <fec. — His work on Superstition and Science—The necessity of
  maintaining a Spirit of Faith......Page 19


                          CHAPTER II.

        SPIRITUALISTS BEFORE THE AMERICAN  DEVELOPMENT.

Profound General Ignorance of the History of Spiritualism—Spiritualism
  existed in Germany for a Century before appearing in America—Jung-
  Stilling, Kerner, Lavater, Eschenmayer, Zschokke, Schubert, Werner,
  Kant, Obcrlin, Ac, acknowledgers of it—Before them Wesley, Sweden-
  borg, and others—Life of Jung-Stilling—The Vision of old Eberhard
  Stilling—Stilling lives at  College by Faith—Stilling's Funds of Provi-
  dence—He writes the ' Nostalgia/ 'Scenes in the Invisible World,' Ac.
  — Predicts the Death of Lavater — His Presentiments of Evil — His
  Opinion of Mediumship— The Apparition of the Sack-bearer — The
  Apparition whose Touch Burned — Stilling's  Ideas  regarding Spirits
  — A Defender of Swcdenborg — Remarkable Passages in the ' Shep-
  herd  of Hermas'...........35
                                                        (ix) 
CONTENTS.
                         CHAPTER  III.

MANIFESTATIONS OF  THE SUPERNATURAL IN GERMANY--Continued.

Justinus  Kerner and  the Seeress  of Prevorst — Kerner's History —
  Madame Hauff6,the Seeress, becomes his Patient—Account of Madame
  Hauff6 — Her extraordinary Case — A Seeress of wonderful Powers —
  The Spirit of the Book-keeper appears to her — The case investigated
  by Kerner and the High Bailiff of Weinsberg — The Spirit of the Bur-
  gomaster of Lenach — The Seeress cures the Countess of Maldegham
  — The Spirit-Language of the Seeress — Her  Sun and  Life-circles —
  Her Ideas similar to Plato's — Her Spiritual Calculation — Accordance
  with the Teaching of Swedenborg — Eschenmayer's View of the Seer-
  ess's Idea of Two Suns—Schubert's Opinion of the Seeress's Sensitive-
  ness to Metals, Plants, Crystals, Ac. — Strange Occurrences  in the
  Castle  of Slawensick — The Ghost in  the House of  Correction at
  Weinsberg — Occurrences at Dr. Kerner's  own House    .     .     .62


                         CHAPTER  IV.

MANIFESTATIONS  OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN GERMANY — Continued.

Eschenmayer and his works — Von Eckartshausen sees  his own Funeral
  — Schubert, Author of the  'History of the  Soul/  a  Spiritualist —
  Gorres, his View of Spiritual  Insight—His ' Christliche  Mystik'—Dr.
  Ennemoser and his Writings — Meyer and his Writings : His Views
  of Spirit-Life — Immanuel Kant acknowledges the Truth of Sweden-
  borg's Supernatural Announcements — The Fire at Stockholm—Dis-
  closure to the Queen  of Sweden — Also to the Widow of the Dutch
  Ambassador — Kant's after Inconsistency — Werner, Novalis, Schiller,
  Goethe, Ac.— Kant's singular Confession regarding Ghost-Stories    .  88


                          CHAPTER V.

        THE SUPERNATURAL IN SWITZERLAND  AND  FRANCE.

Lavater, a Firmer Defender of the Supernatural—His Questions to Cler-
  gymen — His Rules of Life — Issues a Circular requesting Facts of a
  Supernatural Character—The Result — Incidents  occuring to Himself
  and  Friends — Fuseli, the Painter — Lavater visits  Gassner — Meets
  Cagliostro — His Opinion of him — His Tragical End  and Noble Char-
  acter— Zschokke—Wrote 'Yearnings after the Invisible'—His Faith
  expels all Fear of Death or  the Future — Rhabdomancy, his Experi-
  ences of  it — Curious Examples of his 'Inward Sight'—The old Ty- 
CONTENTS.                           xi
  rolean Lemon-Seller — Gassner, his Healing Powers—Eschenmayer's
  Account of his Mode of Cure—Dr. Schlisel's Account—Oberlin visited
  by his Deceased Wife — Similar Experience of many Great Men .   .  110

                         CHAPTER VI.

                THE SUPERNATURAL  IN  THE  BIBLE.

Its Supernatural Character accepted and perpetuated by Christ—Modern
  Denial of Miracle — The Result of Materialistic Education — Protes-
  tantism the  only Church  denying Present Miracle — Dr. Middleton,
  Bishop Douglas, Farmer,  Hume — The Rationalists, by  calling  in
  question the Miracles of the Bible, render Christ an Impostor — Folly
  of imagining that the Jews did not understand their own History, or
  that they falsified it—The Abb6 Baruel's Protest against the  Skeptics
  —Evidence requires Renewing—Terrible character of Human History
  — Thus evidencing the perpetual Action of Spiritual Evil — Creation
  the First  and Greatest Miracle — The Early History of Man attests
  the Truth of Swedenborg's Theories—Various  Phases of Scripture
  Miracle — Appearance of Angels — Of God in His Angels — God's Ap-
  pearance to Abraham, Moses, Balaam, Ac.—Divine Dreams and Visions
  as witnessed by the Patriarchs and Prophets—The Spirit of Prophecy
  in Israel — Moses, at the Commencement  of  the Jewish History, ex-
  actly foretells its End—This  confirmed by Josephus, an Eye-witness
  —The Reality of the Miracles of the Egyptian Soothsayers—Miracles
  in the Wilderness — The same through the Jewish History — Raising
  the Dead, Opening the Inner Vision, Spirit-writing — The Nature of
  Idols  and Idolatry — Prohibition of Sorcery — A Famine of the Word
  Predicted, and eventually takes place — Josephus defends the Truth of
  the Jewish History — Shows the unreliableness of Greek Literature —
  Its comparative Modernness — Misrepresentations of Teachers — The
  Jews ready to affirm the Truth of their History by their Death — As-
  serted burning of the Hebrew Sacred Books—Recent Ludicrous Account
  of the Nabateans — Who they are.......133

                         CHAPTER VII.

              THE  SUPERNATURAL OF THE APOCRYPHA.

The Beauty of its Writings — Fine Incident in Esdras before Darius —
  The Vision of the Son of God — Of the Woman in a Field—Keen
  Ridicule of  Idolatry — The Book of Tobit — The Prophecy of Jonah
  fulfilled against Nineveh in the Time of Tobias — Miraculous Scenes
  in the Book of Maccabees—Heliodorus in the Temple — Recovery of
  the Sacred Fire by Nehemiah — Omens on the Approach of Antiochus
  Epiphanes — The Miracles of the Apocrypha confirmed by Josephus
  and Philo-Judaeus..........188 
Xll
CONTENTS.
                        CHAPTER VIII.
           THE SUPERNATURAL OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Vinet's Eloquent View of the Origin and Power of Christianity — Chris-
  tianity the only effectual Light in the Dark  History of the World —
  Christ foretold by the Sibyls—Heralded by Hebrew and Pagan Seers,
  yet unrecognized at nis Advent by the Jews — Opposite Representa-
  tions of the Messiah in the Prophets, yet all harmonizing—Desperate
  Resistance of the Learned Jews to Conviction — Similarity of Mind in
  the Jews  and Modern Scientific Men—New Ideas most  readily Ac-
  cepted  by the so-called  Credulous, and by Women — The Miracles
  performed by the Devil — The Miracles of Christ — The Cases of Pos-
  session in the New Testament Real, not mere Diseases—Proofs of this
  — No Devils to be  Cast  Out  in the  Church of England, except by
  Special License from a Bishop — This Canon thoroughly Anti-Chris-
  tian— Apparitions known in Christ's Time — The Saviour Walking on
  the Water supposed to be one — Angel Messengers in the  New Testa-
  ment, as in the old — Sorcery, several Cases of it — John's Warning
  against Evil Spirits — The Mosaic Law against Seeking to the Dead,
  abrogated by Christ on the Mount of  Transfiguration — Instances of
  Christ and  His Apostles  rising into  the Air — Modern  Instances —
  Miracles never Denied by the Church  of Rome — Opinion  of the Con-
  sequences  of such  Denial,  by the  Rev. Mr. Beecher — Knocking- of
  Spirits — Christ Stands and Knocks — Evil as well as Good Spirits
  present themselves now as of old — The Stigmata—Catherine Em-
  merich— Dr. Wolff's Opinion that St. Paul bore  the Stigmata — The
  Startling Nature of some of Christ's Doctrines to the Jews— Eating of
  Blood—Modern Objectors to Spiritual Phenomena exact Counterparts
  of the Infidel Jews —The Blind and Deaf of to-day think those  who
  See and Hear Mad — The  Power  of  working Miracles  the  Eternal
  Heritage  of the Church — This Heritage not confined to Bishops or
  Clergy—The Spirit  of Prophecy restored in Christianity—No Church,
  according to St. Paul, can be a Living Church  without Spiritual Gifts
  — The Grand Distinction of the Church of  Christ the Limitless Out-
  pouring of the Spirit —Connected  sequence of Historic Evidence of
  Christianity —The  History of Eusebius —Proofs  of  Christianity in
  Lucian—Pliny's Letter to Trajan—Testimony of Tacitus—Testimony
  of the Ancient Jews in the  Toldath Jeschu — Josephus's  mention of
  Christ —Justin Martyr  to Trypho —Fulfilment of the Predictions of
  Moses and of Christ in the Destruction of Jerusalem —Fulfilment at
  this Day of Christ's Words,  ' Daughters of Jerusalem,  weep for your-
  selves/ as witnessed by Miss  Bremer and Dr. Wolff— Testimony of
  the Pagan Historian Ammianus Marcellinus — Testimony of other
  Historians....... 
CONTENTS.                         Xlll
                         CHAPTER  IX.

          THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE  ANCIENT NATIONS.

The Supernatural a Universal Principle — Presents itself under various
  Phases —Whether Good or Bad to be known by its Fruits — Horst's
  View of it — According to  Goethe, this Faith is Inborn — Exists, ac-
  cording to  Bryant, Cudworth, Faber, and Cory, as  the Basis  of all
  Mythologies — The Mythologies all traced to  the Period before the
  Dispersion at Babel—The  Greek Mythology from this Source — This
  evident in Hesiod, the Sibylline Verses, and in Homer — In Berosus,
  Sanchoniatho, and Manetho—In the Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythago-
  rean Accounts — Triads  of Gods  in all Systems — Proofs of Ancient
  Spiritualism in Berosus, Sanchoniatho, and Manetho — Other Proofs
  from the History of  Egypt — Numerous Authorities quoted for this
  Origin  of the Greek Mythology — Brought by Pythagoras and Others
  from Egypt — The Greeks amid  their Polytheism  knew of one Su-
  preme  God—Plato's View of the Threefold Nature of God—Cudworth
  attributes Plato's Knowledge to Primal Truth—Zoroaster's Two Prin-
  ciples— According to Ancient Notions,  both Sexes  in the Deity —
  Proofs  from the Orphic Fragments, from Ulpian,  Porphyry, Bishop
  Synesius, Ac.—A Triune Nature in God held everywhere of Old — So
  in Mexico and India — A Supreme God  acknowledged amid all the
  Ancient Polytheisms — Human Sacrifices almost Universal amongst
  Pagan  Nations — Proofs of it — Faith  in a Spirit-World and Faith in
  Oracles is General—Truth  in Oracles, Dreams,  Ac, permitted to them
  by God............245



                           CHAPTER  X.
      THE  SUPERNATURAL  IN ASSYRIA,  CHALDEA,  AND  PERSIA.

The Cuths, or Goths, Ancestors of the British, Scandinavians, and Nor-
  mans— Faith of the Assyrians in Spirit Agency — This Faith equally
  held by the Chaldeans and Medes — Destruction of Assyrians  by an
  Angel—The Chaldeans great Astrologers and Soothsayers—Prophetic
  Woman in the Tower of Belus—Daniel and the Soothsayers of Babylon
  — Cyrus Foretold by Prophets and Magi — Prophecy of the taking of
  Babylon by Cyrus — Birth and Conquests of Cyrus predicted by the
  Magi—Croesus tests the  Oracles—Oracular Announcements to Croesus
  —Cambyses warned by  Dreams and Omens — His  Death foretold by
  an Oracle — Chaldean Oracles quoted by Greek Philosophers — The
  Mythology of Zoroaster and the Persians — Account of Zoroaster —
   I.—2 
XIV
CONTENTS.
Doctrines of the Zend-Avesta — Warnings of the Magi to Alexander
of Macedon—Calanus the Indian Philosopher—The Death of Alexan-
der foretold by the Magi—Their Announcement to Antigonus .     . 273
                         CHAPTER XI.

              THE  SUPERNATURAL  IN ANCIENT EGYPT.

Remarkable Character of Egypt—The  Land of Bondage and of Wisdom
  — Its Knowledge carefully preserved and concealed in Temples —
  Difficulty of obtaining it by Pythagoras and other Greek  Philosophers
  —The Fate of Pythagoras—Gross Superstition of the Common People
  of Egypt—Mesmerism practised in the Temples—Clairvoyance known
  to the Egyptians—Their Mythology and Oracles transmitted to Greece
  — Transmigration —Healing in the  Temples—Instances of  their
  Oracular Truth — Sethon, Psammeticius, Amasis, Ac.               297
                        CHAPTER XII.

        THE  SUPERNATURAL IN ANCIENT INDIA AND CHINA.

The Vedas and Laws of Menu — Indian Doctrine of Transmigration —
  Fakirs and Yogis known to Greeks and Romans as Gymnosophists —
  Their Penances  described  by the Laws of Menu—Still practised in
  Modern  Times —Seen by  Humboldt  at Astrachan, Juggernauth —
  Burning of Widows—Proofs  of  the Kinship of  the Mythologies of
  India, Egypt, and  Persia —An Indian Goddess found in the Roman
  Mythology —India has its Three Chief Deities —Belief of both Budd-
  hists and Brahmins in frequent Descents of the Deity—Vast Numbers
  of Spirits in the Indian Mythology—Description of Them—Haunting
  Spirits—Vishnu —Ninth Incarnation  in Buddha —The Doctrines of
  Buddha—Numbers of Buddhists and Brahmists—Asceticism the Path
  to Supernatural Power—Apollonius,  of Tyana, studied in India—His
  Account of Marvellous Powers—These Accounts confirmed by Modern
  Phenomena —Assertion of Colquhoun  of the Corroboration of these
  Indian Powers by Recent Facts-The Indian Mode of reaching the
  Nirvana, or Pure Spiritual  State-The Soma Drink-Buddhist  Ab-
  sorption-Similarity of Buddhist and Catholic Rites-Buddhist Prayer
  Mach.nery-Buddhist Celibacy, Penances, Festivals, Ac.-The Super
  natural in Ancient China-Polytheism-The State  Religion-Lao  tse
  h.s Doctrines-Confucius, his  Doctrines  and Writings - Belief in
  Legions of Spirits around us-Apparitions, Dreams, Ac-Worship of
  Ancestors-Intercourse with Spirits-Sorcery-Healing by Imposition
  of Hands-Dean Trench's Idea of the Travels of Divine UeT    307 
CONTENTS.
                        CHAPTER XIII.

          THE SUPERNATURAL IN  ANCIENT  SCANDINAVIA.

The Scandinavians from the East, and drew their Mythology thence —
  Their Gods Eastern  Gods under other Names — They had their Chief
  Gods—Regnarok—The Yggdrasil or Tree of Life—The same Passage
  regarding the Creation of the World in the Orphic  Hymns, the Vishnu
  Purina and the Edda—The Valor or Prophetesses—The Valkyrior—
  Belief in Spirits, Elves, and Apparitions—A Ghost ejected by Process
  of Law — The Sagas — The Berserkir — The Druids and Alrunes     . 325


                         CHAPTER  XIV.

             THE SUPERNATURAL IN ANCIENT  GREECE.

No People more Spiritually Receptive than the Greeks—This the Source
  of their Eminence in the Arts and Philosophy—Philosophical Theories
  of Greece—The Hylopathians—The Atomic and Hylozoic Philosophers
  —The Opinion of Epictetus of Atheists—Democritus admitted Appari-
  tions but not a God—Speculations on Departed  Spirits—Plato's Vehicle
  of the Soul — Ideas of the Greek Fathers confirmed  by Modern Mani-
  festations— Socrates distinguishes betwixt the Proper Objects  of our
  Natural Senses and of Divine Revelations — Belief of the Poets and
  Dramatists of Greece — The Faith of the Greek Historians in the Or-
  acles— In Divine Dreams  and Warnings — Fulfilment of Oracles re-
  lated by Herodotus—Inspired Knowledge of Languages in the Priest-
  esses— Facts from Pausanias  and Plutarch — Ruinous Consequences
  to  a False Prophet—Calehas the Seer — Facts from Diodorus Siculus
  —Forcing the Oracle — Predictions by casting Lots — Pan is Dead! —
  Evidence  of Thucydides, Xenophon, and Lucian — Cicero on the Ora-
  cles— Evidence  of many  Celebrated Greeks — Loss of the Oracles
  lamented—Curative Practice in  the  Greek Temples — Mesmerism —
  Two Greek Swedenborgs, Epimenides and Hermotinus    .    .     . 332


                          CHAPTER XV.

               THE  SUPERNATURAL  IN ANCIENT  ROME.

 Roman Ideas  of Divine Agency—Mesmeric Phenomena  noticed by
   Seneca, Martial, Plautus, and  Pausanias — Such known to the Native
   Tribes of Italy — Romans consulted Oracles after  the Rise of Chris-
   tianity— The Sibyls—Eminent Believers  in  the Sibyls — The Sibyls
   introduced into Christian Hymns — Opinions  of Seneca and Cicero —
   Moral Cowardice of Cicero—The Supernatural in Livy—Pliny and 
XVI                         CONTENTS.
   Tacitus — Predictions by Tiberius — Miracles of Vespasian — Facta
   from Strabo and Macrobius—Greek Philosophers converse with Spirits
   through the Alphabet—Put to Death by Valens—Lars and Lemurs   . 370


                         CHAPTER XVI.

    THE  SAME FAITH CONTINUES  IN ALL THESE  NATIONS TO  THE
                            PRESENT  TIME.

 Skeptics the Misbirths of Humanity—Scene  at Mr. Salt's  at Cairo—Mr.
   Lane and the Magieian — The Author of Eothen — Experiences of
   M. Dalaborde in Egypt—Also of Dr. Wolff, Lord Prudhoe, and  others
   — The  Magician Ab6o  Roo-oo's  displays  wonderful  Power—Mrs.
   Poole's Account of a Haunted House in Cairo — The Sheikh Bechir__
   Indian Ascetics — Fakirs and Djogis — Indian Jugglers — The Fakir
   Buried Alive at Lahore and Resuscitated — The Brahmin's Prediction
   to Mr. Hodges, and to Others — Spiritualism amongst  the Karens —
   Abu Rihan — Chinese Magic — Lao-tse  and Confucius — The Tao-tse
   of China, Cathay, Ac—The Rebellion in  China foretold by a Chinese
   Spirit in America — Dr. Macgowan's Account of Present Magic Prac-
   tices in China —Rapping and Table-Turning familiar  in Tartary in
   the Thirteenth Century —M. Hue's Account of Spiritualism in Thibet
   —Similar Accounts from many other Eastern and Northern Countries
   —Turkish Dervises, Lapps, and Negroes—Australian Natives—Ideas
   of the Deity from the Vishnu Pur&na — Extract from Dean Trench's
   ' Unconscious Prophecies of Heathendom'......395


                       CHAPTER XVII.

       THE SUPERNATURAL  AMONGST THE AMERICAN INDIANS.

The Aborigines of America full  of Eastern  Tradition — Had  Spiritual
  Intimations of the  Coming of the White Men—The Author's Sensations
  on seeing the South American Coast—The Mexican Zemi—The Trance
  of Paranzin—Kohl's Account of the Spiritualism of  the  Ojibbeways—
  The Red Man's Life-Dream—The Dream Tree-The Visions of  Cloud
  —The Indian Jossakid —The Jossakid's Vision of the Whites —Ojib-
  beway Tradition — Hiawatha — Brainerd and the Pauwau  .    .    .420


                       CHAPTER  XVIII.

        THE  SUPERNATURAL AMONGST  THE EARLY  FATHERS.

The Fathers acknowledged the Pagan Miracles —Their own Miracles —
  Statements of Irenaeus-Montanist Seeress-Textullian and St. Cyprian 
CONTENTS.                         XVII
 on Exorcism—Origen and Athanasius on Miracle—Sts. Ambrose, Au-
 gustine, and Jerome — Record of Miracles by the Early Church His-
 torians, Hegissipus.Papias, Eusebius, Sozomen, Theodoret, and Evag-
 rius — Support of the Fathers and Early Historians by Locke, Bacon,
 Cudworth, and Sir Thomas Browne — The Banner of Constantino —
 Discovery of the Cross—Miracle at the Tomb of Evagrius—Speaking
 without Tongues — True Value of Historic  Evidence    .    .    .  438


                        CHAPTER XIX.

              SUPERNATURAL OF THE NEO-PLATONISTS.

Origin of the Neo-Platonic Doctrines—ApoUonius of Tyana, Porphyrius,
  Plotinus, Iamblichus—Iamblichus  familiar  with Clairvoyance—The
  Various Kinds of Spiritual and Magnetic Knowledge common to the
  Ancients—The Apocatastasis — Other Views of Iamblichus on Spirit-
  ualism— His Remarks on Prayer — Doctrines of the Neo-Platonists
  inherited by the Mystics  of the Middle Ages — True Mysticism —
  Eminent Mystics..........469


                         CHAPTER  XX.

       THE SUPERNATURAL OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC  CHURCH.

 The Church of Rome always True to the Doctrine of the Miraculous —
   Cost to Protestantism of its Renunciation of this Faith — Instances of
   Miracle in the Catholic Church—Also amongst the Old British Chris-
   tians—Rising in the Air — Various Cases of it—Sts. Philip of Neri,
   Loyola, Catherine, Hildegarde, Theresa,  Bernard,  Philip Benetas,
   Francis of Assissi, Dominic, Edmund, Ac. — Maria  Fleischer — The
   'Estatiea'—Joan of Arc—Savonarola—Disorderly  Spiritualism—The
   Devils of Loudun — The Flagellants — Scenes in the Orphan  Houses
   at Amsterdam and  Horn — Therapeutists  in the  Catholic and Old
   British Church — Case of Mademoiselle Perrier — Destruction of Port
   Royal — Divine Judgments — Perkins's  Metallic Tractors —Stigmata
   in Ancient Fathers—Also in many Saints—Maria von Mori, Catherine
   Emmerich, Dominica Lazari, Angela de Fuligno, Nicholas de la Flue—
   A Peasant Girl predicts the Death of Pope Ganganelli and Election of
   Cardinal Braschi—Popes Accused of Sorcery—Modern Catholic Thera-
   peutists—The Cure" D'Ars—Soeur Collette—Guardian Angels—Effect
   of Spiritual Belief in them.........484
2* 
 
THE   HISTORY
THE   SUPERNATURAL
                  CHAPTER I.

AN  APOLOGY FOR FAITH IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.
Tous pensent, personne n'ose dire.  Pourquoi ?  Le courage
manque done ? Oui: mais pourquoi manque-t-il ?  Parceque
la v6rite" trouv6e n'est pas assez  nette encore ;  il faut qu'elle
brille en sa lumiere, pour qu'on se de"voue pour elle.  Elle
6clate enfin, lumineuse, dans un ge"nie, et elle le rend he'roique,
elle l'embrasse de devouement d'amour et de sacrifice.  Elle
le place sur sou cceur, et va  a travers les lions. — Michelet.
  IN my papers in the ' Spiritual Telegraph' on the wonder-
    ful story of the Prophets of the Cevennes, I endeavored
to demonstrate, that though there may be, from time to time,
more extraordinary manifestations of the influence  of  the
spiritual world operating on the incarnated world, the prin-
ciple is universal, and belonging to all times and nations; as
essentially a part of God's economy in His education of  the
human race as the rising and  setting of the sun.
   Since writing that, every day has further convinced me of
the great fact thus  asserted.   There is  no part of  human
                                               (19) 
20          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
history or human literature which does not abound in the
plainest demonstrations of this influence.  We  find  it in
almost every book we  open;  we have it  in the  Scriptures
from the first page to the last, from the Creation to Christ,
—a period of 4000 years.  We have  it in all contemporary
literature;  in the  Grecian, the Roman,  the  Egyptian, the
Persian, the Indian, and the Arabian.  It  glows in the Zend-
Avesta;  it stands mountain-high in the Vedas;  Buddhu
lives in it in divine reverie; Brahma proclaims it in his Ava-
taras; it is  the  very life-blood of the  Scandinavian Eddas.
There —
                  All succeeds to the will,
                  Because the Odreijer
                   Now have descended
                  To the old,  holy, earth.

  If we go  into nations  that never  had a literature, this
eternal truth  is walking there  in all its strength.    The
American Indians, North and South,  had it ages before the
white man arrived.  The Red Men felt  the  inspirations of
the Great Spirit in their forests, and spoke as inspired by it
at their councils. They declared that the angels of the Great
Spirit  walked as friends amongst their ancestors.   The
Mexicans prophesied of a people coming  in a ship from the
East to take  from them their long-possessed  sovereignty.
The Australian natives refuse to go  out at night because
then, they think, the powers of darkness are in the ascendant.
The Obi of the  Africans  speaks  the  same language.   The
conviction  of the  permanent contiguity  of the spiritual
presses on the earth-walls of  humanity wherever spirit lives.
  Passing from the Bible  to  the  book containing the finest
writings next to the Bible, the Apocrypha, we find the same
great principle taking its easy, natural stand, as a perpetual
agent in human history.  Josephus takes it up with the same
sober assurance as he takes  up his pen.   We  have the mi-
raculous deeds of the Maccabees; we have the grand appa-
rition of  the fiery horse and horseman, and the  radiant 
                AN  APOLOGY  FOR FAITH.              21

youths who punished the intrusion of Heliodorus into the
Temple of  Jerusalem.   We have the inspired harbinger of
woe, and the dread  apparitions and prodigies of the siege
of the sacred city.  The fathers of the Church received the
miraculous as part of their gospel heritage.   The Christian
Church, Roman, Grecian, and Waldensian, never, for a mo-
ment, doubted the superhuman demonstrations of their re-
ligion.  Every  page of their  several histories is freighted
with  the miraculous.   Let any  one  read the story  of the
Greek Church, and  of the ancient and  never secularized
Church of the Waldenses.  Let any one read the two massy
volumes of the  Rev. Alban Butler,  of the ' History of the
Saints,' and the four volumes  of  Newman's  ' History of the
English Saints,' and  add to  them  the 'Legends  of the
Saints,' by Mrs. Jameson.  In  these the perpetual stream
of miracle flows without a ruffle of doubt.  We have pious
men and pious women  in all ages curing diseases, quenching
the violence of fires, walking on waters, raising the dead,  as
matters belonging to the life and business of Christianity.
   Has Rome, for secular purposes, invented or falsified some
of these things ?  Undoubtedly.   But what then of the Wal-
denses, who had no worldly purpose ?   And are  we to be-
lieve that  most  holy men of all ages — men who sought  no
earthly advantages or  glory,  and shunned  no suffering  or
shame — are combined in  a monstrous lie which every age
could confute ?  In this respect Rome only goes with every
other Church, and every other record.  And, finally, we have
this doctrine of  spiritual protrusion maintained by the great
leaders of Protestantism;  by Luther, Melancthon,  Calvin,
 Martin Bucer, Erasmus, Knox;  by some of the great bishops
 of the Anglican Church ; by the Church itself in the Collect
 of St. Michael and All Angels, and in various other portions
 of the Book of Common Prayer; by the founders of every
 school of dissent;  by foreign teachers and  philosophers;
 Oberlin,  Bohrae,  Swedenborg, Zschokke, Lavater, Stilling,
 Kerner, &c.; and by the most eminent of the great modern 
22
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
 poets and philosophers, Milton, Bacon, Boyle, Dante, Words-
 worth, Byron, Shelley, &c.
   Thus then, all times and regions, and greatly gifted and
 inspired men, held firmly,  in their several ages and places, by
 the  golden chain of the supernatural,  which we now too
 grasp.  It is the Lex Magna, the great dogma of the universe ;
 it is that —
          Voice of God, close  whispering within,
         •Wretch, this is villany, and this is sin,'

 of Homer, which rebels impatiently against the sophism which
 would banish ethereal companionship  from this material
 sphere.  True, there have been in many ages a sprinkling of
 Sadducees, a little knot of spiritually crippled men, as there
 have been  bodily crippled ones; but  the  grand total of the
 healthy world have felt the ever unrelaxed grasp of life from
 the  invisible that surrounds us.   It  is only since Hobbes,
 and  Tindal, and Hume, and their continental disciples, the
 Illuminata of Germany, and the Encyclopedists  of France,
 whose faith in no-faith culminated in the French Revolution,
 that the torpedo touch of  Sadduceeism has been able to enter
 into  education,  and to paralyze the science, theology, and
 literature of an age.
   Can this endure ?   Impossible 1   The might of all nature,
 the momentum of all man's  history, is against it.   As well
 might we expect an eclipse to become permanent; the cholera
 or the plague to rage for  ever.   The natural condition  of
 humanity is alliance with  the spiritual;  the anti-spiritual is
 but an epidemic—a disease.   Come then, let us see the truth
in the face of nature and confirm our souls in  its universality.
 Let us stroll through the wide corn-fields of the supernatural,
 or, in modern phrase, of spiritualism.   Let  us lift *>ur eyes
and see that they are white for harvest.  There are immensi-
ties of grain garnered in those barns, the libraries, that those
who  will may thresh out.   There are,  too, standing crops —
some green, some yet milky  in the ear, some golden for the 
AN  APOLOGY FOR FAITH.               23
sickle — that we  may wander amongst;  and as we draw the
awned ears through our hands may hear the larks, the poets
of all ages, carolling above our heads.   Hear Hesiod sing-
ing of
            Aerial spirits, by great Jove designed
            To be on earth the  guardians of mankind.
  Hear Homer tell us  that —
                 In similitude  of strangers,  oft
        The gods,  who can with ease all shapes assume,
        Repair to  populous cities.
  We will sit by reedy brooks in the sunshine,  whilst  the
embattled wheat  rustles in our ears, and Socrates shall bid
us,  as he did Phaedo, ' not to be inferior to swans  in respect
to divination, who, when they must needs die, though they
have been used to sing before, sing then  more than ever,
rejoicing that they are  about  to depart to  that deity whose
servants they are.  But men, through their own fear of death,
belie the swans too, and say that they, lamenting their death,
sing their last song through grief; and they do not consider
that no bird sings when it is  hungry, or cold, or  is afflicted
with any other pain, not even  the nightingale or swallow, or
the  hoopooes, which, they say, sing lamenting through grief.
But neither do these  birds appear  to  me  to sing through
sorrow, nor yet do swans; but, in my opinion, belonging to
Apollo, they are  prophetic, and, perceiving the blessings of
Hades,  they sing and  rejoice  on that day more excellently
than at any other time.   I, too, consider myself to be a  fel-
low-servant of the swans, and sacred to the same god, and
I have  received the power of divination from our common
master no less  than they,  and I do not depart from this  life
with less spirit than they.
  We will hear Plato  in his ' Euthyphron,' speaking of the
anti-spiritualists of his day :—' Me, too, when I say anything
in the public assembly concerning divine  things, and predict
to them what is going to happen, they ridicule as mad ; and
although  nothing that  I  have predicted has not turned out 
24          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

to be true, yet they envy all such men as we are.   However,
we ought not to heed them, but pursue our own course.'
  We will stand with ' Ruth  amid the alien  corn' of other
lands, and the good  Boaz of the field, the master-spirit of
the world, shall bid his young men drop us handfuls as they
reap.  In these alien yet kindred fields, Dante shall give us
marvellous  passages from his ' Vita Nuova ;' Ariosto shall
enchant us with miracles in woods and deserts; and Boccaccio
mingle  the  marvellous with  stories of chivalrous and city
life.   Schiller, and even the  world-man Goethe, shall  open
glimpses into  the  swarming  regions of those who ' are not
dead, but gone before.'  We will  have a day with Fenelon
and Pascal in  the monastic glades, and amid the cloisters of
old France.  For the present, however, let us say a few words
on the difficulties  of Faith to men built up  like enclosed
knights  and nuns  of old, in  the hollow walls  of one-eyed
education.
  In the lesser work of Townshend on  ' Mesmerism,' we find
the following anecdote :—'A  doctor of Antwerp was allowed
at a stance to  impose his own tests ; the object of the seance
being to demonstrate vision  by abnormal means.   He said
beforehand,  " If the  somnambulist tells me what is in my
pocket,  I  will believe."   The patient having entered into
somnambulism, was asked by  him  the  question, " What is in
my pocket ?" she immediately replied, "A case of lancets."
"It is true," said the doctor, somewhat startled;  "but the
young lady may know that I  am  of the medical profession,
and that I am likely to carry lancets, and this may be a guess;
but if she will tell me the number of the lancets in the case,
I will believe."  The number of lancets  was told.  The skeptic
still said, " I cannot yet believe ;  but if the form of the case
is  accurately described, I must yield  to conviction."  The
form of  the  case was accurately described.  " This certainly
is very singular," said the doctor,  " very, indeed ;  but still I
cannot believe;  but  if the young lady can tell me the color
of the velvet that  lines the case  that contains the lancets, I 
AN  APOLOGY FOR FAITH.
25
really must believe."  The question being put, the young lady
directly said, " The color is dark blue."  The doctor allowed
that she was right;  yet he went away repeating,  "Very
curious, yet still I cannot believe." '
  Nor could the doctor have  believed had  he received  an
amount of evidence as large as the Cathedral of Antwerp.
How can a stone move ?  How can a petrified  man believe ?
And the scientific, as a class, are petrified by their education
in the unspiritual principles of the last generation.  These
principles are the residuum of the atheistic and materialistic
school of the French Revolution.   The atheism  is disavowed,
but the disbelieving leaven remains, and will long remain.  It
will cling to  the scientific like  a  death-pall, and totally dis-
qualify them for independent research into the internal nature
of man, and  of his properties and prospects as an immortal
being.  This education has sealed up their spiritual eye, and
left them only their physical  one.   They are as utterly dis-
qualified for psychological research as a blind man for physi-
cal research.  They are  greatly to be pitied, for they are in
a wretchedly maimed and deplorable  condition.   It is not
from them that we have to hope for any great  discoveries in
mind; let  us only take care that they do not throw their
loads of professional clay, their refuse of human dissections,
on  the subjects of enquiry, by more  perfect and unpetrified
natures. Such natures, as I have stated, existed in all times,
down to the paralysis which fell on men in the last age. How
different is  the tone,  as  I shall hereafter show, in  almost  all
the great writers of  the period  just  preceding!  What a
different creed is promulgated by Sir Thomas  Browne, who
lived  in the seventeenth century !  In  his ' Religio Medici'
he says, ' We do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to
the discovery of good and bad angels.   I can never pass that
sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk  of admiration :
" Our  good angels reveal many things to those  who seek into
the works  of nature !"  I do think that many mysteries
ascribed to  our  own inventions  have been the  courteous
  I —3 
26           HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.

revelations of spirits;  for those noble essences in heaven
bear a friendly regard to their fellow nature on earth ; and I,
therefore, believe that  those  many prodigies and ominous
prognostics  which forerun the ruin of states, princes,  and
private persons,  are the  charitable premonitions of good
angels, which more careless inquirers term but the effects of
chance and nature.'  And alluding to the school of Hobbes,
which was beginning to cast  its  dark fog on the hitherto
bright faith  of men, he adds :  ' The severe school shall never
laugh me out of the  philosophy of Hermes,—that this visible
world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein,  as in a por-
trait, things are not truly,  but  in  equivocal shapes, and as
they counterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric'
  How different to the clever men of our time 1 aad yet Sir
Thomas was deemed one of the  acutest intellects of his era.
Our scientific and literary men  stick by the death-creed of
Hobbes,  Diderot, and Co., and yet, not knowing  it, cannot
believe any great new spiritual  fact on any amount of evi-
dence.   The  same petrified class  of people in Christ's time
were only the more enraged by accumulated evidence.  When
at length they could not  disbelieve Christ any  longer, they
determined to kill him.  Though they saw that His miracles
were all benefactions, even to  the raising of the dead, they
were only the more irritated  by that.   Instead of melting
their petrifaction, the blaze of evidence made them feel their
stony  bondage, without being able to  break it;  and  they
were the more pinched and cramped  by their  educational
prejudices.   In their pangs, nature expanding their percep-
tions,  but not their  hearts, and habit and  pride  still com-
pressing  them with  a  deadly  clasp, they grew furious, and
cried no  longer that Christ was an impostor and a deceiver,
but that  He  did  good  things, and that if they let Him go
on,  the whole world  would go after Him.   They, therefore,
seized Him and put Him to death 1
  This is an  awful picture of the eternal  nature  of profes-
sional pride  and materialistic education, and it is the precise 
AN  APOLOGY FOR FAITH.               27
picture of the scientific and professional of  to-day as it was
of the same class in Christ's time.   ' Not  many  wise, not
many learned, not  many  great  of this world' believed on
Him.  The Pharisees and high priests asked, ' Which of the
rulers and Pharisees have believed in these things ?'  So now,
as then, it is from the unprejudiced, and often from the un-
educated, that the capacity for receiving  new  truths, on
simple and palpable evidence, is to be expected.  The general
recipients of  fresh facts are  men and women accustomed to
use their own eyes, and not the spectacles of so-called learned
men and learned theories.  In California and Australia they
were not the geologists who could find the gold, but the
plain simple men who sought it not by talk of strata, and
primaries, and tertiaries, Palaeozoic and Silurian ages, but
by just simply digging after it.
   Long  before Sir Roderick Murchison  had predicted gold
in  Australia, or Count  Strzelecki  and the  Rev.  W. B.
Clarke had found it there, the convicts cutting the road from
Sydney  through the Blue Mountains had gathered it in
quantities (see my ' Two Years in Victoria,' vol.  ii. p. 254).
Long had the shepherds of Victoria collected  and brought
down nuggets to sell in Melbourne, where  no one believed
their story, but insisted  that these nuggets had been intro-
duced from  some other country.   But, strangest of all is
the fact stated by Mr. Davison in his elaborate work, ' Dis-
covery and  Geognosy of Gold  Deposits in Australia,' that
 Mr. Stutchbury, who, on the recommendation of Sir  Rode-
 rick Murchison, was sent out by our Government to Aus-
tralia as the most suitable  geologist to find gold, if there
 were any, could not  find a trace.  And in 1851, when the
 Colonial  Secretary announced  to  Mr.   Stutchbury  that
 Hargraves, an  uneducated digger, had found a gold  field in
 the neighborhood  of Bathurst, officially replied that  he had
 for some time been  exploring that very quarter, and 'could
 see no evidence whatever of a precious metal in the western
 districts.' 
28
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
    Such were  the results  of science;  but  the untheorized
  men knew a spade and a pick, and they knew gold when they
  saw it, and so bagged the metal, whilst the learned bagged
  only a  deal  of vaporing talk about chloritic schist,  and
  talcose  rocks, and permian deposits.   The parallel  holds
  good  in psychological gold  digging.   They must be men
  with all their senses  unsinged, with  all their limbs  perfect
  and healthy, •and their  eyes and minds free  as  God  and
  Nature made them, to seek  and find truth.  No  half men,
  no paralytics,  who  have lost the  use of one side, and that
  the best side, of their intellectual frames, through the vicious
  habits  of an  educational process,  will  ever  become  the
  pioneers of the  knowledge of the  yet  undiscovered regions
  of human nature.   As soon might you pit  a Chinese lady,
  with all her  toes crumpled up, to run against a full-blood
  Arabian for the Derby.   Let us  hope for a more rational
  education of professional men, when  nature and observation
" shall take the place of theory and the pride of  theory.  Till
  then we must go on without them ; we  cannot wait of men
  who, as Wordsworth  says, have been
               Suckled in a Pagan creed  outworn.
  The great poet tells us that the Greeks felt
           A spiritual presence, at times  misconceived,
           But still a high dependence, a divine
           Bounty and government that filled their hearts
           With joy and gratitude and peace and love.
  And he asks:
                   Shall men for whom our age
           Unbaffled powers of vision hath prepared,
           To explore the world without and world within,
           Be joyless  as the blind 1 Ambitious souls,
           Whom earth at this late season hath produced
           To regulate the moving spheres,  and weigh
           The planets in the hollow of their hand;
           And they who rather dive than soar, whose pains
           Have solved the elements, or analysed
           The thinking  principle, shall they, in fact,
           Prove a degenerate race?   And what avails
           Renown, if their presumption makes them suoh ?
           0 there is  laughter at their work in heaven! 
AN  APOLOGY FOR  FAITH.
29
         Inquire of ancient wisdom; go demand
         Of mighty Nature if 'twas ever meant
         That we should pry far off, yet be unraised,
         That we should pore and dwindle as we pore?
These porers and dwindlers, who think
         Our vital frame so fearfully devised,
         And the dread soul within it,  should exist
         Only to be examined, pondered, searched,
         Probed, vexed, and  criticised;
These  microscopic men, who  will  have  no  evidence  of
things which they cannot take  up  with their thumb and
fingers, atoms which  they can carve and pry  amongst,  are
continually accusing us of credulity, as of something  mean
and imbecile.  But  what  is this credulity ?  A credulity
based on evidence is hardly credulity.  But what is the cre-
dulity which the spiritualists indulge in ?   Will any one  tell
us wherein it differs from the credulity of those who saw  the
miracles of Christ — those miracles which so  offended  the
scribes  and  Pharisees ?   Wherein  does it differ from  the
credulity of Paul, who believed he saw a miraculous light on
his way to Damascus, and heard commands  from heaven ?
Do these very wise men know that it is to this  species of
credulity that both Christ and Paul  attribute the very high-
 est and noblest  properties ?   ' 0 1  ye of little faith 1' was
the continual cry of the  Saviour.   Faith He pronounced to
be the sublimest and  most meritorious quality of the soul.
 To faith in messages from the inner  world, He awarded  sal-
vation !  ' Whosoever believeth  in me shall have everlasting
life 1'   'If ye have but faith as  a grain of mustard seed, ye
 shall say to this mountain,' &c.
   Paul was continually exalting the nature and character of
 faith.    ' By Him all that believe are justified from all things
 from which they could not be justified by the works of the
 law.' — Acts xiii.  ' Believe, and ye  shall be  saved.' — Acts
 xvi.    ' For therein is  the righteousness of  God  revealed
 from faith to faith,  as  it is written, the just shall live by
 fa-ith.' — Romans i.   The  glory and greatness of Abraham,
        •» * 
 30          HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

 for which God made him the father of the faithful, and the
 ancestor of Christ, was this faith, or credulity : and  he had
 this credulity so enormously, that when he was promised by
 a spiritual messenger at a hundred years old,  and his wife far
 past the age of child-bearing, that he should have a son, he
■ staggered not; and he believed not according to-nature, but
 hardily contrary  to nature, and gave glory  to God.   Nay
 more, he had such a pitch of credulity, that he was ready, at
 a spiritual command, to kill his own son,—a credulity which,
 in  this age, would have made him a  laughing-stock, and
 would have put him  in jeopardy of the gallows.  Yet God
 deemed this vast  credulity not  merely sensible and prudent,
 but so sensible, so prudent, so noble, that it was entered into
 God's book of record as the highest aud most substantial
 righteousness.  So far from credulity—that is, the quality of
 mind termed by our learned men, credulity — being deemed
 imbecile by the Author of all minds, He has set upon it His
 stamp of divinest approval.   In His view, it is the sublimest
 action of the soul;  the profoundest philosophy.  If any one
 would comprehend the grandeur and estimation of faith, or,
 as philosophers term it, credulity, let him read the eleventh
 chapter of St. Paul's Epistle to the Hebrews, in  which he
 reviews the history of the world from Adam to the coming
 of Christ, and directly attributes all the marvels of the annals
 of the patriarchs and prophets down to the accomplishment
 of the Messiahship, to faith.  Faith which subdued kingdoms,
 wrought righteousness, obtained promises, stopped the mouths
 of lions, quenched the violence of fire, made weakness  strong,
 and  raised the very dead.   Faith, says St. Paul,  by which
 only we can understand that the world was  framed  by the
 word of God.
   That is the despised quality of faith, or belief in evidence
of superhuman things.   Nay, we are told by  our Saviour
himself, in  the  case of Thomas, that blessed  are  they who
saw not and yet believed.  And that too was  the opinion of
 Sir Thomas Browne, already quoted.   'Some believe the 
AN  APOLOGY FOR FAITH.              31
better for seeing Christ's sepulchre;  and when they have
seen the Red Sea, doubt not the miracle.   Now contrarily,
I bless myself that  I lived not in the day of miracles ;  that
I never saw Christ or His disciples.   I would not have been
one of the Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of
Christ's patients on whom He wrought His miracles.   Then
had  my faith been  thrust upon me;  nor should I enjoy the
greater blessings  pronounced to all  who saw not and yet be-
lieved.'— Beligio Medici.
   They who, then, are ready to accept the sole  testimony of
their own senses, or of their sane and honest neighbors, of
things however extraordinary, are not, in Christ's opinion,—
nor  in that of Sir Thomas  Browne,— fools  and dupes, but
blessed.   Perhaps those who think themselves  very wise in
scorning all evidence that does not  suit them, may be a little
surprised at the amazing value set upon  this very credulity,
by the highest  authority, as a quality that requires a certain
soundness of heart,  and honesty of  purpose, and courage of
intellect,—a quality which cannot be obtained except by the
exercise of the very highest  elements of human nature.   And
equal must be their surprise at the very different estimation
in the Gospel of  another  class of men, 'in whom God made
foolish the wisdom of this world, because  they sought it not
by faith, but, as it  were, by the works of the law; for they
stumbled at that stumbling-block.' — Romans ix.
   It would do some  people a great deal of good to  read
that admirable little book, of only  89 pages, called ' Super-
stition and Science,' by the Rev. R. S.  Maitland, d. d. and
f. S. a., in which,  with  a rare mixture of acute logic and fine
irony, he  deals  with  certain  philosophers,  the Faradays,
Brewsters, and the like.  Speaking of superstition, he says:
   ' Few  persons, I suppose,  are really much the worse  in
 mind, body, or  estate for  being  thought superstitious by
 their neighbors.   As  to  the matter of fact,  every man —
 except those, if there be any such,  who have renounced all
belief in everything — is placed somewhere in the scale of 
32
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
credulity:  and is looked up to as too high, and down upon
as too low, by those who are beneath or above him in faith,
just as he is iu the matter of learning  and money.  If we
hear that a man is learned, we cannot  deny it, for who has
not  learned  something ?  But it  makes  a great  difference
whether  the testimony comes from  his university, or a vil-
lage ale-house.   If he  be rich, whether  his neighbors and
competitors  inhabit  Finland or  Grosvenor Square.   And
with regard to superstition,  one may commonly judge as to
the meaning of the word in  any particular case, from the
general style and character of him who uses it.  If a  philos-
opher is excited and sets up a shout over the  solution of a
difficulty, or the detection of a fraud, and  glorifies it as a
triumph  over superstition, we  may suspect — we  must not
set it down for certain, but we may, I say, suspect — that he
is not only glad to get rid  of something  which he did not
wish to believe, but that he  means directly to  impugn some-
thing else,  which he cannot  contrive  to disbelieve.   The
panic haste in which a vulgar dread of being thought super-
stitious, or being driven  to  believe something  disagreeable,
calls on science and philosophy to come to the rescue — the
prostration  in which frightened ignorance waits to receive
the lesson which it is to turn into nonsense by parrot repeti-
tion — the  silent awe  with  which it listens to profane and
vain  babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely so called—
all this is miserably ridiculous.   It is something which can-
not be estimated or  even imagined  by those who, without
taking the trouble to look into the facts, and to use the
common sense which God has given them, are content to sit
down, calm  and silent, under  the  shameful conviction that
they  are not  scientific, and must not  pretend to  have an
opinion, but must swallow whatever pretenders  in philosophy
may condescend to tell them.'
  Equally excellent is what  Dr. Maitland  says of credulity •
namely, that to believe human  testimony  is as much  a part
of our nature as to require food ; and that  the very men who 
AN  APOLOGY FOR FAITH.
33
affect to believe as little  as  possible go  on for threescore
years and ten, believing from  hour to hour, and from  year
to year, what people tell them on testimony which they can-
not have tested, and which, had  they a  motive for it, they
would reject on mere hearsay.
   I trust that this work will do much to set the world right
on these questions.  That it will teach people that all attacks
on faith under the pseudonym of credulity do not indicate a
philosophical  but a shallow mind, incapable or  unwilling to
determine the true limits of evidence, and to give a rational
concession to the powers of the unsophisticated human intel-
lect.   That so far from regarding the dicta of mere scientific
or literary men on questions of a higher nature than  mere
physics as  decisive, the mistakes and weaknesses in regard to
the  supernatural, of such men as Faraday, Brewster, Dick-
ens, Dr. Elliotson,—the martyr of Mesmerism turned perse-
cutor of spiritualism,—will do much to cure implicit reliance
on men wandering out of their proper provinces. That they
will come to regard such men with all honor and respect, as
far as they confine themselves to what they really have  stud-
ied ; but, at the same time, to regard them as men suffering
under  the  chronic paralysis of  faith left on Europe by the
 French Revolution.  That,  in  fact, all  that part of  their
minds which  regards the science of pneumatology is dead,
and incapable of any vital process.   That, so far as they are
concerned, all further discoveries in the region  of our  more
subtle  life  and essence is at an end.  They must be suffered
to die  out, as the dried-up stalks and stubble of a past sea-
son, and the energies of a new and more equally-developed
order  of minds must  be relied on for the  prosecution of
knowledge  more  important than  even railroads  and tele-
graphs, because embracing the eternities  of nature and des-
tiny.  Instead of allowing faith to be trodden  under foot,
under the nickname of credulity, men will become conscious
of its  truly  august character, of its gospel  greatness.  At
the  same time that they are careful, whilst fixing their eyes 
34
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
on the fair mountains  of speculation in the distance, they
will be also careful to follow the highways of evidence as
they proceed.   In  such minds, nicknames will cease to pos-
sess any influence.   In spirit  enquiries, the term spirit-rap-
ping will  not be regarded as  wit, much  less  as argument,
any more  than it would be deemed clever to call Christians
water-dippers because  they practise  baptism.   Yet  there is
a large class  of the vulgar  who, when they have pronounced
the word  spirit-rapping, think they have  exploded spirit-
evidence.   These are ' of the earth, earthy!' animal exist-
ences, in the words of John Keats,—

        Which graze the mountain tops with faces prone.

   In the  meantime, let us say with Jung-Stilling, in  his
' Scenen aus  dem  Geister-Reiche :'—'Ob  uns fur Narren
und Obscuranten erklart, oder fur verriickte  Schwarmer halt,
das ist ganz  einerley :  dafiir wurde unser Herr und Meister
selber gehalten.   Lass't uns zu Ihm hinaus gehen, und seine
Schmach tragen.'   That is, 'Whether we are reckoned fools
and ignoramuses, or set down as mad fanatics, it is all one:
our Lord  and Master Himself was pronounced such.  Let us
go out to  Him, and bear His shame.' 
AMERICAN SPIRITUALISM.                35
                CHAPTER  II.

•SPIRITUALISTS BEFORE THE AMERICAN DEVELOPMENT.
       There is nothing new under the sun.
                                    Solomon.

A man, for want of a better term, is designated a fool when
by his opinions he is found alone in the midst of his nation- or
his age; and if he meet with partisans, real or pretended, so
long as their number is small, they share with him the same
title and the same disgrace.
                     Vinkt's  Vital Christianity, p. 64.
   SO  profound is the ignorance of the great subject of Spi-
     ritualism, which is but another term for the belief in the
Supernatural, in this age — an influence pervading all ages
and all nations, wide as the spread of the sun's light, repeat-
ing its operations as incessantly as the return of morning —
so thoroughly has  the  ocean of mere mundane affairs and
affections submerged us in its waves — that if presented with
a new phase  of a most ancient and indestructible power, we
stand astonished before it, as something  hitherto unheard of.
If our knowledge reaches yesterday, it is absolutely at fault
in the day before.  This  has never been  more conspicuous
than  in  the  estimation  of  American  spiritualism  in this
country.  Because it  has  assumed  a novel shape,  that of
moving physical  objects,  and has introduced spirits speak-
ing through  the means  of an alphabet,  rapping, drawing,
and writing, either through  the  hand of mediums, or inde-
pendently of them, it has almost universally in this  country
been  regarded as  an  entirely new  phenomenon.  We still 
36          niSTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
continually hear of spiritualism as originating  in  America
within the last ten years.   The  evidence  produced in this
volume will show that no view of the matter can  be more
discreditable to our knowledge of psychology.   Nothing can
be more self-evident than that American spiritualism is but
the last new blossom of a very ancient tree, colored by the
atmosphere in which it has  put forth, and somewhat modi-
fied in its shape by the pressure of circumstances upon it. 'In
other words, it has burst forth from the old, all-prolific stem,
to answer the needs of the time.   As  materialism has made
a great advance, this grand old Proteus of Truth has assumed
a shape expressly adapted to stop its way.  As materialism
has  tinctured all  philosophy, spiritualism  has  spoken out
more plainly in resistance of it.   The spirit-world has come,
as it were, a step nearer to our firesides, and by what seemed
the  happy accident  of  a  child's expression,  but which,
undoubtedly, was the usual  promptings of Providence in all
times of  need, America learned  to speak  to spirits and to
receive replies, though only, like  Thisbe,  through the still
sturdy wall of fleshly matter, explaining the mystery of all
those knockings and hauntings, those sighings and rustlings,
those thrillings through our nerves, and awe-overshadowings
of the minds of men, through many a long age.   The sen-
sation which this has created has  been in proportion to the
instinctively perceived value of this new key to the great old
storehouse of spirit treasures.   It has shown how much the
modern  Sadduceeism, by its holding  up  new  obstructions
between us and our invisible Fatherland, has made  such an
additional instrument  requisite.  We  must clear away the
death-wall of  doubt  and  negation,  or we  must  perish.
America, by the simple discovery of the telegraphy of rap-
ping, and the  further developments  of  mediumship,  made
intelligible by this discovery, has,  in  truth, inaugurated a
new era  of spiritualism ; but it has by no  means created or
has had  created within it the power of spiritualism itself.
That power is the  all-time inheritance of the human race. 
       THE SUPERNATURAL IN MODERN GERMANY.      37

  For about a hundred  years before, Germany and Switzer-
land had their spiritualists, developing, or  believing in phe-
nomena,  almost in all  particulars  identical with those of
America,  If they had  not  discovered the mode of con-
versing with spirits by means of rapping and the alphabet,
they had been enabled to converse with them by other means.
They had spirit-vision, spirit-writing, knowledge of coming
events from the spirit-world, and daily direct intercourse with
its inhabitants.   Pre-eminent amongst these spiritualists were
Jung-Stilling,  Kerner,  Lavater,  Eschenmayer, Zschpkke,
 Schubert,  Werner, Kant, of the German  portion ;  France
 had Oberlin, &c.  England, at a little earlier period, had its
 John Wesley and his  disciples, who had  full faith in these
 phenomena, and Sweden its Swedenborg, perhaps the  great-
 est spirit-medium  that ever appeared, passing in and out of
 the  spirit-world and holding converse with its inhabitants
 almost  at  his pleasure.   But leaving Wesley and  Sweden-
 borg for another notice, I shall now devote  my attention to
 the  spiritualists of Germany  and  Switzerland who flourished
 from the middle of the eighteenth century  to within less than
•twenty years of the spiritual outbreak in  America, and one
 of  whose  most distinguished members,   Dr.  Kerner,  was,
 indeed,  still living at the time of commencing this work.  I
 shall notice this group of spiritualists here, otherwise  out of
 their course, simply because they will at once deprive the
 American dispensation of much of its   novelty, and clear
 away thus the gross error of making America within the last
 ten years  the original mother of spiritualism.

                  Johann Jung-Stilling.

    The  life and character of  this eminent spiritualist has  been
  made familiar to the English reader through the translation
  of Mr, Samuel Jackson, who has  also introduced to us his
  ' Pneumatology '  and some  other portions of his  writings.
  The story of his  early life  as written by himself, under the
     I.—4 
38           HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

title  of Heinrich Stilling's childhood,  youthful  years  and
wanderings, is one of the most charming  specimens of  em-
bellished biography in  any language.  It is what  Goethe
has named in  his  own case ' Wahrheit und  Dichtung,' or
truth  and fiction.   The events of the life, he tells us, are
real, with some poetic  embellishments intended  to  make a
reality appear  like  a work of imagination.   The  scenery
and the personages which  figure in it aro delightful.   We
are conducted  into a  village of  Westphalia,  where  old
Eberhard  Stilling,  a  charcoal-burner,  lives   with  his "wife
Margaret,  and  his  family.   This  village, which  he  calls
Tiefenbach, or Deepbrook, stands  on each side of such a
stream at the feet of hills covered with beech forests ;  and
old Eberhard spends every week in the  neighboring hills,
burning charcoal, and  goes home every Saturday to return
to the woods on Monday morning.  Eberhard is a pious old
patriarch ;  he has two sons, one of whom is  of a mathema-
tical turn, and  becomes the steward of a neighboring gen-
tleman : the  other,  Wilhelm, is lame in his  -feet, and  is a
tutor.   Wilhelm is  the father of Heinrich, whose mother is
the delicate  daughter of  an old ejected preacher of thfl
name of Moritz.  The mother dies early, and leaves Hein-
rich  a  poetical temperament.  The  boy is  very fond of
going with his  grandfather into the woods, and staying with
him in his  woodman's  hut  covered  with  sods, watching the
old man's labors, and listening to his talk.  On one occasion
the boy asks  him to tell him about his ancestors, for he has
heard of heroes, and they all  had their ancestors, and were
often  descended from some great  prince.   Father  Stilling
smiled, and replied,  ' It would  be hard to prove that we were
descended from a prince;  but that is all the same to me,
nor must thou wish  it.   Thy forefathers were all honest  and
pious people  ;  there are few princes that can  say  that.   Let
this be thy  greatest  honor in the world, that thy grandfather,
great  grandfather,  and  their fathers, were  all  men  who,
though they had nothing under their  command out of their 
                 JOHANN JUNG-STILLING.               39

house, were, notwithstanding, beloved and honored by  all
men.   None  of them married in a dishonorable  manner, or
transgressed with any female; none  of them ever  coveted
that which was not his, and all died honorably at a very old
age.'  Heinrich  rejoiced, and  said, 'I shall then find all my
forefathers in heaven.'   ' Yes,' replied his grandfather, 'that
thou wilt;  our family will  there bloom and flourish.  Hein-
rich, remember this evening as long as thou livest.   In  the
world to come, we shall be  of high nobility ; do  not lose this
privilege.   Our blessing will rest upon thee as long as thou
art pious;  but if  thou  become  wicked, and  despise  thy
parents, we shall not know thee in the next world.'  Hein-
rich began to weep, and said, ' Do not fear that, grandfather !
I will be religious, and rejoice that my name is Stilling.'
  And such  examples  and conversations  as  these seem to
have sunk deep into the lad's  heart,  and Stilling became
a steady champion for Christianity, and a firm believer in
spiritual guidance, and  not  only in a general but  a particular
Providence.   He struggled his way up from the tailor's shop-
board, and the obscurity of village life, through the various
grades of  schoolmaster, merchant's clerk, family  tutor, to the
university, where he went with only one dollar in his pocket,
and without  any further  visible means  of passing an aca-
demical career, and taking his medical degree.   ' But,' says
Goethe, who was his fellow-student at Strasburg,  and became
strongly attached to him, ' the element of his energy was an
impregnable faith in God,  and in an assistance immediately
proceeding from him, which obviously justified  itself in an
uninterrupted  provision, and an infallible deliverance from
every distress and every evil.  Jung had experienced various
instances of this kind in his life, and they had recently been
frequently repeated; so that though he led a frugal life,  yet
it was without care, and with the greatest cheerfulness:  and
he applied himself most diligently to his studies, although he
could not  reckon upon any certain subsistence from  one 
40
HISTORY  OF TnE  SUPERNATURAL.
quarter of a year to another.  I urged him to write his life,
and he promised to do so.'—Wahrheit und Dichtung.
  In urging Jung-Stilling to write  his  life, Goethe  ren-
dered a great service  to the cause of vital genuine Chris-
tianity.   Not that  of  mere theory, which has none  but a
vague metaphysical faith, but which accepts the Gospel in
all its  simplicity  and   power; accepts  it as  based  on the
promises which  it  contains, that  its  author will  be with
His disciples to the end of the world,  and that, if they thor-
oughly rely on Him, they shall  not only receive whatever
they ask rightly and reasonably, but it shall be prepared for
them even  before they ask, because their Heavenly Father
knoweth what they need.   Stilling had accepted the Gospel
in this bona fide substantial fashion.  He did not exactly say,
as Luther was wont in his daring way to say to God, ' This,
O God, thou, Lord, most positively promised, and if Thon
dost not fulfil it,  I will not believe them again ;'  but he had
an inward unshakeable assurance that God was leading him
towards the work which He meant him to do in the world,
and he must leave all the means of carrying out his plans to
Himself.   But it was not exactly what Goethe imagined; he
was not 'without care,' and his cheerfulness jwras not without
an understratum  of mental anxiety.  On the contrary, his
faith was often tried  to the uttermost; he was often left to
the very last moment without the slightest sign of rescue from
the deepest perplexity, and fear of disgrace from breach of
money engagements.    For years  he was  left  to struggle
through frightful poverty, and  to  be  scorned, and buffeted,
and  persecuted by  those  around him.   Without this his
faith would have been of little value, his  trust in God's
promises would  have been too cheaply purchased.  It was
in the depth of excruciating trials that he was taught to feel
the eternal arm beneath him, it was when he was about to
sink and the waters  of affliction were up to his very lips,
that he was saved again and again, and made to understand
that his  fears were vain, his faith  and not his  helper had 
            OLD EBERHARD STILLING'S VISION.          41

been weak.   He was never once forsaken, and his life is one
of the most remarkable and triumphant examples of ' living
by faith.'   From a poor tailor's son he rose to be not only a
professor  of the Universities  of Marburg  and Heidelberg,
but a most  successful operator for the cure of cataract, and
a  very popular writer in defence  of  Christianity.   The
Grand Duke of Baden became personally attached to him,
delighted to have him near him,  and gave him a handsome
stipend to devote himself  to  this class of literature, and  to
the cure of cataract  gratuitously.  By these means Stilling
not  only  restored to sight many  hundreds of the blind, but
spread over all Germany, and into many foreign lands, the
radiance  and joy of his own faith,
   Mr. Jackson, Stilling's translator,  says,  ' Untutored  in
academic divinity, which had proved insufficient to  stem the
torrent of  increasing infidelity,  his expanded  mind, after
being well  established in fundamental truth,  was led  to the
contemplation of subjects  which were still much involved  in
obscurity, and which enabled  him to present the realities  of
the  invisible world in  a  new and  striking manner to the
reader's eye.'  He became, in truth, a spiritualist on  a wide
and varied  scale.   He  not  only lived close to the  Divine
 Spirit, and was thus a spiritualist in the highest sense, but
he, like Swedenborg, was led into the invisible world, and in
 his  ' Scenen aus der Geister Welt,' made  revelations there
 and gave pictures there, which every real spiritualist at once
recognizes as genuine.   In this respect  he evidently  inherited
 this faculty of open vision from his grandfather, the vene-
 rable old Eberhard Stilling.   He describes a scene in which
 the old grandfather, his daughter Maria, and himself  went
 into the  forest to collect firewood.   Arrived there, they sat
 awhile by a beautiful spring,  and after awhile old  Eberhard'
 bade him remain there, and  he would  go and  collect fallen
 wood.  After a time he returned, looked cheerful and plea-
 saut, as  if  he had found something, smiled also occasionally,
 stood, shook his head, looked fixedly at one  particular spot,
        4* 
42          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
 folded his hands  and smiled again.   Maria  and Heinrich
 looked at him with astonishment, yet they did  not  venture
 to ask him about  it, for he often did  as though he laughed
 to himself.  Stilling's heart was, however, too  full;  he sat
 down  by them and related as follows, his eyes being full of
 tears.   Maria  and Heinrich saw it, and their tears  already
 overflowed: —
   ' On leaving you to go into the wood, I saw at a distance
 before me a light, just as when the sun rises in the morning.
 I was much surprised.   What is that ? thought I;  the sun
 is already standing in the heavens, — is it a  new sun?  It
 must be something strange ; I will go and see it.  I went
 towards  it; as  I  approached there was before  me a  large
 plain,  the extent  of  which  I  could  not overlook.   I had
 never seen anything so  glorious in all my life !  Such a fine
 perfume  and such a cool air proceeded  from it as I cannot
 express.   The  whole region was white with the  light, —the
 day with the  sun  is  night  compared to  it.  There stood
 many thousand castles, one near another.   Castles ! I cannot
 describe  them to you ; they were as if made of silver.   There
 were also gardens, bushes, brooks.   0 God, how beautiful 1
 Not far from me stood a great and glorious mansion.'  Here
 the tears flowed abundantly down the good Stilling's cheeks,
 as well as those of Maria and Heinrich.   ' Some one came
 towards me out of the door of  this mansion like  a  virgin.
 Ah ! a glorious angel!  When she was close to me, 0 God I
 I  saw it  was  our dear departed Dovra 1'  All three now
 sobbed, none of them could speak, except Heinrich, who
 wept and  exclaimed,  'O my mother 1 my dear  mother 1'
 ' She said to me,' continued  Stilling,  < with such a friendly
 manner, with the very look which formerly so often stole my
 heart, "Father, yonder is our eternal habitation, you will
soon come to us."  I looked, but all was  forest before me;
the glorious  vision had  departed.   Children, I shall  die
soon ; how glad I am at the  thought! >   Heinrich could  not
cease asking how his mother had looked, what she had on 
         STILLING LIVES AT COLLEGE  ON FAITH.       43

and such  like.   All three  pursued their labor during the
day,  and  spoke continually  of  this occurrence.   But old
Stilling was from that time like one who is in a strange land,
and not at home.  The old man was right.   The vision was
shortly followed by his death.   This event was also indicated
to a neighbor by a sign, and she warned them of it.
  When  he was grown  up, Stilling,  whilst walking one
Sunday, felt himself suddenly seized by an unknown power,
which penetrated his whole soul;  he felt inwardly happy,
but his whole body trembled, and he  could  scarcely keep
himself from sinking to  the ground.   From that time he felt
an invincible inclination to live and die entirely to the glory
of God and the  good of his fellow men.  His love to God
and man was intense;  and on the spot he made a firm and
irrevocable covenant with God to resign  himself henceforth
to His guidance.   This is what  has been so often  ridiculed
as sudden conversion ;  but Stilling simply adds, ' This cir-
cumstance is a  real truth,   I leave it to  men  of genius,
philosophers, and psychologists to make what  they please
of it;  I am well  aware of what it is that converts a man and
so entirely changes  him.'
   As we have said, Stilling felt himself inwardly drawn to
become a physician. Through the same  inward impulse he
had betrothed himself to a  pious but consumptive young
woman, whom he  might find dead  on his  return  from the
University.  But how to get there I  For his course of study
a thousand rix-dollars were necessary, and he did not know
where in  the whole world to raise a hundred.  Neither his
own friends nor his intended wife's could  help him.  The
worldly prudent would have  pronounced  the scheme insane,
and have bade  him stick to his needle  and shears.   But
Stilling had a firm persuasion that he was divinely led, and
he started for Strasburg with a surgeon named Troost, who
was going to  refresh  his  knowledge  by a  new  course of
study.  By the  time they  had reached and were  about  to
quit Frankfort,  he  had only one single rix-dollar  left; but 
 44          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

 there  he met  an acquaintance,  whom he  calls Leibmann,
 who asked him where he got his  money for his studies.   He
 replied from God ; on  which Leibmann said, ' I am one of
 God's stewards,' and handed him over thirty-three rix-dollars.
 When these were spent at Strasburg, 3Ir. Troost, who  had
 travelled with  him, said to him one  day, ' Stilling, I believe
 you have no money.  I will lend you  six  Carolines — about
 five pounds — till your  remittance comes.'   No  sooner  was
 that gone,  and he was wondering  where the next  was to
 come from, when Leibmann sent him three hundred rix-dol-
 lars, from which sum he paid Troost and got through the
 winter.
   In the following April, as he sat at study in his room, he
 was suddenly seized with a terrible panic and  a desperate
 inclination  to set off at once.   He struggled against  the
 feeling, as a fit of hypochondria, but could not get rid of it;
 the urgency to hasten home remained violently.   Whilst in
 this condition, he received a letter informing him of  the ill-
 ness and apparently approaching end of his betrothed. This
 explained his dreadful presentiment,  and he set off instantly.
 He found his betrothed, as it seemed, at the point of  death;
 but she  wonderfully recovered : and, supplied  with a fresh
 sum of money by his intended father-in-law, he returned to
 Strasburg.  By this time this gentleman was enabled to help
 him through, and thus he finished his course of studies,  ob-
 tained his diploma, returned, married, and  settled at Elber-
 feld.   He  began his married  and professional  life with five
 rix-dollars only !  He had a hard fight for it.   He was not
 much  estimated in that manufacturing town; but at Stras-
 burg he had made the acquaintance of Goethe, Herder, and
 others  of the rising lights of Germany.  In one of his most
 difficult moments,  Goethe sold his first part of the Life of
Jung-Stilling for a hundred  and fifteen rix-dollars,  which
lifted him out of a sharp strait, and at once made him famous.
He was appointed Professor of Agriculture, Technology, etc.,
at Rittersburg, but he owed in Elberfeld eight hundred rix- 
          STILLING'S FUNDS OF PROVIDENCE.           45

dollars, and did not know how he should get away ;  but on
taking leave of some of the chief merchants, several of them
made him parting presents, and on counting them up, both he
and his wife were astonished to find them amouut exactly to the
required eight hundred rix-dollars, neither more nor less !
After this he  was appointed professor at Marburg  of  the
Economical, Financial Sciences, with a fixed salary of 1,200
rix-dollars — not 200Z. — but with a provision  for his wife
in case of his death.
  His debts,  incurred through deficiency of  salary in his
earlier career  as professor, pressed heavily upon him, for he
had  a considerable family; but he was sent for to perform
operations for cataract in Switzerland, and he received there
exactly the amount of all his debts, namely, precisely  one
thousand six hundred and fifty gulden—137J. 10s.  But  the
expenses of the journey were not provided for by this amount.
These were six  hundred gulden;  and exactly this  amount
was paid him before he reached home.  These instances may
suffice; the whole of Stilling's life abounded in them.   In
fact, he defrayed at one time or other debts to the amount of
many thousand  gulden  by the 'funds of  Providence,' his
timely and unfailing  supplies, as Goethe observed, fully jus-
tifying his  reliance on that Providence.  Well might Uz,
lyric poet of Anspach, call him 'the  man whom Providence
so remarkably leads,  and who  so boldly confesses and cour-
ageously defends the religion of Jesus.'
  Let us now notice some of the phases of Stilling's spiritual
development.  He became what is now termed a great writ-
ing medium.   He not only wrote boldly in defence of Chris-
tianity, when  infidelism  from  France  inundated Germany,
but he wrote  under  an  influence  which astonished himself.
As George Fox  would say, he was 'led and  guided' in his
writing.  Two of  Stilling's most  remarkable works are his
'Scenes  in the Invisible World,'  and his 'Nostalgia.'   He
was  merely proposing to himself to write imaginary scenes
in the invisible world, as Lucian had done in the Mythologic 
46
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
 Olympus, and in  the  'Nostalgia'  to  write in imitation of
 ' Tristram Shandy;' but  his pen was  guided to write what
 astonished himself and the public.   He wrote the ' Scenes in
 the Invisible World' wholly as if it were a work of imagina-
 tion ; nor does he in that work or the  ' Nostalgia' represent
 them as anything else; but when I read the ' Scenes' I  was
 instantly certain that these were not the product of imagina-
 tion, but of spiritual dictation.   No one who has known what
 that is could doubt this for a moment.   These  compositions
 bear all the marks and proofs of such writings.   A physician
 can  no more mistake  the  character  of a disease from its
 diagnosis than a spiritualist can mistake the features of such
 writing.   Turning  then to the ' Lebensgeschischte' of Stil-
 ling, I was  by no  means  surprised to  read  the following
 statements: —
   ' The  state  of  mind  which  Stilling experienced whilst
 laboring at this work,  which consists of four  large  octavo
 volumes, is utterly indescribable. His spirit was as if elevated
 into ethereal  regions; a feeling of serenity and  peace per-
 vaded him,  and he enjoyed  a  felicity which words cannot
 express.   When he began to work, ideas glistened past his
 soul, which animated  him so much that he could scarcely
 write so rapidly as the flow of thought required.  This was
 also the reason why the whole work took quite another form,
 and  the composition quite another tendency, to that which
 he had proposed at the commencement.'
   In his  account  of writing the ' Nostalgia'  we have  the
 explanation of the extraordinary scenery of both that and
 the ' Scenen :'—' There was, besides, another singular pheno-
 menon.   In  the state between sleeping and waking, the most
 beautiful,  and, as it were, heavenly imagery, presented itself
 to his inward sense.  He attempted to delineate it, but found
 it impossible;  with the imagery there was always a feeling
connected, compared with which all the joys of sense are as
 nothing ; it was a blissful season !  This state of mind lasted
exactly as long as Stilling was engaged in writing the ' Nos- 
          STILLING'S  UNCONSCIOUS  MEDIUMSHIP.        47

talgia;' that is, from August 1793 to December 1794, con-
sequently a full year and a quarter.'
  The book was received with enthusiasm by the pious both
at home and abroad.  From all parts and ranks in Germany
it brought letters and  toade friends;  it converted  many
skeptics,  and was  welcomed  in  America, Asia, Denmark,
Sweden and Russia, as far as Astracan.   But the wide spread
and approbation of these works was not the  most extraor-
dinary thing.   Stilling  found that  when he  had supposed
that he was writing fiction, even as it regarded this world,
he had been writing actual facts.   One morning, a handsome
young man, evidently of distinction, and whom, he says, was
the remarkable----,  but does not  name, entered his apart-
ment.  This gentleman  saluted him as  his secret superior,
kissing his hand and weeping; but Stilling replied that he
was no man's secret superior, nor was in any secret  connec-
tion whatever.   The stranger was astonished, and could not
credit this, saying, ' I  thought you knew me already.'  But
as Stilling positively denied any knowledge of what he meaut,
he asked him then how  he had so accurately described ' the
great  and venerable  connection  in the East,  and  had  so
minutely pointed out  their rendezvous  in  Egypt, in Mount
Sinai, in the Monastery of  Canobin, and under the  Temple
in Jerusalem ?'
  Stilling assured him that it was all fable and fiction,  which
be  had merely  written  down as it presented itself to his
imagination.  ' Pardon  me,' replied the stranger,' the matter
is in truth and reality as  you have described it; it cannot have
come by chance ;' and he related, to the equal astonishment
of Stilling, the real particulars of the association.  He soon
heard from a certain  great  prince,  asking him' how he had
learned the real particulars of the association  as he had de-
scribed them in the ' Nostalgia.'  Stilling had been  a spirit-
medium without knowing it.
   On other occasions he became  actually prophetic.   The
most remarkable instance of it was his announcing the tragic 
48          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
 fate of  Lavater ten weeks and some days before it took
 place.  Writing  to  Antistes  Hess of Zurich,  on  July  13,
 1799, he told him that whilst writing, he felt a  sudden and
 deep impression that Lavater would die a bloody death, that
 of a martyr.   He  begged Hess to communicate this to
 Lavater, which he  understood was done.   On  October  14,
 his son-in-law, Schwarz, came running to inform him that
 Lavater had been shot  at and severely wounded.   Stilling
 cried out in horror and in astonishment at the fulfilment of
 the prediction.
   The  manner of Lavater's death was this.   The revolu-
 tionary French under Massena had  stormed  Zurich,  and
 Lavater heard two  of their  soldiers  making a  disturbance
 at a house near his parsonage, inhabited by two females only.
 They were demanding bread  and wine,  and as  they did not
 get it, Lavater took  them a bottle of  wine  and  some bread.
 One of them, a grenadier, a Swiss by birth, of  the Canton
 de Yaud, was particularly grateful, and  called him ' Bruder
 Herz,' a dear fellow, in German.  Lavater went back to  his
 house, but at his  own door was fiercely assaulted by another
 soldier, and called out to ask the friendly soldier for protec-
 tion against him.  But now he was totally changed, answered
 him  in a rage, and shot him.   He had probably learned from
 some people of Zurich that  it was the celebrated Lavater,
 who boldly opposed French principles  in  government, and
 still  more in religion, and who had addressed letters of pro-
 test both to the French Director Reubel, and to the Directory
 itself, remonstrating against the  infamous conduct of the
 French  in  Switzerland.   He therefore  instantly forgot his
 kindness, and shot  him  as an  enemy to the revolutionary
 and infidel principles of France.  Thus Lavater died not only
a bloody but a martyr's death, as Stilling had foretold.  He
did not, however,  die at once, but lingered on in much agony
till January 2, 1801,  something more than a year
  In  Stilling's  second volume  of < Scenes  in the Invisible
 World  he  unconsciously  introduced facts  as   operations 
                STILLING'S  PRESENTIMENTS.             49

 merely of the imagination—facts which had not yet come to
 his knowledge.  Amongst them were these.  In ' The Glori-
 fication of Lavater,' a poem appended to the volume, he made
 Felix Hess and Pfenninger, two friends of Lavater, in the
 form of augels, fetch Lavater's spirit after his death to the
 New Jerusalem.   About half a year after the publication of
 this poem, Breidenstein, the reformed preacher at Marburg,
 came to visit Stilling, and  in  conversation  said,  ' It is sur-
 prising how beautifully you have made use of  the late Felix
 Hess's promise.'   ' How so ?' inquired  Stilling; ' what pro-
 mise V  Breidenstein replied, 'Upwardsof twenty years ago
 Lavater stood by the side of Felix Hess's  dying  bed, wept,
 and said, " Now thou  wilt not stand at my bed-side when I
 die 1"  Hess answered, " But I will come and fetch thee !"'
 Stilling rejoined, ' Really, I never heard a word of it; it is,
 however, something strange.  Where is it ?  I must read it
 myself 1'   ' That you shall,'  said Breidenstein ;  ' it is indeed
 very strange 1'  The next day he sent Lavater's Miscellane-
 ous Works, in which  there  is a  short  biography  of Felix
 Hess, and this conversation  appears just as Breidenstein re-
 lated it.
   Stilling also introduced a still more dear friend of Lava-
 ter's, Heinrich Hess,  as bringing Lavater to the Yirgin
 Mary, and  Mary relates to him  the  Lord's character, as
exemplified in His earthly life.   Long  after, Stilling  read-
ing the ' Jesus Messias' of Lavater, which he had  never seen
before,  found, to his  astonishment, that Lavater consoled
himself with the hope that  in  his  entrance into heaven,  the
Yirgin Mary would  relate to him the character  which  her
son  bore  in  His  earthly life.   These  instances  would  be
easily explained, if we  could suppose that  Stilling had read
these things,  and  had forgotten the circumstance,  though
retaining the  events; but we may  rely on the assertion of
Stilling that  he had never  seen those works or read  those
passages.
  Stilling's presentiments of evil .were spmefcHaes very strong, 
 50          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

 and as unerring as they were strong.   Whilst  on a journey
 to  Gottingen,  Cassell,  and other places,  in  1801, he  was
 seized with a strange fear and melancholy, which  eventually
 became so violent, that he said to his wife, ' If the  torment
 of the damned in hell  is not greater than mine, it is  still
 great enough.'  At length the carriage in which they trav-
 elled  was run  away with  at full  speed  by  four  spirited
 horses, was  dashed to  pieces, and  Stilling left crushed  and
 severely wounded on the place, a rib being fractured and his
 thigh injured.  From this accident he suffered  much in after
 years; but  the moment it had taken place his terror  and
 mental  agony were  gone.   The  evil  had come,  and he  was
 at peace.
   Besides Stilling's habit of  living in direct communication
 with the Divine Spirit, he believed in the  active operation
 of numerous subordinate spirits in the concerns of men.  He
 distinctly  states this in his ' Retrospect of his Life.'  The first
 men were  created by God in  a state of perfection; but they
 sinned by disobedience  against God,  and by this means  lost
 the equilibrium between the sensual and the moral impulses.
 The sensual became more and more predominant, and there-
 fore, with respect to all their posterity, the  thoughts  and
 imaginations of the heart of man are evil from  his youth up,
 and that continually.
   ' Previous  to this a  class  of  higher  and more spiritual
 beings had  fallen away from God, and  became  evil;  the
 prince of  these beings had seduced the  first man to disobe-
 dience.   These evil spirits then can work upon the spiritual
 heart  of man when  he gives them the opportunity of doing
 so.  But there  are also good spirits which are  about a man,
 and likewise  influence  him when circumstances  require it.'
 This isjDrecisely the theory of Swedenborg.
  Stilling was  of opinion that men or women are  not in a
normal, or, indeed, in a healthy state,  when  they  become
cognizant by sight  or sound of these spiritual beings,  and
be  held that it was  not orderly or innocuous  to encourage
* 
THE  SACK-BEARER.                  51
such intercourse.   No doubt, that intercourse which Stilling
and all holy men  have cultivated with the Divine Spirit, the
Creator and  Lord of all  Spirits, is  the very highest and
holiest; and they who enjoy that may well dispense with  all
other.   But all men are not so highly developed as Stilling,
and  though by prayer they may enjoy the  influence of the
Divine Spirit, there are many  souls to whom the ministry of
subordinate*spirits is helpful and beneficial.   Their ministra-
tions are more adapted to  the condition of such souls, and
their discovered presence may greatly  strengthen their faith,
and raise them above the dark abyss of utter disbelief.  The
spirits of God are all ' ministering spirits' sent  to men of
many different grades of mind and degrees of development;
__and their ministrations are, no  doubt, as various as  the
conditions of  men.   Communion with evil spirits, of course,
i6 perilous, pernicious, prohibited, and unblessed.
   In his ' Pneumatology' Stilling has collected a great num-
ber  of narratives of some remarkable apparitions  derived
from persons well known to him, and  in his  estimation
thoroughly trustworthy.  Amongst these, one of the most
curious, is the story of the Sack-bearer.  Stilling received
the account from an eye-witness, and  one who, being in the
haunted house, took most  active and courageous means to
learn all about the ghost from itself.   Stilling says  that  he
ascertained from  other sources that  the account  was quite
true.  He does not tell us the name of the town where it
occurred, a  matter to be regretted, but a deficiency so often
occurring from the over-sensitiveness of the parties  con-
cerned.  The narrator says that  he went to work as a jour-
neyman  with  a tradesman who  lived in the  upper part of
an old house which had been  a monastery of Capuchins :  on
the  ground-floor lived a baker.  At  the time when  Stilling
received this  account, he says the narrator was  become ' a
pious and intelligent citizen.'   It was in 1800 when he went
to live with the master weaver in the  old monastery.
   Hearing extraordinary noises in the attic, he enquired the 
52
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
 cause, and was told it was the Sack-bearer;  that is, an ap-
 parition bearing that name from the fact that he continually
 seemed to let fall something on the  upper  floors like  a
 heavily-filled  sack ;  and made strange groans and noises, as
 if in  attempting to raise it again.   On one occasion he had
 been  met in his Capuchin  dress by the baker below, bearing
 such a sack along the lobby, before day-break, which so hor-
 rified the baker that he ran  off and let  all his*bread burn.
 The landlord, the weaver, had also seen him carrying his
 sack, and he informed the narrator that it was on account of
 this haunting that his  grandfather  bought  the  house very
 cheap.   Learning this, and being often awoke in the night
 by the  sound  of the falling sack, which seemed to shake the
 whole story of the house on  which he lay, he  was at great
 pains to  get  a sight of the apparition, and  stole up to the
 upper room repeatedly when  the spirit was  letting the sack
 fall one time after another with the greatest concussions, but
 it was only on one occasion that he caught a glimpse of him
 retreating into a corner.   He rushed  into that corner, but
 found nothing.  On occasion  of a person dying in the house,
 his noises were almost incessant.   Stilling wrote to a friend
 of his at this time, a physician, who learned from the pro-
 prietor that the  Sack-bearer still  made his visits, and pre-
 dicted to the inhabitants of the house events  about to occur.
 By the latest intelligence which  he obtained, it appeared
 that the spirit had learned to  make himself understood, and
 was able to converse with the  people, who had ceased to fear
 him.  It  was  supposed  from  some  circumstances  that  the
 monk had committed  some  fraud in  grain  or other com-
 modity with which he had been entrusted, and this was his
 penance.
   Another very remarkable case of apparition is related by
 him, which he introduces with this remark of such extensive
 application : —' This subject  is generally treated as some-
thing superstitious and  degrading.   It belongs  to good-
breeding and  refinement to smile at ghost-stories,  and to 
AN  EXTRAORDINARY APPARITION.
53
deny the truth of them;  and yet it is curious  that  people
are so fond of hearing them told, and that besides this, the
incredulous narrator commonly seeks to make them as prob-
able as  possible.'  Every one must  have been  struck  with
this fact.   People will  tell you a ghost-story, premising, ' I
do n't believe a word of it, understand, and yet the incidents
all occurred.'  And if you will proceed to throw  discredit on
the narrative, you will find  that these incredulous  people
will grow indignant  at the  doubt cast on their statement.
So amusing is this  popular  characteristic, and  so common,
that a  man of much repute  writing to me  the other  day,
said, ' You  may convict the  world of belief in  spiritualism
by an overwhelming  mass of evidence, but the world will not
even then  admit that  it  is convinced: the fact being  that
every human soul believes it in its soul, and  simply because
it is a soul, in inseparable relationship to the world of souls,
which  will not let spirit, however incarnated, cease to feel
the spirit-world in which it lives.'
   At Marburg, one  of the students  who attended Stilling's
class, and whom he continued to know in after-life as a most
excellent man, brought him a printed account of a strange
occurrence which happened to his father when a  young man,
and to his  grandfather.  The latter had written down the
whole narration, and printed it for circulation only amongst
his friends.  It is very large, being given in complete detail,
with the conversation betwixt the grandfather and the spirit.
The spirit described  himself to have been one of their ances-
tors a hundred and twenty years before, and identified him-
self by their  genealogical table.   He appeared sometimes
three or four times  a day as a little man, dressed in a blue
coat and brown waistcoat, with a whip hanging at his  girdle,
and knocked audibly at the door before entering.  He  was
extremely importunate  that  the  son should  go to a certain
tree in  a certain meadow, under  which by digging he would
find a deposit of money.   This money seemed  to have chained
him to the spot all these years, during which he had not found
        5 * 
54          HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
a medium in the family to whom he could make himself ap-
parent.   But he  appeared also to have a deed of blood on
his soul, for he «took down the son's Bible from a shelf, to
which was attached a small hymn-book, and pointed out
with his finger the hymn beginning " Have  mercy, gracious
God," and the  third verse of which  had the words " From
guilt of blood deliver me,'" &c.  The spirit  continued its
importunities from January  1 to April  30, 1755.
   Neither  father nor son would  listen to  him, considering
him as a tempter; but this the spirit denied, and to convince
them, joined  with them  in  singing  hymns, calling  on  the
name of Jesus, and declared that he was glad always to hear
the Word of God.   He  joined them in the reading  of the
Scriptures, and on  coming  to the words in the 8th chapter
of the Epistle to  the Romans, ' We are saved by hope,'&c,
he clapped his hands, and exclaimed, ' 0 yes,  yes, saved by
hope I'  He declared that he was going through a course of
purification sent from God.
   Yet there were circumstances which  made the  father and
son believe that he was  far from this  purification, for fire
streamed from every finger wnen  he  became angry at their
resistance to his wishes.   Still  more, when  he touched the
Bible it smoked, and the marks of  his thumb and finger
Bhrivelled up the  leather  of the binding where he held it, and
also the paper where he pointed out  the place in the hymn,
'From guilt  of  blood deliver me,' was black and  singed.
The Bible with these marks is ' preserved in the family, and
many creditable persons have seen it, and may still  see it.'
Still further, on one occasion wishing the son to shake hands
with him, he  recommended him first to lay his  handkerchief
over his hand.   This was done, and the handkerchief was
found 'with the five fingers of a hand burnt in, so that the
first and middle fingers were, in part, burnt entirely through;
but the thumb and two other fingers were burnt black and
singed.'  This handkerchief  was sent round amongst friends
and acquaintances, who assured  Stilling of  the truth of the 
CHARACTERISTICS OF  SPIRIT.
55
whole, and then  these  singular relics were laid up for the
inspection of all respectable visitors, and for posterity.   The
whole account was signed and attested by the father and son,
and  the  clerk of the peace, the Imperial Commissioner  of
Liquidation,  and the schoolmaster of the place, on May 16,
1755.
   The fiery touch of the spirit which induced the father and
son to believe it a bad one, modern  spiritualists can testify
to belong  to many spirits.   How often have we seen  fire
streaming even from the finger of a medium 1  How often
have spirits,  before shaking hands with you, desired you  at
Mr. Home's, to lay your handkerchief over your hand first 1
How often have you felt the touch of spirit fingers prick as
from the sparks of  electricity !
   And Stilling soon came  to understand this.  He says,
'Light,  electricity, magnetism, galvanic matter, and ether,
appear to be all one and the same body under different modi-
fications.  This light or ether is the element which connects
soul and body, and the  spiritual and material world, to-
gether.'
   In these  words Stilling, above  half a  century before
Reichenbach's experiments on the  Odyle  force, announced
that force as a modification of electricity, magnetism, &c.;
which Reichenbach confirms.  The spirit eventually, not-
withstanding its fire, was  accompanied by another radiant
little spirit,  and finally appeared white and radiant  itself,
full of joy, announcing its deliverance from the probationary
state ; knelt with the son, and uttered a beautiful prayer and
thanksgiving to God, which Stilling gives;  and  then took
his leave, saying they would see him no more, which proved
true.
   As  regards the  touch of spirits, it yet appears true, that
 according to their  state, the sensation they occasion is more
 or less agreeable.  Stilling says:—' When a departed spirit is
tranquil in its mind, its  touch is felt to be like the softness of
a cool air, exactly  as when the electric fluid is poured upon 
56          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
any part of the body.'  And how fully can this be confirmed
by spiritualists !  How frequently is the approach  of spirits
at seances perceived by the cool atmosphere which precedes
them !  In fact, there is scarcely a characteristic of spirit with
which  Stilling does not show himself familiar.   He  notices
the wonderful creative and representative  power  which all
spirits  possess, so that they can  not only appear to us in the
exact likeness and  the exact costume  of the earth-life, but
can project the most varied scenes  at their will,  as we  see a
similar power exercised in dreams.  ' I knew  of a  spirit,'
says Stilling, ' on whom the  little  brass buckles were per-
fectly cognizable.'   And  in the case just  stated, the  spirit
did not forget his  horsewhip.   ' Departed souls,' he  says,
' have  a creative power, which, during the present state, and
in this rude  and material world, can only be exercised with
trouble and  expense, and in  a  very imperfect manner; but
after death the will of the soul is really able to produce that
which  the imagination conceives.'
  Stilling knew, too, the truth of spirit being present where
it wishes to be.  ' When the soul is separated from the  body,
it is wherever it thinks to be; for as space  is only its  mode
of thinking,  that does not exist except in its idea.'  Every
doctrine which Swedenborg asserts  of  spirits, is asserted by
Stilling. The soul awakes from death immediately in Hades,
and is  drawn to good or evil  spirits  according to its own
moral  condition.   If it be of the earth, earthy,  it still hangs
about  the earth.   Spirits need  no language, their thoughts
are all visible to each other; and  hence  the evil avoid the
good spirits, because all  their evil  is visible to them.   He
asserts the doctrine  of guardian angels.   ' Every man has
one or more  guardian spirits about him ;  these  are  good
angels, and  perhaps the  departed souls  of   pious  men.
Children are  attended solely by  good spirits,  but  as the
individual gradually  inclines  to evil, evil  spirits  approach
him.'  On the other hand, as  he turns from evil to good, the
good angels again draw near; and the more he  inclines one 
CHARACTERISTICS OF SPIRIT.            57
  way or the other, the more the wicked spirits enslave, or the
  good ones strengthen him. The good angels never, however,
  forsake him, till he  is become thoroughly hardened .in sin.
  'Materialists,' he says, 'have positively seen  spirits, so that
  they were convinced it was the soul of one of their deceased
  acquaintances, and yet they continued to doubt of their own
  immortality and self-consciousness.  My God !  what incre-
  dulity !"  The phenomena of rapping and knocking he fre-
  quently notices as modes of spirits announcing themselves.
    He was convinced of the soul possessing a spiritual body,
  a truth now  universally admitted by Swedenborgians  and
  spiritualists.   'Animal magnetism,' he says, 'and an exten-
  sive medical experience, have taught and incontrovertibly
  convinced me that the animated spirit, the divine spark in
  man, is inseparably united with an ethereal or luminous body ;
  that this human*soul, which is destined to be a citizen of the
  world of spirits, is, as  it were, exiled into  this earthiy  life
  and animal body, to which it is fettered  by  means of the
  nerves, and must be thus fettered to it for the purposes of
  its ennoblement and perfection.'
   He was a defender of the sober sanity and truthfulness of
  Swedenborg, though  he thought that he was in error in sup-
  posing that he entered the spiritual world by any other than
  the same means by which clairvoyants and mediums in general
  enter it.  He maintained that it was by a species  of magnet-
 ism that Swedenborg became conscious of the spiritual world
 and he  held that this phenomenon resulted from something
 abnormal in  the constitution  of the person thus  affected
 amounting sometimes to a species of disease.  He held that
 people  ought not to  seek such intercourse, and that it was
 prejudicial to the health of the persons so seeking it  Now
 m this  there lies a certain truth.  Whatever in any decree
 loosens the spirit from the bonds of the  body, in the same
 degree admits it to the consciousness of the spiritual world •
 and, therefore,  many  persons,  especially women  of weakk  •
conations or of peculiarly nervous temperament, areTund 
  58          niSTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

  to be mediums,  or,  as Reichenbach calls  them, sensitives.
  Now, there is no doubt, but that much practice  of medium-
  ship is  to such  persons  debilitating.   The  spirits  which
  manifest themselves through them of necessity seize on their
  spiritual atmosphere, as their means of coming into palpable
  contact with incarnated spirits, and thus draw from them a
  portion of their vital  power.  But this is not always the
  case, neither is it wrong to derive information in this manner.
  The proof of this is found in the result, which is good, and
  therefore  justified by the Divine law —' By their fruits ye
  shall know them.'  Whatever person becomes intelligent of
  inward  things and of coming events is a medium, though he
  often does not know it.
     Stilling lived in a perpetual state of mediumship, and had
  bis presentiments, his warnings, his visions and revelations,
  as of the death of Lavater, and yet lived to a good old age.
  The highest form  of spiritual agency is the direct one of the
  Divine  Spirit.   But God  has surrounded us  by His  minis-
  tering spirits, and acts greatly through them.  Although we
  are told in the Old Testament that the Lord descended on
  Mount  Sinai and delivered the  law to Moses written by His
  own finger; we  are told  in  the  New Testament that even
  there it was by an  'angel which spoke to him in the Mount
  Sinai,'—Acts vii. 38.  And again, in words addressed to the
  Jews in the same chapter, verse 53,  ' wno have received the
  law by  the disposition  of angels, and have  not kept it.'  So
  that it is difficult for us to say where God  speaks to us me-
  diately  or immediately.  Stilling, having told us that such
  intercourse is wrong, goes on to  give us abundant instances
  of the good effects of such mediumship.  In fact, every case
  which he adduces of preternatural appearance or warning is
  for good and not for evil.   He introduces Swedenborg satis-
  fying the spiritual  doubts of the Queen of Sweden, or a mer-
  chant of Elberfield, a friend of Stilling's, and preventing a
• widow paying a  sum twice over, by bringing the  information
  from her husband in the spiritual world of where the receipt 
STILLING AS  A MEDIUM.
59
would be found.   Professor Boehm of Giesen is mysteriously
drawn from a social circle to his own lodgings, where he is
led to draw his bed from one side of the  room  to the other,
and  then  return  to his company, wondering at the foolish
thing he had done;  but at midnight the beam in the ceiling
falls  upon the place  where the bed had stood, and the Pro-
fessor sees then the  hand of God, through his  good angels
most probably.   He cites the case of the father of Madame
de Beaumont,  who was going on a river party of pleasure at
Rouen,  and was  prevented  by  the distress of a deaf and
dumb aunt, and thus saved from drowning, the  fate of most
of the party.  The  wife of a common mechanic, he tells us,
had  this spiritual gift, to whom  spirits came to entreat for
her  prayers, and received much benefit from  them.  She
could call a distant friend to her bedside when she was ill by
this  power; she  consoled persons  in distress  by assuring
them of the safety of their absent friends;  she  foretold  the
horrors of the French Revolution; and saw Admiral  Coligny
in a bloody shirt.  She saw  Cagliostro, and perceived that
he had spiritual  power, but  used it as a necromancer.  Yet
Stilling himself assures us that this  Mrs. W----was a pious
and benevolent Christian, and lived to the age of sixty-three.
And how happened  it that she could be  all this  and yet be
practising what  was wrong?   She did  it,  he  tells us, by
f incessant watch and prayer.' Precisely so! It is the spirit
in which  spiritual intercourse is  maintained that  makes  it
good or ill.   Spiritualism is orderly or disorderly ;  in other
words, good or bad.   It is  a Divine  gift which may, unfor-
tunately, like all our other gifts, be by prayer sanctified, by
neglect of it — desecrated and  demonized.  There is a re-
markable  passage in  'The  Shepherd of Hennas,' a book
written in the  first century, and then  read  in the Christian
churches  as canonical, which  accords so exactly  with the
experience of myself and my family, that I here recommend
it to the  especial  attention of spiritualists :__
   ' There is a lying prophet that destroys the  minds of the 
60          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

servants of God;  that is,  of those that are doubtful, not
those that fully trust in the Lord.   Now those doubtful per-
sons come to him  as to a Divine  spirit, and enquire of him
what shall befall them.  And this lying  prophet, having no
power  in him of the Divine spirit,  answers them  according
to their demands, and fills their souls with promises accord-
ing to  their desire. .  Howbeit that  prophet is vain, and an-
swers vain things  to those who are themselves vain.  And
whatsoever is asked of him by vain men, he  answers them
vainly.  Nevertheless, he speaketh  something truly.
   ' Whosoever, therefore, are strong in the faith of the Lord,
and  have put on the truth,  are not joined to such spirits, but
depart from  them.  But they  that are doubtful  and  often
repenting, like the heathen, consult  them, and heap to them-
selves  great  sin,  serving idols.   For  every  spirit that  is
given from God needs not to be asked, but having the power
of the  divinity, speaks all things of itself, because he cornea
from above, from the power of the Spirit of God.  But he
that being asked, speaks according to man's desires, and con-
cerning many of the affairs of this present world, understands
not  the things which  relate unto  God.   For these spirits
are darkened through such affairs, and corrupted and broken.
But they that have the fear of  the  Lord, and search out the
truth concerning God, having all their thoughts towards the
Lord,  apprehend whatsoever is said to them, and forthwith
understand it, because they have  the  fear of the Lord  in
them.   For where the Spirit  of the Lord dwells,  there  is
also much understanding  added.  Wherefore join thyself
unto the Lord, and thou shalt understand all things.
   ' There  is a trying of the  spirits.  " He showed  me cer-
tain men  sitting upon benches, and one man sitting  in a
chair ;  and he said unto  me, ' Seest thou those that sit upon
the benches ?   They are the faithful, and he who sits in the
chair is an earthy  spirit.  For he cometh not into the assem-
bly  of the faithful, but avoids it,  and  joins himself to the
doubtful and empty; and prophesies unto them  in corners 
               THE  SHEPHERD OF HERMAS.             61

and hidden places, and^ pleases them  by speaking unto them
according to all the desires of their hearts.   Try the man
who  hath the Spirit of God;  because the spirit which  is
from above  is humble  and quiet; and  departs from all the
wickedness and from the vain desires of the present world.
He makes himself more humble than all men, and answers to
none when he is asked, for the Spirit of God doth not speak
to a man when he will, but when God pleases.'"'
  This has been our experience.   Ask questions  at seances,
and you will have plenty of idle spirits rushing in to answer
you  according to your wishes ; wait in prayer for what may
be given  you from the spirit of  truth, and you will  have
truth.  For spiritualism is for spiritual truth, not  for worldly
affairs, which are the business of our natural faculties.   The
Shepherd of Hermas, therefore, says of preaching: — 'When,
therefore,  a man who hath the Spirit  of God shall come into
the church of the righteous, who have the faith of God, and
they pray unto the Lord, then the holy angel of God fills
that  man with the blessed  spirit, and he speaks  in the con-
gregation as he is moved of God.'
   We have now shown sufficient of Jung-Stilling, and refer
the reader to the ' Pneumatology' for  many other extraor-
dinary cases of spirit  intervention.  There have been few
spiritualists  in any  age  who  more  clearly understood the
mysteries  of spiritual economy, or who  more faithfully and
conspicuously obeyed its highest monitions — those coming
from the Divine Spirit itself.
I.-6 
62          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
                CHAPTER  III.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE  SUPERNATURAL IN GERMANY
                    • continued.


     \l Justinus Kerner and the Seeress of Prevorst.
   BUT the most prominent figure in the spiritual  circle of
     Germany is Dr. Justinus Kerner.  He was a physician
of Wiirtemberg, who departed this  life at Weinsberg, near
Heilbronn, which had been many years his place of residence,
so late as the 22nd of February of the present year 1862, at
the age of seventy-six.   He had  long been blind.   He was
educated  at  Tubingen, where he became acquainted with
Uhland, and united with him in the collection of the Poetry
for the People.  He settled at Weinsberg as the government
physician of the district.  There, at  the  foot  of  the cele-
brated Weibertreue, a  castle of Weinsberg, he devoted him-
self  to poetry  as  well as medicine, and  acquired  a distin-
guished reputation as a lyrical poet and one of the founders
of the Swabian new school of poets.   He published succes-
sively the 'Deutschen  Dichterwald,' which contains some of
his finest productions ; 'Romantic Poems ;'and'a collected
edition of his poems.   He also published ' Reiseschatten,' or
'Shadows of  Travel,' a  strange, wild,  fantastic  work of
mingled poetry and prose, and the 'Homeless,' a very intel-
lectual and pathetic story.  He next distinguished himself by
his chemical researches into the frequent causes of poisoning
by eating sausages, a thing  very frequent some time ago in 
KERNER AND MADAME HAUFFE.
63
Germany, but scarcely ever heard of in England from  the
more healthy meat used.   He ascribes  this to the acidifying
of the fat, which thus acquired a poisonous property.   But
when Dr. Kerner had thus attained  a  high reputation as a
medical and scientific man, as well as a poet, he startled all
Germany, in the midst of its philosophical  Sadduceeism, by
announcing the case of a female patient of his, as one of an
example of clairvoyance little short of that of Swedenborg,
and as giving the most indubitable proofs of the reality of
spirits and a spiritual world.
  We may imagine the sensation created by supposing what
such an announcement would have been in England, if we
had  such a phenomenon as a physician  with the reputation
of Forbes Winslow and a poet with that of Campbell rolled
into  one ; and who had soberly assured us that  his patient
saw into the spiritual world at all times  and  all hours ; saw
what was distant as well as near; what  was in the future as
well as present;  and gave the most  undeniable proofs that
she did see all this.   The excitement, the clamor, the  con-
fusion were indescribable.  The rationalistic philosophers, of
course, smiled; the fashionably learned  stormed, and wrote
great books to refute  it all  before they had themselves seen
and  examined the  phenomena; the  ignorant and  worldly
smiled in their supposed wisdom, or laughed in their natural
folly.   There were,  however, a  number  of the learned, and
those possessing some of the profoundest heads in Germany,
who  sensibly took their way to Weinsberg, saw, tested, and
returned perfectly  satisfied of the truth of  the matter and
of all its  detaUs.   Amongst  these were Schubert,  Eschen-
mayer,  Gorres, Werner, &c,  &c.   Of the chief of these
learned metaphysicians and historians I shall presently quote
the verdicts.
  In 1829, Kerner published the whole narrative under the
title  of  'The Seeress of Prevorst,' Madame Hauffe   the
patient, having died  in August of that year.  The 'work
went into three editions within the next ten years, the third 
64
HTSTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
published  in 1838, lying  now before  me.  The conflicts in
the literary world during  that period  resembled those which
raged for so many years in the United States after the deve-
lopment of the  Misses Fox; and were  far  greater than
the second edition  of  those which the  spread of the  new
phase of spiritualism to England has occasioned.   Through
all, Kerner, a man of a genial and accomplished character,
maintained the utmost good-humor, laughing at the laughers,
smiling at the stormy,  pitying the abusive, confident in the
stability of his facts ; and simply  saying in his preface of the
third edition of the  Seeress :—' Truly it is hard — and who
must not feel it ? — that a foolish, weak woman should over-
turn learned systems, and bring forward again a faith which
the lofty wisdom of men imagined it was  in the act of utterly
rooting out.   But for  this  I know no  other  comfort than
that of Paul,  1  Cor. i. 27, 28, " But  God  hath chosen the
foolish things of the world to confound  the wise;  and God
hath chosen the weak  things of the world  to  confound the
things which are mighty," &c.  And thou,' he adds, 'much-
persecuted book*, go now boldly forth into the throng, teach-
ing and warning, and may the thorns with which  they seek
to smother thee become garlands of life!'  Kerner  had
somewhat prepared the learned world for this shock, by 'An
Account of Two Somnambulists,' published in 1824 ; and he
followed up the Seeress by a ' History of Cases of Possession
in Modern Times;' by  ' Appearance from the Night-Region
of Nature,' in 1836, and  another work on  ' Possession,' and
the ancient mode of curing it by  magnetic  action.
  But though Kerner  had  begun to study this great  and
neglected  domain  of Psychology, termed  by Eschenmayer
'The Night-Region, or Night-Side of  Nature,'before the
Seeress became his patient, it is clear that  he had up to that
period obtained but a very superficial knowledge of its won-
drous phenomena;  for when Madame Hauffe  was brought
to him to  Weinsberg, he sternly determined to  treat her by
the old rules  of  medicine,  and  nearly killed  her.   It  was 
KERNER  AND  MADAME nAUFFE,           65
probably through his having published his work on the two
somnambulists that he was called in to this lady: but he soon
found that instead of dictating to her, his wisdom  was to  sit
and be dictated to by her from the inner regions of life.  His
astonishment, as the proofs of an invisible world and an invi-
sible power and agency rose  before him in this poor invalid,
and from day to  day demonstrated  their own  reality, was
beyond everything of his whole past life ; and it is fortunate
for the world that the case fell into the hands of a man whose
mind was not  too  much  petrified  by his science, to permit
him to see that there were empires of science lying yet before
and behind him.   As it was  the Seeress and a nearly six
years'  daily watching of  her case, which not only made Ker-
ner," but  many of the most celebrated minds of  Germany,
thorough and  avowed spiritualists, I shall bringthe Seeress
rather than Kerner into the foreground, only observing what
a striking change  the observation and serious reflection  on
these cases produced in the spirit of Kerner.   In the Reise-
schatten, all is wild, fantastic,  and belonging  exclusively  to
the outer life and humor; in the Seeress, the tone  is that  of
a wisdom chastened by the  profounder views of being; and
lovely  in its Christian benevolence.   His tone is like that  of
Wordsworth in his latter years,  who,  addressing  the spirit
of Coleridge, says of  their readers: —

          Prophets  of Nature, we to them  will speak
          A lasting inspiration, sanctified
          By reason, blest by faith: what we have loved
          Others will love, and  we will  teach them how:
          Instruct them how the mind of  man becomes
          A thousand times more beautiful than earth
          On which he dwells, above this  frame of things
          In beauty exalted, as it is itself
          Of quality and fabric more divine.

   'Beloved,'  says Kerner, 'as the relations of our outward
 life now are —this every-day life —man is  like a chrysalis,
 which has the unhappy lot to develop itself in the midst of
 a crowd of boys.   See, beloved 1 how one blows  at it, and
       6* 
66
HISTORY  OF TnE  SUPERNATURAL.
 another strikes at it, and a third transfixes it with a needle;
 and thus disturbed in its unfolding, it dies slowly, still half
 chrysalis.  And that, beloved!  is the image of an unhappy
 magnetic life, the phenomena of which are the most especial
 subject of these pages.'
   Madame Hauffe was born  in the hilly country of Wiirtem-
 berg at  Prevorst, a village  near the town of Lowenstein.
 This region, the highest point of whose hills "is only 1,879
 feet above the level of the sea, is yet full of magnetic influ-
 ences, and produces effects similar to those of second-sight
 iu the Highlands of Scotland,  in Denmark, and in Switzer-
 land, as  we  shall  soon  find  evidenced in Zschokke, an in-
 habitant of  the latter country.
   The parents of Madame  Hauffe were in respectable cir-
 cumstances..  Her father was the Jager, or forest-keeper of
 the neighborhood, and  her brother's occupation appears to
 have been of the same kind.   Her maternal grandfather had
 lived under spirit guidance from his youth, as  Friends would
 say, ' he  had been  led and guided ;' in the language of spi-
 ritualists, he was a decided medium, open to spirit influence,
 and when, by his own plans for his  progress in life, he had
 quitted his situation, he  had  been turned back on his way by
 the  appearance  of a spirit,  and strong impressions on his
 mind, resumed his post, and had succeeded  greatly in it, be-
 coming the head of the concern, and a blessing to the whole
 neighborhood.  Frederica Hauffe was  born in 1801.   She
 was a lively child, but soon showed that she was a medium.
 She was, therefore, sent to the grandfather in the more breezy
 Lowenstein, that she might  not  be  too much exposed to
 spiritual  influence  in  the  solitude of  Prevorst.   But her
 grandfather soon saw that she was extremely sensitive to the
impressions of particular places.  In some she was all gayetv,
in others became still with a shudder of  awe.   Like Caspar
 Hauser, she felt the proximity to graves,  and at church could
not remain below,  but always went up into the loft.  She was
sensibly affected  by different  metals, and became perceptive 
              YOUTH  OF MADAME HAUFFE.            67

of spirits.  She was married when she was twenty years of
age, and went to  live at Kurnbach, a place lying low and
gloomily amongst the mountains, very different in its atmo-
sphere to the airy situations of Prevorst and Oburstenfeld, ->
where she had spent most of her youth.   Her tendency to
spiritual development here grew rapidly, and she  fell into
serious illness through her endeavor to conceal her condition.
In this state she ' suffered many things from many physicians,'
who did not at all understand her ailment.  She was attacked
by cramps, especially in the chest; felt to have a stone in her
head; she began to see figures in crystal, or looking-glasses ;
when she looked into  a glass  of water she could see forms
and equipages, and describe them half an hour before they
came  in sight.   She had prophetic dreams; possessed the
second  sight, and announced deaths  by seeing  coffins and
funerals at houses where every one was in health,  but where
the prognostic was always soon  after realized.  The appear-
ance of spirits became more frequent, and more distinct.  She
often spoke in verse for days together.  She had a long illness
after the birth of  her first child; many remedies were tried,
but they only appeared to increase her disease.  In her clair-
voyant  state she described an instrument which she called a
Nervenstimmer, an  adjuster or regulator of the nerves, a
drawing of which is given in the volume; but no  notice was
taken of it, though, when at  a much later period she referred
to  this  at Weinsberg,  Kerner had  one  made, and  from  its
salutary effect, he imagined  that if used at the time she first
named it, it might have restored her.
   As it was,  she  fell into the most extreme condition of de-
bility ; lost her teeth; had exhausting hemorrhages, and every
medicine that should  have  given  strength, only produced
additional weakness.   Her friends then sought to a man, who
furnished her with an  amulet, and professed to cure by sym-
pathy,  but his treatment  greatly aggravated her illness, and
Kerner was called in.
   The singularity of her case, and the treatment resorted to, 
68
HTSTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
had  filled the whole country round with the most extraordi-
nary rumors.   Her own relations had set down much of her
ailm&it to imagination, and had treated her with much harsh-
ness.   On  one  or more  occasions they had upbraided  her
with feigning illness, and had compelled her to get out of
bed, but she had fallen on the floor in convulsions or in such
prostration that her life was all but terminated by it.  Kerner
himself had been  greatly prejudiced  against her  by the re-
ports of her  circulating  through the country; and, though
he had never seen her, he determined to put all her fancies
and complaints to flight by a regular vigorous treatment by
the ordinary  rules of  medicine.
  But he found  that every remedy produced in her exactly
an opposite effect to that which he expected.  Her husband
and relatives were in despair; she was  like one dead, yet
died not;  and  as a last effort and  contrary  to Kerner's
wishes, they  carried her to Weinsberg,  and left  her in his
care.  She arrived  there November 25,  1826,  more dead
than alive.   It was necessary to give her every few minutes
a spoonful of soup, or she fainted  away, and was racked by
cramps.  Every  morning at  seven  o'clock  she fell into a
magnetic sleep,  became  clairvoyant,  and  spoke  what  she
saw.   In her first sleep  in this state, on the evening of her
arrival, she sent for Kerner.   He did not go until  she was
awake, when he told  her sternly that he would never see her,
or listen to her in her sleep ;  that he thought nothing at all
of anything she said  in it; that  her somnambulic habit had
made her relatives miserable, and now must cease.  He spoke
this with severe emphasis, for his determination was to treat
her strictly on a physical basis.   His words and tone on this
occasion threw her into a state of the deepest prostration
and  distress.
  ^Kerner continued, however, his plan of treatment for some
weeks; but he found that  he only did  her mischief.  The
very smallest doses of medicine  produced very opposite ef-
fects to those which he expected ; and it was evident that a 
MADAME HAUFFE AT WEINSBERG.
69
very short time of persistence in this course would terminate
her existence,  Kerner was therefore compelled to allow her
to prescribe for herself  in the magnetic sleep, which she had
long anxiously prayed  to be allowed  to  do when  in that
state;  and  he  confesses  that the  outer  physician was
ashamed to see what much  better remedies her inner physi-
cian prescribed.  When he  asked  her  to prescribe  for her-
self, she replied that she could not do that till she was  in the
sleep-waking state the next evening.   Kerner ordered seven
mesmeric passes  to  be made  over her when she slept; and
Bhe in her sleep said a  gentle course of magnetism continued
upon her for seven days would be the  best for her.
   The moment she came out of the sleep, she felt so much
better from the seven passes, though nobody told her that she
had received them,  that  she could sit up in bed, and  under
the course of manipulation which she had prescribed  in her
sleep, she continued to improve.   It was now too  late for
her full recovery, but during her stay at Weinsberg,  upwards
of two years and a half, she continued to prescribe for her-
self, and Kerner devoted himself to watching and recording
the extraordinary manifestations.  In person Madame Hauffe"
was small, her features of an oriental cast, with long dark
 eye-lashes ; and her frame was as slight and fragile  almost
 as a shadow.   She  had received nothing but the  meagrest
 education;  knew no language but her own; knew nothing
 of geography,  history, nor natural history; her Bible and
 Prayer-book being  her only studies.   Her  moral character
 is described both  by Kerner  and by Eschenmayer, in  his
 ' Mysteries,' as blameless; her piety deep,  and without  hy-
 pocrisy ;  and though extremely maligned and  denounced as
 an imposter, she cherished no ill-will to any one.  We have
 said that in her magnetic sleep she spoke in verse frequently,
 once for three  whole days  together.  One of these little,
 simple effusions expressed her trust in God under such ac-
 cusations :— 
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
             Du, Vater, bist gerecht,
             Kennst mich alleine,
             Weisst  ob ich  gut, ob schlecht,
             Weisst  wie ich's meine.
             Ob ich betriige,
             Mich selbst beliige,
             Ob dieses Schauen acht,
             Ob unrein  oder reine:
             Und ob diess Schauen gleich
             Von dir gekommen;
             War' ich freudenreich
             Wird's  mir genommen:
             Ja, wollest mir diess innre Aug' verhiillen !
             Doch willst du nicht—trag' ich's nach deinem Willen.

  The expression  is simply that God is just,  and knows
whether  she be wicked, deceives others, or  lies  to herself;
knows whether her inward  vision is genuine, and coming
from  Him.  She believes that were she rich in  joys this
would be taken from her, but knows that it will not, for she
bears it by His will.
  Kerner now witnessed  daily in his patient every species   '
of spiritual manifestation which has since  become so com-
mon in America and  in England, except the mode of con-
versing with spirits through  raps and  the alphabet — for
this she had no need, she conversed with them directly. She
was, in fact, according to  Kerner, Eschenmayer, Schubert,
Gorres, and others, who  observed her long and  carefully,
more in the spiritual world than in the physical.   Hers was
really one of those cases  which  Stilling  says arise from dis-
ease,  or rather was strengthened by it, for we have seen that
she was a medium from a child.   Her life hung in the body,
as it were, only by a single thread.   A single nerve seemed
to enchain her to it.   ' She was more than half a  spirit,' says
Kerner, ' and  belonged to a world of spirits ; she  belonged
to a world after death, and was  more than  half dead.   In
her sleep  only was  she  truly awake.   Nay, so loose was the
connection between soul  and body that, like  Swedenborg,
she often went  out  of the body, and could coitemplate it
separately.'   'In  this state,'  adds  Kerner, 'she  had  no 
MADAME HAUFFE'S  PECULIAR  CONDITION.      71
   organic  strength,  but depended wholly on  that of  other
   people, which she received chiefly through the  eyes and the
   ends of her fingers.'  She said this  herself, and  others felt
   it, felt that she drew strength from them, as invisible spirits
   often do from  mediums.  Weakly people  felt  weaker near
   her.   She drew nourishment from the air, and in the coldest
   weather could not live without the window open.  She saw
   and-conversed daily with spirits, both in and out of her  mag-
   netic sleep.   She said that  their  presence  was  disagreeable
   to  her in  the outward waking state,  but she  delighted in
   their society in the inner waking  state.   Here she was in a
   condition  of  homogeneity  with  them — wholly spirit with
   spirit.   She was not fond of speaking  of the apparitions she
   saw, and had she not been questioned, little of  their visits
   would have been known.  Yet they  came continually to her,
   to  pray for them.   They came often very black or grey, for
   moral purity or impurity is no metaphysical quality, but a
*  real  one, and as conspicuous  in  spirits as a dirty or  clear
   complexion in human  beings.   She  granted  their requests,
   prayed with  them, sung hymns with them, and  growing
   clearer, whiter,  and  brighter,  they eventually  took  their
   leave, with thanks, for a higher sphere.  That these were no
   mere imaginations continual proofs  were given, for  which I
   must refer the reader to the volume  itself; but this one may
   be taken as the first instance which occurred.
      Madame Hauffe arrived  at Weinsberg  on November 25,
   1826.   She was an entire  stranger  in the place, and knew
   no soul in it except Kerner.  Yet the very evening of that
   first day, when she fell into her magnetic sleep, she told him
   that a man was  near her who desired to say  something to
   her; but she could not tell what.   That he squinted dread-
   fully,  and  that his appearance  disturbed her; she desired
    him to go away.  On December 24 she  said the man was
   there again, and on the following evening that he had brought
   a  sheet of paper with figures on it, and that he  came up from
   a  vault below.   Now Madame  Hauffe lay in a  small room 
72          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
of a house on the ground floor, but actually over the cellars
of a wine merchant named F----,  who occupied the adjoin-
ing house, of which  circumstance  she  knew  nothing.  But
Kerner recognized the spirit of the man by the squint, and
by a report that on his death, six  years- before,  he  had left
something wrong in his  affairs with  Mr. F----, in whose
employment he had been.  The spirit came again and again,
imploring her to endeavor to set this matter right, and that
the necessary  document  or  account was in  a  house sixty
paces from  her bed.  She  said she saw  a  tall gentleman
writing in a small room with a larger beyond, in which were
some chests, one of  them open;  and  on  a desk a heap of
papers, amongst which was  the paper which  tormented this
spirit.  Kerner had  Mr.  F----to witness  these statements
in the Seeress's sleep, and  they immediately recognized the
building  described as the office of the high bailiff.  Kerner
went to the  high bailiff, and they looked for  the paper, but
in vain,  and they concluded that her vision was false, and  •
that there was  no such thing.  He returned and told her
so, but she  quietly insisted that the  paper was there, and
must and could be found.   Madame Hauffe had said that
she had seen the number 80 at the bottom of the paper, and
therefore Kerner gave  her  a paper when she  was in her
sleep in the  evening, on which were rows of  figures, and  at
the bottom  80.  He told her  that was  what she  wanted;
but she said, 'No, the paper is,still where it was;  and the
man was  there  again importuning.  That this paper lay on
his soul,  bound him to earth; but if it were found he'might,
by prayer, obtain salvation.'   Both in her sleep and after she
awoke she showed great uneasiness regarding the paper.
   Kerner went, therefore, again to the high bailiff, and* found
the paper exactly as she had described it.  Kerner requested
the high  bailiff to bring the  paper with him, and attend the
Seeress's  sleep.   He  came,  and in her sleep she exclaimed,
'The papers are no longer there!  But ah !—that is sur-
prising !  the one the man always has in his hand, lies there 
        INSTANCE OF HER  PERCEPTION OF SPIRITS.      73

open.  Now I can read more, " To be carried  into my pri-
vate book;" ah 1  that is the line  he  always points to;  he
wishes to direct  attention to that book.'  The bailiff was
astonished, for instead of having the paper in his pocket, as
Kerner supposed, he had laid it as the sleeper now described.
This private book, it appeared, was missing, and  the  wife
was in danger of being put to her oath about it; and, as she
did not know  of  it,  she was likely to  perjure herself by
swearing that  there  was no such  book.   Madame Hauffe"
desired  that the widow should be warned  not to swear that
there was no such book.  As Kerner did not like to write  to
the widow, Madame Hauffe wrote to her herself, and had an
interview with her.
  The high  bailiff, Heyd, drew up a statement and signed
it, saying, that the man whose spirit had appeared,  had con-
ducted the business of wine merchaut F----, and  on his death
there was a deficiency of 1,000 florins, and the private book
of the manager was  missing.  That proceedings had been
taken against his widow on this account, when the whole was
cleared  up by the discovery of  this paper through the ap-
pearance of the spirit  to Madame  Hauffek   Mr. F----, the
wine merchant, also  gave a written attestation of the  truth
of these relations, saying, that he previously had no belief in
apparitions, nor in somnambules, but that  his eyes  and ears
in this case had convinced  him that there was no deception.
That the affair, which had "happened  six  years before, had
ceased to be talked of; that he had not  mentioned the  sub-
ject of the paper to any one but the magistrate,  and when it
was now spoken of to him, he had difficulty in recalling the
particulars of  the case.
   But this was only  one case amongst many equally extra-
ordinary, stretching  through the whole  time that  Madame
Hauffe' was  at Weinsberg.   She often mentioned the  visits
of  spirits, of whom  no one in  the neighborhood had  ever
heard;  she knew everything of the distant places  whence they
came, and on  enquiry the  whole of the  circumstances were
   1-7 
74
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
discovered to be correct.   Such was the case of the Burgo-
master of Lenach, who had, according to the statement of
his spirit to the Seeress, defrauded two orphans. Kerner, in
speaking of the repeated proofs of the reality of these appa-
ritions, makes some remarks, the truth of which must strike
every one who has had to do with the arguers against spir-
itual phenomena: — 'When the Seeress was alive, and these
things were  talked of,  did any of those who  now write vol-
umes  of refutation, ever take  the trouble to come  and see
her, and examine her for themselves ?   No ; they sat still at
their desks, and yet considered themselves better able to pro-
nounce on these facts than  the calm, earnest, and profound
psychologist,  Eschenmayer, who examined everything on the
spot, and in person, and thought nothing of taking a journey
in the depth of winter, for the purpose.  So only, on such
subjects can  truth  be  elicited.   Learning and speculation
cannot supply the place of personal investigation.'
  Madame Hauffe, like most clairvoyants, could read in her
magnetic state anything laid on the pit of her stomach, and
enclosed between other sheets of  blank paper.   Without
even attempting to look at the paper, she always stated  its
contents, and when Kerner laid two  such  papers  on her
chest, one saying there was a God, and  the  other denying
this, she said the one paper made her feel happy, the other
gave her the  feeling of a void.  She continually saw things
at a distance;  knew what  was doing at home; wrote, and
warned her parents of a danger to her child, which they thus
avoided; and, at another time, of a danger  to her brother
from  his gun.  He examined it, and found that it had been
maliciously charged by somebody, in such a manner that it
would, in all probability, have burst in his hand on being
discharged.   She foresaw the death of her father and grand-
father, and many such things.   She recognized her maternal
grandmother as her constant guardian angel, but missing her
for a week, another guardian  angel told her that she was
closely  engaged at her  grandfather's.   She was,  in fact, 
          CASE OF THE  COUNTESS  MALDEGHAM.         75

attending her husband, the Seeress's grandfather,  in his last
hours.
  Madame Hauffe had a wonderful therapeutic power, though
herself so hopeless an invalid.   The most remarkable proof
of this was the restoration of the Countess of Maldegham  by
praying with her.  This  lady had fallen  into a state of the
strangest hallucination after the birth  of her second child.
She imagined herself no longer really living.  She  did not
recognize the identity of  her husband or her children.   She
believed they had lost their estate, and  when taken to it, she
could not recognize  it  The  count, in the deepest anxiety
over her condition, had consulted all the most famous  phy-
sicians both  in Germany and  other countries, but all in  vain.
The  countess, in her lucid  intervals, always said that her
cure  would proceed from no physician, but from her husband.
The  count on hearing of the cures by Madame Hauffe,  went
to Weinsberg with the countess.  He introduced  her to the
Seeress through Kerner;  she prayed with the countess, and
prescribed by clairvoyance for her, and she was suddenly and
completely cured.  Eschenmayer  says,  ' I heard the  account
from  the lips  of the countess  herself,  and witnessed her
entire conviction that she had been cured by the Seeress.
This history gives us a glimpse into the  region of spiritual
sympathies,  which disperses, like  soap-bubbles, all our mise-
rable objections drawn from the laws of nature.   My friend
Kerner calls on mankind to acknowledge the power  of  faith
and prayer; but, alas 1 they kuow it not.   They think to lay
open the universe by the  force of their vaunted reason, and
they find it but an empty shell.'  Kerner, in  1838, reported
that  the countess still, ten  years after, remained perfectly
well; and Mrs. Crowe, at the time of her  translation  of
' The Seherin von Prevorst,' was informed by a  gentleman
recently from Germany, that she remained so  at that period.
  Madame Hauffe found developed  in her an inner spiritual
language, which she both spoke and wrote.   She said  that
it was undeveloped in every human  soul, and that the mo- 
76
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
ment  they are out of the flesh, they speak  it instinctively.
The language was sonorous, and had an oriental resemblance.
She said it was connected with numbers, and therefore pos-
sessed an infinitely greater expression  than any  outward
language.   When she was  awake, she knew nothing  of it.
She said that' in the words of this language lay essentially
the value and properties of the things they expressed.   She
gave  to herself a name, Emelachen,  which she  said ex-
pressed entirely her  character, and the like names to her
friends.  This, I have observed, is the practice of all spirits,
and they  also give  you and  every one in communication
with them, names expressive of their characters.  Many of
the words  resembled Hebrew  and  Arabic.   Specimens of
them  are given  in the volume, as well as specimens of the
writing, having a striking resemblance to other spirit-writing
which I have seen.  Notwithstanding the possession from
nature of this language, she asserted, as all spirits and spirit-
readers do, that disembodied spirits have no absolute need
of it,  for they read each other's  thoughts.   She  began to
speak this language even before her marriage.
   Other extraordinary developments in her, were  her  Son-
nenkreise   and  Lebenskreise,  sun-circles  and  life-circles.
After a time of great  suffering  in October, 1827, she said
that she felt  a  ring encircling her, and fastened to her left
side.   That it was no imaginary but a real ring,  lying heavy
upon  her, and it lay  on  the nerves, and consisted  of nerve-
spirit.  Under this ring she felt six  other rings.  Within
this larger ring, she perceived an inner ring of three circles.
This inner ring she called her life-circle, the soul residing in
the centre,  and  looking forth  into the  large outer  circle,
which  she called her sun-circle.  There is some  little confu-
sion in  her  description, for the six lesser circles under the
large  circle, and which eventually became seven, she also calls
sun-circles.   The  meaning  seems to be that the  inner or
life-circle  is the  sphere of the spiritual  life, the  outer  circle
with its lesser circles  is the circle of the outer life, the lesser 
       MADAME HAUFFE'S SUN AND LIFE CIRCLES.     77

circles so many years.   These represented her outer experi-
ences since she fell into the magnetic state, and the last was
cut in two in  a particular  direction, rendering  a certain
number of  months quite blank.  During this time she had
no consciousness of what  passed  outwardly.  This  period
was  a blank in  her memory.   The outer or sun-circle was
divided into twelve sections — months;  the inner one into
thirteen and a half.  These circles, she said, were always in
motion, and every seven years the seven sun-circles fell away
and  seven  more appeared.  Every  person she said had two
numbers connected  with  their lives.  Her numbers were
seven and  ten, and within these numbers events came round
in cycles.
   But the most  remarkable  thing connected with these
circles, is, that the balance of every day's good and  evil is
summed up and  expressed in a cypher, and  carried into the
next day;  the week's, the month's, and the  year's the same.
At the end of every day, week, month and year, this cypher,
expressing  the exact balance for or against the  individual,
stands self-registered;  and so, at the end of his  life, there
stands a cypher expressing the exact moral account of the
individual.   Therefore, the moment the soul steps out of the
body, it carries with it, written on  its breast, the  exact sum
of the good or evil of its whole existence.  This is  a startling
idea.  That we have in our own sonls a self-registering prin-
ciple, going on in its operations independent of our control,
and presenting our exact spiritual  condition at  the moment
of our entrance into the spirit-world.
   The full understanding  of this circle system can only be
obtained by a careful study of the explanations given by the
Seeress, and which stand at large in Kerner's volume, but of
which Mrs. Crowe gives but  an  abridgment in her trans-
lation.  We have  also in  the original seven lithographic
plates, representing these circles.   These  Madame  Hauffe"
drew under spirit influence:  and the manner of her drawing
them is deserving of especial attention, as every spiritualist
       7* 
78          HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

will see, from what he has experienced himBelf, or seen in his
friends, how genuine it is.   Kerner says : —' She threw off
the whole drawing (Plate I.) in an incredibly short time,
and employed  in marking  the  more than a hundred points,
into which this circle was  divided, no compasses or instru-
ment whatever.  She made the whole with her hand  alone,
and failed not in a single  point.  She seemed to work as a
spider  works its geometric diagrams, without any visible in-
strument.  I recommended her to use  a pair of compasses to
strike the circles;  she tried^  and made immediate blunders.'
   Having myself,  who never had a single lesson in drawing,
and never could draw in a normal condition, had a great
number of circles struck through my hand under spirit in-
fluence, and these  filled up  by tracery  of  ever new  inven-
tion, without a thought  of my  own, I, at once, recognize the
truth  of Kerner's  statement.   The drawings made by my
hand have been seen by  great  numbers of  persons,  artists as
well as others, and remain to  be seen, though the  power is
again  gone from  me.   Giotto,  or any  pair of compasses,
could not strike more perfect circles than I could under this
influence, with  nothing but  a  piece of paper and a pencil.
No inventor of tracery or patterns could invent such original
ones as were thrown out  on the paper  day after day, with
almost lightning speed, except with long and studious labor,
and by instrumental aid.   At the same time the  sketches
given  through  me are not to  be named with the drawings,
both in pencil and  colors,  produced in this manner through
others  who are well known.
   Another remarkable thing connected  with the spirit-lan-
guage  and these circles, was a system of spirit numbers and
calculation,  which  she represented, like the  language, of
wonderful capacity.  Both the writing and the numbers ran,
in oriental fashion, from the right to the  left, though she
assuredly knew nothing of  oriental  modes.  She  had two
systems of calculation, one  for the outer and the other for the
inner world ; and so rapid and intuitive was her knowledge 
       MADAME HAUFFE'S INTERNAL CALCULATION.     79

of this language  and this system of calculation, that at any
distance of time afterwards she could detail in an instant any
variation,  however  slight, in any copy of  her writing or
drawing.  On a copy of her Sonnenkreis being brought to
her a year after she had made the  original, she immediately
detected the omission of a single point!
  A few words more will fill the  whole extent of space which
I can give to this remarkable case of spiritual development.
I recommend my readers to study the original;  and I would
also recommend Mrs. Crowe to perfect her good work to the
English reader by giving a complete, uncurtailed translation,
illustrated by the seven plates of drawings which accompany
the original.  Let us now see how extraordinarily the Seeress,
from direct spiritual insight, has  confirmed the wisdom of
many great minds  of  whom she never heard.   Dr. Kerner
has made these references, I only quote him.
   'The sun-circle,' says the Seeress, 'is our sun-circle, and
every man carries this in himself  upon his life-circle, the soul.
The life-circle, which is the soul, lies under the sun-circle,
and thus  becomes  a mirror  to  it.'  This is precisely what
Leibnitz and Yan Helmont had  said :  ' The soul is a mirror
of the Universe.'   ' So long,' says the Seeress, ' as the sonl
continues in the centre, she sees  all round her, into the past,
the future, and the infinite.  She  sees the world in all its laws,
relations,  and properties,  which  are implanted  in it through
time and space.  She sees all this without veil, or partition-
wall interposing.   But in proportion as the soul is  drawn
from the  centre  by the attractions of the  outer world, she
advances  into  darkness, and loses this all-embracing vision,
and knowledge of the nature and properties of all that sur-
rounds her.   This insight  is now given  to us only in the
magnetic Bleep, when  we are withdrawn  from the influence
of the senses.'  This is precisely what Schubert says :  ' That
which is  with us now, science, was, in the earliest times,
rather a revelation  of a higher  spirit to man.'   ' The num-
bers of which the Seeress speaks, are,' says Passavant, ' con- 
80          HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

tinually spoken of and used  by clairvoyants,  and  remind
us of the importance attached to certain  numbers in the
books  of Moses, as three, seven, and forty;  with those  of
the prophets, and especially of Daniel.  The oldest astronom-
ical works display the  same calculations,  drawn from the
deepest insight into  the natural relations of things, as are
asserted in the magnetic sleep.   The astronomical tables of
India,  which claim  an antiquity of  6,000  years, leave us
nothing to discover  regarding the variation of the ecliptic.
The most ancient Indian poems speak of the natural powers
of plants, of the  significance of their shapes and colors, of
the properties of stones and metals.  The most ancient  races
had the same theories of language and number as our Seeress
was taught from within.  Certainly the system of the ancient
philosophers proceeded  from such  a natural  insight, and
above  all, that of Plato.  How great is the likeness of the
system of calculation of Pythagoras, so far as we know it,
to that of the  sleep-waker, and especially  of the Seeress!
How vividly are we  reminded of these circles and the  inner
mystic numbers, when we read in Plato—'The soul is im-
mortal and has an arithmetical beginning, as the  body  has a
geometrical one.   She is the image of a universally diffused
spirit;  has a self-movement, and penetrates from the centre
through the whole body around.   She is, however, diffused
through corresponding mid-spaces, and  forms at the  same
time two circles bound to each other.'  The one he calls the
movement  of the soul — the life-circle of our Seeress; the
other the movement  of the universe and  of the  comets, the
sun-circle of the Seeress.   ' In this manner,' says Plato, ' is
the soul placed in connection with that which  is without;
knows what is and constitutes harmony;  whilst  she has in
herself the  elements of a  fixed harmony.   'This  natural
calculation,' Plato says, 'serves for the enquiry into the
good and the beautiful.  If a man loses this gift of God he
no longer understands human nature,  our moral and  immor-
tal parts, nor the foundations  of religion.   When he  loses 
    THESE DOCTRINES THOSE  OF PLATO AND  OTHERS.   81

his number, he loses his connection with the good, and be-
comes the inevitable prey of evil.'  This is  the same as the
assertion of the Seeress, that if a man lose this fundamental
calculation, he is placed in immediate rapport with evil and
its consequences, and  with the consent of his own will.
  Other modern seers have  conceived of an especial mystic
number in nature.    San Martin says: 'Numbers are no
other than an interpretation of truths and laws, the ground
text of which lies in God,  in man, and nature.'  Novalis
also says:  'It is very probable that  there is in nature a
wonderful mystic science of  numbers.   Is  not all full of
meaning,  symmetry, allusion, and a singular connection?'
   Swedenborg, of whom the Seeress knew nothing whatever,
alludes to exactly such circles.  ' The  base and false have
their seat in the natural mind, whence it  comes that this
mind is a world in small or in  form ; and the  spiritual mind
a heaven  in small or  in form,  and into  the  heaven nothing
evil can  come.   Both  minds  are bowed out into  circles.'
The Seeress, knowing nothing of Swedenborg, asserted the
same doctrine as the  Swedish seer, that there is a spiritual
sun as well as a natural sun — the spiritual sun she  termed
the sun of grace.  ' There  is  a higher  sun than that visible
 to  us,' says Swedenborg.  ' Above the angel-heaven is a sun,
 pure love.   It shines as fervently as the sun of the world.
 The warmth of this sun gives will and love to angels and to
 men.   Light,  wisdom, understanding,  flowing  from it, are
 called spiritual.   That which radiates  from  the sun of the
 world is natural, and contains the life of nature.'
   Eschenmayer wrote to Kerner on reading the communica-
 tions of the Seeress:—'There are two suns; the one which
 we see enlightens our day,  and brings all to the light, but is
 therefore restricted to. our  planetary system, and is but as a
 drop in the ocean.   There is also  a central sun,  which we
 do not see, which leaves us dark, but  even in this darkness
 opens up first to us the infinitude of the starry world ; a sun
 from which all the  stars, including our sun itself,  receive 
82
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
 their light, and which is  as  certain as is our sun.'  Enne-
 moser, in his ' History of Magnetism,' says, ' Man stands in
 the world in a circle, founded indisputably in nature ; wherein
 is neither  beginning nor end ; it is boundless, and the past
 and future are comprehended in it.   The whole  world is
 clearly irradiated with light, and  man  himself is the mirror
 of the divine  image.'  These are almost the very words of
 the Seeress.
   In the infancy of the race, mankind  lived more in this
 circle; had, therefore, little  or  no veil or  partition-wall
 betwixt  itself  and  the  spiritual.   In  the same circle lived
 the poet, the prophet, and the true Saviour.   But time and
 its increasing corruptions have drawn the human soul farther
 and farther from the pure centre; drawn it into thick worldly
 darkness and engrossments, and the partition-walls betwixt
 the earthly and the divine, are grown thicker  and denser;
 the veil  of flesh more  opaque, and it is only through the
 clairvoyante trance or the direct act of God and his angels,
 that we obtain transient intimations of the great  spirit-world
 around us and within us.
   There are many things connected  with  this wonderful
 narrative of the Seeress which the reader must seek in the
 account  at large.   Her  truthfulness  had been  attested by
 numbers of her most enquiring and scientific visitors. Kerner
 himself says he visited Madame Hauffe at least 3,000 times,
 but never  could discern deception.   He states  that so far
 from priding herself on  her powers of spiritual  vision, the
 subject was painful  to her; she would  gladly have been'free
 from it, and never talked of it except when drawn out.  The
 fact that her life and sun-circles were realities to her, was
 shown  by her  laying the drawings of them  on her heart
 always in a particular manner in her magnetic sleep; and if
they were  purposely  altered, however  adroitly,  she felt it,
and readjusted them  exactly as they had been laid by her
before, and without once looking at them.   Her perception
of different sensations from plants, precious stones, and other 
       SCHUBERT'S ESTIMATE OF ^MADAME HAUFFE,     83

minerals were repeatedly tried by placing them in her hands
when in her sleep,  when she always ascribed the same pro-
perty to the same thing (Schubert's Geschichte der  Seele,
vol. ii., p.  619-626).  In fact,  the infallibility of her percep-
tions was  one of  the most amazing  features of her case.
Her spiritual vision, by inspection of crystals, mirrors, or
soap-bubbles, gave a carious  confirmation to similar phe-
nomena witnessed  commonly in the East,  and formerly in
Europe by Cornelius Agrippa and Dr. Dee.
  Returning from the Seeress to Kerner himself, I have to
remark, that not  only  in  this work,  but in his  others  on
kindred subjects, he has collected a number of narratives of
apparitions and various  other spiritual manifestations, all of
them supported by the strongest evidence, both persons and
places  often fully  named,  in several  instances certified as
true by public  authorities.   Some of these  have been  in-
cluded by  Mrs. Crowe in her  Night-side of Nature.'  They
detail so many phenomena which have since  been repeated
amongst both American and English spiritualists, that they
are of the utmost value  as proofs of the permanent nature of
these things. What occurred in Germany long before Amer-
ican spiritualism  was heard of; and  what has occurred in
America  amongst  tens of thousands who never heard of
these German occurrences, and since in England, all possess-
ing  the  same  specific  characteristics, proclaim  their own
reality beyond the  possibility of denial.  Furniture was moved
from place to place, carried through the air; gravel and ashes
flung about, where no human  being could  fling it.   In  the
strange occurrences which happened to Councillor Hahnn
and Charles Kern of Kiinzelsau, in the castle of Slawensick,
in Silesia,  (which  are given by  Mrs. Crowe and also by Mr.
Owen, in  his 'Footfalls,') these gentlemen were afterwards
joined by two  Bavarian officers, Captain Cornet and Lieu-
tenant Magerle, as well as by Councillor Klenk, all anxious
to discover the cause of the phenomena; and they were fre-
quently attended  by Knittel, the  castle  watch, Dorfell,  the 
84
HISTORY  OF. THE SUPERNATURAL.
  book-keeper, and Radezensky, the forest-master.  Hahnn had
  been a student of German philosophy and was a materialist.
  Yet these gentlemen, Hahnn  and Kern,  for  two months,
  and the others when present, were persecuted by the throw-
  ing of lime at  them, when the doors were fast;  and not only
  so, but by the throwing  at  them and  about,  knives,  forks,
  spoons, razors, candlesticks,  and the  like; scissors, slippers,
  padlocks,  whatever was  movable, were seen to fly about,
  whilst lights darted from  corner to corner.   The knives and
  forks rose from the table  before them, and fell down again.
  The most  unaccountable thumping and noises attended these
 migrations of insensible articles. A tumbler was thrown and
 broken to  pieces.   Captain  Cornet cut about with a sword
 at the invisible form that  was throwing articles about, but in
 vain.  What was strangest  of  all, they  saw a jug of beer
 raise itself, pour beer into a glass, and the beer drunk off;
 on seeing which John, the servant, exclaimed,  'Lord Jesus 1
 it swallows 1'  Kern, looking into a glass,  saw a female in
 white, which greatly  terrified  him, and resembled the  re-
 ported appearance of the White Lady often seen in German
 palaces.   After two  months the  annoyances ceased, and
 never returned.  No natural clue to their solution was ever
 obtained.
   What  took place in the prison at Weinsberg, was made
 the subject of a strict investigation by a committee during
 the proceeding of the events, but only to confirm their ab-
 normal character.  Dr. Kerner, who was the physician to the
 prison, was  ordered  to  attend a woman confined there who
 complained of being disturbed by a ghost which haunted her
 and  importuned her to pray for its salvation.  The magis-
 trates ordered  him  to report on  the case.   After having
closely watched it for  eleven weeks, Kerner reported  that
there was no doubt about the case ; the woman  was haunted
by a ghost  almost every night, who professed to have been a
 Catholic of Wimmenthal, and who had been in this miserable
condition since 1414, in consequence of having, amongst other 
  APPARITION IN THE HOUSE OF CORRECTION, HEILBRONN, 85

crimes, joined with his father in  defrauding  his brothers.
Others were appointed with Kerner to watch the case, and
amongst these were Justice Heyd, Drs. Seyffer and Sicherer,
Baron von Hugel, Kapff, professor of  mathematics  of Heil-
bronn, Fraas, a barrister, Wagner, an artist, Duttenhofer, nn
engraver,  &c.   All were compelled to confess the reality of
the phenomenon.  A Mr. Dorr of IJeilbronn, amongst others,
laughed much at the report of these things ;  but he was soon
candid enough  to write, ' When I heard these things  talked
of,  I always laughed at them, and was thought very sensible
for so doing; now I shall  be  laughed at in my turn, no
doubt.'   The chief features  of this case were these : — The
ghost came nightly, and sometimes entered by a door, and
sometimes by a window, placed high  and strongly guarded
by  iron  bars.  He often announced his coming by shaking
this window violently.  In  order to know whether this win-
dow could be easily shaken,  the  examiners  ordered men to
attempt to shake it; and it was found that it required six to
shake it at  all, whilst  the spirit shook  it  violently.   The
spirit was always preceded by a cool  air, and attended by
the same  crackling noise  mentioned before, and familiar to
the readers of the American case reported by Mr. Coleman.
He was also accompanied by a cadaverous,  stifling smell,
which made a number of the prisoners,  who always perceived
it,  sick.   He was  also attended by phosphorescent  lights,
radiating  around his head.  When he touched persons, the
parts  became painful and  swollen.  He opened  doors and
shut them  at pleasure, though locked and  bolted.  He spoke
quite  audibly, and could be heard  not only by the woman
Esslingen, but many others.  When the woman was liberated,
she  went with some of her friends, according to her promise
to him, to pray  on his  grave at Wimmenthal, and he came
visibly and thanked her.  At going away  he asked to shake
hands with her, and on her wrapping her handkerchief round
her  hand first, a small flame rose from it, and the burnt marks
of his thumb and finger remained, as in the  case of  the Ha-
  I._ 8 
86          HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

mersham family in Stilling's ' Pneumatology.'  After this he
never reappeared at the prison, nor in the houses of many
of the examining gentlemen, as he had done.
  Whilst Madame Hauffe was spending  some time at Ker-
ner's house, gravel and  ashes were  thrown about'where no
visible creature was to throw them.  A stool rose gradually
to the ceiling, and then  came down again.  Footsteps were
heard following members of the family from room to room.
In another case, a square piece of  paper floated about the
room, and a figure appeared, attended by ' a crackling noise
and  a bluish light.'  Such appearances and sounds have
been abundant in Germany, but I shall close this enumera-
tion of them  by noticing a circumstance which corroborates
the narratives of witchcraft.  It was a fact that, when Madame
Hauffe was in a particularly magnetic state, she could not
sink in her bath, but  rose to the surface, and could only be
held down by hands.   She was also at times lifted into the
air, as is the  case with Mr. Home, and has  been with many
saints and devotees of all countries and times.
   I have gone at greater length into the accounts of Stilling,
Kerner, and Madame Hauffe, than I can afford in the general
course of this history, into which enormous masses of facts
press for utterance ; but I have done this in the outset to dis-
sipate at once, as I  have said, the ignorant assumption that
modern spiritualism originated in America, and still more to
demonstrate  that there  has scarcely been a single variety of
manifestation in the United States,  or  since  in  England,
Switzerland,  and France, which were not already exhibited
here; and  which,  indeed, have not been exhibited, as this
history will show,  in  almost every  age and country  of the
world.   These reappearances  at distant intervals, and in
remote countries, of  the same identical phenomena, prove
absolutely that they result from one great law of Providence,
or, as philosophers prefer to call it — Nature.   The Seeress
and  Stilling  confirm  all that  has occurred amongst us and
our transatlantic  brethren ;  and our  manifestations again 
   FACTS OF DIFFERENT AGES CONFIRMING EACH OTHER.  87

confirm  those  of Stilling and  the Seeress.   Nay, more, the
phenomena attending the Seeress confirm those of Plato and
Pythagoras.  A German woman, of next to no  education,
after a lapse of more than two thousand years, reutters some
of the deepest psychological truths of the great Grecian,
Persian, Indian,  and Egyptian  sages —they who gave the
highest finish and the deepest significance to the mythologies
and religious revelations of the pagan nations of antiquity.
These are carefully scrutinized and accepted  as truths by
the most profound psychologists of Germany, who satisfy
themselves  with astonishment  that  this  simple  peasant
woman had no knowledge whatever  of those ancient sages,
nor even of Swedenborg, who had departed from earth nearly
half  a century before.   These  facts, testifying to the  per-
manent existence of such phenomena, the products of perma-
nent law, and free from any fantastic, accidental, or visionary
character, free from any kinship with Bedlam or chaos, can-
not be too much pondered  upon by those who pride them-
selves on the sequence of their logic or the keenness of their
faculty for metaphysic analysis.  Of the other chief figures
of this illustrious group  of German spiritualists,  I can only
give the briefest notice.  Their works would  supply whole
volumes  of  evidence of the most interesting kind;  and the
department of apparitions alone, from sources of the highest
authority, would fill a library. 
88
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
                CHAPTER  IY.

MANIFESTATIONS OF THE SUPERNATURAL IN GERMANY,
                     continued.
Eschenmeyer, Schubert, Gorres, Ennemoser, Meyer, Kant, &c.
   THE calm, careful, and impartial observer, as Eschenmayer
    is termed by Kerner, with a noble superiority to the gener-
ality of men who have  devoted themselves to medicine and
natural and practical philosophy, after having closely watched
the phenomena manifested in and by the Seeress  of Prevorst,
became one of the  boldest and steadfastest proclaimers of
the truths of  spiritualism.  He was originally  professor of
practical philosophy in the University of  Tubingen, but had
for some years lived independently at Kircheim-under-Teck.
He was a disciple of Kant and  Schelling without accepting
the absolute-identity theory of the latter.  He was the author
of celebrated  works —' Philosophy in its  Transition  into
Non-Philosophy;'  'An Attempt to explain the apparent
Magic of Animal Magnetism by Physical and Physiological
Laws.'  These he had followed up by works on Moral Philoso-
phy, Normal Right  and Canon Laws ; but his ' Psychology;'
his 'Philosophy  of  Religion,' and  ' Dogmatics  drawn from
Reason,  History and  Religion,' displayed the  tendency  of
his mind towards the higher mysteries of our nature.  The
case of the  Seeress of Prevorst, therefore, was one of the
profoundest interest to him ;  and he not only published his
observations upon  it, but joined with Kerner in a series  of 
VON ECKARTSHAUSEN.
89
papers on spiritual subjects, afterwards collected under the
name  of 'Blatter  aus Prevorst,' 'Leaves  from Prevorst.'
He also, strengthened by foundation of positive facts drawn
from this  practical insight into psychology, attacked the
infidel philosophy of Hegel, under the title of  ' The Hegel
Philosophy compared with Christianity ;'  and  he dissected
Strauss's  'Leben Jesu' in his ' Iscariotism  of our Time,'  as
a supplement to that work.   But they are  his  ' Mysteries '
which contain the richest evidences of Eschenmayer's spirit-
ualism.   I have already quoted him  more  than once; and,
therefore, with a single passage from  this last-named work,
I  shall  pass on.   'Whoever,' he says,  'will freely peruse
these  histories  will quickly  see that it  is  not  merely with
mathematical phenomena, but with the great demonstrative
fact of COMMUNICATION with the dead  that we have to do.
The question here  is teaching and testimouy which  have the
greatest interest and significance for mankind.'

                  Yon  Eckartshausen.

   Baron von Eckartshausen, who had deeply studied psycho-
logical laws, was residing at Munich. One night he  remained
till twelve o'clock  meditating on the powers of magic, when
suddenly he heard a funeral song.   He looked out of the
window,  and saw  Roman  Catholic priests going  before a
coffin with burning wax candles in their hands,  and reciting
prayers.  Chief mourners went before the  coffin.   Eckarts-
hausen opened  the window and asked, 'Whom do they carry
here ? '  A voice replied, 'Eckartshausen.'   ' Then,' said  he,
11 must prepare.'   He  awoke his wife, told her what had
happened, and within one  hour  after  he  was dead.  Dr.
Wolff heard thi3 account from Eckartshausen's own family.
   Wolff  relates, too, that when  residing  in the family  of
 Count  Stolberg, the Count sometimes uttered prophetic an-
nouncements which always came true.   On the news of Na-
poleon having  escaped from Elba arriving, Stolberg rose and
        8* 
90
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
said, 'But this will be his last  attempt.'  The same day, as
Wolff was walking out with him, he suddenly stopped, and,
as if absorbed in thought,  exclaimed, ' Er fallt!  Ihn stiirzt
Gott der Almiichtige.  So  hat es beschlossen  der Alte der
Tage 1'   'He falls !   God  Almighty hurls him down.  So
has it been decreed by the Ancient of Days !'

                       Schubert.

   The author of the admirable ' History of the  Soul' was at
this period, too, one of the ablest and most undaunted of the
German  spiritualists.   The reader  will find abundant evi-
dence of this in his great work, the ' Geschichte der Seele.'
He was one of the staunchest maintainers of the truth of the
phenomena of the Seeress  of  Prevorst.  Schubert believed
in the influence of stones  both  on body and  spirit.  He
says in his ' Natural  History,'' In many respects the mineral
kingdom appears a world full of deep indications of the spir-
itual one; and of magical relations to the nature of man.
For not only has a somewhat  poetical antiquity ascribed
certain qualities and forces to stones, such as those of keep-
ing us inwardly awake and sober, of  procuring prophetic
dreams, and of inspiring heroes with courage amid dangers
by repeatedly looking at them ; but there are  also modern
relations of magnetic clairvoyance and touching of metals
which show that the  contact or even the proximity of metals
acts on the human body in a much deeper manner than the
merely mechanical.'
   Schubert tells us that Dr. Kerner has written the  history
of the Seeress without the fear of the foolish judgments of
the so-called wise, and with a serious conscientiousness; and
he himself gives us a detailed  and very interesting  account
of the  effects  on Madame  Hauffe of the different precious
stones, of  other  stones and spars,  glass, crystals,  metals,
plants  (especially poisonous ones), fruits, different kinds of
food;  of the  different imponderables,  the rays of the sun 
GORRES.                       91
and moon, electricity,  galvanic  electricity;  of  sounds and
imponderables in  the  air, ' Geschichte  der  Seele,' vol.  ii.
619-626.   For further evidences of Schubert's spiritualism,
see this learned work, especially  the  second volume, the first
being rather the history of the body — the soul's house.

                        Gorres.

   And Gorres, too, was one of this remarkable constellation
of spiritualists — Gorres, that fiery  and trenchant and many
sided soul; Gorres in his youth haranguing in clubs  and
popular assemblies, all flame and eloquence on the wondrous
dawn of  freedom  in France; Gorres writing his  ' Rothes
Blatt,' and heading deputations to Paris; Gorres in mature
age  as  stalwart a champion  for the Catholic faith ; Gorres
with his ready and acute and nniversal talent, the historian,
the physiologist, the theologian, now in prison for his free
speaking of kings and princes, now at the head of patriotic
Tugenbunds, and again revelling with Arnim and Brentano
in the poetry and legends of the Middle Ages, and editing
People's Books.   Gorres everywhere and every how, keen,
sarcastic, impetuous, and yet truthful, at length threw all the
glowing energies  of his soul  into  the cause of the highest
philosophy.  He espoused the  cause of spiritualism in his
' Emanuel Swedenborg, his Yisions, and  his  Relation to the
Church,' in his ' Christian Mysticism,' and in his ' Life  and
Writings of Suso.'  In the  introduction to  this last work,
his observations on the circles of the Seeress  are so  excellent
that I shall give a summary of them.
   'To  the clairvoyant, the inner world lying  behind the
Dream-World  is laid  open.  He wanders in it in  full day-
light.   Placed in the periphery of his being, he looks  forth
towards its shrouded centre.  All the rays of influence which
fall from above into that centre, and stream  through its  in-
terior,  strike against him, who  places himself in the midst
 of their streaming with his face directed towards their source. 
92
HISTORY OF TnE SUPERNATURAL.
Its interior is to him  objective, and he  gazes upon it to its
very depth, and glances thence over into that spiritual world
from whence they have come.   But in this relationship, as in
the intuitive and  other activity, whilst the soul, descending
from the  highest centre, enters into the circle  of the lower
life, and as regards the spiritual world and its duties and
significance,  has  abased herself, she  has, on the  contrary,
transferred herself into the higher centre of all natural things,
which repose in the embrace of human life ; has herself drawn
nearer to  the centre  of Nature, and whilst she has centered
herself in this, and has thereby risen to  a higher worth  in
the region of nature,  she has received this  worth into herself.
To the clairvoyant, then, stands the world no longer circum-
stantially  opposed, but has rather'subjectively entered  into
him.  No longer does he strive from her outside to penetrate
visually into her interior nature, but he rather glances from
her centre outwards, yet only into the spiritual. In descending
from the  spiritual  centre,  he  has arisen nearer to the world
centre; for his eye, turned towards the  spiritual, his back is
at the same time turned on the natural, and  he receives its
influences as if they  streamed from  behind and from within
to him.  The world of nature, as seen from within under this
condition, changes itself thus into a spiritual one; for, having
stepped behind the veil, the  spectator beholds immediately
all the powers and activities of nature which  operate in the
body of nature under a variety of appearances, and with the
spirit of nature unites itself every intercourse of the exalted
senses.  But  all the powers of nature operate  through antag-
onisms ;  therefore, with their  increased activity commences
the play of polarity, of which the clairvoyant becomes aware.
It seizes on the metals according to the position which  they
severally occupy in consequence of their innate forces, in the
graduated order of succession in their species; the earthy
arrange themselves in like  manner, according to their forces,
so that those which in themselves are rigid operate by rigidity
and knitting up; those which are in themselves lax, relax the 
  GORRES'  DESCRIPTION  OF THE LIFE AND SUN-CIRCLES. 93

spell of cramps in those who suffer from them.   The colored
rays of light follow the order in their action in  which they
lie in a colored body;  so that the red ray binds and awakes,
the violet looses and passes deeper into sleep and the night-
world ;  and even so sounds, soft sounds answering to dark
colors,  and hard sounds to  red.   In  the same manner plants
arrange themselves, so that the laurel points towards the
inner world, and the hazel-tree  towards the outer one; and
so, finally,  men  order themselves in  their surroundings ; the
greater number for  the outer world, but others, because they
are in  closer rapport to it, belong to the  inner.  All  these
operations of metals, plants, and  men were strikingly mani-
fested  in the  Seeress.  And  all these relationships are per-
ceived through  a species of common sense,  which all other
sense being departed  from, it is more  closely allied to the
spiritual, is less bound to  time and  space,  and since it> looks
not into things from without, but from within outwards, looks
into their living faces, and  into the  mirror  of the spiritual
world,  and appears less obstructed by the impenetrability of
matter.
   ' Thus a new spirit-world is thrown open  to the sense of
sight,  and  it lies before it in the same clearness as the outer
world  in the  waking state.   And as in  the outer sight of
the body divides itself into distinct life-spheres, and the sun-
world  dissolves itself into regulated  circles, and these circles
stand in a determined intercourse with those spheres; so this
inner observation also divides the soul into spheres, and the
spiritual world into circles, which in the same manner unite
themselves into regulated and alternating relationships.  Such
are the circles with which the Seeress has circumscribed her
inner self; and  which Justinus Kerner has so  fully compre-
hended, and so truthfully and graphically described that sun-
circle in which the visible world lies; the life-circle, which,
pertaining to the  soul, speaks of  a higher spiritual  one \
betwixt both  the dream-circle with the middle world and in
the interior  of the soul-life-circle,  the  three  others which 
94           HISTORY OF TnE  SUPERNATURAL.
belong to the spirit.  To her the innermost of these three
circles is bright as the sun, the  centre of it much brighter
than the sun.  In this she saw  an abyss not to  be  looked
through; the  deeper the brighter, which she calls the Sun
of Grace, and from which it seemed to her that  all  things
that live proceed as sparks.  Thence sprung the radical num-
bers of  her  existence, by which she conducted  the calcula-
tions of her condition;  from  thence and the  next circles
came all the instructions  for her healing; from  thence  con-
structed itself the  proper inward language,  in which  she
thought and internally acted.
   'What has now been  said sets  the relationship which
exists betwixt these intentions and those of the  saints in the
clearest light.  This  looking  into the inner spiritual circle
is that of the saints only, and to them alone has it been per-
mitted to declare what they have seen.  In this rapport with
God the soul ascends step by step, and  presently is exalted
above itself and the whole  circle  of clairvoyance.   That
which appears to the mere clairvoyant the deepest centre,
included and shining  in that region, now shows  itself merely
as a single  point in the periphery of a higher arrangement,
which, in its innermost part, belongs to a still higher centre,
whose depth, by the continued operations of God, once more
opens itself, and a view into a still higher centre is allowed ;
till, finally, the soul, in the closest intercourse of which she
is capable, knows  God  alone, and  He dwelling in her,  and
thinking  His thoughts in her, and being  obedient  to  His
entire will, which wills in her  will, after that He has freed it
from every  touch  of  an  evil  compulsion.   Here, then,  first
opens itself that profounder heaven, which the natural heaven
includes in  itself.   Those three soul-circles, which  a  view
into that deeper condition discovers, now show themselves
as the symbolical indications of those three higher conditions
which the inner life of the saints have opened up to us.   All
is now  sacred which  before was profane, and receives  from
the church consecration and sanction.  Another healing than 
DR. ENNEMOSER.
95
that of the body becomes the object of care; a higher cal-
culation begins, since the radical number of life has found its
exponent in God;  and to express the whole in one word, it
is the esoteric mystical principle which has established itself
in  opposition to the exoteric,  which  is the  foundation of
clairvoyance.'
  These  views  Gorres  has practically illustrated in his
' Christliche Mystik,' and they who would have an adequate
idea of the extent of miracle claimed by the Catholic Church,
must read the two  bulky volumes of that work.  In  this he
has ranged through extensive libraries of the lives and works
of saints in every country of the world.  There you find the
whole history of the extatics and their stigmata, chief amongst
them, St. Francis of Assisi.   In some, the wound in the side
penetrated  to  the  heart, so  that it must have been mortal
without a standing miracle.   Others had the power, in their
devotion, of becoming invisible, of rising in the air, of being
carried from place  to place, as  St. Joseph of Copertina; of
passing through closed doors; of the opening and closing of
doors before the saints ;  of miraculous powers of preaching,
singing, playing on  sacred  instruments,  healing sickness.
Often the  places where they were were so ablaze with  light
that  people thought  they were on  fire; and  all this he re-
lates in the  coolest  manner, and  some of the cases of so recent
a date that he gives copious and positive evidence.

                    Dr.  Ennemoser.

  It is scarcely necessary to point out this  eminent psychol-
ogist  as  one of the  great band of German spiritualists of
the latter end of the eighteenth and commencement of the
nineteenth  century.   His three great works, his Histories of
Magic and  of Magnetism, and his  ' Geist der Menschen  in
der Natur,' have made him universally known.   To the Eng-
lish public  the translation of the ' History of Magic,' made
by  myself and my  son Alfred, on our voyage to Australia in 
96           HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
1852, when American spiritualism  was little heard  of  in
England, and undreamed of by us, has made the name and
opinions of Dr. Ennemoser familiar.   In this work, which is
a great collection of historical facts connected with magic,
and with spiritualism  in its relations to those mysteries  of
nature called magical, Dr.  Ennemoser has shown how far
the ancients, the Middle Ages, and modern  times all agree in
the assertion and the experience of a spiritual  world and
power, rising forth out of the physical nature of man and
showing  itself above  it.   Ennemoser is no dreamer, and no
credulous accepter of unproven facts.  As a physiologist
and physician his knowledge of these subjects was the result
of years  of extensive experience.   He  has carefully  sepa-
rated the lower  from the  higher phenomena, the purely
spiritual  from the spiritual still shrouded  in the physical.
Clairvoyance and magnetic action do not  amount with him
to anything abnormal, or what  is called preternatural, but
are strictly powers of  nature, and belonging to the region  of
physical  science.  He does not admit  extatics  with  their
stigmata to a higher than a magnetic sphere.  In his ' Mag-
netismus,' he gives long and  careful details of their cases,
and sees  no miracles in them.  But not the less does he per-
ceive, and maintain,  the  existence and  projection into the
sphere of human life of the higher region  of manifestations
which, as Gorres says, commences where clairvoyance  ends.
He sees  palpable proofs  of spirit-agency in all the various
relations of classic mythology, of Middle Age witchcraft and
the reality of demonology, in  the  annals of the  church, and
in the more modern developments; sets his seal to the reve-
lations of Bohme, Swedenborg, the therapeutic power  based
on Christian inspiration of Gassner, and Greatrakes, and of
similar psychologic truths, though under deforming influence
in various and remote peoples.   Whilst he does not  admit
the extatics to more than  magnetic influence, though clearly
their condition is linked on  to a higher, he fully admits spir-
itual inspiration of many of the saints, and specifies the cases 
             THE  PHILOSOPHY OF ENNEMOSER.          97

of St. Theresa, St. Catherine of Sienna, and others.   To
regard clairvoyance as a disease with Stilling and others, he
he says is to confound causes and effects.   Weakness of body
may allow the strength  of the soul the more to manifest it-
self,  but the soul has no more to do with the weakness of the
body than the sun  has with the clouds through which some-
times his beams cannot penetrate, and  then, again, do pene-
trate because the clouds become weak and thin.  The sun is
always there by day; the  soul is always in the body; and
one  and the other  manifests itself more or less according to
the intervening obstructions.   The weakness  of the physical
frame may therefore permit the display of clairvoyance, but
does not create it.  Clairvoyance is a positive condition  of
the inner life, independent in the physical  organization as to
its existence, but  not independent  as  to  its  manifestations
outwardly.   Therefore, says Ennemoser,' To hold that clair-
voyance is a disease, is to confound  it with the diseased sub-
ject; or rather, it is nonsense.   Clairvoyance is now  known
to be a conscious, freely acting condition of  the inner life,
and  he who  pronounces  it frenzy and madness  is seized by a
madness himself.' — Magnetismus, p. 225.
   A few pages onward  he says:—' In the higher  steps  of
clairvoyance and of genuine extacy soars the winged spirit
wholly in the super-sensuous  region ; gazes with the clearest
perception  on the objects around it; distinguishes delusion
from truth,  and understands  perfectly the language of kin-
dred nature*.   Strong in innate  strength and fire, elevated
above all earthly obstructions, in full society and accordance
with spiritual powers, and undisturbed by the  reflex of daily
life,  the  creative spirit moves in the  highest condition  of
inspiration,  of pure enthusiasm, and genuine felicity.   When
we thus know this higher and super-sensuous condition  of
the spirit, and when we can no longer deny a  higher  than a
mere natural,  a spiritual and Divine influx, and when there
is  found practically to  exist a higher clairvoyance,  and a
true  state  of  extacy, then the  assertion of  Wirth  in his
  I.— 9 
98
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
' Theory of Somnambulism,' that clairvoyance is a phrenzy,
or that of Strauss that it.is want of mind altogether, may be
taken for what it is worth.'  P. 229.

                Friedrich  von Meyer.

   They who would convince themselves to what extent this
able metaphysician was a spiritualist, have only to read  his
masterly work,  'Hades, a  contribution to the Theory of
Spirit-Knowledge,' and  his ' Blatter fur hohere Wahrheit,'
' Leaves for a higher Truth.'  In his ' Hades' he lays under
requisition, not  only the fixed belief of the pagan world of
Greece, Rome,  and all the countries where any faith and
letters prevailed, but also the assertions of the Bible.  ' How
much farther,' he says in his  'Blatter,' 'the admission of the
higher phenomena of Nature would have been, if we  had  not
had the childishness to terrify  ourselves  with  the  rod of
everyday  opinion.   This is  shown  by the confession of a
great  physiologist  and  very  witty  man (Kant ?),  who,
haunted by the fear of superstition, like all learned  men,  yet
treated with respect what he did not understand.'
   Meyer  asserts that the faith of all nations of the earth,
the  testimony  of  the most  enlightened  people who ever
existed, and the ineradicable feeling in  our own  bosoms,
which are at bottom one and the same thing, reduce doubt
to no doubt that there is a world of  spirits from  which they
can  return into this.  That  however incomprehensible this
may be to the natural reason, the progress of.our knowledge
of the  physical world and  of the  extraordinary nature of
man  is every  day  rendering   more  comprehensible.   He
notices the  inconsistencies  of Luther, who, to  get rid of
Purgatory, in his translation of the Bible,  struck  out  the
Greek word Hades and the Hebraic Scheol, both indicating
an  intermediate state, and in their  places set, for  the most
part, Hell, and  in a  few cases the Grave — yet,  gives such
numerous proofs in his letters and writings of the reappear- 
THE  PSYCHOLOGY OF MEYER.            99
 ance and  the  haunting of spirits.  And  this, he justly ob-
 serves, is the case  also with Luther's  friend and coadjutor
 Melanchthon.
   Meyer handles with great ability the mistaken notion that
 spirits once divested of their bodies must arrive at an almost
 instantaneous expansion of their faculties, extension of their
 knowledge, and exaltation of their desires.   Nothing has so
 much  astonished modern spiritualists as the ignorance and
 childishness, to say nothing of the falsity  and depravity, of
 spirits who have  announced their  presence after  ages  of
 departure  from this life.   Nothing  has brought  down on
 spiritualism so much ridicule from opponents.   But as  Swe-
 denborg has shown, nothing is more common than for disem-
 bodied spirits to  remain for  great lengths  of time without
 any intellectual  or spiritual  advance; thus verifying  the
 assertion of the Scriptures, that 'as the tree falls, so it lies.'
 Meyer has shown  at much length from the writings of  the
 ancients, that it was a deeply-rooted faith of theirs,  that  the
 dead carried all its passions, peculiarities, and predilections
 along  with  it.   This  is  everywhere  manifested  in  their
 anxiety to  have  the remains  of the  dead interred  with all
 customary   honors.   We have  in Homer,  and the  great
 dramatists, spirits coming from Hades to complain that their
 bodies  have been  neglected,  and those rites undischarged
 which soothe the spirit even in Elysium.
   Meyer tells us that such is the truth taught by the latest
 openings with the spirit-world, and we may thence see  what
 we have to expect, if we enter there without that new-birth
 which Christ taught the absolute necessity of.  If we do not
enter there  as a little child, but carry with us the stains the
distortions  and grovelling desires of  earth, still harder'will
mir escape  from them be there than here.  He stoutly main-
tains as truths of  a  spiritual nature, corroborated  by  both
ancient and modern philosophers, the revelations  of the
Seeress of  Prevorst,  which avowal of itself is the  test of a
thorough-going German spiritualist of that
era. 
100         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
                    Immanuel  Kant.

  I must here close my notices of this brilliant constellation
of German philosophers, who, in  a most skeptical and sneer-
ing  age, dared  nobly to maintain spiritual truth.   What a
splendid contrast do they present to the majority of the phil-
osophers and theologians of England  at the present day!
These  great  men dared to look  unpopular facts in the face,
as the  first step in an inductive  process; and having dared
that and found them facts, they had the moral courage to
proclaim them.   All honor to  Kant.   There are numbers
yet who ought  to be included  in this notice, but space does
not allow.  There is the popular dramatist  and theologian,
Heinrich Ludwig Werner;  there  is Novalis, who is of opinion
not only that  spirits reappear,  but that at the moment of
appearing they spiritually magnetize us, so  that  we become
percipient of them.   There is  Schiller, who, in writing, won-
ders whence  his  thoughts  came ;  for they frequently flowed
through  him independent  of  the action of his own mind.
There  is Goethe, who saw his double as he was riding along,
who believed in the spiritualism  of Stilling, and the spiritual
intimations of his own father.  But if I entered amongst the
poets and distinguished writers of different kinds, I might run
through this  vast literature.  But there is an individual, and
that a very distinguished one,  who  occupies a peculiar posi-
tion — Immanuel Kant.  Kant is not only the founder of the
transcendental  school of philosophy, but the real originator of
that desolating system of rationalism, which, opening out of
English infidelity, shaped itself into a more  insidious form in
Germany.  There has been an  attempt to exempt him from
this charge,  and  to  attribute the mischief  to his  disciples,
Fichte and Hegel, who,  it. is  alleged,  carried his principles
farther than he intended, or had any idea of.  Whatever he
might intend, the results developed in Fichte and Hegel lie
in his  own theorems.  He  abandoned, in his  scheme for the 
IMMANUEL KANT.                 101
 demonstration  of the existence  of Deity, all proofs drawn
 from ontology, cosmogony, and physico-theology ; and based
 his faith in God on a practical and moral necessity !  This he
 elaborately  worked out  in  his  ' Einzig moglichen  Beweis-
 grund zu einer Demonstration des Daseius Gottes,' The only
 possible ground of evidence in the demonstration of the ex-
 istence of God.  Kant was no skeptic ;  on the  contrary, he
 was a firm  believer in God  and Christianity, although you
 discover very little of the latter  great truth in  his  argu-
 mentative philosophy ; you have  to  seek  it in  his  familiar
 letters.  But in stripping away all historic proof of the ex-
 istence of God, he reduced the Almighty to a mere abstract
 idea, a subjective conception of pure reason.   But there is a
 God in history as well as in  metaphysics.   That  deep and
 universal idea in  the human mind  thus  develops itself  in
 perpetual majesty, and clothes the abstract idea, the radical
 and innate faith of the race, as a body clothes the spirit.  The
 conscience and the experience of man acknowledge the great
 Mover of worlds  and events, as he at once speaks from the
 soul within, and  in the  progressive evolution of  a  mighty
 drama of world-history without.   All this corroborative and
 collateral proof, Kant and his successors  have sacrificed  to
 the proud ambition of planting and establishing  God, not on
 the throne of his own magnificent universe, but on  that of
 an Aristotelian logic.
  That this  is no empty charge against Kant might be abun-
dantly shown, were that the object of this work.   Let us see
simply how he has treated the faculty of prophecy.  In  his
 'Kleine  Anthropologische-Practische  Schriften,'  Theil  7,
Article 'Yon der Wahrsagergabe,' p. 90, he says  that pro-
 phesying of the inevitable fate of a people is useless, because,
 according to such prophesying, that fate cannot  be avoided^
 and it is absurd because  a theory of free-will is constantly
 attached to  it, which is a contradiction.  That madmen have
generally been held to be prophets, which makes the absur-
dity the greater.   It is  not  here  the business  to examine
       9* 
102         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

these propositions farther than to say, that this cuts up pro-
phecy by the roots.   It  is,  in other words,  entering upon
the old ' fate and free-will question,'that as an omniscient
Providence  must foresee, so he must predetermine :  one  of
those logical knots in which  men think they have tied up the
hands of an omnipotent  God when they have  only tied  up
their own.  This treatment of  prophecy is  precisely the
mode in which the disciples of Hobbes and Hume, of Paulus
and Strauss, the feeble untimely birth of Rationalists in Eng-
land have treated both prophecy and history.   They sweat
histories as Jews sweat  gold coins, and having destroyed
their 'image and superscription,'and rendered them light
and flat, expect us to take them as still  possessing all their
original weight, substance, and  distinctness of relief.  For
these reasons  it  is  impossible to exempt Kant from being
one of the most influential originators of modern Sadducee-
ism.   But, spite of himself, he became and  remains  one  of
the most distinguished attestors of the  truth of Spiritualism
in the person of Swedenborg.  Let us see how.
   In 1758, when he  was thirty-five years  old and in the vigor
of his faculties, a Fraulein von Knobloch had asked his opin-
ion of  the wonderful things  said of Swedenborg, which just
then were  exciting  a great  sensation in Germany.  Kant
answered in a letter, in which he says  he has always endea-
vored to avoid such subjects lest he should become frightened
at crossing a church-yard or being in the dark.   But in
consequence of his desire to know the truth, he tells her, that
he has  made a careful enquiry into the circumstances, and I
shall now translate the whole of his statement regarding  his
enquiries.
   ' I had this narrative  through a Danish  officer, and for-
merly an attender of my lectures, who at the table  of the
Austrian ambassador, Dietrichen,  in Copenhagen,  heard a
letter which Baron Liitzow, the  Mecklenberg ambassador
in Stockholm had addressed to Baron Dietrichen read in the
presence of himself and  other guests.  In this letter Baron 
   KANT ENQUIRES  INTO SVVEDENBORO's PREDICTIONS.  103

Lutzow stated that,  in the company of the Dutch ambassa-
dor to  the Queen of Sweden, he had heard the extraordi-
nary story regarding Baron Swedenborg,  which is  already
known  to you, gracious Fraiilein.   The credibility of such a
narrative startled me ;  for it is difficult to conceive that one
ambassador  to another  should  send  a narrative for public
use,  which should communicate something  regarding the
queen  of the  court to which he was  accredited, which was
untrue, and at which he, with a  distinguished company, were
yet said to be present.   In order not  to blindly reject a pre-
judice against apparitions and the like by a new prejudice,
I thought it only reasonable to  make  some enquiry into this
matter.  I wrote to the already mentioned officer in Copen-
hagen, and furnished him with a variety of questions regard-
ing it.   He answered, that he had  again spoken on the affair
to the  Count von Dietrichen, and found that the matter was
actually as stated; that Professor Schlegel had  also assured
him that there could be no doubt whatever about it.  He
advised me, as he himself was just then departing to the army
under  General St. Germain, to write  to Swedenborg himself
in order to obtain more exact information.   I wrote accord-
ingly to this extraordinary man, and my letter was handed
to him by an English merchant  in Stockholm.  He informed
me that Herr von Swedenborg  had received the letter po-
litely, and promised to answer it; but  this answer never came.
In the meantime, I raade^the acquaintance of a superior man,
an Englishman, who spent the last  summer here, and whom I
engaged, on the strength of the friendship we had mutually
contracted, to make, on  his journey to Stockholm, particular
enquiry regarding the wonderful gift  of Baron  Swedenborg.
According to his first communication, the already related story,
on  the assurance of the most distinguished people in Stock-
holm,  was exactly as I have already stated it to you.  He
had not then spoken to Baron Swedenborg himself, but hoped
soon to do it, since it was difficult to him to persuade himself
that all which the most intelligent people of that city told him 
104          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

of his secret intercourse with the invisible spirit-world could
be true.   But his subsequent letters spoke very differently.
He had not  only spoken with Baron  Swedenborg, but had
visited him in his own house, and is in the highest state of
amazement concerning these so wholly extraordinary things.
Swedenborg is a sensible, courteous, and open-hearted  man :
he is a learned man; and ray friend has promised me shortly
to send me some of his  writings.   Swedenborg told  him,
without any  reserve, that God  had endowed him  with the
singular power of holding intercourse with the departed souls
at his pleasure.   He referred him to actual historic  proofs
of this.   On  being reminded of my letter, he replied that he
had  indeed received it, and should have answered it before
now, had he not determined to lay these extraordinary mat-
ters before the public eye.   That he was  going to London
in May of  this year, in order to publish  his book, in which
would be  found  a  complete  answer to every one of my
questions.
   ' In order,  most gracious Fraiilein, to give you a few evi-
dences of what the  whole living  public are witnesses of, and
which the gentleman who sends them to me has carefully
verified  on the spot, allow me  to lay before you the two
following incidents:—
   'Madame  Harteville,  the widow of the Dutch  envoy  in
Stockholm, some time after the death of her husband, received
a demand from  the goldsmith Croon, for the payment for  a
silver service which her husband had ordered from him.  The
widow was confidently persuaded that her husband had been
much too  orderly to allow this debt to remain  unpaid; but
she could discover no receipt.   In this trouble, and since the
amount was considerable, she begged Baron Swedenborg to
give her  a  call.   After some apologies, she ventured to say
to him, that  if he  had the extraordinary gift, as all men
affirmed,  of conversing with the departed  souls, she hoped
that he would have  the  goodness to  enquire of her husband
how it stood  with the demand  for the silver service.    Swe- 
     SWEDENBORG ANNOUNCES A FIRE IN STOCKHOLM.  105

denborg made no difficulty in meeting  her wishes.   Three
days after this, the lady had a company of friends taking coffee
with her ;  Baron Swedenborg entered, and in his matter-of-
fact way, informed her that he had spoken with her husband.
That the debt had been discharged  some months before his
death, and  that the receipt was in  a certain  cabinet which
she could find in an upper room.  The lady replied that this
cabinet had been completely emptied, and amongst the whole
of the papers this receipt could not  be found.   Swedenborg
said that her husband had described  to him that, if they drew
forth a drawer on the left side, they  would see  aboard, which
being pushed aside, they would find a concealed drawer, in
which he kept his secret correspondence with Holland, and
there this  receipt would be found.   On  this  representation,
the lady betook herself,  with all the company, to the upper
room.   The cabinet was opened, they found the secret drawer
described, of which she had hitherto kuown nothing, and in
it the required paper, to the greatest amazement of all present.
   ' The following circumstance, however, appears to me to
possess the greatest strength of evidence of all these cases,
and actually takes away every conceivable issue of doubt.
   •In the year 1756, as Baron Swedenborg, towards the end
 of the month of September, at four o'clock  on a Saturday
 evening, landed in  Gottenberg from England, Mr. William
 Castel invited him to his  house with fifteen other persons.
 About six o'clock in the evening Baron Swedenborg went
 out, and returned into the company, pale and disturbed. He
 said that at that  moment there was a terrible conflagration
 raging in Stockholm on the  Siidermalm; and that the fire
 was increasing. — Gottenberg lies 300 miles from Stockholm,
 — He was uneasy and  went frequently out.   He said that
 the house of one  of his friends, whom he named, was already
 laid in ashes ;  and his own house was in danger.  At eight
 o'clock, after he had again gone out, he said  joyfully, " God
 be praised, the fire is extinguished,  the third  door  from my
 very house !"  This information occasioned the greatest ex- 
106         HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
citement in the company and throughout the whole city, and
the statement was carried to the Governor the same evening.
On Sunday morning the Governor sent for Swedenborg, and
asked him about the matter.   Swedenborg described exactly
the conflagration, how it had begun, and the time of its con-
tinuance.   The same day the story ran through the whole city,
where it had, as  the Governor had  given attention to it,  oc-
casioned still greater commotion, as many were in great con-
cern  on acconnt of their friends  and their property.   On
Monday evening arrived in  Gottenberg a courier who had
been despatched by the merchants  of Stockholm during  the
fire.   In the letters brought by him  the conflagration was
described  exactly  as  Swedenborg had  stated  it.  On  the
Tuesday morning a royal courier came to the Governor with
the account of the fire, of the loss  it had occasioned, and of
the houses which it had attacked ;  not in the  least differing
from the statement made by Swedenborg at the moment of
its occurrence; for the  fire  had been extinguished at eight
o'clock.
   ' Now, what can any one  oppose to the credibility of these
occurrences ?  The friend who writes these things to me  has
not only examined into them in Stockholm,  but about two
months ago in Gottenberg,  where he was well-known  to  the
most distinguished families,  and where he could completely
inform himself from a whole city, in which  the short interval
from  1756 left the greatest  part  of the eye-witnesses still
living.  He has at the same time given me an account of the
mode in which, according to the assertion of Baron Sweden-
borg, his  ordinary intercourse with other spirits takes place,
as well as  the idea which he gives of the condition of departed
souls.' — Zur Anthropologic   Ueber Swedenborg, s. ii.
   Now it is clear that at this moment Kant was firmly con-
vinced of the truth of  all  this.  No  possible doubt could,
according to him, exist.  One would, therefore, have imagined
that philosophers would have found in such an opening into
the spirit-world the most deeply interesting source of actual 
KANT'S  AFTER DILEMMA.
107
and practical knowledge of psychology.   Yet only six years
afterwards we find him writing his ' Essay on the Disorders
of the Head,' in which,  without naming Swedenborg, the
whole  is aimed  at him;  and frenzy, dreaming, noodleism
(Einfaltspinsel),  craziness,  enthusiasm, visionariness, fanati-
cism, nonsense, and madness are heaped  together to account
for what so lately had been demonstrated beyond  possible
doubt.  Two  years later, in 1766, he came  boldly out with
his ' Dreams of a Ghost-Seer,' in which  he attacks Sweden-
borg  directly by name, and at much length.   He now (pp.
81-83) relates again the incidents which he communicated in
his letter to Fraiilein  von Knobloch, but in a  much more
slight and vague manner, and adds to  them, but still more
vaguely, a mention of what occurred to the Queen of Sweden,
but whom  he only vaguely calls a princess.  He has now
read Swedenborg's great work, ' Arcana Ccelestia,' which he
terms  'eight quarto volumes full of nonsense.'
   No doubt.  To a metaphysician determined  to wrest all
the evidences of history and experience,  and  to build systems
 of God and man on the abstractions of pure reason, such
 facts as Swedenborg there enunciates,  must be very  great
 nonsense.  They are, he  says,  contrary to all experience, for-
 getting that  he  had admitted before that  Swedenborg had
 given  unassailable proofs  that  his  assertions  were expe-
 riences, and  Kant, though denying the evidences  of  expe-
 rience, is yet very ready to call  in their aid when they serve
 his turn.  He had himself no such experiences, and there-
 fore he could not allow any other man  to have them.   Yet
 he is careful not to deny directly the truth of  what he had
 before declared to be so invincibly true.   The revelations of
 Swedenborg were  nonsense to  him,  and his  writings must
 have  been  still greater  nonsense  to Swedenborg.  It must,
 indeed, have been a pitiable spectacle to see the great  meta-
 physician  thus, according to  his own confession, talking of
 what he did not understand.  In this blind  confidence, Kant
 undertakes to say (p.  77), that  enquiries into visible nature 
108
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
are inexhaustible.  A drop of water or a grain of sand, such
is  their varied composition, affords  scope for infinite  re-
search ; but with our spiritual nature it is quite otherwise.
There nothing more can  be known than is already known.
Of the  spirit  we can  know nothing positive,  we  can only
imagine.  This was, in fact, to deny in one way what he had
so positively affirmed in another—the truth of Swedenborg's
revelations.   Such was the pitiable condition to which mere
metaphysical delving had brought the  mind of  this boasted
thinker.   That nonsense of Swedenborg has been accepted,
is being accepted by millions as the  highest and  most con-
vincing truth, whilst the self-contradictory transcendentalist
is forced to  confess (p. 59), ' I know just as little how  the
spirit of man  goes  out of this world, that is, what the con-
dition after  death may be, as how it came in.  In  fact, I do
not even know how I am present in this world ;  that is, how
an immaterial nature can be in a body and acting through it.
And  this very ignorance warns  me not wholly  to  reject all
truth in the numerous  narratives of apparitions,  yet with the
usual, but ludicrous reservation of doubting them in every
case, and believing them all in the lump.'
   Thus this searcher after and assertor of psychologic truth
believed and did not believe, and in his latest writings forty
years  afterwards,  'Ueber Erkenntnissvermogen,' p. 91, he
endeavors to  set up a distinction  between the truthfulness
of a seer, and the  truth  of his teaching; forgetting again,
that Swedenborg, at whom he is still aiming, had  once con-
vinced him  both of the truthfulness of his character and the
truth of his revelations.   The solution of the whole matter
lay in the fact that Swedenborg knew from positive demon-
stration what Kant did not  know, and  had he been truly
wise, would, therefore, not  have attempted to  discuss.  He
has, however, been candid  enough to give us a very curious
description  of the so-called philosophical  mind in  regard to
apparitions.  (Zur Anthropologic, p. 79.)
    ' Philosophy, whose self-darkness exposes her to  all sorts 
KANT'S  INCONSISTENCY.
109
of vain questions, places herself in a miserable perplexity on
the  introduction of certain narratives, when  she  neither can
doubt them without just censure, nor dare believe them from
fear of incurring ridicule.   She finds herself, to a  certain
degree,  in both these difficulties in  stories  of apparitions.
In the first, by listening to them, and  in the second,  in con-
sequence of matters by which men draw her on to something
farther.   In fact, there is  no bitterer reproach  to philoso-
phers than that of easy credence,  and of falling  into the
common  illusion; and  as  those who are skillful  in these
matters,  purchase the appearance  of  knowingness cheaply
by casting their mocking laughter on  all that reduces the
ignorant and the wise to one level, and which is equally in-
comprehensible  to both, it is no wonder that the stories so
frequently brought forward should find such great accept-
ance, at  the same time that they are openly repudiated, or
secretly held.   One may,  therefore,  safely assert, that no
academy of science will ever offer a prize for the  solution of
this question ; not  because the members of such a body are
free from all tendency to such belief, but because the  rule of
prudence properly  sets limits to  the  questions which are
thrown out alike by conceit and idle curiosity.  And so will
relations of this kind probably every time have secret be-
lievers, but will  be outwardly rejected through the prevailing
fashion of unbelief.
  Such  is Immanuel Kant.   Arguing against  his  convic-
tions, but compelled by his attestations to the truth of Swe-
denborg's revelations in  certain cases, he stands, like the
Jews in regard to  Christianity,  a  perpetual  witness for
spiritualism.   Accepting his admissions,  we do not ask him
to  draw conclusions for us;  we are  all able to draw them
ourselves with simple honesty from their premises. 
110
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
                  CHAPTER V.

   THE SUPERNATURAL IN SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE.


        Lavater, Fuseli, Zschokke, Gassner, Oberlin, &c.


     WE  must extend  a little our present demonstration from
      Germany  to  the border countries, as they  present
simultaneously  similar  evidences in men  intimately con-
nected with Germany.   /

                     J ^
                     v Lavater.
  The great father  of the science of physiognomy was a
great  spiritualist.  The evidences of  this  abound  in  his
' Yiews of  Eternity,' his ' Mixed Writings,'  and  in  his
son-in-law  Gesner's  ' Biography and  Posthumous Writings
of Lavater.'   The evidences meet the reader in almost every
cyclopaedia  notice of him.   The 'Conversations Lexikon'
says, ' His tendency to the wonderful and mysterious led him
more than once openly to express his expectation of miracles
and  revelations.'  He even testified  his belief in Gassner's
cures,  which his neighbors declared proceeded from dealings
with the devil, as if the devil were ever likely to heal  the
diseases or alleviate  the sufferings of mankind.  The Penny
Cyclopaedia  takes up the same strain regarding Lavater.
" He always  firmly  clung to  his peculiar religious views,
which  were  a mixture of new interpretation with  ancient
orthodoxy,  of philosophical  enlightenment  with extreme
superstition.   One leading article of his faith was a belief in
the sensible manifestation of supernatural powers.  His dis- 
        LAVATER'S FAITH IN  THE SUPERNATURAL.     Ill

position to give credence to the miraculous, led him to admit
the strange pretensions of many individuals, such  as the
power  to  exorcise devils, and to perform cures  by animal
magnetism, &c.'"
  But  what now were the doctrines which led the so-called
Christian world to stamp Lavater as a ' superstitious eccen-
tric,' simply because he believed in Christianity being still
what Christ promulgated  and left it.   Because he believed
in the efficacy of prayers and the gift of what is called the
miraculous being an eternal heritage of  the Church.   He
believed only what the Catholic Church has always believed.
He had seen continually  that prayer was as efficacious as
ever, that faith was not a mere belief  but  a positive power,
by  which,  according to St. Paul, all  the great  events of
Jewish and Christian history  were  achieved (Romans  ii.).
That such a man for such opinions should have been branded
as visionary and credulous, shows that Protestantism is but
another name  for an  accredited infidelity.  Lavater said
truly,  ' If the facts stated by Kant of  Swedenborg are true,
then revelation  and miracle  are as  active now as ever.'
Though he was far from entering into the views of Sweden-
borg, not probably having sufficient opportunity of studying
them,  he entertained the same as to a middle-state for souls,
and as to the spiritual body  of the soul, which he with
Aristotle  called  the ' vehicle' of the  soul;  and he believed
in apparitions both on these grounds,  and on the warrant of
Scripture in the cases of Elias and Moses.
   In  1769 Lavater drew up 'Three Questions,' which he
sent round in print to a number of clergymen whom he
knew,  and others, supported by  many citations and remarks.
In them  he states that he is  enquiring what the  writers of
the scriptural books really taught, not what  is now our daily
experience, and whether it agrees with their representations:
but what they really taught as the  true faith of the Church
 of Christ.  He  finds,  he says, all  these  writers, without
exception, agreeing that there  is an immediate  and direct 
112         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
revelation of God to the souls  of  men, more evident and
distinct than the ordinary operations  of nature.  That he
finds appearances and acts of the  Deity,  which manifestly
depart from  all our known  experience of nature.    They
represent the Deity as a being to whom man can speak, and
who returns  him an answer.   He  finds   there operations
ascribed  to  the  Spirit of God;  sensible  operations which
cannot be ascribed to nature, but are ascribed to the Spirit
of God, or the  Holy Spirit.  He finds that  these  authors
are of  opinion, that the  great and  inestimable value of the
mediation of Christ is, that it opens this intercourse, which
had  been lost by ignorance  and unbelief,  again;  and that
they confirm this by the facts  which they record.   That
these authors say expressly that to bring man through Christ
to an immediate communion with his Spirit, was an eternal
purpose, and that the promises of his gift extend to all who
believe in Jesus.  That these gifts are fully described by the
Apostles in the  most  perspicuous  language,  who illustrate
them by facts,  quite beyond the range of ordinary nature,
and in perfect agreement with the nature and  acts of Christ.
He finds that a power is ascribed to prayer, that God  hear-
eth and answereth prayer;  that  He gives  the  most  positive
promises of such answer, and does not limit  this  power of
prayer to particular persons, circumstances, or times.  Whence
he  establishes this  proposition  that the   scriptural writers
teach,  as a  positive truth, that it  is not  only possible, but
that it is the destination of man to maintain  a peculiar and
immediate communion with the Deity.
   His own convictions of these truths were such, that he laid
down the following rules of life : — Never to lie  down or get
up without  prayer  : never to proceed to any transaction  or
business without asking God's guidance and blessing.  Never
to  do anything  that he would not do were Jesus Christ
standing visibly by.  Every day to do some  work  of love;
to promote the benefit of his own family;  to commit no sin,
to do  some good, to exercise  temperance in all things, and 
    LAVATER'S QUESTIONS TO PROFESSED CHRISTIANS.  113

daily to examine himself as  to  his having  kept these rules.
Such  are the opinions and doctrines which have caused all
biography and cyclopaedia writers to set down Lavater as a
'credulous  eccentric'  They are  expressly the doctrines of
all Scripture  and of all the  eminent men  who have in all
ages sought to comprehend and  practise real  Christianity.
Where, then, are the biography and  cyclopaedia writers ?
Where, then, is  modern Protestantism?  Lavater tells us
that, instead  of  precise answers  to  his  questions, he  finds
' only exclamations  and declamations,  sneers and  ridicules,
or sighs and lamentations over the consequences which such
a doctrine might be expected to produce.'
  Instead of  noticing these pitiable proofs of the disappear-
ance of substantial  Christianity, he issued a circular request-
ing the friends of truth to send him any well-attested evidence
of occurrences beyond  the  ordinary course  of nature, or of
such as had followed prayer, of some positive  exertions of
faith;  to ascertain, if possible, whether,  after the  death of
the Apostles  and their immediate successors,  the same class
of events had really continued  for which we  give  credit to
them and  their  times; and  especially whether no  certain
proofs existed of such  events, commonly called miraculous,
having taken place since the Reformation.  He declared that
it was very important to know whether there were still living
any pious conscientious man, who before the omniscient God
would declare that  he had prayed with undoubting expecta-
tion that he  should be heard, and was not heard.    He de-
clared it as his object to learn whether the Christian of the
eighteenth, as well as the Christian  of the  first,  century
might attain to immediate and sensible communion with God,
and whether he whose sufferings no human  power or wisdom
could relieve, might have confident recourse  to the omnipo-
tent power of Christ.   'Can there be,' he says, ' an  enquiry
more important to the friend of humanity, who  views around
him so much dreadful misery; or to the Christian  who  sees
everywhere infidelity, and the empty, powerless and spiritless
       10* 
114
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
name of Christianity triumph ? '  He warned his correspond-
ents to observe the strictest truth  in their communications,
declaring that no crime could be more impious and detestable
than falsehood in such a case.
  In consequence  of this  circular he received a mass of ex-
traordinary relations, which he read and examined with most
unwearied patience and care.   Many of them he regarded as
fully proved,  others as by no means so ;  and so far from ex-
hibiting a weak  credulity, he incurred very severe reproaches
for  rejecting claims which many able men admitted.   Such
were the claims of a Catherine Kinderknecht, near Zurich,
who had a great reputation  for performing remarkable cures
in answer to prayer, and whom his friend Fuseli,  the great
painter, afterwards so well  known  in  England, had great
faith in, but who was led by Lavater to  give up this faith.
Neither did he believe in Gassner without visiting  him, nor
when he had visited him did he rate  his  powers so high as
many others, and they physicians, did.
  In his lifetime we find some incidents occurring to himself
or friends which every one learned  in such matters will re-
ceive as additions to their divine evidences.   Whilst he was
on a journey, in  1773,  to  his friend  Dr.  Hotze at Richters-
weile, his wife, though she had received a letter from him the
day  before,  announcing his perfect  health and safety, sud-
denly fell into a severe agony about him, impressed with a
vivid sense of his great danger, and prayed energetically for
him, though her father regarded her alarm as most unfounded
after immediate  intelligence of his safety.  At that moment
Lavater was in a terrific storm on the Lake of Zurich which
carried masts  and  sails away, and made the sailors despair
of saving the vessel.
  His friend, Professor Sulzer, told  him that in his twenty-
second year he was suddenly seized with a violent attack of
melancholy and terror, and it was impressed on his mind that
his future wife was at that moment suffering from some severe
accident.  He had  no  thought of marrying,  much  less any 
           lavater's OPINION OF CAGLIOSTRO.        115

idea who was likely to become his wife.  Ten years after-
wards, when he was married and had nearly forgotten the
circumstance, he learned from his wife, that precisely at that
time (when only ten years old), she was nearly killed by a
violent fall, from the effects of which she had never entirely
recovered.
  On one occasion a gentleman called on him, and  the mo-
ment he saw him he was  impressed with the conviction that
he  was a murderer.  The gentleman  was, however, a very
interesting intellectual man, so far as could be seen ; he was
well received in  Ziirich,  and Lavater  dined  with him at a
friend's house  the next  day,  where he  made himself very
agreeable.  But news came quickly that he  was one of the
assassins of the King of  Sweden, and he disappeared.
   Such was the anxiety of Lavater to ascertain the truth,
that he wrote  to Dr. Semler, an avowed infidel and deter-
mined opponent to all pretensions to miracle, to examine the
proceedings of Gassner, believing that he had that love of
truth that, after carefully witnessing the occurrences, he could
admit the facts, if they were such, though he might ascribe
them to some other cause.  Semler made a visit to Gassner's
place, and thoroughly watching his proceedings, pronounced
his cures  real, but naturally, in his state  of mind, as explain-
 able  by natural causes.   Lavater also had some interviews
with the celebrated Cagliostro, at Strasburg, but instead of
credulously being imposed  on by him, he formed  much  the
same opinion of him as most careful and competent observers;
that he was a man of wonderful endowments, of certain me-
diumistic powers, but untruthful  and tricky.   ' So long,' he
says, 'as  Cagliostro retains his forehead, and I have mine,
 we shall  never here below be confidential friends ; how fre-
 quently soever  the most  credulous of all the credulous may
 represent us as closely connected.'  He adds, 'I believe that
 nature produces a form  like his only once in a  century, and
 I could weep blood to think that so rare a production of na-
ture should, by the many  objections he has furnished against 
116         HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
himself, be partly so much misconceived;  and partly, by so
many harshnesses and crudities, have  given just cause for
offence.'
  To the truly Christian spirit and character of  Lavater all
men of all parties and opinions who knew him bear  unhesi-
tating testimony.   In the moments of his long-continued
agonies from his wound, he prayed earnestly for the man who
shot him.   In fact, he is, so far  from a credulous eccentric,
one of the most  candid, impartial, clear-sighted, and noble-
spirited men whom the church of Christ embraces.   What a
condition  must that professed church now be in, when such
a man is pointed to as a credulous and eccentric person, be-
cause he maintained the living form of prayer, the operations
of the Holy Spirit, and the truth of Christ's promises to his
followers.

                       Zschokke.
  This popular  and active  citizen was by birth a German,
but a Swiss by adoption.  He was born at Magdeburg, but,
as we learn in his very interesting ' Selbstschau ' or Autobi-
ography, went early to Switzerland, where he was the friend
of the brave Aloys Reding, and for a great part of  his life
engaged in the public affairs of the Swiss republic. Zschokke
was  no dreamer.  He was a man of action, and a patriotic
and wise one; his influence being deeply  felt amongst his
compatriots, and widely acknowledged.  As a writer of tales
he was extremely popular, and many of them possess great
dramatic life, in consequence of which  some of them have
been successfully dramatized by others.   He was no professed
mystic or spiritualist; but he was a practical and peculiar
medium.  Into that inner world to which the clairvoyant pene-
trates  generally  through mesmeric manipulation, Zschokke
entered by his normal  condition.  Probably the air of his
mountains gave him this  opening, as it does to Highlanders
and natives of the Western Isles and of Wales.   His vision,
however, was not extended to the perception of spirits, but 
HEINRICH ZSCHOKKE.
117
simply to the perception  of the interior state and life of cer-
tain persons who came into his company.   Like so many, in
his early youth, when he lost his father, he was seized with a
passionate  desire to see  his spirit.  On his knees and dis-
solved in  tears, he  implored him  to appear to him  again ;
and when he did not, he exclaimed, 'And thou, too, best of
fathers, carest about me no longer  1'   On his flight from the
desolate condition of his home, we  are told,  ' Yoices of sweet
prophecy made the air ring wildly around him.   He was  not
superstitious; but there  are times when wiser men than he
have dreamed of intercourse with future events  and  unseen
powers.'
  He wrote his ' Yearnings after the Invisible,' and he  had
faith in the invisible.   'Those views,' he says,' strengthened
me for new efforts in the  good cause.   I found, indeed,  that
the gross  majority  of the present population of the whole
earth lies  deep in the mire of animalism ; and  that those
nations who boast of the highest culture,  and with all their
arts, sciences, social order, and refined manners, lie far, indeed,
beneath the mark of a true humanity, in harmony with nature
and reason.   This, then, is  the office of the real priests of
 God — whether found on thrones  or in council chambers, in
 pulpits or professors' chairs, or merely at writing-tables —
 to render more truly humane the  human race around them.
 Whether for their reward thorns shall grow for them on earth,
 or palms  in  heaven, need not concern them.  I, at least, no
 longer felt myself  troubled with thoughts  of what might be
 my fate after death.  I had a living certainty of the provi-
 dence of God, and that tranquillized me concerning  all the
 rest.'
   Zschokke was superstitious enough  to  believe in rhabdo-
 mancy.   He  says,  ' My connection  with  mining  operations
 brought me  acquainted  with many  persons in whom I was
 much  interested.   The  operations  themselves were unim-
 portant, for the interior  of the Jura is mostly poor in  metals,
 but an alabaster quarry which I discovered brought me into 
118
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
a friendly correspendence with the venerable Prince Primate,
Karl von Dalberg, and my search after salt and coal  to the
acquaintance of a young Rhabdomantin of twenty years old,
who  was sent to  me by the well-known geologist, Dr. Ebel
of Zurich.  In almost every canton of Switzerland are found
persons endowed with the mysterious natural gifts of discov-
ering, by a peculiar sensation, the existence  of subterranean
waters, metals or  fossils.   I have known many of  them, and
often put their marvellous talent to the test.  One of these
was the abbot of  the convent of St. Urban, in the canton of
Lucerne, a man of learning and science ; and another a young
woman, who  excelled all I have ever known.  I carried her
and her companion with me through several  districts entirely
unknown to her, but with the geological formation of which,
and  the  position  of its salt and sweet waters, I was quite
familiar, and  I never once found her deceived.  The results
of the most careful observation have compelled me at length
to renounce the obstinate suspicion  and incredulity I at first
felt on this subject, and have presented me with a new phase
of nature, although one  still involved in enigmatical obscurity.'
  But we come now to his own peculiarity, a gift which  he
called his 'inward sight.'   ' It is well known,' he  says, 'that
the judgment we not seldom form, at the first glance, of per-
sons  hitherto unknown, is more correct than that which is the
result of longer  acquaintance.  The  first impression, that
through  some instinct  of the soul attracts or repels us with
strangers, is afterwards weakened or destroyed by custom, or
by different appearances.  We speak in such cases of sym-
pathy or antipathy, and  perceive  these  effects  frequently
amongst children, to whom experience  in human  character
is wholly wanting.  But now to  my case.
  ' It has happened to me  sometimes, on  my first meeting
with  strangers, as I listened silently to their discourse, that
their former life, with many trifliug  circumstances  therewith
connected, or frequently some particular scene  in that life,
has passed quite  involuntarily, and as it were, dream-like, 
ZSCHOKKE'S INWARD SIGHT.            119
yet perfectly distinct before  me.   During this time I usually
feel so entirely absorbed in the contemplation of the stranger
life, that at last I no longer see  clearly the face  of the  un-
known wherein I undesignedly look, nor distinctly hear the
voices of the speakers, which before served in some measure as
a commentary to the text of their features.   For a long time
I held such visions as delusions  of the fancy, and the more
so as they showed me  even the dress  and  motions  of  the
actors, rooms, furniture, and other accessories.   By way of
test, I once, in a familiar family  circle at Kirchberg, related
the secret history of a seamstress who had just left the room
and the house.  I had  never seen her before in my life.
People were astonished,  and langhed,  but were not  to be
persuaded  that I did not previously know  the relations of
which I spoke, for what I had uttered was the literal truth.
On my part, I was no less astonished that my dream-pictures
were  confirmed  by the reality.   I became more attentive to
the subject, and when propriety admitted it, I would  relate
to those whose life thus passed before me the subject of  my
vision, that I might thereby obtain confirmation or refutation
of it.  It was invariably  ratified, not without consternation
on their  part.  " What demon inspires you ?  Must I  again
believe in possession ?" exclaimed the spiritual Johann Yon
Riga, when in the first hour of our acquaintance I related his
past life  to  him.   We speculated long  on  the enigma, but
even his penetration could not solve it.
   ' I  myself had less confidence  than  any one in this mental
jugglery.  As often as I  revealed my visionary gifts  to' any
new person, I regularly expected to hear the answer—" It
was  not so."  I felt a secret shudder when my auditors  re-
plied that it was  true, or when their astonishment betrayed
my accuracy before I spoke.   Instead of many, I will men-
tion one example, which pre-eminently astounded me.  One
fair  day, in  the city of Waldshut, I  entered the Vine inn,
in company  with two young student-foresters.  We were
tired  with rambling through the woods.   We supped  with a 
120         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
numerous company at the table d'hote, where the guests were
making very merry with the peculiarities  and eccentricities
of the Swiss, with Mesmer's magnetism, Lavater's physiog-
nomy,  &c.   One  of  my companions, whose  national pride
was wounded by  their  mockery, begged  me  to make some
reply, particularly to  a handsome young man who sate oppo-
site to me, and who allowed himself extraordinary license.
This man's former life  was at that moment presented to my
mind.  I turned to him, and asked whether he would  answer
me candidly if I related to him  some of the most secret pas-
sages of his life, I knowing as little of him personally as he
did of me 1  That would be going a little farther, I thought,
than Lavater did  with his  physiognomy.   He promised, if I
were correct in my information, to admit it frankly.  I then
related what my vision had  shown  me, and the whole com-
pany were  made  acquainted with the private history of the
young merchant; his school-years, his youthful errors, and,
lastly, with a fault committed in reference to  the strong-box
of his principal.  I described to him the  uninhabited room
with whitened walls,  where, to the  right of the brown door,
on a  table, stood a  black money-box, &c.  A dead  silence
prevailed during  the whole narrative, which I alone occa-
sionally interrupted by enquiring whether I spoke the truth ?
The startled  young man  confirmed  every particular, and
even,  what I  had scarcely  expected, the last  mentioned.
Touched by his candor I shook hands with him over the
table, and said no more.   He asked my name, which I gave
him, and we remained together talking till past midnight.
He is probably still living I
   ' I can well  explain  to  myself how a person of lively im-
agination  may form, as in a romance, a  correct  picture of
the actions and passions of another person, of a certain char-
acter, under certain  circumstances.   But whence came those
trifling accessories which in no wise concerned me, and in rela-
tion to people for the most part indifferent to  me, with whom
I neither had, nor desired  to have, any connection ?  Or was 
           THE OLD TYROLEAN LEMON-SELLER.         121

the whole matter a constantly recurring accident 1  Or had
my auditor, perhaps, when I related the  particulars  of his
former life, very different views to give of the whole, although
in his first surprise, and misled by resemblances, he had mis-
taken them for the same ?  And yet, impelled by this very
doubt, I had given myself trouble to speak of the most in-
significant things which my waking dream had  revealed to
me.   I shall not say another word on this singular gift of
vision, of which I cannot say that it was ever of the slightest
service.  It manifested itself rarely, quite independently of
my will,  and several times in favor of persons whom I cared
little  to  look through.   Neither am I the only person in
possession  of this power.   On an excursion  I  once made
with two of my sons, I  met with an old Tyrolese who carried
oranges and lemons about the country, in a house of public
entertainment, in Lower Hanenstein, one of the passes of
the Jura.  He fixed his eyes on me for some time, then min-
gled in the conversation, and said that he knew  me, though
he knew me not;  and went on to relate what I had done and
striven to  do in  former times, to the consternation of the
country people present, and the great admiration of my chil-
dren, who were diverted to  find another person gifted like
their father.  How the  old  lemon  merchant came by his
knowledge he could not explain, either to me or to himself:
he seemed, nevertheless, to value himself somewhat upon his
mysterious wisdom.'
   Thus it  would seem that every human being carries his
whole history about with him, written in spiritual characters
on his mind, where it can be clearly read by another  mind
in rapport.   The Seeress  of Prevorst says that  the balance
of our moral account is duly posted up daily, and represented
in a wonderful cypher.  Do  these significant cyphers remain
in succession on the tablets of the soul, rendering us uncon-
scious chronicles  of our own existence 1   We appear clearly
to be yet only in  the external courts of psychology. 
122
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
                        Gassner,

  This celebrated  therapeutic, who created so intense  and
extensive an excitement in the latter half of the 18th century
in  Switzerland, performed his cures precisely as Valentine
Greatrakes in the  reign  of Charles II, in this country,  and
as  Madame Saint  Amour in France  in  our own time; of
Herr Richter in Silesia some years ago, and others to whom,
at  a later period of this history, I shall direct attention.   In
fact, he performed  them very much  as  the  apostles did,  and
by the same  faith  and power  in  Jesus Christ.   Those  who
doubt that faith and power, are at full liberty to doubt here.
I give the account just  as Dr. Ennemoser has abridged it
from Dr. Schlisel's  narrative, as an eye-witness : —
  Gassner, a clergyman  from  the country of Bludenz, in
Vorarlberg, healed many diseases through exorcism.  In the
year 1758 he was the clergyman  of Klosterle, when, by his
exorcisms, he became  so celebrated that he drew a vast num-
ber of people to him.  The flocking of the sick from Swit-
zerland, the Tyrol, and Swabia is said to have been so great
that the number of invalids was frequently more than a thous-
and, and  they were,  many of them,  obliged to live under
tents.  The Austrian government gave  its assistance,  and
Gassner now went under the  patronage  of the Bishop of
Regensburg, where he continued to work wonders, till, finally,
Mesmer, on being asked by the Elector of Bavaria, declared
that Gassner's cures  and crises which he so rapidly,  and
wholly to the astonishment of the spectators, produced, con-
sisted in nothing more than in magnetic-spiritual excitement,
of which he gave  convincing proofs in the presence of the
Elector.   Eschenmayer,  in  'Keiser's  Archives,' treats at
length of Gassner's methods of cure. •
  Gassner's mode of proceeding was as follows :—He wore
a scarlet cloak, and on his neck a silver chain.   He usually
had in his room a window on his left hand, and a crucifix on 
       DR.  SCHLISEL'S REPORT OF  GASSNER'S CURES.    123

his  right.   With  his  face  turned  towards the  patient, he
touched the ailing part, and commanded  that  the disease
should manifest itself; which  was generally the case.  He
made this both cease and depart by a single command.  By
calling on the name of Jesus, and  through the faith  of the
patient, he  drove  out the devil  and the disease.   But every
one that desired  to be healed  must believe,  and through
faith  any  clergyman  may  cure devilish  diseases,  6pasms,
fainting, madness, &c, or free the possessed. Gassner availed
himself sometimes of magnetic  manipulations;  he touched
the affected part,  covered it with his hand, and  rubbed  there-
with vigorously both head and neck.  Gassner spoke chiefly
Latin in-his operations, and the Devil is said  often to have
understood him perfectly.   Physical susceptibility, with wil-
ling faith and  positive physical activity, through the com-
mand of the Word, was thus the magical cure  with him.
  There were,  in the year 1T70, a  multitude  of writings
both for and against Gassner's operations.  These appeared
principally  in  Augsburg,  and soou  after them  two  parti-
cularly worth notice : the first, under the title of ' Impartial
Thoughts, or Something for the  Physicians on the Mode of
Cure by Herr Gassner in Elwangen,  published  by  Dr.
Schlisel, and printed in Sulzbach, 1775.'   The other, 'The
Observations of an Impartial  Physician  on Herr Lavater's
Grounds of Enquiry into the  Gassner Cures,  with an Ap-
pendix on Convulsions, 1775,' probably by the  same author.
  Dr. Schlisel relates, that with  a highly respectable com-
pany  he travelled to  Elwangen, and  there saw himself the
wonderful cures, the fame of which had been spread far and
wide, by so many  accounts  both  in newspapers and separate
printed articles.   'Some,'  he  says,  'describe Gassner as
a holy  and prophetic man; others accuse him  of being  a
fantastic fellow, a charlatan and  impostor.  Some extol him
as a great mathematician, others  denounce him  as a dealer in
the black art;  some attribute his cures to the magnet, or to
electrical power, others to sympathy and the power of ima- 
124         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

gination ;  and, on the other hand, a respectable party, over-
come  by the might of faith, attributed  the whole to the
omnipotent force of the name of Jesus.'
  Schlisel writes, farther, that he gave himself all possible
trouble to notice everything which might, in the most distant
manner, affect the proceedings of the celebrated Herr Gass-
ner.   Schlisel, indeed,  seems to have been the man—from
his quiet power of observation, his impartial judgment, and
thorough  medical  education, which qualifications  are  all
evident in his book — to give a true  account of the cures of
Gassner, while  he notices all  the circumstances, objections,
and  opinions which had been  brought  forward  or which
presented themselves  there.  He  relates that  Elwangen
must  have grown rich through  the  numbers of people who
thronged  thither, though Gassner  took nothing  for  his
trouble, and  that the Elector on that account  tolerated the
long-continued concourse of people.   That in  March  1753
many hundreds of patients arrived daily; that the apothecary
gained more in one day than he otherwise would in a quarter
of a  year from  the oil, eye-water,  a universal powder of
blessed thistle (carduus benedictus), and the incenses, &c,
which Gassner  ordered.   The printers  labored  day  and
night, with  all their workmen,  at  their  presses, to furnish
sufficient  pamphlets,  prayers,  and  pictures for  the eager
horde of  admirers.  The  goldsmiths and glaziers were un-
wearied in preparing all kinds of Agni Dei, crosses, hearts,
and rings;  even the  beggars had their harvest, and as for
bakers and hotel-keepers, it is easy to understand  what they
must have gained.  He  then describes  the room of Herr
Gassner, his  costume,  and his proceeding with the sick: —
On a table  stood  a  crucifix,  and at the table sate  Herr
Gassner on a seat, with his right  side turned towards  the
crucifix, and  his face towards the patient, and  towards the
spectators also.   On his shoulders hung a blue, red-flowered
cloak ; the rest of his costume was clean, simple and modest.
A fragment of the cross of the Redeemer  hung on  his breast 
       DR. schlisel's  report of  gassner's cures.    125

from a silver chain; a half-silken sash girded his loins.  He
was  forty-eight years of age, of a very lively countenance,
cheerful in conversation,  serious  in  command, patient  in
teaching, amiable towards every one,  zealous for the honor
of God, compassionate  towards  the  oppressed, joyful with
those of strong faith, acute in research, prophetic in symp-
toms  and  quiet indications; an  excellent theologian, a fine
philosopher,  an admirable  physiognomist, and I  wished
that he might possess as good  an acquaintance with medical
physiology as he  showed himself  to  have a discrimination
in surgical cases.   He is in  no degree a politician; he  is
an enemy  of sadness, forgiving to his  enemies, and perfectly
regardless  of the  flatteries of men.   For twenty years he
carried on this heroic conflict against the  powers of hell,
thirteen of these  in quietness, but seven publicly,  and of
these last he had now passed six months victoriously in El-
wangen.
  Thus armed, he  conducted in this room all his public pro-
ceedings, which he continued daily, from early morning to late
at night;  nay, often till one or two o'clock  in the morning.
The more  physicians there were  around him, the  bolder he
was in causing the  different diseases to show themselves; nay,
he called upon the unknown physicians themselves. Scarcely
do those who are seeking help kneel before him, when he en-
quires respecting their native country  and their  complaints;
then his instruction begins in a concise manner, which relates
to the steadfastness of faith, and the omnipotent power of the
name of Jesus.   Then he seizes both  hands of the kneeling
one, and commands, with a loud and proud voice, the alleged
disease to  appear.   He now seizes the affected part — that
is, in the gout, the foot; in paralysis, the disabled limb and
joint; in  head-ache, the head and neck; in those troubled
with flatulence, he  lays his hand and cloak on the stomach ;
in the  narrow-chested, on the heart; in  hemorrhoidal com-
plaints, on the back-bone; in  the  rheumatic and epileptic,
he not only lays hold on each arm, but alternately places both
       11* 
126
history of the supernatural.
hands, and the hands and cloak together, over  the whole
head.
  In many cases the disease appears immediately, on  being
commanded, but in many he is obliged to repeat the command
often, and  occasionally ten times, before the atfhck shows
itself;  in some, but the fewest in number, the command and
laying on of hands have no effect.
  The first class he terms the good and strong faithed  ; the
second, those of hesitating and feeble faith;  the  last  either
naturally diseased, or pretendedly so, and unbelieving.   All
these attacks retreat by degrees, each  according  to its trial,
either very quickly at his command, but sometimes not till
the tenth or twentieth time, from limb  to limb.  In some the
attacks appeared repressed, but not extinguished; in others,
the commencement of a weary sickness, with  fever and spit-
ting of blood; in others, intumescence even to suffocation,
and with violent pains;  others, gout and convulsions.
   When he has now convinced the spectator, and thinks that
he has sufficiently strengthened the faith and confidence of
the sufferer, the patient must repel the  attack himself by the
simple thought—'Depart from  me, in  the  name of  Jesus
Christ 1'   And in this consists the whole method  of cure and
confirmation which Gassner employs in all kinds  of sickness
which we call unnatural.   Through these he calls forth all
the  passions.   Now anger is apparent, now patience, now
 joy, now sorrow, now hate, now love, now  confusion, now
reason, each carried to the highest pitch.  Now  this  one is
blind, now he sees, and«gain  is deprived of sight, &c.
   All take their leave of him, filled with help and consola-
tion, so soon as he has given them his blessing, which he thus
administers :—he lays the cloak on the head of the patient;
grasps the forehead and  neck  with both hands firmly, speaks
silently a very earnest prayer, signs the brow,  mouth, and
heart of the convalescent with the sign of the cross, and ex-
tends to  the  Catholics the fragment  of the cross to kiss;
 orders, according to the sickness, the proper medicines  at the 
                gassner's mode of cure.            127

apothecary's,  the oil, water, powder and  herbs, which  are
consecrated by him every day ; exhorts every one to stead-
fastness in the faith, and permits no one, except those who  are
affected with defects born with them, to depart without clean
hands,  and countenances full of pleasure.
  He excludes no single sickness, no fever, not even an epi-
demic disorder.   May not the science of medicine, therefore,
partly  fear that it will soon be superseded by  this moral
theory  ?
  We  may now enquire what diseases Gassner calls natural,
and what unnatural ? For instance, a broken  bone, a maimed
limb, or a rupture, are complaints with  natural causes; but
all such as are produced ejther by want of, or  by a superfluity
of the  natural conditions of the  body, are curable — as the
cataract, which he cures to the  astonishment of every one.
We may give another demonstration : — Two lame persons
appear.   One has  the  tendon Achilles, or a nerve  injured.
He is healed, indeed, but the foot remains crooked.   This is
a natural lameness.   The pious crooked man has no hope of
assistance from  Herr Gassner,   The second has a similar
shortness of the foot, but the  cause  of which  was gout,
wasting  of the limb, or paralysis.   This is  unnatural lame-
ness, and will be cured by Herr Gassner, as quickly as the
name  of it is here written.
   Here you have now  the portrait of this new wonder-phy-
sician, of our great Herr Gassner.  Sic oculos, sic ille manus,
sic ora ferebat.  How does it please you ?   Have you any-
thing  to object to the original, or to the picture ?
   The author  now puts to the  physicians and to the acad-
emies  the question whether Gassner actually cured these dis-
eases  as related, and whether  in  his mode of cure there ho
a hidden, magnetic, sympathetic, or  magic power ? How does
he heal,  and what circumstances attend  the cures ?  This
 alone  concerns the doctors.  The clergy may settle with him
 witch-trials,  and whether  the devil in so  many ways can
 injure man.   Whether the accusers of  Herr Gassner, 'ex 
128         HISTORY of the supernatural.

lege diffafnari,' deserve  punishment, or  whether Herr Gass-
ner ought to be considered guilty as a deceiver, is a question
for the lawyers and criminal judges.   He  then  proceeds to
answer  these  questions, with the  admission that  he, like
many of his learned brethren, is somewhat incredulous, and
often tolerably stiff-necked.  ' For,'he says,  'it would  not
be creditable  if I should  take a thing  for granted, without
cause, enquiry, or conviction.' To the first question, whether
all  these diseases were healed, he answers, 'Yes, I have
seen it, with  many persons  of different religions, and par-
ticularly with  two most experienced and upright physicians
— one a Catholic, and one a Protestant.   With them I at-
tended  nearly all, both  public and  private opportunities, as
eye-witness, and  with  most perfect  conviction.   " How 1
what! "  will you  say ?  "A physician.  Fie 1 for shame 1 "
Yes, I, a physician, and  one, indeed, who has written  a whole
treatise on  gout, sought from Herr Gassner help  against
that hell-torture.  Well, do  not on that account imagine that
I have ceased  for a moment to be a physician ; for I confess
it now candidly that I rather intended to test Herr Gassner,
than hoped to derive any cure from him.   But a man that
sees will  not  deny that it  is day  when the  sun burns his
neck ;  and a courageous physician  will believe that he is ill
when he feels  pain.   All those present,  and the aforesaid
physicians  fully testify that which  we  saw, and I myself, to
my astonishment,  experienced.'
  ' He who will not,' says Schlisel,  'believe that Herr Gass-
ner cures all kinds of diseases — he who rejects the evidence
of such impartial  and overwhelming witnesses—I must either
send, as one dangerously ill, to the water-cure, or if that does
not succeed, to the mad-house ; or,  as a non-natural  sufferer,
to the curative powers of  Herr Gassner.   But  he requires
believing patients.'
  He now proceeds in  the tone of  the  opposing doctors, —
that, indeed, every physician has, according to his own state-
ment, cured everv kind  of disease ;  some by  electricity, and 
         faith  necessary  to gassner's cures.      129

some by other means; by sympathy and imagination.  Many
also have enquired  whether  Herr Gassner's  crucifix, or the
chain on his neck, or his half-silken sash, be not electric ?
Whether a magnet  be  not  concealed  in his cloak,  or his
hands be stroked with one, or be  anointed  with a  sympa-
thetic ointment!
  After he has circumstantially  shown that none of these
accusations will hold good, he comes to the conclusion—that
Herr Gassner performed all his cures merely by the glorified
name of Jesus Christ, and by the laying on of his hands and
his  cloak.  But he gives the  people the oil,  the eye water',
and the like ; he counsels them to use such  things after the
cure has  taken  place.   He has, however, in order to make
the blind see, no eye-water, nor oil to put in  motion a para-
lyzed  limb ;  much less powder and fumigations  to drive out
the  devil.   He merely  touches the joints of the lame; he
rubs the  ears and glands of the deaf;  he touches with his
fingers the eyelids of the blind.   He draws the pains forth
under his hands  by a commanding strong voice.  He com-
mands them with the  same  power, with an  earnest and au-
thoritative voice, to  come out and depart, and it takes place.
Where, then, is  the sympathy, where the electricity, where
the magnet, and all philosophical acuteness ?
  'Yes,  but why then does he not cure all  by  the same
means ?'  Ask your own consciences; enquire into the mode
of life and the  mode of thinking of your uncured  friends,
whether they come within the  conditions required by Herr
Gassner,  and possess the three kinds of faith which we men-
tioned in the opening  of this account of Gassner, and you
may yourselves answer the question.  Are you silent ? you
will then first open your thoughts to  me,  when  you have
experienced what has been the  permanence of the Gassner
mode of cure.  Herr Gassner demands as a security against
a relapse into sickness, like  St. Peter, a constant and  pera
petual conflict.   Wherefore?  Because the  attacks  of an
invisible  enemy are  never ceasing.   He prescribes to  every 
130
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
one how he can maintain himself in health without his aid ;
and  I assure  you on  honor, sincerely, that I have  known
many, very many, who  have cured themselves of violent
illness without going to or having  seen  Herr Gassner, but
merely by following his book by my advice,  and who still
daily derive benefit from it.   And I have never known one
person who has relapsed into the old non-natural sickness,
who has not first deviated from the prescribed rules of Herr
Gassner, or who  has not wholly  abandoned  them.   Who,
then, was to blame ?
  These are Dr.  Schlisel's statements after long acquaint-
ance  with Gassner's system ; and with these I shall close
this  chapter  of the  Spiritualists of Germany and Switzer-
land — for nearly a hundred years  previous to the appear-
ance of it  in the  United States.  At the same time it was
not in Germany and Switzerland only that Spiritualism ex-
isted.   It was in France, with Oberlin.
  This noble Christian — whose name is venerated all over
the world for his apostolic  labors for more than half a cen-
tury amongst the people of the  Ban-de-la-Roche, or Stein-
thal, in Alsace — found, when he went there, his parishioners
talking of apparitions  of their departed  friends as familiar
facts.  As he regarded this as an  empty and  pernicious su-
perstition, he reproved them  for it, and set himself  in the
pulpit to denounce it, and to reason them out of it.  But,
so far from this, he himself was at length compelled to be-
lieve in apparitions, by the appearance of his own wife. After
her death, she came almost daily, and sat and conversed with
him.   It is asserted in  his memoirs, that she was visible not
only to himself, but to  the rest of  his household.   For nine
years she continued this practice, not only informing him of
the nature and life of the other world, but continuing his
best  counsellor regarding his  undertakings in this.  She in-
formed him, that previous to her decease she received a visit
from her departed sister, the wife of Professor Oberlin of
Strasburg, announcing to  her her  approaching  death, on 
       OBERLIN VISITED BY HIS DECEASED WIFE.      131

which she had immediately set about making extra clothes
for  her children, and laying in  provisions for the funeral
feast.  This done, she took leave of her husband and family,
and went quietly to bed, quite assured that her end was at
hand, which proved so.  That her knowledge of her decease
was from the spirit of her sister, she had not told  Oberlin
before her death.
  All these transactions Oberlin left a  narrative of.   Mr.
Dale Owen says that he  met  in Paris, in 1859, with M. Mat-
ter, who, by permission of Oberlin, had examined these pa-
pers : and  observed  that Oberlin was  convinced  that the
inhabitants of the invisible world can appear to us, and we
to them, when God  wills;  aud that we are apparitions to
them, as they are to us.   In  1824,  Dr. Barthe and Mr.
Smithson visited Oberlin, and  conversed with him on  these
subjects.   They  asked him  how he  could distinguish his
wife's appearance from dreams ; and he asked them how they
could distinguish one color from another.  He told  them
that they might as well attempt to persuade him that it wa3
not a table at which they sate, or that he did not receive
these visits from his wife : at the same time that he was per-
fectly free from  any trace of dreaminess or fanaticism.  He
said there must be an aptitude for seeing spirits.  Taking
up  several pieces of flint, he observed that they  all looked
exactly  alike, but that some had  so  much iron  in  them
as to be  magnetic, others  had none.  So it  was with the
faculty of ghost-seeing.   People might laugh, but the thing
was a fact nevertheless.   Like Swedenborg, he said his wife
declared  that everything on earth  was but  a copy of the
things of the other world.   At  length his wife sent  him a
message by another deceased person, that she was now ele-
vated to a higher state, and could no longer revisit the earth:
nor did she ever after appear.  All these particulars are con-
firmed by his friend and biographer Herr  Stbber.
  We might now pass over to England, and witness the same
faith  in the Wesleys, the Fletchers of  Madeley, and  their 
132         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
followers; and then, by a sort of Jacob's ladder, ascend by
Fox and  the  Friends,  Bohme, the Friends  of God,  the
Roman  and  Grecian churches, through  the histories of
Greece,  of Rome, and of the  Jews, to the source of time,
spreading our researches through  all  surrounding nations
with the same result.  But having now dissipated the vulgar
error that Spiritualism originated a few years ago in Amer-
ica, I shall proceed at once to  the early world, and descend
in proper chronological order, certain of finding the so-called
modern  delusion a great law of humanity, a substantial and
universal truth.
  Those rationalists who are now so busy undermining the
Scriptural evidences  are merely  so many teres or wood-
worms, who eat  out the life of the timber and furniture of
our houses, and  leave us only a worm-eaten and crumbling
mass instead of it.   They exalt the ethics of Christianity,
whilst they  are  destroying  its historic strength.  For my
part, I want a Saviour, not a mere philosopher.   Philos-
ophers are so plentiful, that  I do not thank  them for any
addition to the number. I want a Saviour, and when one
has  come and produced his  credentials  in  accompanying
miracles, and preceding prophecies, and then come a set of
people and  discredit his credentials, and  endeavor to per-
suade me that his  genealogy has  all been dressed up and
falsified,  they reduce him from a  Saviour  to a mere im-
postor :  and  it is  then in vain to endeavor  to  recommend
him  as  a philosopher.   His ethics may  be  very  fine,  but
they are  not what I want; I want salvation, and that is not
to be obtained either from  impostor  or philosopher.  We
must take Christ,  therefore, altogether as he  stands in the
Scriptures, or leave him altogether. 
BIBLE PROPHECY.
133
      CHAPTER  VI.

THE  SUPERNATURAL IN THE BIBLE.
    Happy art thou, 0 Israel; who is  like unto thee, 0 people
    saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help, and who is the
    sword of thy excellency !  And thine enemies shall be found liars
    unto thee; and thou shalt tread upon their high places.—Deu-
    teronomy xxxiii. 29.

    What advantage then hath the Jew? . .  . Much everyway:
    chiefly because unto them were committed the Oracles of God.
                    Paul's Epistle to the Romans iii. 1, -.


   THE  Bible carries us at once to the day of creation, and,
     including the New Testament, brings us down to the day
of the promulgation of the Christian  system, the great ob-
ject for which the Hebrews were raised  into a nation, edu-
cated into monotheism, and made the proclaimers of the most
extended, most clear and consistent, the most amply and ex-
actly fulfilled series of  prophecies which the world ever saw.
The elaboration  of their faith, add the  steady development
of their history, are avowedly and conspicuously for the pur-
pose  of their  bearing  the great  burden of Christian pro-
phecy.  Christ accepted this chain of prophecy, of four thous-
and  years  in length, as completed in  him.  ' Beginning  at
Moses and all the prophets, he expounded  uuto them, in all
the Scriptures, the things concerning  himself (Luke xxiv.
27).  ' Then said I, Lo, I come fin the volume of the book
it is written of me), to do thy will, 0 God' (Hebrews x. 7).
* Search the Scriptures,' he said,  'for in them  ye think ye
have  eternal life, and they are they which testify of me'
(John v. 39).
  I—12 
134         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
  For four thousand years from the  creation of Christ, this
preparation for the advent of God in man on the earth was
in unintermitted process in the history of the Jews; and we
might, therefore, suppose that it was quite  sufficient to refer
simply to this great fact, as ample authority for what I have
to say of the spiritual, and what are called miraculous mani-
festations, in that history.   But amazing as it may seem, we
are  stopped on the very threshold of this history by the ful-
filment of its own prophecy in the mouth of Moses,  ' Thine
enemies shall be found liars unto thee,' and by the prophecy
of Christ some thousands of years afterwards, ' Thine ene-
mies shall be those of thine own house.'   After the comple-
tion of the  four thousand years,  during which the Jewish
history ran its course without any one calling in question its
verity, and after nearly two thousand  years more in which
its sequence,  Christianity, has continued to exist in wide and
sincere  acceptance, a sect of Sadducees  has risen up which
calls in question the  veracity of both those histories.  From
this  country went forth the works of Hobbes,  Toland, Tin-
dal, and  above all Hume, and  having  gone the tour of the
Continent, are come back to us worked up  into the rational-
istic system of  Paulus and Strauss.   The  essay on miracles
of David Hume has not  only infected men already anti-
Christian, but,  to more or less  extent,  almost every class of
Christians themselves.  It has destroyed  the faith  in that
higher order  of nature appealed to by Bishop Butler, called
the miraculous — in  many utterly,  in many others partially,
and  in  a  great number who  deem  themselves not only
sound Christians, but qualified preachers and authorities,
both national  and sectional.    Even those  who feebly admit
the truth of miracles down to Christ and his immediate suc-
cessors, stop  sturdily there\ and can believe in nothing of
the kind now-a-days.  And why so ?   Why do they suppose
that this was the course of Divine Providence uninterrupted
by four thousand years, and that then it came to a dead stop ?
Why do they thus violently rend asunder  the analogies of 
  PROTESTANT EDUCATION INTO THE ANTI-SUPERNATURAL. V\5

all nature  in God's operations, which continue forever, and
suppose that  we have less need of the same manifestations of
the higher course of nature  than the ancient world, and espe-
cially the early  Christians had ?"   Why do they suppose tha|
evidence, like  everything else, does not grow old, and that wo
have as much need of the repetition of miracles as they had
two thousand years ago ?  Why  do  they see millions aban-
doning the  Christian faith, and acceptiug the desolate gift of
materialism, on the very plea that they have  no proof of
these miraculous manifestations which, prevalent till  then,
the ancients had, and do  not see  that without such  manifes-
tations these  souls  can never be  recovered ?   ' Miracles of
the present time,' says Professor  Hare, 'are far  more con-
vincing than  the miracles  of a time long past.'  Why do
they see  a  deadness and indifference, a formal faith and a
lifeless profession,.in the churches on the  no-miracle basis,
and yet set their faces against the miraculous as  still exist-
ent in the Church of Christ, according to his plain  promise,
that he would so 'continue alway to the end of  the world'
with his disciples, and that they should do even greater works
than he did ?
   Simply because they are  educated  into this condition  of
mind.  The  churchman,  the sectarian, the professor and the
preacher, the  man of literature  and the  man  of science,
are  all educated in a certain  benumbing  modern  Pyrrho-
nism, which came in with Protestantism, and exists only in
Protestantism, the direct and avowed product of  the opposi-
tion to miracle in the Church of  Rome.   In endeavoring to
pull up the tares  of false  Roman miracle, they have done
what Christ exactly warned his disciples not to do__pulled
up the root  of faith  in  miracle,  and in the great spiritual
heritage of the Church with it.   And before we wonder at
this deadly feat of  Protestant reaction, let  us reflect a little
on the almost omnipotent power of education.   What nation
people, or person ever fully escapes from the net of education,
woven with fibres fine as those of the gossamer, but tougher 
136         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
than  the  most tempered steel ?  Look round on  all the
hundreds of millions of human beings on the globe.   From
age to age they advance tenaciously— as for their very lives,
tenaciously holding the dogmas of their education.  Science
advances, art  advances,  philosophy  advances from  experi-
ment to experiment; old sloughs fall  off, new discoveries
are made ; but in religion all continues in stereotyped fixed-
ness, blind to the  diversities of  faith around us, defiant of
the manifest fact that all cannot be in the right.   The Jew,
the Brahmin, the  Parsee, the Buddhist, the Yezedee, the
Mohamedan, the Christian in all his forms, the Roman, the
Greek, the Protestant again in all his forms, the Churchman,
the multifarious Dissenter,  all hold  on their way, hugging
each  his cherished dogma  as the truth, but not ready to
admit that all cannot be right, yet  confident that he is so.
And  why ?   Simply from the mighty and, in  ninety cases
out  of every  hundred,  invincible force of education.  By
education, as it regards  religion, we  are built  up  within
walls stronger than stone ;  masked  with blind masks more
impervious to the light of spiritual truth than  masks of steel;
and they are only the heroes of the  race who can  burst this
bondage, and  get out to the free, fresh air and the universal
sun of impartial enquiry.   Those who have travelled on the
Continent have seen, or have had the opportunity  of seeing,
the remains of knights who have, hundreds of years ago,
been built upnvithin the walls of their own  or their enemies'
castles, where they have been found of late years.   There
stand the skeletons erect, not only within walls of some yards
in thickness, but also shut up  in their own armor,  most
emphatic representatives of the theological knights of the pres-
ent day built up within the adamantine walls of scholasticism.
  But it is  replied, that the Rationalists have, on the con-
trary, broken  the  trammels of their education in receding
from  Christianity into  rejection  of miracle.  By no  means.
Every one of these men was educated in the Protestant
dogma of the cessation of all miracle  since the promulgation 
         UNREASONABLE DEMANDS OF SKEPTICS.      137

of Christianity.   The root of faith was cut off in them, and
without root they  must inevitably tumble, at  the  feeblest
breath of skepticism,  to the materialistic earth.
  Thus, as  much by the  acts  and reasons of Luther, of
Cranmer, and Ridley, and the early bishops of the Anglican
Church, by the  arguments of Middleton, and  Douglas, and
Marsh, and of the Dissenters' own Farmer and  Priestly, as
by the sophistry of Hume and Strauss, the followers of these
men in England — the Baden Powells, Frondes, Essayists
and Reviewers, &c. — are led to attempt the destruction of
the historic evidences  of  the Bible and New Testament.
These gentlemen have become, they tell us, so learned in the
physical constitution of the universe, that they cannot see
how God, having thus fixed  it, can introduce  any variations
into it.  They have tied up their own faculties  in a knot of
logical syllogisms, and  persuade themselves that they have
tied up the omnipotent hands of God.   They profess a cer-
tain philosophical  belief in  Christ, but  they do not believe
Him when He repeatedly says,  ' With  God all things are
possible.'   They think that they know, at this distance of
time, much more about  the history of  the Jews  than the
Jews themselves, during four thousand years,  did.  They
would  expurgate the Bible, and leave  out all  miracle, and
ask us to put faith in the dead skeleton which they had left.
They would take out of it the life and soul, pick off muscle
and nerve, and hand ns the dry bone as a fair equivalent.
They would rob  Christ of  all the long series  of prophetic
and historic testimonies to his identity,  of all  His own
miracles, and then ask us to accept Him as  another Plato.
They would give us  His philosophy of morals as something
admittedly beautiful, but  they would first deprive it of all
AUTHORITY.
   Now, what is Christ to us, any more  than Plato or Soc-
rates, if He  have no  greater authority ?  If all the announce-
ments of Him ages before, every one  of which  being a pro-
phecy is a  miracle,  are taken away, and with  them all the
        12* 
138         HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
historic evidence of the miraculous history of his ancestors—
if the miracles which he did, and declared that he did,  ' that
they might believe,' are reduced to  myths,—which are but
another name for lies — of what avails it that he says ' I am
the resurrection and the life ?' His credentials and authority
gone, it matters  not how beautiful may be  His teachings,
what aesthetic grandeur or glory they may possess, to us they
are but dead letters, for they have no foundation  in the reve-
lation of a God, given amid signs and wonders; they have
in them no innate truth,  for the same process has destroyed
also the truth of  Christ.  He appeals to the  testimonies  of
Jonah,  of Isaiah, and of Daniel, but they deny the authen-
ticity of those  books, and, therefore, Jesus, on their system,
is either not divinely illumined,  or he is  a liar.
   To this blasphemous condition they reduce us; but their
absurdity far exceeds their treason.  If their reasonings be
true, the Bible, extending over four thousand years, is  not a
veritable history, but a concatenation of falsehoods, for such
are myths and  mere legends.   We are  asked to believe an
absurdity so monstrous  as that a succession of historians;
chronicling the annals of their nation  through many  ages,
have uniformly persisted in a  course of fiction, instead of
simple  truth — that these many historians who  never met,
who were sundered from each  other,  many of them by cen-
turies, have agreed, in some impossible manner, to palm upon
posterity a series  of the most empty  and  most impudent
untruths, as the  sober history of their race.   And for*what
object ?
   That there might have arisen one, or even two men, in a
nation, capable of falsifying their history, is possible; but
that such history should be accepted by the  nation at large
as true, is utterly incredible—especially when it was  a his-
tory not penned to flatter, but to disgrace the nation in the
eyes of all the world, according to the world's ideas.   Now,
 what is the character of the Jewish history ?   Is it that of
 adulation and self-glory ?  On  the contrary, it stands  alone, 
     STERN TRUTHFULNESS OF THE JEWISH HISTORY.  139

amid all the histories of the earth, as one unsparingly depict-
ing the vices and failings of their kings, princes, priests, and
people.   Open it anywhere, for it is everywhere alike, and
you find the Jewish nation drawn in the most stern colors of
corruption, stiff-neckedness, ingratitude to God, proneness to
all vices and base  idolatries.  At the very time that God is
leading them up under Moses to the Promised  Land, they
are so sensual, refractory, and prone to idolatry, that God
vows to destroy them, and make  a nation  of Moses.   It is
the same all the way through their doings of the judges, of
their kings, to the  last.   They became so  desperately aban-
doned to all wickedness, that God drives them repeatedly out
before  their enemies, lays waste their cities, and  plunges
them into miserable  slavery.  Their highest and most ap-
proved king commits  adultery, and follows it up with murder;
their most magnificent one is a sensualist and gross idolater.
Open their  prophets;  open them anywhere, and read the
descriptions and denunciations of them by these wonderful
men.  Never was  a  nation, never  were princes  or priests
described  in such  colors.   ' How is the faithful city become
an harlot! it was full of judgment; righteousness was lodged
in it; but now murderers. . . . Thy princes are rebellious, and
companions of thieves ; every one loveth gifts, and folioweth
after rewards; they judge not the  fatherless, neither doth
the curse  of the widow  come unto  them.'—Isaiah.   'The
children of  Israel  and  the children of Judah have only done
evil  before me from  their youth;  for the  children of Israel
have only provoked me to anger with the work of their hands,
saith the Lord. For this city hath been to me as a provoca-
tion to  mine anger and  of my fury from the day that they
built it, even  unto this day ;  that  I should  remove it from
before my face.  Because of all the  evil of the children of
Israel  and of the  children of Judah, which they have done
to provoke me to  anger, they, their kings, their princes, their
priests, and their prophets, and the men of Judah, and the
inhabitants  of Jerusalem.'—Jeremiah ii. 
140         HI8TORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
  Every circumstance of the whole history is stated with the
same stern truth.  It was the same in the historians of the
Gospel.  In what fearful colors  are  limned  the deeds and
the moral condition of the Jews at that time 1   With what
terrible words does Christ denounce their hypocrisy, oppres-
sions, and cruelties !  They completed their gloomy annals
by putting him, the  merciful and gentle Saviour, to death.
The faults of the apostles are no more  spared than were
the crimes of their ancestors.   And yet we are asked by the
pretended wise men  of to-day, to  believe that this  severe,
self-accusing people, these historians of so many ages, have
one and all combined in a foolish fraud  to  dress up their
entire  history  in  myths and  fiction 1  If they  had been
prone to fiction, it would  certainly  have been  to flatter their
national pride, and  present to  the world a  pleasant  por-
traiture  of themselves.   Never did  people  sketch one so
repulsive.
   When we turn to their literature, this evidence of the love
of truth, amid all their defects, is still more apparent.  They
are, in fact, the appointed guardians of the truth.  A sublime
inspiration, an  elevation  of moral  tone, a conception of the
true character of virtue and holiness, burst upon us in amazing
contrast to that of  all other nations.  What a contrast is
the morality of the Bible even to that of Plato and Socrates I
Imagine Plato, as he does, representing Socrates, the most
exalted  enunciator of Greek morals, recommending that all
women  and children shall be  in  common.   That parents
should  not be  able  to  recognize  their  own  children,  nor
children their parents.   That  young men who  had distin-
guished themselves  in war should  have free range amongst
the women of  his model republic, and that  women should
contend naked in the public games, &c.  Turn, then, to the
Bible.   The change is from darkness to light.   There you
(hid a God commanding the utmost purity of thought and
life;  who  tells them that He demands truth and  holiness iu
their inward parts.  Who makes it a portion  of the national 
        SUPERIORITY OF THE HEBREW THEOLOGY.     141

law, ' Thon shalt not raise a false report; put not thine hand
with the  wicked  to be  an unrighteous witness.'—Exod.
xxiii. 1.   Who inculcates  love and  mercy to the stranger
and oppressed, and declares that He  is of too pure eyes to
behold  evil.   What wonderful contrast is there,  also, in the
tone towards the Deity ; not a mob of gods of very indifferent
character, but  one  great,  glorious,  and paternal power!
What a deep and  intimate  relationship  also presents itself
between God and his people !  In  all other systems of reli-
gion, we see the  gods, as  it were, afar off, holding little or
no intercourse with  man.  But here God is tending and
gniding them as a father, He delivers them from  their op-
pressors by  His  own outstretched arm,  and  they  pour out
their joys and sorrows  into His  bosom with  a wonderful
intimacy amid all their  reverence.  Read the  Hymns  of
Orpheus or of Homer, and then turn to the Psalms of David.
In the  one,  only distant praise and glorification ;  in the
other, what  love,  and trust, and spiritual life, and consola-
tion !   Where in  all heathen devotion, even of  the most
philosophical people, do we find a sentiment expressing such
filial confidence in the perfect justice of God, such a clear
assurance of the recompenses of eternity, as  that  expressed
at the  close of the  fifteenth Psalm ?  After surveying the
prosperity of the wicked, the Psalmist  says,  'As for me, I
will behold  Thy face in  righteousness; I shall  be satisfied
when I awake with Thy likeness,'
  And this  is the people  whose history, on which  lies the
foundations  of our most precious faith, we are desired__not
merely by foreign infidels,  but by men educated,  paid, and
posted  for life, by the Government of this nation, to teach
the truths of Christianity to the people—to regard as a series
of myths and empty  wonders.  Certainly no such monstrous
demand was ever made by men, treating the belief in miracles
as credulous,  on  the credulity of mankind.   We must  to
adopt their theory, regard the Bible, not as the great treasury
of divine truth, but as the most base and mendacious history, 
142
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
and written by an atrociously base and  mendacious people.
We must consent to believe such a number of impossibilities,
in one proposition, as never were collected in one demand on
human credulity before.   That a people should wilfully de-
face and falsify their history for 4,000 years  for no conceiva-
ble  purpose, would  be a sufficiently strong  demand  on our
faith; but that this people should from age  to age persist in
the same strain and in the same plan, is infinitely more diffi-
cult  of  acceptance;  and finally,  that this  should be, of all
nations, the one selected to maintain the truth of God and
of Christ,  is so preposterous a proposition that it implies a
moral insanity in those who advance, and something still more
insane in those who could accept it.   To disbelieve a miracle
or a series of miracles may be, under some  circumstances, a
proof of sagacity, but he that could believe  all  that is im-
plied in the above demands must be a personification of credu-
lous folly  bordering on idiocy.
  Let us close these preliminary remarks with a passage
from  the  Abbe Baruel,  a defender of revelation, who has
turned their own weapons with admirable effect on the skeptics
and insidious underminers of Scriptural record of his time
and country.   He has opened a debtor and creditor account
with them, placing on opposite pages their contradictions not
only of one another, but of themselves, and poured consum-
ingly on them the ridicule which they have vainly endeavored
to heap on the Old and New Testament: —' Go ! your phil-
osophy shall not be mine.   My heart tells me too well that
the author of  my being is the first object of my duties.  I
quit your school to learn to fulfil them.   Moses,  Christ and
His  apostles repeat — the  whole of Revelation repeats —
" Thou shalt worship the  Lord thy God, and Him only shalt
thou  serve."   Thou shalt love Him with all thy soul, and all
thy strength;  and  I say with them, " Behold the first of
duties 1 the cry of nature 1  Let that philosophy which would
stifle this cry be itself annihilated !  I  adore God, an* my
whole reason bows before Him.  I feel  that it calls me to 
    JEWS BEST ACQUAINTED WITH THEIR OWN ANNALS.  143

the foot of His altar.   The false  sage has contemned it, but
the gospel raises it again.   My  soul, fatigued  by impiety,
flies there anew.   I will love God ; to the frightful void which
your sophists  have left in my soul shall succeed the object
which alone can  fill it; and the first precept of revelation
shall recall  those  of all  nature."' — 'Lettres Provinciales,'
vol. iv., p. 365.
  It is  in the light of revelation, then, and  not under the
iusidious counsels of rationalists, that we must read the plain
narrative of Scripture.  We find  the undermining system of
the church-skeptics demands too much credulity from us.
We can believe miracles, but not such impossibilities of con-
spiring historians whom long  ages  held asunder, of a unity
of purpose in lying maintained for four thousand years with-
out a rational object, of the authors and guardians of truth
being the  unparalleled propagators of  falsehood, of  Moses
and Christ being implicated with  and supporters of impos-
ture, as these gentlemen expect of us.  Taking up, then, the
Bible in the spirit of common sense, we find that it is alto-
gether built on what is called  a miraculous  basis.  Miracle is
woven up  with it from beginning to end.  Miracle is both
its warp and woof; miracle is still more, it is the very sub-
stance of  its material.  It is all  miracle, or it is noth-
ing.  In other words, it is that higher course of nature which '
God, without violating or interrupting the  lower or physical
course, interfuses through it at His  pleasure, as easily as He
interfuses  His sunshine through the  atmosphere, or, when He
pleases, hurls  his  lightning through  His sunshine;  as He
sends His  mysterious comets amid His  fixed stars and regu-
larly revolving planets, and pours the fiery life-blood of im-
ponderable  principles through  the unconscious pulses of
nature.  We are convinced at once that the Jews and their
historians  knew their own concerns, and  how to record them,
much better than these would-be profundities of our time.
We are more struck with the folly and presumption of these
men, the farther they  are removed from the scene of action, 
144         HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL,

imagining that they see it better than those who were living
upon it.   In vain  they tell us that this great history is con-
ceived  and  executed  in a spirit  of Eastern hyperbole and
exaggeration ; we find its language in the historical portions
the simplest language of nature, and stamped with the most
sterling impress  of truth.   There is nothing which strikes us
so much as the  candor and confidence with which the most
surprising events are stated.  There is no effort used  to con-
vince you of their truth, but the utterance of the truth itself;
there is no asseveration of the reality of the most startling
occurrences.   The historians speak as men who  knew well
what they said, and said it to a nation as well accustomed to
such facts as themselves.   We wonder, standing afar off in
our lower and more death-laden atmosphere;  but these mat-
ters were  no wonders to  them.   They were in a condition
more open to the skies,  less fallen  from the  primal condition
of the  race, when  God and His angels walked amongst men;
a condition of greater  receptivity and unobstructed vision.
They were witnesses of that higher  course  of nature which
continued till and after Christ, and would  continue  still, if
we had continued  as worthy of it, and allied to it.
  In these prefatory remarks I do not enter at all into the
question of the  Jewish chronology.   The  world  may have
had an earlier origin than the literal renderings of the  Mosaic
theory  would seem to indicate,  or it  may  not.  With that
point I have nothing to do.  I am, for the reasons  already
stated, going to  take the Jewish history as  I find it, because
I perceive it, as  a  whole, more apparently probable than any
theories yet broached by its enemies.   Whatever may be the
exact value of the portion of this history which must have
come immediately  through inspiration, or mediately through
tradition, I  find  the historic portions, with such partial ex-
ceptions as may  well be attributed to the errors of copyists,
perfectly accordant with  all cotemporary history,  and  with
human nature.   And  this history, from first to  last, is a spir-
itualistic history.  And when I speak of Spiritualism, I mean 
   THE CREATION GREATER THAN ALL OTHER MIRACLES. 145

 by it the manifestations and operations of spiritual natures
 from the highest Spirit, God, to the lowest Spirit, angel, dis-
 embodied  man, or devil.   All  these  are, and  clearly have,
 from the hour of the creation of man, been operating around,
 upon, and through him.  The desperate bias to evil in human
 nature, in all ages, has something in it far beyond the result
 of man's mere passions and selfish interests.   ' The heart of
 man  is above  all  things  deceitful, and desperately wicked.'
 The wickedness, the  malignity, the devilishness of man, as
 recorded in universal history, is something frightful to con-
 template.   If we could have been brought from some pure
 planet, in the full  exercise of*our faculties, to take a view of
 earth, we must have certainly imagined that we were introduced
 to hell.  For murders, for war's wholesale murders, for cruelties
 practised from age to age on one  another, burnings, torturings,
 exterminations,  disinheritings, persecutions,  poisonings, the
 killing of intimate relations, parricides, fratricides, matricides,
 infanticides, cheatings, and monstrous selfishness, impiety, and
 deadly  atheism, no hell can  produce worse records than this
 earth.  That this state of things has been instigated and set on
 fire from hell, is one of the most incessant teachings of this
 history.  Our Saviour himself says that the devil has been a
 murderer and a liar from the beginning.  Therefore, all religions
 and mythologies assert this warfare of spiritual power around
 and in man.  Persia in the east, and Scandinavia in the north,
 and the red Indians in the west, all accord in this testimony, and
 in the darkest haunt of man, and in all his  experiences, lies
 rooted  the  terrible consciousness of it.   Out of this conflict
 man must come  purified with victory by the power and grace
 of God, and by the ministration of his  angels, or  he  must
 fall into fearful wickedness and moral deformity, through the
 successful agency of the 'devil and his angels.'
  The most stupendous exertion of spirit-power was the first
— the creation of the world, and of man its inhabitant.  The
calling  forth of the universe  with its heavenly bodies and its
earthly abode, as man would view them from his new stand-
  I.—13 
146
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
point, unaided by the long and difficult operations of science;
the lights above, the breathing atmosphere around, the won-
ders and beauties of the earth's surface, must to the human
eye  and mind have been miracles which  would  render all
others tame in appearance.   The miraculous  apparitions of
flowers, and  all  their hues of beauty, and breath of varied
fragrance ; the lofty and exquisitely foliaged trees;  the rich
fruits pendant from their boughs,  or resting  on the grassy
floor of the world ; the animal life swarming around in all
its wondrous diversity ;  majestic beasts, winged fowls, creep-
ing and serpentine creatures, their hues and instincts, passions,
proceedings and voices ; the flowing  waters, and their singu-
lar inhabitants, existing where man himself must perish. All
the laws and powers obviously operating in this marvellous
scene ;  the  vivid lightning, the roaring  thunder, the innate
principles of growth and symmetric form, and that great and
wonderful  law which determines the relative size of every-
thing ;  the terminus of development,  which does not allow a
cat to grow into a tiger, or a beetle to assume the bulk of a
bear;  everything now commonized to our ideas and percep-
tions, must to men, issuing  in  full  intellectual and  spiritual
thought and clearness from the hands of the Almighty, have
been infinitely more wonderful than the appearance of a spirit,
or the perception of a voice without  a visible speaker.  The
harmony and colossal sublimity of the whole new  creation
must have far more impressed the human soul than any minor
deviations  from  an apparently regular  system of  cosmical
economy.  After such a whole universe of wonders, men could
not wonder at any incidental or partial marvels.
   Accordingly, nothing appears to have fallen more naturally
on the fresh senses of new-born man than the visits of God
and the converse with spirits.  When God called for Adam
in the garden of  Eden, he heard the  Divine voice normally;
there required no new condition of vision, no biologic trance,
to enable him to perceive it.   God spoke to man as to a being
made to hear the spirit voice, and see the spirit form, and man 
    MAN ORIGINALLY PERCIPIENT OF SPIRITUAL BEINGS. 147

 answered as directly and naturally as he could to another in-
 dividual in the flesh.
   ' Man,' says Swedenborg, ' was so created, that during his
 life on earth amongst men he might at the same time also live
 in heaven  amongst the angels, and  during  his life in heaven
 amongst the angels, he  might at the same time also live on
 earth amongst men, so that heaven and earth might  be to-
 gether and form one — men knowing what is in heaven, and
 angels what is  in the world ; and  that when  men departed
 this life they might  pass through, from the Lord's kingdom
 on earth, into the Lord's  kingdom in the heavens, not as into
 another, but as into the same, having been in it also during
 their life in the body.   But as man became so corporeal he
 closed heaven against himself.' — 'Arcana Ccelestia,' 1880.
   In  his 'Spiritual  Diary,'  Swedenborg  also  says:  'It has
 thus been  ordained by the Lord from all eternity, that there
 should be such an intercourse and communion between men
 and angels, and also that man, when he has come to his full
 age, should not know, when he is enjoying this intercourse,
 that he is living in  the body, and that thus, when the body
 is rejected, he might immediately enter into heaven.'—2541
 2542.
   The whole of the early history of man attests the truth of
 this assertion of Swedenborg.  The Lord spoke face to face
 with the first human pair, both in warnings (Gen. ii. 16) and
 in judgment (Gen. iii. 9-22).  He made coats of skins for
 them and clothed them (v. 21).
   In his judgment he made them acquainted with the cher-
 ubims when  he  drove them out  of the garden (v. 24).  He
 spoke face to face with €ain, reasoned with him (Gen. iv. 6),
 and set a mark on him (v. 15).  In the fifth chapter of Gen-
 esis (v. 24), we come to a mystery in the fall of Enoch.  It
 is said that ' Enoch  walked with  God, and was  not, for God
 took him.'  This was generally supposed by the Jews, and
 apostles, and the fathers, to mean  that God conveyed  him
openly to  heaven in a fiery chariot, as he did Elijah;  and 
148         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
St. Paul —Heb. xi. 5 —says  expressly, that 'Enoch was
translated that he  should not see death.'  The book of
Enoch itself says, that God withdrew  him from the knowl-
edge of mankind.   We may suppose that his body under-
went some change, like that of Christ;  that though Christ
himself declared it to differ essentially  from spirit, having
flesh and  bones, yet these were  so etherialized  that they
could pass through unopened doors (St. John xx. 19, 26),
and  could suddenly become invisible (St. Luke  xxiv. 31).
The three translations  of Enoch, Elijah, and Christ, are,
perhaps, the  most incomprehensible miracles, in  the  whole
Bible, to the  human understanding.
   As mankind became  more and more  debased, and of the
earth earthy, God  retired, or,  more properly, was obscured
from the  human perception by their  grossness.   Yet, even
in the time of Noah, or  more than sixteen hundred  years
after the creation, God  still remained near to the few  right-
eous,  and spoke in his old manner to Noah, instructing him
of the coming deluge, how to prepare the ark, and shutting
him in when  all was  ready (Gen.  viii.  1, 16).   In  the course
of the next two chapters we find him  repeatedly renewing
his direct conversations with  Noah.  When He  had come
down at Babel to confound  the  language of men, and to
disperse them over the earth,  he  yet continued to speak to
Abraham in  his old familiar manner, so  far as we can per-
ceive, without any mediumship of visions or other indirect
modes (Gen. xii. 1, 7 ;  xiii. 14).  It is in the fifteenth chap-
ter of  Genesis that we  first find God speaking to Abraham
in a vision,  and the reality of communication in vision is
made  most  positive by the  fact, that  in this vision God
promised  him an heir by miraculous  means, and  afterwards
literally fulfilled the promise thus  made.    In the same chap-
ter he  gives him another vision, attended by outward prep-
arations  for  sacrifice,  and  by a supernatural fire passing
amongst the  portions of the things offered (v. 9, 10, 11, 12,
17).   From  this  time forward, the divine appearances were 
       DIVINE APPEARANCES UNDER HUMAN FORM.    149

sometimes  direct, sometimes  by dreams  and visions, and
sometimes by angel messengers in the shape of man.   Swe-
denborg has  noticed  the visions of the Bible, as in the be-
ginning, remarkable for their  simplicity and directness, but
as gradually unfolding  in  symbols, more  or less complex,
until the relations of Ezekiel and  St. John assume a  form
which has baffled the critical acumen of commentators.  Im-
mediately after these  visions of Abraham, we have the first
appearance of ' an  angel of the Lord,' the forerunner of a
long succession of such messengers.   The angel of the Lord
appeared to  Hagar in the wilderness, promising the  poor
outcast  that  she should be the mother of countless multi-
tudes (Gen. xvi. 7), and again another angel appeared to
her in her despair (Gen. xxi. 17), promising her to make her
son a great nation.   In the seventeenth chapter of  the  same
book, God again talks directly with Abraham, and listens to
Abraham's  requests, and ' when  he left off talking  with him
God went up from Abraham' (v. 22).
  In the very next chapter (xviii.) we have some of the most
mysterious statements of all Biblical Spiritualism.  We  have
Abraham sitting in the door of his tent in the heat of the day,
and we are told in the same sentence that the Lord appeared
to him, and  that he lifted  up his  eyes and saw three men
standing by him.  These three men Abraham addresses as
'My Lord,' and yet, at the same time, entreats them to stay
and take refreshment, and kills  the fatted calf for them, and
waits on them at table, having first ' bowed himself toward
the ground.'  And they spoke to him, and yet said  ' I will
do' so and so.  In the conversations which take place God
promises Abraham  a  son  and heir, and also reveals to him
the coming destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.   The  men,
it  says, departed, ' and went towards Sodom, but Abraham
stood yet before the Lord.'  The well-known dialogue takes
place in which Abraham entreats for Sodom and Gomorrah,
and when the angels arrive  at Sodom in the evening, we find
not three but only two of them.   It would seem  that the
      13* 
150         HISTORY OF TnE  SUPERNATURAL.

third angel had more especially represented the Lord, and
had remained  behind with Abraham, and we are told  that
'the Lord went his way as soon as he had left off communing
with Abraham, and Abraham returned to his tent.'  In this
extraordinary  account, though the  Lord  appeared to the
patriarch, and though he recognized it as an appearance of
the Lord, yet that appearance  was under the form of a man.
The whole has tried the intellects of  men  in all ages, and
has given rise to a thousand conjectures, explanations, and
theories.  The simplest of  all  appears to be that God ap-
peared by his angel, making his presence sensibly felt in him.
Thus, though we  are told that  the Lord appeared to Moses
in a burning bush, we are first  told that it was the angel of
the Lord (Exodus iii. 2), and then that it was the Lord (v.
4), and that ' God called unto him out of the midst of the
bush,' and commanded him  to  put off his shoes, because the
ground was holy by the presence of God.  Still more ex-
pressly we are told that God descended on Mount Sinai, and
gave the law to Moses, writing it with his own finger on the
tables of stone.  We are told that Moses and Aaron, Nadab
and Abihu, and  seventy elders of Israel  went up, and they
saw the God of  Israel, and there was under His feet, as it
were, a paved work of a sapphire stone, and, as it were, the
body  of heaven in its clearness  (Exod.  xxiv. 9, 10), 'also
they saw God, and did  eat and  drink' (v. 11).   Yet when
Moses (Exod. xxxiii. 18) desires  the Lord to show him His
glory, He replies, ' Thou canst not see  My face ; for there
shall no man see Me  and live'  (v. 20).
   Thus, in all these places, when we are told that the Lord
appeared, and that certain  favored servants ' saw Him,' and
that ' Moses conversed  with Him face to face,' as a friend,
none of these holy men saw the pure naked Divinity, but
only God's presence  veiled  under the form of some angelic
power.   Flesh and blood could not bear the living flame of
the great uncreated Spirit of all  life, whose hands wield the
lightning, and the tip of whose finger lights up suns to burn 
               PROOFS OF FAILING FAITH.            151

for eternities.   And  this great truth is fully confirmed by
Stephen, in the hour of his ecstasy, before his death, when,
though the Old Testament says  that God delivered the law
to Moses on Mount  Sinai, he says that  their fathers  ' re-
ceived the law by the dispositions of angels' (Acts vii. 53).
In all those cases, therefore, where  God is said to have ap-
peared under a visible form, we may be assured that it was
by the mediumship of angels.   But in the multifarious modes
in which his communications are made to the Jews, he ap-
pears to speak to them frequently by a direct voice, outward
or inward, as well as in visions, dreams,  and by means  of
miraculous signs, or by Urim and Thummim.
   In the very midst of God's most condescending revelations
of Himself to Abraham, in the one particularly in  which  He
promises him and  Sarah a son, we have a proof of how fast
the power of physical nature was seizing on the human spirit.
When Sarah, who had just had her name changed  by Divine
command, from Sarai to Sarah, or Princess, was promised a
son in her old age, she laughed ; and even Abraham himself—
the man who, of all men, believed God, and had it  accounted
to him for righteousness—laughed at this supernatural prom-
ise.  'Then Abraham fell upon his face and laughed, and
said in his  heart, shall a child be  born unto him that is a
hundred years #old, and shall  Sarah that is  ninety years  old
bear?'  (Gen.  xvii. 17).
   Thus, at a very early age of the world, and in the almost
daily performance of miracles, the father and  the mother of
the faithful, Abraham himself, the pre-eminent model of  un-
hesitating faith, had learned so much  of the  philosophy of
the modern Baden Powell, and his  rationalistic confreres, he
had perceived so much of the fixedness of what are called
nature's  laws, that he did not, for a moment, believe that
they could be broken or interfered with by their Maker.  He
forgot, in his new physical knowledge, that God had been all
his life either disturbing this fixedness, on his  behalf and on
that of his progeny, or had been introducing new laws with- 
152
HISTORY  OP TnE  SUPERNATURAL.
out disturbing the old ones.  This is a very curious passage,
and should abolish  in  us  any wonder  at  the- philosophical
paralysis of this late material age of the world.   That, how-
ever, which is now  a permanent habit  of mind, was but a
momentary touch of it in Abraham.  Directly after,  we  find
him preparing to immolate  this miraculously given son at
the command  of God.
  We might thus proceed through  the whole Bible: every
step, every chapter nearly, is a manifestation in one form or
another of Spiritualism of the  highest type.   Amongst the
most striking  instances of the  appearance of  the Lord in
general terms is Gen.  xxvi., where  God commands Isaac to
go down into Egypt, on which occasion he declares that' In
his seed shall all the nations  of the earth be blessed,'—a pro-
phecy so  singularly now  verifying  itself  in  the spread  of
Christianity,  more than three  thousand six  hundred years
after that simple, unostentatious manifestation of Divinity.
From this time  we find few, if any, announcements merely
that the Lord appeared, but expressly  that he  appeared  by
his angel, or in  dreams and visions.  Even now those days
of patriarchal simplicity of heart and life  were  departing in
which God could speak face to face with man.  Men were
fast multiplying on the earth, and corruptions  and earthliness
were multiplying with  them, so that God  drew farther, as it
were, personally from them.
  Amongst His  appearances by angels these are the chief.
As Jacob was returning from Padan-Aram, from his profit-
able servitude with Laban,  ' The angels of God met him;
and when Jacob saw them he  said,  This is God's  host,  and
he called the place Mahanaim, that  is, two hosts, or camps'
(Gen. xxxii. 1).  Soon after, at Penuel, one of the strangest
incidents of Jacob's life took place.  When left alone at night
' there  wrestled  a man with him until  the breaking of the
day.'   This  so-called man performed a miracle by touching
the hollow of his thigh and putting it out of joint, and shrink- 
ANGELIC  APPEARANCES.              153
   ing the sinew, so that ever after Jacob ' halted in that thigh.'
   He called Jacob there Israel, or a prince of  God.
     The man had shown a divine power, and he refused to give
   his name, but we are left to infer by the words  he  said  to
   Jacob,  'As a prince hast thou power with God and  with
   men,' that  it was God  in his angel who  thus wrestled  with
   him  (xxxii. 24-32).
     The Lord  appeared  to Moses at Mount Horeb when He
   meant to send him into  Egypt to bring out the people of
   Israel, but  only through an angel.   ' The angel of the  Lord
   appeared unto him in a flame of fire out of  the midst  of a
   bush ;' but it is immediately added,' God called unto him out
   of the midst of the bush, and indicated  his  presence by or-
   dering  him to take off his shoes  because the ground was
   holy.'  God  addressed him directly through the angel, '  I am
   the God of thy father,' &c.  After this, God spoke continu-
   ally to  Moses, but whether by an outward or inward  voice
   is, except in one or two places, not mentioned.   The  truth
   seems to be, that Moses was now spiritually opened up to the
   spiritual life, or, in modern phrase, he was a fully developed
   medium, and the spiritual voice of God was as audible to him
   as any human voice, or more so.  In all the mighty works in
   which he henceforth was  employed,  we hear no more that the
   Lord appeared to him, but that He continually spoke to him
   as from a perpetual presence.   Even on the great occasion
   when he came to Mount Sinai, for the promulgation of the
   law, it is only said, ' God called to  him out of the mountain,
   saying,' &c. (Exod. xix  3j.  God appeared by His angel to
   Balaam (Numbers xxii. 23).  At verse 9 it says,  ' God came
   to Balaam,' but it appears that it  was by night, and  in a
   dream.   The next  day he appeared by an angel, and, what
   is singular, the  prophet's ass  saw the angel before the pro-
•   phet could, showing that  there is a spiritual perception  in
   beasts, as is often shown in dogs and horses, and by conse-
   quence, that the inferior creatures have also their spirits.  In
   verse 4 of  the next chapter it says that' God met Balaam,' 
154         niSTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

but how He met him is afterwards  explained, that it was by
spiritual vision; for Balaam himself says that ' he saw the
vision of the Almighty, falling into a trance, but  having  his
eyes open' (Numbers xxiv. 4).  An angel appeared to Gideon,
ordering him to assume the command of Israel.  The angel
is picturesquely represented as sitting under an oak, in Oph-
rah (Judges vi. 11).   Another angel appeared to the wife
of Manoah, and afterwards to Manoah himself (Judges xiii.),
announcing the birth of Samson.  On this occasion the angel
refused his name, and when Manoah brought out an offering
he  ordered him  to offer  it not to him, but to the Lord  (v.
16);  and the angel, having commanded him to lay the offer-
ing on a rock, touched it with his rod, and it burst into flame,
and he ascended in the flame  of the burnt-offering and dis-
appeared.   The Lord sent an angel of pestilence to  punish
David for  numbering the people in the pride of his heart,
and David, we are told,  saw this angel (2  Samuel xxiv.  16,
17),  This apparition is  more minutely related in 1 Chroni-
cles xxi.   An angel  appeared to Elijah in the  wilderness,
when fleeing from the wrath of Jezebel, and awoke him by
touching him, and showed him food (1 Kings xix. 5).   An
angel appeared again to Elijah (2 Kings i. 3).   An angel
of the Lord went out and smote the host of the Assyrians (2
Kings xix. 35).  An angel  appeared,  to  rescue  the three
men,  Shadrach,  Meshach, and Abednego from the fiery fur-
nace  (Daniel iii.  24) ;  and I think the la^t  appearance of an
angel in the Old Testament was to Daniel,  where he assured
Darius that ' the Lord had sent his angel  and had shut the
mouths of the lions' (Daniel vi. 22).
   From this review it appears that the dispensation of angels
ceased very much after the time of  the Judges.  Under  the
Kings, the prophets took their place as  God's heralds,  and
may  be  divided into  two classes,  as herald  prophets  and  •
writing prophets.  Those of one class were sent to kings, and
others, with direct announcements of commands or judgments;
those of the other class wrote down, or delivered to those 
INSPIRED DREAMS.
•  155
who wrote down, the prophecies regarding not only the He-
brews, but all surrounding nations.  I shall return to these.
We will now notice the dispensation by dreams and visions.
This extended through the whole Jewish  history, from the
earliest times to the latest, about 400 years before Christ, or,
according to Josephus, who claims later revelations of this
kind, through the Urim to about 200 years before Christ.
  There is a difference betwixt dreams and visions. Dreams
were communicated  in sleep, visions were presented to the
spiritual eyes — not necessarily in sleep, but in the ordinary
waking condition;  though in some cases the separating lines
are not very distinctly drawn, and the  vision  partakes very
much of the dream, and the  dream of a vision.  Dreams,
again, divide themselves into ordinary  dreams and inspired
dreams.  They are the inspired dreams only  which are pro-
phetic, and such are given not  only to-day,  but have  been
given in all ages  and nations, and  recognized as such, and
verified as such by their accurate  fulfilment.   In that fine
passage in Job iv. 13-16, in which  the perception of spirit-
ual presence is more visibly described than anywhere else in
 the whole world's literature, this is expressly stated : — 'In
 thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep fall-
 eth on men,  fear came upon  me, and trembling, which made
 all my bones to shake. Then a spirit passed before my face;
 the hair of my flesh stood up.  It stood still, but I could not
 discern the form  thereof: an image was before mine eyes,
 there was silence,  and I heard a voice, saying,' &c.
   The  first remarkable dream was given to Abraham when
 God  cast a deep terror upon  him,  and showed  him a vision
 of a smoking furnace and a burning  lamp passing amongst the
 portions of his offering, and announced to him the captivity
 of his descendants in Egypt; and of  his subsequent gift to
 them of the land ' from the river of Egypt to the great river,
 the river Euphrates.'  The next great nocturnal vision was
 that  to Jacob, at Beth-el, of^the ladder of angels reaching
 from earth to heaven; and in which God renewed his prom- 
156  -       niSTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

ise to Isaac that in their descendants should all the families
of the earth be blessed, — a promise, though given only in a
dream,  like so many other great promises,  so  wonderfully
fulfilled, showing the positive and substantial mediumship of
dreams (Gen. xxviii. 12).  Then came the dreams of Joseph,
which  gave such offence both to  his father and his brethren
(Gen. xxxvii.  5, 9,  10),  yet  completely fulfilled  in  Egypt.
The dreams, in Egypt, of Pharaoh's  chief baker and chief
butler,  and of Pharaoh  himself,  which Joseph  interpreted,
affecting the preservation of the whole people of that country
(Gen. xl. and xli.).  In the thirteenth chapter of Deuterono-
my, the reality of  inspired dreams is recognized, and the
' dreamers of dreams' which tend  to lead the people from the
true God are  to be put to death.   Gideon, in the seventh
chapter of  Judges,  hears a man in  the camp of Midian tell
a dream to his fellow-soldier, which he at once recognizes as
true.  God ceased to listen to the  enquiries of Saul in dreams
(1 Samuel,  xxviii. 6).  We have already seen that God com-
municated with Solomon in a dream (2 Chronicles, i. 7).
  The visions of the prophets appear everywhere throughout
their  writings, and  contain many wonderful  representations
of things and  people.  Jeremiah  was shown  an almond-tree
and a seething pot,  as signs (i. 11,13), baskets of figs (xxiv.).
See the wonderful  creatures and wheels described in Eze-
kiel  i.; in  chapter viii., the seventy ancients  committing
idolatry; in the ninth,  a vision of men with  drawn swords,
and a writer with an ink-horn to  record the number of the
people whom the armed men should slay.   In chapter xi. he
had  a view  in a vision of the  five-and-twenty men plotting
mischief.  In  chapter xxxvii. is his wonderful vision of the
valley full of dry bones made to live.  The  visions of Daniel
were equally wonderful and important.  That of the image
of gold, silver, and  brass, with legs of iron and feet of clay,
which  was  broken  to pieces by  the  stone cut  out  of  tho
mountain without hands, and  which stone  grew till it filled
the whole earth, is the vision not  merely of the rise and de- 
             GRAND SERIES OF PROPHECIES.           157

struction of a succession of kingdoms, but of the ever-grow-
ing and interminable kingdom of  Christ.
  The manner in which Daniel received such visions is fully
described  in chapter x.  After three weeks' penitence  and
fasting, being on the banks of the river Hiddekel, he lifted
up his  eyes and  saw a  man of most wonderful and brilliant
appearance; but his attendants, not being thus purified, and
their internal senses sharpened, saw nothing: but a great
quaking fell on  them,  and they fled.   Then  Daniel heard
him speak, but as he heard him speak, he says, he was  in a
deep sleep  upon his face on the ground.  The angel of the
vision then lifted him up, and set him on his knees and hands,
and after  he  had  spoken farther, Daniel arose,  but stood
trembling.  He  then shows  him the successive transactions
of the  Persian,  Grecian, and Roman dynasties, as they af-
fected Israel, till the coming of Christ.  For the full explana-
tion  of these prophecies,  the reader may consult  Bishops
Newton and Faber; Smith's ' Select Discourses,' 4to.; Corn-
bridge ; Sherlock's ' Uses and Intents of Prophecy,' &c.
  Beyond this general reference, I will only quote these par-
ticular ones from the ' Penny Cyclopaedia,' in general a suffi-
ciently skeptical authority: — ' Some of these prophecies re-
corded in the Bible were extant in books written long before
the events took  place to which they refer ; such as the pro-
phecies concerning Abraham's posterity, and their extraordi-
nary increase, their  sufferings  in Egypt 400 years,  their
sojourning in the wilderness, and their  possessing at length
the land of Canaan.   The prophecy concerning  Josiah (1
Kings  xiii. 2), who was expressly named 361 years before
the occurrence of the event in which he was the chief agent
(2 Kings  xxiii.  15, 16).   The  prophecy concerning Cyrus,
who is also mentioned by name (Isaiah xliv.  xlv.), 176 years
before  he was born and became king;  his conquests, his  re-
storing the Jews from exile, and his rebuilding Jerusalem.
The prophecy of Jeremiah concerning  the captivity, and its
duration of seventy years.   The  prophecy of  Daniel (viii }
  I. —14                                         V   'J 
158         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

concerning the profanation of  the  Temple  by Antiochua
Epiphanes, with a description of this man's temper, counte-
nance, &c, 408 years before the accomplishment of the event.
These prophecies relate to the Jewish people in particular;
but there are others relating to Tyre, and Egypt, and Nineveh,
and Babylon, which, in a manner no less striking, present, in
all their circumstances of delivery and  fulfilment, a  perfect
contrast to the supposed  predictions of the ancient pagans.
The  numerous prophecies  in the Old Testament respecting
the Messiah, with their accomplishment recorded in the New
Testament, and the prophecies of Jesus and His  Apostles,
are so familiar to the minds of all that they need not be speci-
fied.   The prophecies of the Old and New Testament, which
have been long fulfilled, afford altogether an amount of evi-
dence which, if really understood, it seems  impossible to re-
sist as proof of the Bible being a revelation from God.'
   The remarkable accuracy of the prophecies in these visions
has directed the concentrated force of the skeptics against
the authenticity of  the  book of Daniel,  and  our English
clergyman have now ventured to cast doubt upon it,  in so
doing rendering Christ an impostor, and the authenticator of
an imposture — for Christ tells His disciples that when they
' see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by the prophet
Daniel, set up in the holy place, they may know that the end
of Jerusalem  is come' (Matthew xxiv.  15  ; Mark xiii. 14).
They cast the same falsity on Ezekiel, who  makes God twice
pronounce the truth of Daniel, and place him in the same first
class of prophets with Noah and Job.  ' Though Noab, Daniel,
and Job were in it, they, should  deliver but their own souls'
(xv. 14).  ' Though  Xoah, Daniel, and Job were  in it, as I
live, saith the  Lord,' &c. (v. 20).
   I must leave the vast mass of wonderful prophecies running
all through the Old Testament to the writers just mentioned,
and others who have, by careful labors, shown how they have
been literally fulfilled in every nation mentioned, and still more
in those relating to Christ in Christ.  The destruction of As- 
MOSES  FORETELLS THE NATIONAL END.       159
 syria, the remains of whose palaces and temples we have seen
 dug up in our own time, more than two thousand years after
 their demolition ; the destruction of Babylon, and Egypt, and
 Tyre and Sidon, &c.   But there is one prophecy so remark-
 able that it ought to be particularly noted.  When  Moses
 had led up the children of Israel to the borders of the  Prom-
 ised Land, into which he was not allowed himself to enter,
 in those  solemn and  remarkable chapters of  Deuteronomy,
 especially  the twenty-eighth, in which  he recapitulates the
 Lord's past dealings with Israel,  and prophecies her future
 woes, Moses, before they were  really a nation, for they had
 yet no legitimate seat, displayed to them their whole history
 to the very last act of it, the  destruction of their  capital, and
 their own dispersion amongst the various peoples of the earth.
 He detailed the calamities contingent on disobedience to the
 great Power who had by so many signs and wonders brought
 them up  to the entrance of their promised country.  But the
 result was, in his mind, no contingent  result; for the Lord
 had declared through him that they would disobey and incur
 this ruin.  ' And the Lord said unto Moses, Behold thou shalt
 sleep with thy fathers, and this people shall rise up, and go a
 whoring after the gods of the strangers of the land whither
 they go to be among them; and will forsake me, and break my
 covenant which I have made with  them.....And I
 will surely hide my face in  that day for all the evils  which
 they shall have wrought.....And it shall come to
 pass, when many evils and troubles are befallen them, that
 this song shall testify  against them as a witness; for it'shall
 not be forgotten out of the mouths of their seed; for I know
 their imagination which they go about, even now before I have
 brought them into the land which I sware' (Deut, xxxi. 16-21)
  Clearly foreseeing this conduct on the part of the Jew.'
 as clearly were detailed at this time, by Moses to them the
 horrors  with which  their history  in the  Promised  Land
should close.  Fourteen  hundred  and  fifty  years before it
took place, he described all  the terrible events which their 
160         HISTORY OF TnE SUPERNATURAL.
latest historian Josephus  as  minutely describes  as  actually
taking place at the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.  They
were  to  be visited by locusts, by  famine, by  hunger,  by
nakedness,  by want of all things.  The stranger  within their
gates was  to  get  above them  very high, and  bring them
down very  low (Deut. xxviii.  43).   They were to be an iron
yoke  upon  their neck  till they had destroyed  them.   God
said he would bring a fierce nation  from afar against them,
to waste them, their corn, wine, oil and cattle, and besiege
them within their walls, and then were to come those horrors
with which every one familiar with  the dread history of the
destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans knows too well.
'And thou shalt eat the fruit of thine own body, the flesh of
thy sons and thy daughters, which  the  Lord thy God hath
given thee, in the siege, and  in the straitness wherewith
thine enemies  shall distress thee.   So  that the  man that is
tender among you, and  very delicate, his  eye shall be  evil
toward his brother,  and toward  the wife  of  his bosom,  and
toward the remnant of his children which he shall leave.   So
that he will not give to any of them the flesh of his children
whom he shall eat; because he hath nothing left him in the
siege, and in  the  straitness  wherewith thine enemies shall
distress thee in all thy gates.   And the tender and delicate
woman among you, which would not  adventure to set the
sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness and tender-
ness, her eye shall be evil toward the husband of her bosom,
and toward her son, and toward her daughter, and toward
her young one which cometh out from between her  feet, and
toward  her children which she  shall bear; for  she shall eat
them for want of all things secretly in the siege, and  strait-
ness which shall distress thee in all  thy  gates' (Deut.  xxviii.
53-57).   ' And it shall come to pass that as the Lord rejoiced
over you to do you good, and to multiply you ;  so the Lord
will rejoice over you, to destroy you, and to bring  you to
nought; and  ye shall  be plucked from off the land whither
thou goest to  possess it.  And the Lord shall  scatter  thee 
                FULFILMENT OF PROPHECY.            161

amongst all people, from one end of the earth unto the other'
(v. 63, 64).
   Every iota of these horrors took place.   Moses told them,
(Deut. xxviii. 68)  ' that they should be sold to their enemies
for bondsmen  and bondswomen, and no  man should  buy
them.'  This apparent contradiction was so literally fulfilled,
that Josephus tells us (Book vi. c. viii. of ' The Wars of the
Jews') that the soldiers of Titus — wearied of killing the
Jews, having destroyed  eleven hundred thousand, and  car-
ried ninety thousand into captivity — began to sell them for
slaves, with their  wives  and children, till they completely
glutted the market  and could find few purchasers.   All these
facts Josephus relates without referring to the prophecies of
Moses, as if they did not occur to  him.  Reland ' De  Spoliis
Templi' also assures us  that Terentius  Rufus fulfilled the
prophecy of Micah made long before (iii. 12) by running 'a
plough over Sion as  a field, and making Jerusalem as heaps,
and the mountain of the house as the high places of a  forest.'
   Now let us suppose our classical scholars finding in  Herod-
otus,  or in the .declaration of an  early oracle, a prophecy
of such unmistakable distinctness of the circumstances attend-
ing the subjugation of Greece, and the destruction of Athens
or Lacedemon, promised 1,450 years before  the  event, yet
tallying to the nicest particular with  the historic details of
the event — the condition of the dispersed Greeks remaining
fixed  as the prophet had fixed it,  even down to this our day,
eighteen  hundred  and fifty-nine  years,  or three thousand
three  hundred in all — what would be their rapture over this
marvellous display of prophetic power in their admired pa-
gans 1  But when  it  has occurred in the Hebrew history to
a tittle, and the Hebrews remain before our eyes  the livino-
testimonies of this unparalleled  prescience, so far is it from
striking them,  that  many of them, and clergymen too, are
laboring hard to represent these magnificent truths, stand-
ing proudly on the text of this history alone, as mere myths
       14 * 
162         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
and fables.   Such is the perversity of human reason, and of
' philosophy, falsely so called !'
  The mass of miracle presented throughout the whole He-
brew history is so enormous that I will not attempt to dwell
upon it.  The whole narrative, as I have  said, is one con-
crete  of  it.  There are, however, a few  particulars which
demand from a spiritualist some brief notice.   The miracles
performed  by Moses in  Egypt have a peculiar bearing on
modern  Spiritualism.   We are told  that  the  miracles per-
formed by the magicians were no miracles, but merely clever
illusions.   This  is the doctrine of Bishop Middleton in his
' Free Enquiry,' and of  Farmer.  They contend that no
miracles can be  done by any power except by God himself,
and that it is not to be supposed  that he would permit the
devil  to perform any, as it is upon miracles that religions can
alone be established,  and thus the devil  might at any time
place any false worship  on the same level as the true one, as
it regards miraculous  testimony. It has been shown, by many
and able arguments, that this is wholly groundless. The very
performance  of  miracles  by Moses  is  proof  that God, at
least, delegates the power of such performance ; and how far
he may have endowed  spirits  with  such  power as part of
their  nature, whether good or evil, we have  no  means of
deciding.   There is no such denial of such power through-
out the whole of revelation, but,  on the contrary, many in-
stances of its exercise by evil powers.   The fact of the devil
carrying Christ  to the  top of  the Temple is proof enough,
and the assertion of Christ that false prophets should come
armed with  signs  and  lying  wonders capable,  except for
God's own interference, of deceiving  the very elect, is still
more  proof.  The license which God has  given to the devil,
through  all time,  is one  of the  most puzzling marvels of
creation.
  Now, in  the account of the miracles in Egypt, there is not
a single syllable of warrant for believing the performances
of the magicians were illusions.  On the contrary, it is posi- 
                SKEPTICAL ABSURDITIES.              163

tively declared that when Moses  did  his miracles, ' the ma-
gicians did also in like manner with their enchantments; they
cast down every man  his rod, and they became serpents,'not
appearances of serpents  (Exodus vii.  11,  12).  They did
this in making serpents; in turning  water into  blood; in
producing frogs.   But God only allowed them to  exercise
this power through the devil, in order to confound and shame
them.  He put a limit to the power, and he defeated them
in the  attempt to  produce the meanest creatures of all —
lice !  The very things, insignificant and filthy, in which we
might have expected  the devil to succeed, he failed, was put
to shame, and the magicians exclaimed — 'This is the finger
of God.'   They acknowledged in those few words, that the
power in which they had worked  was not God's power;  that
his power was far above that of their master, and they gave
up the contest;  we  hear no  more of them.   Moses  and
Aaron went on to the performance of still  higher and more
terrible miracles —the swarms of flies, the destruction of the
crops, and fruits, and cattle, by  hail mingled  with  fire, by
pestilence : they brought up locusts, and darkness, and boils
on  man  and beast, and slew all the first-born of man and
beast, and all the time gave light and safety to the Israelites
in Goshen.
   But God had limited the infernal power even before the
lice.  The magicians could produce serpents, but they could
not recall them;  they could convert water into blood, but
could not reconvert  it into water, or the  Egyptians would
not have been compelled to dig for it.  They could not free
Pharaoh from these  plagues, or from the  frogs which went
up  into his  palace,  and  into the very  kneading-troughs.
Thus God only permitted the devil to a certain extent to
make his fame and glory more  conspicuous.
  The miracle of God's dividing the Red Sea before his peo-
ple has greatly pinched the skeptics, and made them  eager to
get rid of it.  It is said that, after Moses,  at the command
of God, had stretched out his rod over the sea, ' a strong east 
164         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
wind all that night made the  sea dry land, and the waters
were divided.'  These incredulous people have jumped spas-
modically at that  east wind.  Never were people so in love
with an east wind — a wind which  neither man nor beast
ever loved before  or since.   They say, ' Ah ! it was the east
wind, you see, which divided the water — a perfectly natural
cause.'  They are ready to take the wind as a cause, and
not God the cause of all  causes.  You would imagine, from
their account, that nothing was so common as that of an east
wind  cutting in two  seas ;  and still more wonderfully piling
them as ' a wall on the right and on the left'  of people hap-
pening, like the Israelites, to come up at the  lucky moment.
How ready are people to credit anything, however contrary
to nature,  when  it suits their purpose ! how steadily they
refuse  to God the sovereignty over his own kingdom, when
it does not suit them I   The cavillers, I dare say, would not
find half  so much difficulty in believing the  assertion of
Josephus, Callisthenes, Strabo, Arrian, and Appian, who all
declare, Callisthenes  being present,  that the  Pamphyllian
Sea divided before the army of Alexander of Macedon, when
God had  decreed to destroy  the Persian Empire  by him
(Josephus, Antiquities, B. ii.  c.  16; Arrian, B. i.  p. T2;
Strabo, Georg. B. xiv.;  Appian De Bel. Civil. B.  ii).  But
what of the  passage over Jordan.   Forty years later, after
the hundreds of thousands of Israelites had all that time been
supernaturally fed in a  desert of sterile sand, where their
clothes and shoes never wore  out, and where the rock smit-
ten by Moses gave forth deluging  streams, they came to the
Jordan, and there was no east wind to help them; but it
was in the warmth and serenity of summer, when  the river
overflowed all its banks,  and the fiat of Joshua again clave
the flood, and it  stood up right and left, and remained so
not  only till all the people had gone over, but till they had
piled up a monument of  stones on the bed of the river.
   Amongst  the  most wonderful  phenomena related in  all
parts of this history, are the descents of fire from heaven to 
VARIOUS MIRACLES BY PROPHETS,
165
destroy the rebellious, as  in the case of Nadab and Abihu,
who offered strange fire on the altar, and in the case of Korah
and his confederates, where the earth, too, gaped and swal-
lowed them up, and a terrible plague slew fourteen thousand
seven hundred of them ;  as it appeared in the  glory of the
Lord on Mount Sinai,' like devouring fire on the tops of the
Mount;' when fiery serpents  ran through the camp, and
destroyed much people;  when  it came down and consumed
the sacrifices of Solomon at the dedication of the Temple;
and of Elijah, in his grand contest with the priests of Baal,
in destroying the captains and their companies sent to Elijah
by Azariah (2 Kings i.);  and  many other such occasions.
  There are many therapeutic miracles in the Old Testament
which are made perfectly credible by similar things in modern
times.  In  the laws of Moses  there  are  regular rules laid
down for the miraculous cure of leprosy (Leviticus xiv,)and
of other ailments (xv.).   The very singular institution called
the 'trial of jealousy,' for the discovery of the unfaithfulness
of wives, which, where the woman was guilty, should ' enter
as a curse into her, and become bitter, and cause her belly
to swell, and her thigh to rot, and the woman to become a
curse among her people' (Numbers  v.).  Now such a law
laid down  permanently for a whole nation, must have been
a standing proof or disproof  of  the truth of  their history.
If no such miraculous power had attended the rite, the result
must have  been the perfect discredit of the law.  But so far
from this, no people are more, or continue to be more, attached
to this Mosaic law.  Many of the  cases of miraculous healing
in the Old  Testament are of a similar character to those in
the New.   The prophets anticipated our Saviour in some of
his most powerful  and beneficent  manifestations.  The par-
alysing, and  again  loosing of  the hand of King Jeroboam
by a prophet (1 Kings xiii.).  The miraculous affluence given
to the widow's  cruse  of oil and barrel of  meal by Elijah  (1
Kings xvii.), and by Elisha (2  Kings iv.).  The miraculous
feeding by Elisha of a hundred men (2 Kings iv. 43).  The 
166
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
restoration of the widow's son to life in  both these cases.
The dividing of Jordan by both  Elijah and  Elisha  repeats
the miracles of  Moses  and Joshua.   The  neutralizing of
the poison in the pottage by Elisha merely throwing meal in,
and the curing of the bad water at Jericho, in 2 Kings ii. 4,
like the curing  of the bitter water by Moses throwing the
branch of a tree into the  spring, an  instance of means  and
wholly incompetent by natural agency to the effect produced.
The cure of Naaman, the Syrian captain, by Elisha, by merely
commanding him to wash  in the Jordan, is  precisely of the
class of some of Christ's miracles.  The recall to life of a
man who was in haste  cast into  the tomb of Elisha, who
started up alive  on touching the  prophet's bones, is a won-
derful miracle, equal to many of the New Testament; and,
on the other hand, the destruction of a whole army of Assy-
rians, a hundred and eighty-four thousand in number, by an
avenging angel,  as promised by Isaiah the prophet to King
Hezekiah (2 Kings xix.), and executed in one night, is a fact
so astounding in its vastness, as to have stamped any history
as infamous in which it had been recorded without founda-
tion.   So of the two most startling  miracles, the command
of Joshua  for the sun  and moon to stand  still (Joshua x.
12), which we are told  took place for about the space of a
whole day;  and the turning*back of the shadow on the dial
of Ahaz (2 Kings xx. 10, 11).   Both of these, we are told
by natural philosophers, if true, would, by the sudden arrest
of the earth in its course, and in the case of Hezekiah, its
actually turning back, would  have destroyed by the shock
everything on the earth, and deranged the whole planetary
system.  Many ingenious  endeavors have been made by be-
lieving commentators to surmount these difficulties.   But we
have yet to learn that, in  either  case, the  earth did literally
stand still.  This idea  assumes  that God the Creator  and
Orderer of all nature, had  no other means of producing theso
appearances.   In the case of the dial of Ahaz, the phenome-
non seems to have been confined to that dial alonej and could 
OPENING OF THE  SPIRITUAL VISION.        167
have been effected by a single and local act of refraction, or
divergence of light  infinitely less extraordinary than the di-
viding of an ocean.   As to the greatest of all these  phe-
nomena, the asserted standing still of the sun and moon, by
what means they did remain apparently stationary 'for about
a whole day ' may not be readily explained, but may be just
as easy to divine power: and after the undoubted occurrence
of the rest of this great history of miracles, we may safely
accept it, however unexplainable.  We have only to assume
the omnipotence of God to satisfy ourselves that he was able
in Joshua's time,  and is able at this time, if he pleases, to
make  the sun and moon to  stand apparently in their places
for a  whole  day  stationary, without at  all disturbing the
planetary system.
   The divining cup of Joseph  (Genesis xliv. 15)—'Is not
this it by which my lord drinketh, and whereby, indeed, he
divineth,' would seem to show that Joseph and the Egyptians
at that day looked into the liquor in the cup, as is still done
in the East,  and has been done by many practisers of magic
in Europe, for revelations  by the appearance of  spiritual
figures and  symbols.  The oracular announcements  by the
Urim and Thummim, though a direct act of Deity, and there-
fore of the highest and most sacred kind,  seems also to have
an analogy with crystalomancy,  as the drinking cup with hy-
dromancy.
   There  were many cases  of the opening  up of the inner
senses through the outward  ones; so that those thus affected
could  see spiritual objects, and hear spiritual sounds.   Moses
was in such a condition  normally.  In  one  case he  was
addressed by a voice which is spoken of as more outward and
striking than usual: ' And when Moses went into the taber-
nacle  of the congregation to speak with the Lord, then he
heard the voice of one speaking to him from off the mercy-
seat, that was upon, the ark of  testimony, from between the
two cherubims' (Numbers vii. 89).  The Lord also  called
Samuel by an apparently outward voice (1 Samuel iii.).   In 
168         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
2 Kings vii., the Lord made the host of the Syrians, as they
besieged  Samaria, ' to  hear a noise of chariots, and a noise
of horses,' and they fled.   He opened up the spiritual vision
of the people to all manner of objects.   But perhaps the
most eminent and directly avowed case of  opening the inner
vision, is that of 2 Kings vi.  15, 16, 17, when the Syrians
came  to seize Elisha: 'And when the servant of the man of
God was risen early, and gone forth, behold an host encom-
passed the city, both  with horses and chariots.  And his
servant said unto him,  Alas ! my master !  how shall we do ?
And  he  answered, Fear  not,  for they that  be with  us, are
more  than they that be with them.   And Elisha prayed and
said,  Lord, I pray Thee, open his eyes  that  he may  see.
And  the Lord opened the eyes of the young  man, and he
saw;   and  behold, the  mountain was full of  horses  and
chariots of fire round about Elisha.'
   This is in  perfect accordance with all spiritual revelation
of the present day; that we  are  constantly surrounded by
the people of the spiritual world, and should see them,  were
not our spiritual eyes closed by fleshly and worldly obstruc-
tion.   The prophet immediately called on the Lord to exer-
cise the opposite  effect  of blindness  on the Syrian troops,
and the prophet whom they were come to seize, ' because,'
at his own  house in Samaria, ' he told the King of Israel the
words that the King of Syria spake in his bedchamber,' led
the troops into the midst of the town, and showed them, to
their  astonishment, where they were.
   There were various  cases, as in modern times, of persons
being lifted up in the air.   The prophets talk of being taken
up in spirit; and this was the case with  Ezekiel,  where the
Spirit took  him up,  and brought him in a  vision  by the
Spirit of God into Chaldea.   But the translation of  Enoch,
and still more of Elijah, was the crowning point of an actual
physical kind.   That such translations of prophets from one
place to another, were recognized facts, is shown by the fear
of  Obadiab,  the governor of Ahab's house, lest the  Lord 
INSTANCES  OF SPIRIT-WRITING.           169
should carry away Elijah, and leave him in trouble with the
King for  having announced  his presence (1 Kings  xviii.),
Elisha also produced one of those counteractions of specific
gravity in  inanimate substances which have so much offended
modern philosophy, in regard to tables and  other  things,
when he made the iron  head of  an  axe float in a river  by
merely throwing in a branch of a tree (2 Kings vi.  5, 6).
  Another parallel of modern phenomena was the appear-
ance of spiritual hand-writing, as in the celebrated case at
the feast of Belshazzar,  in Daniel v. 5, and in Ezekiel ii. 9,
10.  'And when  I looked, behold,  an  hand was sent  unto
me; and lo, a roll of a  book was therein, and  he opened it
before me, and it was written within and without,' &c.  We
have also inspirational writing and drawing, of which a very
striking example is that of  David.   Though the Lord for-
bade David to build him a house because he  ' had been a
man of war, and had shed blood,' yet he, through him, com-
municated all  the  plans and patterns for that  house, for its
portico and courts, and  treasuries, and  chambers, and inner
parlors, and for the courses of the priests and Levites, and
all the work of the service of the house, and for all its vessels.
By the same inspiration  he delivered all the gold and silver
for the candlesticks and lamps, and the tables of shew-bread,
and the flesh-hooks, and cups and  basons  for  the altar  of
incense, and the cherubims, and the chariot  of the cheru-
bims.   ' All this,' said David,' the Lord made me understand
in writing by his hand laid  upon me, even all the works of
this pattern' (1 Chronicles xxviii. 11,  19).
   This is  a very graphic description of the manner in which
spirit-writing  and spirit-warnings are given by the laying on
of spirit-hands.  The cases of the writing on the wall  of Bel-
shazzar's palace, and of the law on the tables of stone, are
examples  of direct spirit-writing without the intervention  of
any human hand; to numerous modern instances of which I
shall hereafter have to  draw the reader's  attention.   The
enlightened and  divinely taught Jews  also  recognized the 
170          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

inspiration from the spirit-world in art, and were  not so un-
grateful as the modern world in appropriating all excellence
in the arts of design and in  literature to itself.   God told
Moses that he had ' called by name Bezaliel, the son of Uri,
and had filled him with the Spirit of God in wisdom, and in
understanding, and in knowledge, and in all manner of work-
manship, to devise cunning works, to work  in gold, and in
silver,  and brass,  and in cutting of stones, to  set them, and
in carving of timber to work in all manner of  workmanship.
And I, behold  I  have given with him Aholiab, the son of
Ahisamach, of the tribe of Dan; and in the hearts of all that
are wise-hearted I have put wisdom, that they may make all
that I have commanded thee' (Exodus xxxi.  1-6).
  In the same manner all the wisdom of  Solomon, in which
he was declared  to  exceed all the kings of the earth, was
avowedly inspired by God, who appeared to him at Gibeon
in a dream; and again in the same manner when  he had
completed the temple, and  because  when  God  asked him
what he should give him, and he requested wisdom and un-
derstanding.  God gave him these above all men, and greater
glory and wealth  than any King of Israel before or after.  In
the egotistic and  unspiritual  nature of modern times, all this
wisdom and understanding would have been called Solomon's
own, and  he would have been pronounced a great genius and
a very able monarch, and the learned would have worshipped
his intellect, and  never thought of the Giver of this intellect.
But Solomon was declared  by the Jewish historian to have
been divinely ' instructed' in all this.   Such is the different
spirit of the two  ages.
  I  have hitherto confined  my observations  to  the sacred
side of the spiritualism of the Bible ;  but in Judea, as in all
other  nations,  spiritual life  had its unsacred, its  dark and
devilish side.   Even in  the midst of this  chosen  people,
chosen and  managed by God himself, to preserve the idea
of the  one true religion ,and destined to produce the Saviour
of all mankind, the devil set  boldly up his tabernacle beside 
PROOFS  OF FAILING FAITH.
171
that of the Lord.   The  spirit of evil was continually and
turbulently seen forever at work  in hostility to  God and to
his appointed leaders.  With the angel of  God  moving be-
fore them in a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by
night, with the glory of the  Lord in  fire and cloud con-
tinually bursting from the doors  of the  tabernacle,  with the
fires, and  plagues, and  serpents of retribution continually
following the  heels of their crimes, they as continually re-
belled against  both God and Moses, and asked whether they
had brought them up out of Egypt to perish  in the desert ?
Whether it was a small thing that Moses had brought them
there to kill them and make himself altogether a prince over
them ?  Well might Moses tell them  that  they had been a
rebellious people from the beginning.   And they continued
so to the last,  till they killed the Messiah, and brought upon
themselves the blood of  all the prophets, from the blood of
righteous  Abel  to  the  blood of  Zacharias, who  perished
between the altar and the temple.  But it was  not in mere
rebellion and  sensuality  that  the Jews offended, but  their
great crime was that, after they had had proofs of the being
and paternity of God, such as no nation in  the earth had,
they fell into all kinds of idolatry and devil-worship, into
sorcery and necromancy, and witchcraft — the dark side of
spiritualism.
   That all  these  proceeded  from the indefatigable agency
of evil spirits, Moses and the prophets, and God through
them, asserted most emphatically, and  at all times.   Idols,
they said, were  nothing, as St. Paul  did afterwards.  ' We
know that an  idol is nothing in the  world' (1 Corinthians,
viii. 4).   The very same words  are used by Isaiah, ' Behold
ye are of nothing, and your works of nought' (xli, 24), and
all of the prophets pour the utmost ridicule on idols, as life-
less, immovable, and empty things.  Isaiah calls  on them in
the same chapter to show  what will happen ;  to do good or
to do evil, that they may be  dismayed and believe it.  In
chapter xliv.  he describes at length the workman taking his 
172        HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
tongs and rule and making it of metal; or cooking his food
and baking his bread with some of the wood of a tree, and
then making a god of the rest,  and worshipping that which
cannot help itself, much less him.  In  chapter xlvi., he returns
to the charge, and describes the  maker of an idol carrying it
on his shoulder because it cannot walk.   Jeremiah (chapter
x.) is equally fierce on idols, which, being made, are obliged
to be fastened up with nails to the  wall, or they would fall
down. They are upright as the  palm-tree, but cannot speak ;
they must needs be borne, because they cannot go.  Every
prophet, and the  writers of the Apocrypha, are equally sar-
castic on idols as utterly nothing.
   But though idols are pronounced  to be nothing, idolatry
is not the less declared to be  a  something, and peculiarly
hateful to God as a disloyalty to Him, who is the real Maker
and preserver of men.   And whilst idols  are nothing, the
powers of darkness and every form  of worship of  them are
asserted as realities, and their worshippers pronounced worthy
of death.   Moses (Exodus xxii. 18) says,  'Thou shalt not
suffer a witch to live ;'  and the same is repeated in Deuter-
onomy xviii. 10, 11;  in Leviticus xix. 31, and in 1 Samuel
xxviii. 3, 9, the  strictest prohibitions  against maids and
women  with  familiar  spirits are  pronounced.  All  these
legislators and prophets, under Divine inspiration, asserted
witchcraft to be a real and demoniac power.  They did not
legislate against a nonentity.  All devil worship was declared
to be offered to real, spiritual entities.  (See Leviticus xvii.
7).   In Leviticus  xx.  2-6, the  pains  of death  are pro-
nounced against  those who give their seed to Moloch, and
go after wizards and such as have familiar spirits.   So  far
from  the doctrine maintained by Middleton and Farmer, that
God  only can perform miracles, being the  doctrine of the
Bible, we are warned  against dreamers  of dreams, and
workers  of signs and  wonders  that come  true, when they
teach anything but the truth of the Bible, because such things
are true,  but evil.   (See Deuteronomy  xiii. 1-5).   Such 
IDOLS AND IDOLATRY.
173
prophet or dreamer was to be put to death.   God is said to
allow the operation of such  spirits to prove the faith of his
people, and  see whether they  will be led away from  him.
Nay, he sendeth such to those who have disobeyed and fallen
away from him.   ' But the Spirit of the Lord departed from
Saul,  and an  evil spirit from  the  Lord troubled  him' (1
Samuel xvi.  14).   We find in  the time  of  the kings abun-
dance of false prophets whom the spirit of evil had intruded
amongst the true ones.  When  Jehosaphat was about to join
Ahab in war against Syria,  no fewer than four hundred as-
sembled to bid them  go, in the face of one true prophet,
Micaiah (1 Kings xxii.). And  in the same chapter, the Lord
is represented as calling for a 'lying spirit,' and sending him
to  mislead  Ahab.  We have  a  false  prophet, Hananiah,
prophesying falsely in opposition to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah
pronouncing his doom, which speedily  took place  (xxviii.
1-17).  Jeremiah  pronounces the  doom of another false
prophet in the thirtieth chapter. In Ezekiel xiv. 9, the Lord
declareth that when a prophet deceiveth, He the Lord hath
deceived that prophet, and  will destroy him.  Isaiah has a
 remarkable passage (viii. 19),  describing the  demonology of
 the Jews, 'And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them
 that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep and
 that mutter;  should  not a people seek unto their God ? for
 the living unto the dead ?  To the law and the testimony;
if they speak not according to this word, it is because there
is no life in them.'  The obscurity in this passage, 'for the
living unto the dead ?' is cleared up by Psalm cvi. 28,' They
 joined themselves also to Baal-peor, and unto the sacrifices
of  the dead.   It was seeking to  the gods of the  heathen,
 the souls of  their deified ancestors;  for  on the ancestral
 spirits all mythologies are based. The peeping and muttering
is rendered clearer by Isaiah xix. 4, where those  who have a
familiar spirit are  represented as speaking with a ' speech low
out of the dust,' as' out of the ground,' a ' speech whispering
out of the dust.'   This was a  striking likeness to the occur-
       15* 
174
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
rence when Saul consulted the witch of Endor; for though
it  was said to be the  prophet Samuel  who  appeared, he
seemed to  rise out of the  ground, like any other spirit of
the dead.
   All these matters are  treated as positive realities, and were
so obviously wicked in their nature that the practice of snch
rites was very justly interdicted under the severest penalties.
Those are the dark  sides of spiritualism, where men seek
avowedly to evil spirits and for evil purposes.   The Jews had
no excuse  whatever for  such demonology, because they had
had for ages the most  magnificent manifestations of the Spirit
of God ready to answer all proper and spiritual enquiries, by
prophets, by inspired dreams  and visions, and  by Urim and
Thummim.  They knew  that the demonology of the surround-
ing nations was demonstrated to them as utterly evil and de-
grading, a dishonor to God who was in their midst, accessible
and true, and  a defilement of their own souls.  They had
been warned by God in  fire and thunder, and by angels  and
prophets from time to time, from age to age, that these were
the snares by which  Satan sought to draw them from the
living God to the foul and unnatural practices of the  heathen.
Saul only sought to this forbidden shrine, when God himself
had refused to answer him ' neither by dreams, nor by Urim,
nor by prophets.'
   Under these circumstances, as regarded the Jews, it has
been of late years asked how can the Spiritualists reconcile
to virtue their practice of communion with spirits, and spirits
of the dead ?   The answer to that really important question
will be given in our next chapter on  the spiritualism of the
New Testament.   It may be sufficient here to state, that every
orderly and pious  Spiritualist believes the Mosaic law, as it
regards evil spirits, as completely in force now as ever. That
it  is and must be  so, on the simple ground  that voluntary
communications with evil spirits, whether in the body or out
of it, is evil, and must  forever remain so.  They who seek
snch communications now, as much as those who did it of old, 
THE  FAMINE  OF THE  WORD.            175
commit undoubted sorcery and necromancy, and are under the
law and condemnation of death.  No change of laws, of sys-
tems of ethics, of times or people, can  change the immuta-
ble nature of evil, and the contamination of contact with it.
But, in the proper place, I shall proceed to show that in the
new liberty of the gospel Christ himself, having become ' a
spirit of the dead,' has abolished  that portion  of  the law
which regards good spirits;  and Himself inaugurated the
practice of that intercourse for  good.  Many parts of the
Mosaic law, as instituted with particular reference to the Jews
and their peculiar besetments, and  sanitary necessities, have
fallen into desuetude from the mere touch of gospel liberty
and gospel strength derived from Christ.   We neither bind
ourselves to become patriarchs with a dozen wives, nor to the
rite  of circumcision, nor to the observance of the  Jewish
sabbath, nor to new moons and solemn feasts, nor to the re-
jection of pork nor hare, nor many other meats.   Yet for the
violation of many of these institutions death was equally the
penalty of the Jewish ritual.
   The Jews, notwithstanding the  unexampled displays of
Divine power and goodness amongst them, notwithstanding
the  love and patience of  God  so  beautifully  described by
Christ in  St. Luke  xiii. 34, ' 0 Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which
killest the prophets, and stonest them that art sent unto thee;
how often would I have gathered thy children together as a
hen  doth  gather her brood  under  her wings, and ye would
not 1' —still sought unto devils, and it was declared in Amos
that the oracle of God should be closed.  ' Behold, the days
come, saith the Lord, that I will send a famine in the land ; not
a famine of  bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the
word of the Lord;  and they shall wander from sea to sea,
and from the north even unto the east, and they shall ruu to
and fro to seek the word  of the Lord, and shall  not  find it'
(viii, 11, 12).   The same  famine  of revelation,  the same
closing  of the oracle  which for  more than three thousand
years had stood open to them, was announced by Micah and 
 176         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

 expressly because they had encouraged false prophets (iii. 6,7).
 ' Therefore  night shall be unto you, that ye shall not have a
 vision ; and it shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine ;
 and the sun shall go down over the prophets ;  and the day
 shall be dark  over them.   Then  shall the seers be ashamed,
 and the diviners confounded ; yea, they shall cover their lips ;
 for there is no answer of God.'
   This terrible privation, this night of Divine absence, ac-
 cordingly fell upon them, and if we regard  Malachi as the
 last of the prophets, it continued 397 years, till the coming
 of Christ.  What  is remarkable is, that the last  prophecy
 of the Bible, the last word even of the old dispensation, was
 the utterance of a 'curse,' which was not removed till the
 new dispensation entered with a  blessing, the announcement
 of the advent of the Messiah with the proclamation of 'Peace
 on earth and  good-will amongst men.'
   I have thus drawn forth the leading facts of the spiritual-
 ism of the Old Testament — a volume, as I have already said,
 extending over four thousand years, and altogether built on
 a basis of the supernatural.  Many have been the endeavors
 to overturn the verity of the narratives contained in it, both
 by enemies and  pretended  friends.   They remain unshaken,
 and must remain so,  unless we can conceive of a nation of
 madmen, and a succession of mad historians, preferring false
 legends to historic  truth — a supposition too monstrous for
 belief.  The annals of this nation were,  like the theology of
 the nation, totally different to  those of  any other nation in
 the world.   The Jews knew that  they were a people divinely
 selected for a great purpose, and their annals were, as I am
 going to show, not left to any one who pleased to write them,
 but were done by public authority, and  preserved as sacred
 records with every precaution of  security, by a race of men
also carefully selected, registered, and living under the pub-
lic eye.  Moses, when recapitulating to  them the history of
his own time, repeatedly  reminded them of the unique  char-
acter of their nation and national  events.   ' For what na- 
CHARACTER OF MOSES.
177
tion is there so great, who  hath God so nigh unto them, as
the Lord our God is in all things that we call upon him for?
And  what nation is there so  great that hath statutes and
judgments so righteous as all  this  land, which I set before
you this day?'  (Deuteronomy iv.  7, 8).   ' For ask now  of
the days that are past, which were  before thee, since the day
that God created man upon  the earth, and ask from the one
side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any
such  thing, as this  great thing is, or hath been heard like
it ?  Did ever people hear  the voice of God  speaking out
of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live ?   Or
hath  God assayed  to go and  take him a nation from the
midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, by won-
ders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched-
out arm, and by great terrors,  according to all  that the Lord
your  God did for you in Egypt before  your  eyes ?  Unto
thee  it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord
he is God,  there is no one  else beside him' (Deut.  iv. 32-
35).   ' Who is there  of all  flesh that hath heard the voice
of the living God  speaking out of the fire as we have, and
lived?' (v. 33).
   Those were the  remarkable words of Moses addressed to
the whole assembled  nation before he took his leave of them
forever.   They  were  not  the words  of  a  man, however
learned, who had been popular amongst them, and died and
was  forgotten, but of the man above all  other men, who is
represented to have  been the medium of those stupendous
wonders by which God  had  separated  the Jews from  the
Egyptians, rescued them from their dominion, and brought
them up to the entrance of the Holy Land ; of the man who
continued throughout every age of their history to  be hon-
ored and appealed to as their great leader and lawgiver, and
who is still so held and honored by the same people, though
now living more than  three thousand years after him, scat-
tered into all nations, according to his prophecy, and suffer-
ing the penalties of  the  crimes which he foretold  that they 
178         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

would  commit.  Never,  for  a moment,  have  this  people,
though Moses candidly told them that they had been all his
days a rebellious people (Deuter. xxxi. 27), rebelled against
his  memory or doubted one  iota  of  all  the marvels which
he has recorded.   Let us go from the  commencement of
this history to its close, and  see what is  the evidence of its
truth there.
  Josephus is the historian of the Jews at their fall, as Moses
was at their rise.   He was  a priest  of high  family, one of
the hereditary guardians of  the national records, as well as
a distinguished statesman and military leader.  He  was not
only learned in the Jewish learning, but in that of the East-
ern nations, and of Greece and Rome.   He was present at
the siege of Jerusalem as the captive of Yespasian, and saw
its destruction, and the dispersion of his people — saw and
recorded the literal fulfilment of the very prophecies of Mosea
which  I  have quoted, of Daniel, of other prophets, and of
Jesus Christ.   Now all the early Fathers and Christian his-
torians of  the  early ages bear one unanimous testimony to
the character of Josephus as a faithful historian.  Amongst
them Justin Martyr, Origen  against  Celsus, Eusebius, Am-
brose, Jerome, Isidorus, Cassiodorus, Sozomeu, &c,  and the
learned Joseph Scaliger in the Prolegomena (p. 7), to his
great work, 'De  Emendatione Temporum,' gives this testi-
mony to him: 'Josephus was  the most  diligent and  the
greatest lover of  truth of all writers ; and it is more safe to
believe him, not only as to the affairs of the Jews, but also
as to those that are foreign to them, than all the Greek and
Latin writers ; and this because his fidelity and compass of
learning  are everywhere conspicuous.'  Bishop Porteus en-
dorses this  assertion of  Scaliger, saying,  ' The  fidelity, the
veracity, and the probity of Josephus,  are universally allowed.
He had the most essential qualities for an historian, a perfect
and accurate knowledge of all the transactions that he relates;
he had no prejudices to mislead him in the representation of 
     TESTIMONY OF JOSEPHUS TO THE MOSAIC HISTORY.   179

them, and, above all, he  meant no  favor  to  the Christian
cause' (Lectures, vol. ii. 234).
   Now Josephus, by a remarkable and no  doubt providen-
tial circumstance, became the possessor of the  sacred annals
of the Jews, which had been preserved in the temple for ages.
Titus, when the  temple was about to be destroyed, allowed
him  to take possession  of these books, and preserve them.
He used them  to write his 'Antiquities of the Jews,' a his-
tory of the nation, in which  he confirms every  one of the
miraculous events of the  Bible ;  confirms its  spiritual and
miraculous character in the fullest sense.
   In his famous two books against Apion, he draws a striking
contrast betwixt the untrustworthy  writings of the Greek
historians,  and the necessary  fidelity of those of  his own
country.   He  shows  the  comparatively recent  rise of tho
Greeks.  'All  that concerns the Greeks, we may say, is of
yesterday  only.'   The Greeks, he says, truly acknowledged
that it was not they, but the Egyptians,  Chaldeans, and
Phoenicians, to say nothing of the Jews, who  preserved the
most ancient memorials and arts of mankind, and that  from
Egypt they themselves imported them.  ' That for those who
first introduced  philosophy and the  consideration of things
celestial and divine amongst  them, such at Pherecydes the
Syrian, Pythagoras and Thales — all with one consent agree
that they learned what they knew of the Egyptians and Chal-
deans, and  wrote but little.'
   In his third  section of his first book, he  exposes the  late-
ness and the unreliableness of Greek  writers, thus : —' How
can it then be other than an absurd thing for the Greeks to be
so proud, and to  vaunt themselves to be the only people that
are acquainted with  antiquity, and that have  delivered the
true accounts of those early times  after an accurate manner ?
Nay, who is there that cannot easily gather from the Greek
writers themselves, that they know but little on  any good
foundation, when they set themselves to write,  but rather
write their  histories from  their own  conjectures!  Accord- 
180         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

ingly, they confute  one another in their own books on pur-
pose, and are not ashamed to give us the most contradictory
accounts of the same things ;  and I should spend my time to
little purpose, if I should pretend to teach  the  Greeks that
which they know better than I already, what a  great disa-
greement there  is between Hellanicus and Acusilaus about
their genealogies ;  in how  many  cases  Acusilaus  corrects
Hesiod  ; or after what manner Ephorus demonstrates Hellan-
icus  to have told lies in the greatest  part  of his  history ; as
does Timeus in like manner as to Ephorus, and the succeed-
ing writers do to Timeus, and all the later writers do to  He-
rodotus.  Nor  could  Timeus  agree  with  Antiochus  and
Philistius, or  with Callias,  about the Sicilian  History,  no
more than do  the several writers of  the Atthidae follow one
another  about the Athenian affairs ; nor do the historians
the like that write the Argolics, about the affairs of the  Ar-
gives.   And now what need I say any more about particular
cities and smaller places, while  in the most approved writers
of the expedition of the Persians, and of the actions which
were therein performed, there are so  great differences 1 Nay,
Thucydides himself is accused by  some  as  writing what is
false, although he seems to have given us the exact history
of the affairs of his own time.'
  He tells them that, when  Homer recited  his poems, they
had  no  literature, and these  were,  by their own  accounts,
not written down till long after.   That the Athenians, who
pretended  to be aborigines,  allowed the laws of Draco to
be their oldest writings,  and that these were only of a date
a little prior to Pisistratus the tyrant, or of the era of Cyrus
and  Daniel;  which are  not more  than  600 years before
Josephus's own time, when  the Jewish warfare was at an
end.   'As for the Arcadians who make such a boast of their
antiquity,' he adds,  ' what need  I speak of them in particular,
since it was still later before they got their letters,  and learned
them, and  that  with  difficulty ?'  He then points out the
distinct  family and class of  the Hebrew priests, who were 
     DEFENCE OF THE BIBLE  HISTORY  BY JOSEPHUS.  181

the keepers of their annals and other sacred writings.  That
their genealogy was accurately preserved for two thousand
years.   That every care was taken  to  keep this genealogy
perfect  from  father to son.   That  in case of the captivity
of any of the priestly family,  their names and  births were
regularly transmitted  to Jerusalem for  entry;  and  if the
registration was interrupted by war  or invasion, the registry
was made np by evidence taken  from persons  still living.
These being the custodians of the records, the prophets, and
the writers,  as inspired by God;  or probably  they were
written  in the schools of the prophets under their dictation.
No one was  permitted of his  own accord to be a writer ;
and that there is no disagreement betwixt the writers of these
records  of different places or  periods.   In fact, the opposi-
tion which existed generally betwixt  the prophets and the
priests,  who  generally persecuted the prophets,  must have
acted as a check to any false statements by the one class, or
falsifications  or interpolations  by the other, had there been
any tendency to it, of which none, however, is, at any time,
apparent. After considering these facts, the following state-
ment of Josephus is most important:__
   'We  have not an innumerable number of books amongst
us, disagreeing from  and contradicting one another, as the
Greeks  have, but only twenty-two books, which  contain the
records of all the past times, which are justly believed to be
divine;  and  of them, five  belong to Moses, which contain
his laws and traditions of the origin  of mankind till his
death.  This interval  of time was little short of three thous-
and years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till
the reign of Artaxerxes, who reigned after Xerxes, the pro-
phets, who were after Moses,  wrote down what was done in
their  times,  in thirteen books.  The remaining four were
books containing hymns to God, and precepts for the con-
duct of  human life.   It is  true, an history has been written
since  Artaxerxes,   very  particularly,  but hath  not  been
esteemed of the like  authority with the former by our fore- 
182         HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
 fathers, because  there has not  been an exact succession of
 prophets since that time.  And  how firmly we  have given
 credit to those books of our own nation  is evident by what
 we do; for, during so many ages as have already passed, no
 one has been so  bold as either to add anything  to  them, or
 take anything from them, or make any change in them; but
 it becomes natural to all Jews, immediately and from their
 very birth, to esteem those books to contain divine doctrines,
 and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly die for
 them.   For it is no  new thing for our captives, many of
 them in number, and frequently in time, to be seen to endure
 racks  and deaths of  all kinds upon  the theatres, that they
 may not be obliged to say one word against our laws, and
 the records that contain them;  whereas, there are none at
 all among the Greeks who would undergo the least harm on
 that account, no, nor in case all the writings that are among
# them were to be destroyed; for they take  them to be such
  discourses as are framed agreeably to  the inclination of those
  who write them.  And they have justly the  same opinion of
  the ancient writers, since they  see some of the present gen-
  eration bold  enough  to  write  about such affairs, wherein
  they were not present, nor had concern enough to inform
  themselves about them from those that knew them ;  exam-
  ples of which may be  had in  this late  war of ours, where
  some  persons have  written histories, and  published  them,
  without having  been in the place concerned, or having been
  near them when the actions were done ; but these men  put a
  few things together  by hearsay, and  insolently abuse the
  world, and call these  writings by the  name  of  histories.'
  (Whiston's Translation.)
     Some of these latter remarks  are  aimed  at Tacitus, who
  Josephus  says  in his account of the wars of the Romans
  against the Jews, had taken liberally from  his history with-
  out any acknowledgment, as  he was in the habit of  doing
  with other historians,  and  had  added false accounts from
  others to them.  Josephus  then  proceeds  to  quote from 
AUTHENTICITY OF THE HEBREW HISTORY.      183
 Phoenician,  Chaldean,  Egyptian and Greek authorities,
 proofs  of the  antiquity of the  Jews.  He quotes  largely
 from Manetho the Egyptian, who wrote  in  Greek :  from
 Dius, the Phoenician historian ; from Menander of Ephesus,
 who wrote of Tyrian history; from Berosus the  Chaldean
 historian,  and  introducer  of the Chaldean astronomy and
 philosophy amongst the Greeks: and  numbers of  Greeks
 themselves.  Hermippus writing of Pythagoras, Theophras-
 tus, Herodotus of Halicarnassus; Cherilus, an old writer
 and poet;  Clearchus, the  Disciple of Aristotle,  quoting
 Aristotle; Hecateus of Abdera;  Agatharchides,  Theoph-
 ilus, Theodotus, Mnaseas, Aristophanes, Hermogenes, Euhe-
 merus,  Conon, Zopyrion,   Demetrius  Phalereus,  the elder
 Philo, Eupolemus, &c.
   Weighing well all these facts, it is very clear that, instead
 of the Hebrew history, amazing as it  is, being at all doubt-
 ful, it is the  only existing  history of  any nation which can
 be said to be fully and incontestably authenticated.   In no
 other nation have the same careful measures been taken to
 secure both the correct inditement and safe preservation of
 the public records.  Their  composition was not left to the
 option, caprice, or incapacity of any men who chose to make
 themselves historians; but this was consigned to a  public
 order of men, approved by manifest signs and announcements
 as the mouth-pieces of God ; men of holy lives and the most
 lofty and  unbendable characters, scorning  the  luxuries and
 the honors of the world, and coming forth from time to time
 to arraign  the most powerful monarchs  before the tribunal
 of Heaven, and to pronounce the most terrible judgments
 upon  nations;  men who feared  neither man nor devil, but
 God only.  These wrote, and another race, all of one familv
 all bound to preserve their blood pure by avoiding any  for-
 eign marriage, kept those   records.   And  not only these
 writers and custodians, but  the whole nation to a man were
ready to perish rather than  deny one word of the  truth of
the whole history.  Agatharchides, a Greek  historian, notes 
184
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
as a folly their inflexible adherence to their customs.  ' There
are a people called Jews, who dwell in a city the strongest
of all  other  cities,  and are  accustomed  to  rest on  every
seventh day, on which times they make no  use of their arms,
nor meddle with  husbandry, nor take care of any affairs of
life, but spread out their hands in their holy places and pray
till the evening.   Now it came to pass that when Ptolemy,
the son of Lagus, came into  this city with his army, these
men in observing their  usual  custom, instead of guarding
the city, suffered  their country to submit itself  to  a  bitter
lord, and their law was openly proved to have commanded a
foolish practice.   The accident taught all  other men but the
Jews to disregard such dreams as these were,  and not to
follow the like idle suggestions delivered as a law.'
  It is on this basis of truth, and of truth set forth with a
simple boldness, and guarded in public institutions of sacred
authority,  and extending  through long ages — a truth at-
tested by  successive generations  prompt  for martyrdom in
its  cause, of a people reaching down to  our own day,  and
standing as an antique adamantine column amid the far dif-
ferent scenes  and notions  of  the  modern  world ;  it is hence
that the Bible has bid defiance  to all  those who  hate its
ethics and dread its  law of future retribution.   In  vain has
it been assailed on all sides  and by all  conceivable arts, by
sneerers and philosophers, by wits and pretenders.
   It  has been gravely asserted that these its sacred  books
were all  burnt in the  destruction of the temple by  Nebu-
chadnezzar, and  therefore that the chain of its evidence is
defective.  That Ezra  was divinely inspired  to  rewrite the
whole of  the  laws, and did so write them, is  founded  on the
fourteenth chapter of the second book of Esdras, v. 21, where
he says, ' Thy law is burnt,' and the following verses, in which
he says he is inspired by the  Holy Ghost  to rewrite all  that
had been done since the beginning of the  world, and that he
did so.  This, and the fables of the Talmud, are the founda-
tions upon which  Dr. Prideaux  has  built his theory  of the 
                  THE SACRED BOOKS.               185

destruction of the sacred books of the Hebrews,—a theory
totally opposed to the plainest evidence of Scripture, and of
Josephus.  The law on  the  two tables of stone, which was
probably consumed with the  ark in which it was laid  up, at
the burning of the temple by  Nebuchadnezzar, consisted only
of the Decalogue, a  minute  section of the laws of Moses,
which are diffused  throughout Leviticus, Deuteronomy, and
Numbers.  But the laws of Moses at large, the Psalms, the
historic  books,  the Proverbs,  the Canticles, Job, the Pro-
phets, &c, were books read by all the people, and undoubtedly
existed  in many copies  in  the public hands.   In the last
chapter of the second book of Chronicles, ver. 17, 18, 19,
and in the last chapter of the second book of Kings, are the
full relations of the burning  of the temple, and the carrying
away of the silver and  gold,  and all the utensils, and all the
precious  things to Babylon,  but not a word of the burning
of the sacred books.   On the return from the captivity, and
the rebuilding of the temple by authority of Cyrus, Darius
and Artaxerxes (Nehemiah  viii.  1-8), it is  said, ' All the
people gathered themselves  together  as  one man  into the
street that is  before the water-gate, and  they spoke unto
Ezra the scribe to bring the  book  of the law of Moses which
the Lord  had commanded to Israel.  And Ezra brought the
law before the  congregation both of men and women, and
all  that could  hear with understanding, upon the first day
of the seventh month.   And he read therein before the
street that was before  the  water-gate, from  the  morning
until midday,' &c.
  Now, here is  not a word of so important a fact as that this
law of Moses  had been destroyed, and that this  was a re-
written law.  Neither can we suppose that it required from
morning  till midday  to read the  mere Decalogue, the law
really burnt, but still remaining as included in the books of
the law at large.  The  very statement  in the second Apoc-
ryphal book of Esdras of his having rewritten the law, is stul-
tified by  the ninth chapter of the first book, which agrees
      16 * 
186         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
entirely with the passage just quoted from the eighth chapter
of Nehemiah.  Esdras ix. 39,  ' And they spoke unto Esdras,
the priest and reader, that he would bring the law of Moses
that was given of the Lord God of Israel,' &c.  And Esdras
brings it and reads it (40, 41), precisely in the same manner
and for the same  length of time.   Whoever wrote this pas-
sage  of the second book of  Esdras was unfortunately too
little  acquainted  with  the first.   He talks of the rewriting
of a law which the first book, and all  other  books show to
have  been  already  extant.   This empty assertion is  thus
proved both false and foolish ; we have,  ever and anon, the
literature of some ancient nation brought forward to ruin
the chronology of  the Bible, or its  theories of man and
his origin;  but these vaunted  discourses, heralded  with
much  pomp and learning, vanish  necessarily  into dreams
and smoke.  Chaldea, Egypt, India,  and China  have been
all subpoenaed in vain ;  and  the Bible, the invincible bul-
wark of life  and immortality, the inexhaustible treasury of
spiritual fact,  remains firm,  fresh,  young, unscathed,  un-
fractured as ever, — the oldest and the newest  book in the
world.
   The latest attempt of this kind is not even yet sent to its
quietus.  Certain Russian, German, and French very learned
philologists have been now for  some  years laboriously en-
gaged on a discovery which they imagine themselves to have
made.  A  M. Chwolsow, a Russian, has announced the dis-
covery of a Chaldean work on The Agriculture  of the Naba-
teans, by a certain ancient Kuthami.  This Kuthami is declared
to be a Nabatean (that is, according to Chwolsow, a Chaldean
author), who gives  glimpses  of things of much earlier date
than the chronology of Moses.   Adarai is indeed recognized
as Adam considerably down  in the chronological list of the
Nabateans.   A M. Quatremeres, a Frenchman, and a number
of German learned men, have been profoundly at work pros-
ecuting enquiries into this wonderful work, when at length
M. Renan, a Frenchman, has somewhat  spoiled this learned 
    RECENT STRANGE ERROR  AS TO THE NABATEANS.  187

hypothesis by proving that the book is but of the second age
of the Christian era, and that any references that it has to a
vast antiquity are thin and baseless, as light vernal mist.  In
fact, had M. Renan himself simply referred to a plain pas-
sage in Josephus's ' Antiquities of the Jews,' B. I.  xii. 4, he
might at once have demonstrated that these profound literati
might have saved themselves  the whole of  their labors.
Speaking of Ishmael, he says, ' When the lad was grown up
he married a wife, by birth  an Egyptian,  from whom  his
mother was herself originally derived.  Of this wife were born
to Ishmael twelve sons, Nabaioth, Kedar, Abdeel, Mabsam,
Idumas, Masmaos, Masaos, Chodad, Theman, Jetur, Naphe-
sus, Cadmas.   These inhabited all the country from the Eu-
phrates to the Bed Sea, and called it Nabatene.   They  are
an Arabian nation, and name their tribes from these, both
because  of  their own  virtue, and because of the divinity of
their father Abraham.'   Thus, the Nabateans are simply the
Arabians, as Diodorus  Siculus also shows in his nineteenth
book, sixth chapter, and the work of  Kuthami is simply and
bona fide an Arabian  original, and not a translation from  the
Chaldean at all.   Thus, on an Arabian work of the second
century  of Christianity have these learned men been building,
much as the Chaldeans built  the tower of confusion,  with a
top intended, if not to reach Heaven, at least far higher than
Moses and  his Anthropology. 
188
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
         CHAPTER VII.

THE  SUPERNATURAL OF THE APOCRYPHA.
If any one think these things incredible, let him keep his
opinions to himself, and not contradict those who, by such
events, are incited to the study of virtue.
                                       Josephus.
  IF we cannot ascribe the same authority to the whole of the
    books  of the Apocrypha  as we  can to those of the
canonical books of the Old Testament, the  same spirit  of
faith in the supernatural runs  through them, and many of
the miraculous  events  related, are corroborated by other
writers, as  Josephus  and Philo- Judaeus.   Many  of the
passages are authenticated by the quotation  of them by our
Saviour. Such are those passages in the first chapter of the
second book of Esdras, which  are  quoted so expressly and
almost verbatim by Christ in Matthew xxiii.  ' I gathered
you together, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her
wings' (30).   ' I sent  unto you my servants, the prophets,
whom  ye have  taken  and slain,  and torn  their bodies in
pieces, whose  blood  I will require  at  your hands saith the
Lord' (32).   ' Thus saith the  Almighty, Your house is left
desolate' (33).  Compare Matthew xxiii. 34, 37, 38.
   Next to the Bible some of the finest writing in the world
is  to  be found in the Apocrypha,  a sufficient proof of  the
Divine inspiration of  very much of these  books.   It is very
remarkable  that to the Bible,  a book  which  so many would
persuade us had little  or no Divine authority, we must go
for the  most solemn  and splendid poetry, the most noble 
            THE VISION  OF THE  SON OF GOD.         189

ethics, the most sublime imagery, the most profound maxims
of wisdom and rules of life, and the most clear and correct
narration of ancient events.  Much of the same  character
rests on  the pages of the Apocrypha.   What a splendid
dramatic incident is that  with which the third chapter of
Esdras opens, when Darius had given a  great feast to all
his governors,  captains, and lieutenants that were under him
from India to Ethiopia, of a hundred and twenty-seven pro-
vinces, and Darius retiring to his bed could not sleep 1  And
he called three young  men of his body-guard to entertain
him; and they propounded to him the three questions of the
comparative power  of wine, kings, and women.  And when
he had called all his governors and princes of Media and
Persia, he had these three postulates argued by the three
young men,  and the  palm was bestowed on Zorobabel,  who
pronounced for women, and above them for the truth.  What
a proud scene  is that, when the people shouted, and the
young man claimed as his reward the king's  promise  to re-
build Jerusalem 1 and ' Darius stood up and kissed him, and
wrote letters for him unto all the treasurers, and lieutenants,
and captains, and governors to conduct safely on their way,
both him and  all  those who should go with him to build
Jerusalem.'   There is nothing finer in all history,  and Jose-
phus, who confirms the occurrence as a fact, luxuriates in it
in his 'Antiquities.'
   Many of the visions  and prophetic passages are  worthy
of a place in any canonical book.  Such is that of the Son
of God (Esdras ii. 42-47).  ' I, Esdras, saw upon the Mount
Sion a great people, whom I could not number, and  they all
praised the  Lord with songs.   And in  the midst of them
there was a  young  man of a high  stature, taller than all the
rest, and upon every one  of their heads he set crowns, and
was more exalted, which I marvelled at greatly.  So I asked
the angel, and said, Sir, what are  these ?  And he answered
and said unto me, These be they that have put off the mortal
clothing, and  put  on the immortal, and have confessed the 
190
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
name of God;  now are they crowned,  and receive palms.
Then said I unto  the  angel, What young  person  is it  that
crowneth them, and giveth them palms in their hands ? And
he answered and said unto me, It is the  Son of God, whom
they have confessed in the world.'
  The image of a woman in a field lamenting for her son, and
refusing to be comforted, as shown him  by Uriel, and which
suddenly changes  into a city, Jerusalem, which (in truth, la-
mented for her son, who should come and be slain), is very fine.
  In the Old Testament, there are many exquisite pieces of
ridicule  of idols,  but there  is nothing more admirable than
the description  of the origin of idolatry in the thirteenth and
fourteenth chapters of the Wisdom of  Solomon.   The ele-
ments are shown to have seduced  some to  forget God in the
works of his  hands; others, more stupid,  took  ' the very
refuse amongst those which served to no  use, being a crooked
piece of wood, and full of knots, and carved it into a god;'
others, lamenting a dead son, or desiring  to flatter a king,
employed the highest sculptors,' and so the multitude, allured
by the grace of the work, took him for a god who but a little
before was but honored as a man.'  The  prominent art of the
Greeks  seems  glanced at here.  In Baruch, again, the idols
are overwhelmed  with satire.   ' Yet cannot these gods  save
themselves from rust and moths, though  they be covered with
purple raiment.  Men wipe their faces,  because of the dust
of the temples, when there is much upon them ; and he that
cannot put to death one that offendeth him, holdeth a sceptre
as though he were a judge of the  country.   He hath also in
his right hand a dagger and an axe, but cannot deliver him-
self from  war and thieves' (vi. 12-15).
  The Book of Tobitis one of the most interesting  books of
antiquity.  In it,  we have families of the exiled Jews living
in that Nineveh which has been in our time dug out of its
ruins, in which  it  was buried soon after by Nebuchadnezzar.
Nineveh, Babylon, and the unfolding of the records of Egypt,
how have they of late years  confirmed  the historic truth of 
        PROPHECY  OF JONAH REGARDING NINEVEH     191

the Scriptures, as Bruce's travels in Abyssinia formerly con-
firmed the truth of the visit of the Queen of Sheba to Solomon !
One after another the ghosts of the dead cities and nations
arise to confouud the theories of skeptics.
  In the Book of Jonah we find the Ninevites  repenting at
the announcement of the  prophet, and we conclude that the
threatened doom of the city is reversed.   But in Tobit we
find that this doom  was only deferred.  Jonah had proclaimed
this destruction in  forty days, and was very angry that the
event did not then  occur.  But the Jews understood the pro-
phecy better.  Tobit, before he died, called his son and his
grandson to his bedside, and bade  them,  after his  death,
depart from  Nineveh, and go into Media, and  dwell  there;
for, said he, 'I surely believe those things which  Jonah the
prophet spake of Nineveh, that it shall be overthrown.' The
forty days (Jonah iii. 4) were understood to mean forty years,
and Tobias accordingly quitted Nineveh for Ecbatana, and, we
are told, lived to see Nineveh destroyed, according  to  the
prediction of Jonah.
  In short, we have an angel coming down in human form to
bring about the restoration to sight of the pious and generous
Tobit, and the fortune and happiness of his son.  We  have a
case of demoniac  possession, and the devil expelled  by the
mediumship  of the angel.  We have prayers  heard  simul-
taneously, by parties whose lives are to be connected,  on the
same day in  Nineveh and Ecbatana.  The touches of genuine
nature  in Tobit, the mention  of the dog  going the journey
with Tobias  and  the angel,  and the sharp taking  up  of old
Tobit by his wife Anna, have always made this book a favor-
ite.  The spiritualism is as remarkable as its nature.
  In the second book of Maccabees we have the  wonderful
apparition to Heliodorus in the temple  of Jerusalem   Se-
leucus, the King of Asia, hearing of  much money  laid up in
the temple,  sends  Heliodorus to fetch it.   Onias   the high
priest,  informs him that it is  the money  of widows and  or-
phans,  and, therefore, doubly sacred; but he insists  on  taking 
192          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

it. On appearing in the temple with a strong military guard,
to force the  treasury, 'there appeared  unto them an horse
with a terrible rider upon him, and adorned with a very fair
covering, and he ran furiously and smote at Heliodorus with
his fore feet, and it seemed that he that sat upon the horse
had complete harness of gold.   Moreover, two other young
men appeared  before him, notable in strength, excellent in
beauty, and comely in apparel, who stood  by him on either
side, and scourged him continually, and gave him many sore
stripes. And Heliodorus fell suddenly down unto the ground,
and was encompassed with great darkness;  but they that were
with him took him up and  put him into a litter' (iii. 25-27).
The high priest prayed for his recovery, which was granted,
and we are told that on the return of Heliodorus to Seleucus,
the king wished him to go again, and make a second attempt;
but Heliodorus told him that, if  he had  an  enemy or a traitor
who deserved punishment, the embassy  was a proper one for
such, but  for no one else.   Some people argue that the ap-
parition to Heliodorus is not authentic,  because it is not also
mentioned by Josephus, not being aware that this very book
of Maccabees,  the second,  is attributed to  Josephus himself,
being believed  to be his book, 'De Maccabaeis.'
   In the second book (i. 19), we are  told that the  priests
took  the sacred fire from the  altar and  hid it in a pit, when
they  were carried captive  into  Persia,  and on their  return
Nehemiah sought for it, but found only water, which, how-
ever, being thrown  on the sacrifices on  the altar, burst into
flame.  In the fifth chapter of  the same  book, on the ap-
proach of Antiochus Epiphanes, the  terrible persecutor of
the Jews, ' for  the space of forty days, there were seen horse-
men  running in  the air, in cloth of  gold, and  armed with
lances, like a band  of soldiers.  And troops of horsemen in
array, encountering and running one against another, with
shaking of shields and multitude of pikes,  and  drawing of
swords, and glittering of golden ornaments, and  harness of
all sorts.'  In the eleventh  chapter appears the  apparition 
        MIRACLES RECORDED IN THE APOCRYPHA.     193

of a single horseman  in white clothing and  armor of gold,
for the rescue of the people from Lysias, the  captain of An-
tiochus Eupator.   Some of these miracles are confirmed by
Josephus and Philo-Judaeus.   In Bell  and the Dragon, we
have a most startling case of the carrying of human  bodies
through the air.   Habakkuk is said to  be  carried by the
hair of his head to Babylon to bear food to  Daniel  in the
lions' den.
   Such is the spiritualism of  the Apocrypha.  To whatever
extent its miracles may be credited, it is clear that the same
faith in miracles remained firm in  the Jews, even in these
their dark days, when a famine  of prophets was come upon
them, and according  to  the words of Esdras, ii. 5, ' The
way of truth was hidden,  and the land barren of faith.' If
this degree was barrenness, what is the barrenness  of our
time ?   In the worst,  the most corrupted, the most forsaken
condition of the Jews, they had still an  amount  of faith in
their history, their God,  and their destiny,  which  puts  to
shame modern so-called enlightenment.
I. —17 
194          HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
            CHAPTER  VIII.

THE  SUPERNATURAL OF THE  NEW  TESTAMENT.
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Socrates.—It is necessary to wait till some one teach us how
to conduct  ourselves towards  gods and men.  Alcibiades.
But when shall  this time arrive, 0  Socrates? and who  shall
teach us this ?  for it seems to  me that it would be sweet to
see this man, whoever he may be.   Socrates. This is he who
takes care of thee. .  . .  and, indeed, admirable appears to he
his regard  for thee. —  Dialogues  of Plato,  the Second Alci-
biades.  Select Cambridge edition,  pp. 255, 256.

The strange things which that strange man says,  and which
some others repeat after him, will not fail, sooner or later, to
be  believed,  and  finally  become the universal opinion.   And
why ?   Because truth is  truth:  because it corresponds to
everything,  satisfies  everything:  because,  both  in  general
and in detail, it is better adapted  to us than error; because,
bound up by the most  intimate relations with all the  order
in the  universe, it has in our interests and wants a thousand
involuntary advocates; because everything demands it, every-
thing cries after it; because falsehood, which nt first appeared
to  benefit all,  has ended  by injuring  nil.   Combinations of
which  it is  impossible  to  give an  account, ami of which
God only has the secret, secure that victory.  It is thus that
truths  the most combated, and at  first sustained by organs
the most despised, end by becoming  in their turn popular con-
victions. — Vinet's  Vital Christianity, p. 68.
rnilE eloquent Swiss theologian whom I have just quoted,
 i-  says also, 'A little more than 1800 years ago, a man ap-
peared in an  obscure corner of the world  ...  He  preached
a religion ;  it is not natural religion ; — the  doctrines of the
existence of  a  God,  and the immortality of  the  soul are 
          ORIGIN AND POWER OP CHRISTIANITV.       195

everywhere taken for granted in his words, but never proved.
They do not consist of ideas deduced from the primitive con-
cessions of reason.  What he teaches, what forms the  foun-
dations and essence of his system, are things which confound
reason ; things to which reason  can find no access.  It pro-
claims a God upon earth, a God-man, a God poor, a God
crucified.  It proclaims vengeance overwhelming the  inno-
cent, pardon raising the guilty from the deepest condemna-
tion ;  God himself the victim of man, and man forming one
and the same person with God.   It proclaims the sovereignty
of the grace of God, and the entire pardon of man.
   ' I do not soften  its teachings.   I present them in their
naked force.  I  seek not to justify them.   No, you can, if
you will, be astonished and alarmed at these strange dogmas;
do not spare yourself in this particular.   But when you have
wondered  sufficiently  at their strangeness, I shall present
another thing to your astonishment.   These strange doc-
trines have conquered the world.   Scarcely made known in
poor Judea, they took  possession  of learned Athens, gor-
geous Corinth,  and proud  Rome.   They found confessors
in shops,  in prisons,  and in  schools; on  tribunals and on
thrones.   Vanquishers of civilization, they triumphed over
barbarism.   They caused to pass  under the  same yoke the
degraded Roman and the savage Scandinavian.   The forms
of social life have changed, society has been  dissolved and
renewed — these  have  endured.  Nay,  more,  the  church
which  professed  them  has  endeavored  to  diminish  their
power by  beginning to corrupt their purity.   Mistress of
traditions, and  depository of knowledge, she has used her
advantages against the  doctrines  she ought to have de-
fended ; but they have endured.   Everywhere,  and  at all
times, in cottages and  in palaces, they have found souls to
whom a Redeemer was precious and regeneration necessary.
Moreover, no other system, philosophical or religious, has
endured ;  but this never grows old.   Those who embrace it
never find  themselves behind their age ;  they understand it, 
196          HISTORY OP  THE SUPERNATURAL.

they are understood by it, and  aid its  progress.   The reli-
gion of the cross appears nowhere disproportionate to civi-
lization.   On the contrary, civilization advances in vain ; it
always finds Christianity before  it' (pp. 83, 84).
  This  great truth, this highest revelation  of  spiritualism,
which thus startled man when it arrived, had yet  been an-
nounced from the creation of the world, and was expected
as the fruit of the ages, as the object of all prophecy, by the
men  whom  it fell upon and astonished.   In the very hour
when man  fell by the instigation of the old serpent, it was
announced that the seed of  the  woman should bruise the
head of this serpentine  nature.   The  antidote  was pointed
out at the moment of the incidence of the great human mal-
ady. Israelite and  pagan equally expected it.  In the  words
of St. Paul, 'The whole  creation  groaned together for the
manifestation of the sons of God.'  All nature, sick, yearned
for the Divine and  only capable Physician.   Man fallen and
demonized, the union with heaven broken,  a kinship and fel-
lowship  with hell  established,  became tyrannous, sensual,
bloody-minded, cruel, and vengeful.   He became a tyrant to
himself, to his fellow-men,  and to all inferior  and dependent
creatures.  The history of his deeds is, therefore, in all times
and countries, the history of a hell.   Carnage, cruelty, both
in peace and war;  cruelty in the palace, in the school, in the
tribunal, and the dungeon ;  cruelty in  the  amphitheatre, in
sports and pastimes, in the domestic dwelling and in the con-
nubial bond ; in the character of master, of king, and magis-
trate ;  over children and servant and  slave, as well as in the
battle-field, the siege, the  violated city, the  surprised camp,
the furious carnage, and the after-time of cold blood; cruelty
everywhere,  deceit everywhere, robbery everywhere,  stupid
idolatry and brazen blasphemy everywhere ;  everywhere  all
that is loathsome, all that is filthy, all that is hateful in spirit
and  vindictive  in opinion — that is  the  history of  man —
the history of a  devil, for nearly six thousand  years.  The
only light which has broken  this darkness, which  has made 
THE  SIBYLS.
197
this pandemonium of foulness  and wickedness hideous, that
it might terrify men out of it, the only loving-kindness which
has descended to soften this savageness  and heal this putrid
sore of humanity, has been Christianity.  In the four-thous-
andth year of  the desolation of the unhappy earth it came,
luminous as heaven, kind and patient as God himself; yet it
continues still, but as light shining in darkness, and the dark-
ness comprehendeth it  not.   God  in Christ  came to his own,
and his own received him not.  Yet the prophets had pro-
claimed this advent in every age, and the  nation taught by
God at least  professed to believe  the prophets.   In the
strange  chiaro-oscuro of learned  Greece and Rome,  in that
wonderful mingling of light and darkness, Socrates, as  we
have seen in the quotation  from Plato, looked for Him who
should teach us how we ought to conduct ourselves towards
gods and men.   That  spirit which  attended him whispered
this celestial news to his spirit; and his  great soul, in its sor-
rowful but patient depths, felt the need and the assurance of
the tidings.   The Sibyls, those wonderful women, springing
in  mystery from the gloom of mysterious ages ; keeping up
a perpetual succession  till  near the advent of Christ, never
growing old  in their  phoenix-like revirescence;  despised,
like  the  whole vatistic order, till  too  late;  wasting their
precious leaves on  unapprehensive kings; these with one
voice had proclaimed the coming Saviour  amongst the hea-
then nations.   Whether prophesying to the Greeks  the fall
of Troy and the epic of Homer, whether issuing from Persia
or Chaldea, whether named of Canaan or Macedon, whether
named Erythsea, or Amalthea, Libyssa or  Demophile, they
proclaimed  with  one  consecutive  voice one  God  and one
Christ.   If we could  accept  all  that Christian writers have
recorded  as  Sibylline  vaticinations,  the Hebrew prophets
themselves have not left so clear predictions of the history
and  fate of the Messiah.   They give us the miracles of  the
Saviour's birth, of  the loaves and fishes, the  restoration of
the  deaf and  dumb, the lame, the dead ;  Christ's  trial, his
       17* 
198          HISTORY OP  THE SUPERNATURAL.
crown of thorns, the insults upon him, and the crucifixion.
All this Lactantius quotes as genuine.  He asserts that he
draws his matter from the same books as Virgil and Cicero
did ;  but what we draw ourselves from Virgil and Cicero we
know must be true, for it preceded Christianity.   To these
pagan prophets  we  shall return in their order;  but I may
remind the reader of the use which Virgil avowedly makes
of the Sibylline announcements in his Pastoral of Pollio, so
vigorously rendered by Dryden.  The whole is like a chap-
ter of Isaiah ; I shall quote it in its  place; here these lines
may suffice :—
      Mature in years, to ready honors move,
      0 of celestial seed ! 0 foster son of Jove!
      See, laboring Nature calls thee to sustain
      The nodding frame of heaven, and earth, and main !
      See, to their base restored, earth, seas and air;
      And joyful ages, from behind, in crowding ranks appear.
Thus heralded by Hebrew and pagan seers, Christ came.
Foreshown  through so  many ages,  described by so  many
inspired  prophets, promised  to  Abraham, and Isaac,  and
Jacob, recognized by Job, hymned by the royal psalmist, his
very name and offices, and attributes, detailed over and over
in the sacred books, studied with solemn anxiety by a nation
which was  to  reap permanent glories and benefits from his
advent, so that we might suppose his identification the most
certain of all things, he came—and was ignored ! The learned
Jews, who thought they had  made  themselves  familiar with
every iota of his character, every mark of his identity, were
the most at fault of all!   They had settled the whole mat-
ter so completely on  an  ideal of their own, that they could
not see the actual through this ideal.  They had prepared
for a great monarch descending openly from the skies, blast-
ing all their enemies by the annihilating fire of his Divinity,
consuming the Roman yoke, as dross is consumed in a  fur-
nace, establishing the hearts of his people in the eternal sun-
shine  of heavenly favor and felicity.   They saw this celestial
King, this God-man of their own race, leading their triumph- 
         MAGNIFICENT PROMISES  TO THE  JEWS.        199

ant armies over the whole earth, and the Almighty, in the
words of David, 'making His enemies his footstool' (Psalm
ex. 1).   They already exclaimed,  in anticipation with that
poet-king, 'Gird thy sword upon thy thigh, 0 most Mighty,
with thy glory and thy majesty!   And in thy majesty ride
prosperously, because of truth, and meekness, and righteous-
ness ;  and  thy right hand shall  teach the  terrible things.
Thy arrows are sharp in the  heart of the King's enemies;
whereby the people fall under thee.  Thy throne, 0 God, is
forever and ever ;  the sceptre of thy kingdom  is a  right
sceptre ' (Psalm xlv. 3-6).
  And certainly these declarations  to a proud people, who felt
all the distinction  of a clear genealogy up to Adam, and of
being God's elect people, whose annals recorded such splen-
dors as those of  the mighty miracles wrought in Egypt, and
in the desert, and  in  Palestine, on their behalf—a people
before whose  steps he had divided seas and rivers, and set the
mountains on fire, and lit up the desert darkness by columns
of instinctive flame, and thrown down the walls of cities at
their approach, and, as their annals boldly asserted, had per-
mitted their leader to arrest sun and moon in their mid-careei».
To such a people nothing could appear more natural  than
that their latter end would be as glorious as their beginning,
and their prophets had many  things which seemed to guar-
antee the most vast and soaring of their expectations. Isaiah
(ix. 6,  7) said, ' For unto us a child is born, unto  us a son
is given : and the  government shall be upon his  shoulder;
and his name shall be  called Wonderful,  Counsellor, the
mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the  Prince  of Peace.
Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be
no end, upon  the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to
order, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from
henceforth, even forever.  The zeal of the  Lord  of Hosts
will do this.'
  Again (xi.  10-16), the same prophet says the remnant of
the people of Israel shall be gathered from Assyria, and  from 
200         HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
Egypt, and from  Pathros, and from Cush,  and from Elam,
and from Shinar, and from Hamath, and from the isles of
the sea.  The Lord would set up an ensign, and  his people
should flock to it from the four corners of the  earth;  the
Philistines, their old and bitter enemies, should  carry them
on their shoulders;  Moab, and Amnion, and Egypt, should
be all smitten before them, and envyings and  rivalries between
the different  tribes of Israel should cease, and they should
rule the total world, happy in themselves, and  triumphant
over all other people.  Such  was to be their felicitous condi-
tion, that the Gentiles were  all to  flock  to their light, and
kings to the brightness of their rising.  Multitudes of camels
and dromedaries, laden with gold and  incense,  were  seen
coming on  in endless  trains from  Midian, Ephah,  and
Shebah ; the flocks  of Kedar, and the rams of  Nebaioth*
were to be at their command.  The isles and the ships of
Tarshish were to  wait on  them with silver and  gold;  the
sons of strangers were to build up their walls ; foreign kings
were to minister to them ; every nation and kingdom which
would not serve them was to be utterly wasted;  those who
had despised them were  to bow themselves  down at their
feet;  as they had been forsaken and hated, they were to be
made an eternal excellency;  they were to suck the milk of
the Gentiles, and suck the breasts of kings,  and to know the
Lord, their Saviour  and  their Redeemer, the Holy One of
Israel (lx.).
  Jeremiah, whilst awfully denouncing the wickedness and
the coming woes of his time, looked yet beyond  these, and
recalled the promise to David, that ' he should never want a
man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel: and to reign
over a people, that, as the host of heaven, could not be num-
bered, nor as the sands of the sea measured (xxxiii.  17-22).
Daniel saw a dominion given unto the Son of Man ; 'a glory.
and a kingdom, that all people, nations, and languages should
serve  him ;  his dominion should be an everlasting dominion,
which shall not pass away, and his  kingdom that which shall 
          MAGNIFICENT  PROMISES TO THE JEWS.       201

not be destroyed ' (vii. 14).  Micah gave similarly magnifi-
cent promises.  The law was to go forth from Mount Sion ;
the Messiah was to judge amongst many people, and rebuke
strong nations.   He was to be great unto the  ends of the
earth; to waste the neighboring  kingdoms ;  his  hand was
to be lifted up upon his enemies, and all his enemies were  to
be cut off (iv. and v.).   Zechariah held the like  language,
and altogether the unexampled magnificence of the promises
were such as were calculated to intoxicate beyond expres-
sion a people by nature  proud and dominant.
   Yet amid these bursts  of glory from the heaven of God
over the future ; these gorgeous limnings of  the  empire  of
the coming King of Israel,  unparalleled in  splendor, and
greatness,  and  perpetuity . by any earthly dominion, there
came tones and breathings of a very different kind, and which
must have caused any people  but one lost and bewildered by
the glittering vista of their seer-sketched pictures, to pause
 and seek carefully their meaning.  This mighty and triumph-
 ant monarch, who was to descend from heaven and subdue
 all earth, who  was to  be God himself, instructing mankind,
 was yet to appear humble, and poor, an outcast and despised
 man, without comeliness  in himself, and without  acceptance
 from those on whom he  was to  confer  so unprecedented a
 dominion.  How could this conqueror, before whom the gen-
 tile nations were to  disappear as smoke, could this  august
 King, this Wonderful, this Counsellor, this mighty God, this
 Everlasting Father, this  Prince  of Peace, be, at the same
 time, ' the stone which  the builders rejected ?'   Was he to
 give his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to those who
 pulled  off the hair;  to hide not his  face from  shame and
 spitting ?  Was he at once to be  Lord supreme, and yet to
 answer this description of Isaiah (liii. 2-10)?  'He hath no
 form nor comeliness, and when we shall see him, there is no
' beauty  that we should  desire him.  He is despised  and re-
  jected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
 and we hid, as it were, our faces  from  him : he was despised, 
202
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
and we esteemed him not.   Surely he hath borne our griefs,
and carried  our sorrows;  yet did we- esteem him  stricken,
smitten of God and afflicted.  But he was wounded for our
transgressions ; he was bruised for our iniquities ; the chas-
tisement of  our peace was upon  him; and with his stripes
we are  healed.  All we like sheep  have gone astray; we
have turned every one to his own way;  and the Lord hath
laid upon him the iniquity of us all.   He was oppressed and
he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth ; he is brought
as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers
is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth.   He was taken from
prison and from judgment, and who shall  declare his gener-
ation ?  for  he was  cut off  out of the land of the living, for
the  transgressions of my people he was stricken.   And  he
made his grave with the wicked and  the rich in his death ;
because he had done no violence, neither was deceit found in
his mouth.   Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath
put him to  grief,' &c.
   Could these enormous contrasts  meet  in one  person ?
 Could the invincible Conqueror, the King who was to strike
 through the  sides  of  other kings,  and this meek, smitten,
 and rejected One, be the same 1  Yet they undoubtedly were.
 The promised Saviour was as clearly the one  as the other.
 This resplendent King was to come 'lowly and riding upon
 an ass.'  He was to have  his visage  marred more  than any
 man, and his  form  more than the sons of men : kings were
 to shut their mouths at him (Isaiah Iii. 14, 15).  He was to
 be  a man  despised, abhorred by the nation,  a servant of
 rulers  (xlix.  7).    He was to be sold  for thirty  pieces of
 silver (Zechariah xi. 12) ;  he was to be brought to the dust
 of death ;  they  were  to  gaze upon him as a ravening and
 roaring lion; they were to pierce his hands and feet;  they
 were to count all his bones, and cast lots for his  very gar-
 ments (Psalms xxii.).
    As these very opposite things were  all to happen to the
 same promised Deliverer, it would  seem now that it might 
         SUFFERINGS OF  THE MESSIAH FORETOLD.     203

have  occurred  to  the  expectant Jews  that this ignominy
must  precede the  reign of universal dominion, even  if they
had not been spiritually-minded enough  to  apprehend that
much of that rule and  supremacy  would be spiritual,  as
Christians now recognize them  to  be.   But the pride and
lust of worldly greatness blinded the Jews to these prognos-
tics of humility and suffering in their Redeemer — they were
looking for a king  and  found only a carpenter !   ' Is not this
the carpenter ? ' they asked in disdain (Mark vi.  3).  It was
as impossible for them to conceive that the promised Saviour,
the Wonderful, the Mighty God, the everlasting  Father, the
Creator of the  Universe  in fact, could be the infant Prince
of Peace, be a  weak, wailing baby lying in a manger, and as
he grew be the carpenter's boy, subject to all the commands
of the old carpenter, his reputed father, as it is for the clever
people of to-day to believe that this same God and Saviour
can condescend to  arouse and convince brutish and material-
ized minds by the movement of tables, and similar phenomena
adapted to their abject condition of mind.  The small wisdom
of men  always presumes  to know better God's business than
the infinite wisdom of God.
   But there  were  other circumstances predicted of Christ,
and which, if anything could, might have caught the  atten-
tion of the learned Jews, and put them  on  the track of the
discovery of the Divinity already arrived, and fulfilling every
day the words of the prophets regarding  himself.  He was to
cure all manner of  diseases, and all manner of evils ;  to open
the eyes of the blind, the ears of the deaf;  to restore vigor
to the lame  and paralytic; to  cleanse the lepers, cast out
devils, and restore  the dead to life.  Well, they saw all these
identifying facts every  day ; the people flocked to him from
all sides, and he cured them all.   He went from  city to city,
and from village to village,  and everywhere  his path was
intercepted by  all  forms  of human suffering and calamity,
and he  laid on  bis hands, and the diseases fled ;  he spoke
even at  distance and they were no more. 
204         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

   One of the most remarkable things in the history of our
Saviour  is, the invincible incredulity of the Jews.  But, in
putting  this  fact forward in  general terms, we do great in-
justice to a numerous section of the Jews.   They were the
learned and so-called wise who were so incurably incredulous;
the people, for the most part, believed,  and profited by their
belief.   They had their sick cured; their deaf, blind, and
lame restored.  Whilst ' the people were filled with astonish-
ment, and praised God' for the miracles which they saw,
saying, 'It was never so in  Israel,' the scribes,  Pharisees,
and high priests were only filled with scorn and rage. ' Have
any of the  scribes  and Pharisees  believed on him 1'  was
their question.   So  far from reasonable  evidence  having
any effect in  convincing these stereotyped souls, the accumu-
lation of evidence only enraged them.   They hardened their
hearts against it, as Pharaoh did.  Their pride was wounded,
but their hearts were not touched,  except by chagrin.  They
grew deadly  and murderous when they  ought to have grown
satisfied  and thankful.   When they at  last saw that there
was no denying the miracles of Christ, their hearts still re-
fused to  believe, though their understandings were forced to
do so ;  and they said, ' What do we ?   For this man doeth
many miracles.  If we let him alone, all men will believe on
him' (John xi. 47, 48).
   Their  remark after the confession, ' This man doeth many
miracles,' was not ' therefore we  will believe on  him ' (the
dictate of common sense), but if' we let him alone  all the
world would  believe on  him;' and they were resolved  that,
though all the world should believe on  him, they would not.
The same evangelist in another place says,' The chief priests
and the scribes, and the chief of the people, sought to destroy
him; ' but in the next verse  he  adds, ' And could not find
what they might do, for all the people were attentive to hear
him.'
  This is a most  instructive  passage.   Why did the chief
priests and scribes want to destroy him 1  Were bis commu- 
       THE JEWS MISLED BY THEIR OWN THEORIES.    205

ideations evil ?  No, they were above  all teachings — wise,
sublime, and good.  Did he do actual and mighty miracles ?
They confessed it.  And those miracles were at the same
time of the most humane and philanthropic character.   Did
they contradict their prophets f  No, they confirmed  them.
Then why did they want to destroy him ?  Simply because his
teachings destroyed their theories, judicial and moral.  They
had elaborated the study of the Mosaic law into a system of
outward observances, puerile, but punctilious and oppressive.
The  lives, the liberties,  and the comfort of men, were des-
troyed by customs  based on a false rendering of the law.
Their character for wisdom and legal and theologic knowledge
was, therefore, based on  this their system.  With these teach-
ings  they stood or fell before the people.   Now the teaching
of Christ tore away all their  bandages of legal chicanery,
and  restored  man  to  the liberty which was the  soul of the
law.   Speaking of  the  Sabbath, he declared the law made
for man, and not man  made for the law.   He recognized the
rights  of humanity; he felt and sympathized with the beat-
ings  of the great human  heart, and he placed man paramount
to the system organized for his benefit and  not for his en-
slavement.  This was life to the  people, but death to their
carnally-minded and selfish  teachers.   Christ rent away all
their masks and wrappings, their simulated sanctity, their
pride painted to look like humility, their selfishness and as-
sumption shaped, as near as possible, to the image of official
decorum.   ' Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites,'  burst from
the great Reformer's lips in tones of thunder ; in a denunci-
ation more terrible than ever ensouled human language before
or since.
   In that  tremendous  and scathing speech, the  doom of
Phariseeism,  and  scribism, and  high priestism  was pro-
nounced ; and in those  daring words the great Speaker had
also  uttered his own doom.  It was a declaration of war  that
was  to the death, and which admitted of no reconciliation.
They or  he  must die.   Their system or his must perish.
   I. —18 
206         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
Everything which they had  on earth — office,  income,  au-
thority, public respect, and status, were at stake.   After that
unsparing verdict they must fall, if they  could not prostrate
him.   Everything earthly was at stake—and for the heavenly ?
It was not in their  system,  in their  hearts, or in  all their
thoughts.  If they could have sacrificed all the honors  and
goods  of earth, for  the honors and goods which Christ of-
fered to them and all the world  in exchange,—the bargain
had been glorious ; but they were only ' of the earth, earthy ;'
they could proffer no heart on which the Redeemer could  pile
the eternity of his blessings.   They must go !  and their only
idea was to  destroy him first.  Because  his doctrines  and
deeds were for human good, therefore they hated them, having
no good  in themselves.  And this Christ knew, and the conse-
quence of his words he knew, and in this  God-like  spirit of
self-sacrifice  he came up to Jerusalem, telling his disciples, on
the way, that he came  to die  by the hands of man for the
salvation of  man.   ' Ye are  of your father  the devil, who was
a murderer from the beginning,' he said; and the  learned
Jews at  once proceeded to  prove their paternity by putting
him to death.  And they did it.
   This is a most awful history.   There is nothing  in all the
annals of mankind which reveals like it the enormity of the
depth  and extent of the desperate wickedness of the human
heart,  and of the indurating nature  of theoretic pride.   It
was not to  be conquered ;  that which  should soften it only
stimulated it to murder.  And such  are and have been the
effects of the insolence  of intellect in  every age.  Nothing is
so utterly destructive of the freedom of reason.   As it com-
pelled the educated classes  of the Jews,  so  it  compels the
educated, and especially the professional classes now, to dis-
believe in spite of their own belief; to close fast their hearts,
though their understandings  have been  rent  open by the
omnipotent leverage of evidence.  In fact, our age is  pre-
cisely  in the same spiritual condition  as  the ago  in which
Christ came.   The one is the exact counterpart of the other. 
   THE LEARNED OF TO-DAY LIKE THE LEARNED JEWS.  207

We hear the professional classes continually sneering at the
credulity of the vulgar and the weak.  ' This people is cursed.'
said the learned  Jews, and so say the learned English.  But
who are they who, in every age, first admit evidence ?  The
so-called credulous.   It  is  a  fact that women  are  always
amongst those  who  accept new theories.   Women  were
amongst the most prominent and devoted disciples of Christ.
In the social feast they were there, not to  feast, but to  wash
his feet with their tears, to  wipe them with the hair of  their
head,  to  auoint him beforehand with  the most precious un-
guents for  his burial.   Women were  at his crucifixion and
his  resurrection.   And  women  now  are  the  first  to  dare
settled opinion, and put faith in new ologies and isms.   And
they are  seldom mistaken.   They speak from the  oracle of
a heart much nearer heaven  than ours,  and open to the
electric touch of the Divine.   It is not so  much credulity as
receptivity  and candor, which thus give them the start of us.
They  have  an innate  love  of  the true as  well as the new;
they have an instinctive tact, and would pick up and swear
to a nugget of gold, where  a learned dry-as-dust would  pon-
der and doubt almost in spite of the  surest tests, and think
it was only iron pyrites.   It is to the so-called credulous that
the world owes the ready acceptance of the  benefits of nascent
facts,  and has not to wait for them till the  learned can recog-
nize them through the rust of age, and when  whole genera-
tions  have  lost the comfort of them.   In what could the
learned recompense us, if we had believed them and not the
people regarding Christ 1  And in  our own time if we had
let vaccination, and mesmerism, and phrenology, and homoeo-
pathy, and  spiritualism, and even steam and the electric tele-
graph, pass by us ?  It is well  that the world has, in no age,
been supple enough or weak enough to expose itself to this
martyrdom through erudite ignorance, to pay so momentous
a tax  for the foolishness and brutishness of pedantry.
  Let us now examine briefly the varied forms of the spiritu-
alism  of the New Testament. 
208          nTSTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

  The spiritual  power of  Christ, like  that of God in the
Old  Testament,  was exerted  on both  spirit and matter.
The  earliest  record of this  is that  of his converting water
into  wine at the marriage  in Cana (John  ii. 6).  This  is
almost the only one which appeared to be  done  rather as
a matter of courtesy  than of direct mercy.  But the next
recorded by the evangelists, and indeed the earliest mentioned
by two  of  them, is his temptation  in the wilderness by the
devil.   There were indeed miracles  preceding and attending
his birth, as the annunciation by an  angel to his mother; the
appearance of the angel to Zacharias in the temple, an-
nouncing the birth of his son, John  the  Baptist;  the priva-
tion  of  speech of Zacharias by the act of the angel Gabriel,
till the birth of John ; the angels proclaiming the birth of
Christ to the shepherds of Bethlehem, &c.  But the first
great miracle in the life of Christ, setting aside the changing
the water  into wine, is very remarkable, for it  is wrought
rather through the devil than through Christ, and is a direct
answer  to  Dr. Conyers Middleton, in  his ' Free Enquiry;'
Mr. Farmer  and many of the English  bishops,   who  have
maintained that no miracles are performed except by God
himself; that he does not permit the devils to perform mira-
cles, because they would then have the power to deceive man-
kind, and even to propagate another gospel.  On this ground
they have denied that the miracles done  in Egypt by the ma-
gicians were real miracles, and declared them  merely delusion.
It has been  often thought that the best answer  to this is,
that Christ said that after him should come false prophets and
false Christs,  showing signs and miracles,  to seduce, if  it
were possible, even the very elect (Mark xiii. 22).  But we
need not go to the future, or to any prognostic; here we
have in  the very outset of Christ's career the  devil himself
performing the most  extraordinary miracles in connection
with the person of our Saviour.   No sooner was Christ bap-
tized of John than he was ' led up of the Spirit into the wil-
derness  to be tempted  of the devil' (Matthew iv.).  Mark, 
THE DEVILS PERFORMED MIRACLES.        209
indeed  says, he was driven of the  Spirit, ' and immediately
the  Spirit driveth  him (ixpdxxtt) into the wilderness.'  This
temptation, therefore, was by direct  divine appointment, as
a necessary step in  the life-process  of the Saviour, who was
to be tried and proved in all respects with us whom he came
to represent and to save.   As it was  thus a divine ordinance
in our great Type and Leader, it is thus certain that it is a
fixed regulation in the life of every one of us.   After we re-
ceive the first baptism of  the Spirit and are made conscious
of spirit-life, and of our spiritual destiny and responsibilities,
we are immediately exposed, by the very circumstance, to the
assaults of the devils.  We are initiated into the spirit-world,
and are laid open to spirit influence both good and evil.
   Now  let this  be  duly remembered; for  there is no argu-
ment so often brought against spiritualism as that it opens
the door to evil and mischievous spirits.  Undoubtedly, and
if there  be any truth and  any teaching in this passage in the
life of our Saviour, the  very circumstance  is  a seal  of its
being a thing from  God.  The Christian, whether a professed
Spiritualist or not, if he be a real  Christian, has no exemp-
tion  from  the visits and attempts of  Satan.   The  very fact
that he  is such  directly draws the tempter towards him ; for
by him, under God's  appointment,  he is to be tried,  and
proved  whether he  be a  genuine  soldier of Christ or not.
The  devils, in fact, are the police of  God.   Nay, the devil,
let us all be assured, will exert miraculous powers against us,
and such power as nothing but the  Divine Spirit can protect
us from or support us under.  If the  devil had the assurance
to come into the presence of the incarnate God, and  tempt
him through his human side, let us  be sure that he will spare
none of us.  This sojourn in the wilderness of temptation for
a typical forty days, is the  novitiate  of the Christian  enter-
ing on his spiritual  campaign, and  Christ is  his example to
lead  him  to  victory.   Christ was there forty days with the
wild beasts, and  any Christian, Spiritualist or not, will find
wild  and beastly natures besetting  him in the outset,  but let
       18* 
210         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

him remember angels also will minister unto him. Now every
Spiritualist must remember what beastly natures, and devils,
and silly, empty, and earthly spirits, beset his seances, giving
him lies,  and telling him vain and foolish things—beset his
writing, his drawings, and his dreams, for a time at the  out-
set, till he was ready to renounce spiritual communication,
and must have done it,  or sunk into association of base, and
lying, and unchristian spirits, had not angels and  the  God
of angels ministered to him, and, as he did to Christ, 'till the
devil departed from him for a season' (Luke iv. 13).
   The devil now  showed  his marvellous power to Christ.
' He taketh him  up into an exceeding high mountain  and
showeth  him all the kingdoms of the  world and the glory of
them ' (Matthew iv. 8), St. Luke adds, ' in a moment of time.'
This  is a miracle  of the highest order as to power exerted,
though inferior to the direct miracles of Christ as lacking the
quality of beneficence, which the devil has not.  The moun-
tain was no natural mountain.  So far from any such moun-
tain in the neighborhood of Jerusalem, there is no mountain
in the world whence all the  kingdoms of the earth can be
seen,  much less in  a moment of time.  It was a  spiritual
mountain, and the whole miracle was done  in the spirit.  It
is only modern spiritualism which can bring such statements
into the region of facts.  For from what we of to-day have
seen, we  can believe this statement fully, and as to the won-
derful rapidity with which spirit transactions take place, the
countless cases of apparitions which appear at the very mo-
ment of death, often from the other side  of the globe, make
this rapidity apprehensible;  and the water-color paintings
done by spirits in the presence of Mr. Coleman, in America,
in ten or twelve seconds, strengthen the idea of it.
   ' Then the devil  brought him to Jerusalem and set him on
a pinnacle of  the  temple.'  In both  these transactions it is
the devil  who  exerts the demonstrative  power; it is Christ
who exerts the resistant.  Christ triumphed, and angels  then
came and ministered to him.  It is worth while for the  enemies 
       THE DEVIL'S MIRACLES IN TEMPTING  CHRIST.    211

of spiritualism to reflect a little on this extraordinary episode
in the Divine life on earth.  Why do they accuse Spiritualists
of intercourse with devils,  even  when  they  shun studiously
such company ?   Our Saviour was  forty days in the wilder-
ness in company  with  the  devil; he  was borne up into a
mountain and to the summit of the  temple in demon hands ;
facts enough to have ruined the character of all the spirit-
ualism in the world.  But  they only who  willingly associate
with devils, those practising sorcery, are criminal; the devils
will be about us whether we perceive them or not. The good
Spiritualist will drive them from him by the  power of prayer
and faith in the cross, because  he is, and must be, at the same
time, a good  Christian.  This power to expel evil spirits was
the very next thing which Christ exhibited.   He  had van-
quished the leader, he went forth to put to flight his legions.
   In the very same chapter of Luke we find him casting out
an unclean spirit, which cried with aloud voice, and declared
that it knew him to be  'the Holy One of God' (ver. 33, 34).
' With power and authority,'  we are told,  ' he commanded
the unclean spirits, and they came out.' Modern philosophy
has done its best to reduce these spirits into  mere diseases—
epilepsy, madness, and  other complaints ; but the  plain and
inflexible  text of the  Gospel  is not thus to be dealt  with.
They are declared to be actual devils who had taken posses-
sion of these victims, and we might as well call air water, or
water earth, as these devils mere diseases, though they seem
sometimes to have taken the forms  of diseases.  In all ages
of the Bible, evil spirits are said to "have entered into  men ;
and the whole of the  East has ever held with the Jews this
belief.  Saul was  said to be afflicted with an evil spirit sent
from God (1 Samuel xvi. 15).  God is said, in the prophets,
to have sent evil and lying spirits  into false  prophets.   In
1 Kings xxii. 19-23, and in 2 Chronicles  xviii. 18, we have
a very extraordinary instance  of this.   When Jehoshaphat,
the King  of Judah, was going  to join Ahab in war against
Syria, and Jehoshaphat thought the prophets were false, and 
212         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
deluding them, and Micaiah, the prophet, was fetched out of
prison to prophesy, he said, ' I saw the Lord sitting upon his
throne, and all the host of heaven standing on his right hand
and on his left.  And the Lord said, Who shall entice Ahab,
King of Israel, that he may go up, and fall at Ramoth-Gilead ?
And one spake, saying after this  manner,  and another after
that manner.  Then there came out a spirit, and stood before
the Lord, and said, I will entice  him.   And the  Lord said
unto him, Wherewith ?   And he  said, I will go out, and be
a lying spirit in  the mouth  of all  his prophets.   And  the
Lord said, Thou shalt entice him, and thou  shalt also pre-
vail ; go out, and do even so.   Now behold the Lord hath
put a lying spirit into the mouth  of all thy prophets.'
   This is perfectly conclusive on the subject, and may show
us why we are taught by our Lord to  pray, ' Lead us  not
into temptation.'  The  manner  in which  the  spirits  are
spoken of is  most distinct.   Christ does not confound them
with the diseases: those he cures as diseases, leprosy, paral-
ysis, blindness,  deafness, dumbness,  fevers,  &c. ;  but  the
devils he addresses as devils, and they reply as devils.  The
legion of devils prayed  to be  allowed  not  to return to the
abyss—hell—but to go into the swine, and we are told that
they went, and the effect of it.   Modern commentators say
Christ  accommodated  himself to the  language of the time;
but it has been well asked, ' Did  He  who came to bear  wit-
ness to the truth,  accommodate  himself  to a lie ?  Was it
the disease of the Gadarenes which drove the swine into the
sea?'   Some devils are said  to produce  ailments;  they
seem  to settle  themselves  in the disease as a  congenial
home for their own unclean  nature.   There is a dumb devil
mentioned, who, when he was gone  out, the dumb spake,
and a woman who had a spirit of infirmity for eighteen years,
who, when the spirit was gone out,  stood  upright, though
before she had been bowed together, and was whole. Christ
left no room for mistake as to this being a spirit,  and not
simply a disease, for he immediately declared that it  was 
      THE  SCRIPTURAL DEVILS NOT  MERE  DISEASES.   213

Satan who had thus bound her (Luke xiii. 16).  The dread-
ful perversion of mind and heart which the Jewish adherence
to the pure letter which killeth, had  produced, was fearfully
demonstrated by the indignation  of the ruler of the syna-
gogue at the Saviour performing this merciful miracle on the
Sabbath day.   ' There are six days on which men ought to
work;  in  them, therefore, come and be  healed, and not on
the Sabbath day.'  With this ruler 'better day better deed,'
was no received axiom.   The formal observance of the  Sab-
bath was more  precious in his eyes than  the  good of his
fellow-beings.  What an inexpressible privilege that we  shall
not be judged  by men of systems, or by orthodoxy, but by
God!
  The  whole of these statements of possession and of exor-
cism in the Gospels, are so plain, so positive, and so solemnly
treated by Christ  and the evangelists, that  no  process  of
rationalism can ever reduce them into anything else. Through-
out the East the belief in demoniac possession has been un-
interrupted and universal.   The Rev. Dr.  Wolff, who labored
so long in Asia, tells us in his ' Life and Travels,' that pos-
session is common in the East to this day.    He gives cases
which came under his own eye.   Every Church,  not  even
excepting the negative Protestant Church, has held the fact
as certain.   In truth, has demoniac  possession  disappeared
from amongst  us  at the present day ?   What are nine out
of every ten — perhaps ten out of  every  ten — of the cases
of lunacy, but cases of possession ?  By  what other theory
than that of the influx of disorderly spirits can  physicians
explain the majority of disordered  intellects ?   It is noto-
rious that they do not find any other rational explanation ;
and Dr. Garth Wilkinson, in a pamphlet  on this subject, has,
years ago, called upon them to recognize in spiritualism the
true and only remedy for this  great,  sorrowful, and growing
evil.
  Before quitting this part of my subject, let me draw at-
tention to the extraordinary practice of the Church of Eng- 
214         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

land in  regard to exorcism.   By the seventy-second canon
of the Anglican Church, all its ministers are forbidden, with-
out license of the bishop of the diocese under his hand and
seal, to  attempt upon any pretence whatever, by fasting and
prayer,  to cast out  any devil or devils, under pain of the
imputation of imposture or cozenage, or deposition from the
ministry.  What  a fall from the practice of Christ!  In the
Gospel  of St.  Mark (ix. 38,  39), it is said, ' John answered
him  saying,  Master, we saw one casting  out  devils in thy
name, and he  followeth not us, and we forbade him because
he followeth not us.   But Jesus said, Forbid him not; for
there is no man which shall  do a  miracle in my name, that
can lightly speak evil of me.   For he that is not against us
is on our  part.'
  The Church of England has clearly  set at defiance this
injunction of our Saviour.  What an extraordinary proceed-
ing in  a Church  which first  professes to communicate the
Holy Ghost, and then does not permit it to operate in the
minister without a license from the bishop  !  Why should we
suppose the  Holy Ghost more wise and prudent in the bishop
than in  the minister ?  If the minister have the Holy Ghost,
he has a guide far above any bishop ; and if  the Church is
doubtful of  the minister really having the Holy Ghost,  what
is to assure  it  that the bishop  has it ?  How very much it is
to be regretted that so. great and influential a Church, one
which has produced  so many truly noble and gospel  men,
should suffer its ministers to be bound by so unworthy a bond
of worldly prudence ; by a policy so opposed  to the policy
of our Saviour, who not  only sent out his apostles to cast
out devils wherever they could meet with  them, but forbade
them to hinder any man who was doing it, not only without
a special license from a  bishop,  but  without any express
license  from himself, declaring  that whoever worked with
him was not against  him.  The Church of Christ is a church
of a wise liberty, but it is the misfortune of national churches
to suffer themselves to be bound by canons and prohibitions 
APPARITIONS IN CHRIST'S TIME.
215
like these, forgetting that the Church of  Christ is in  imme-
diate and perpetual communion with its head throughout all
its members, and ought not to be bound up  in barren servi-
tude by 'the doctrines and traditions of men.'
  This department of the supernatural of the New Testament
presents still various features which identify modern spiritual-
ism with it.  The fact that the Jews were compelled to admit
the reality of the casting out of devils  by  Christ, then de-
clared that He cast them out by Beelzebub, the prince of the
devils,  is completely paralleled by the  opponents of modern
spiritualism.   The  moment that they are driven from the
theory of imposture and delusion, they attribute the phenom-
ena of spiritualism  to the devil.   None do this so promptly
as the modern Roman  Catholics, who have  always believed
in miracles.
  Another is  the  subject of apparitions.   In no form has
the supernatural, in  all ages and countries, manifested itself
so frequently  as by apparitions.  Almost every family has
its  well-authenticated  story  of apparitions.  Apparitions,
accordingly, are equally asserted by the New Testament and
by  the  Spiritualists of to-day.   That  the  Jews were well
acquainted with  the theory and reality of apparitions,  is
shown by the exclamation of the disciples when they saw
Jesus,  in the fourth watch of the night,  walking  on the sea
towards their ship (Matthew xiv. 25, 26 ; Mark vi. 49).  In
both these cases,  our  translators have rendered it—They
were afraid and cried out, ' for they  supposed  it had been  a
spirit.'  In  both  cases it is really,  for they thought it had
been a spectre !  The  word is not Ttvtvpa, but <pdviaopa.  In
the twenty-seventh chapter of St. Matthew, we are told that
after the crucifixion of Christ, the graves wese opened, ' and
many bodies of the saints which slept, arose, and came out
of their graves after his  resurrection, and went into the holy
city, and appeared unto  many,' (ver. 52, 53).   It is difficult
to  reconcile this passage with those of Christ, in which  He
represents the departed as not dead  but living ; and of Paul, 
-16          HISTORY OK THE SUPERNATURAL.

who says, that though David was  alive,  he had not yet
ascended into heaven, clearly referring to  the intermediate
state.  We  can, therefore, only imagine that these  bodies
were animated by spirits, and were  an apparition, denoting
that the souls of the virtuous deceased would appear in the
same kind of spiritualized body which Christ  evidently pos-
sessed after His resurrection, which could pass through closed
doors, and appear and vanish at pleasure.   The  bodies of
Enoch, Elijah, and Christ, all appear to have  been spiritual-
ized ; for they could not otherwise float up to heaven, nor
could they enter  heaven, which Christ Himself tells us flesh
and blood cannot inherit.   Yet the body of Christ was sen-
sible and solid to the touch, or could be made so ; for He
told Thomas to prove this by putting his  fingers into the
prints of the nails in His hands, and thrusting his hand into
His side.  And this throws a light on the fact of spirits, at
modern seances,  not only showing themselves, but  causing
their hands to feel as solid and warm to  the touch as any
living human hands.  When Peter was miraculously delivered
from prison, and went and knocked at the house of Mary the
mother of Mark, where many of the disciples were assembled
at prayer on his behalf, and the servant announced that Peter
was there, they exclaimed,  ' It is  his angel.'  They probably
thought that he had been put to death, and that this was his
apparition.
   The appearances  of angels  as divine messengers, distin-
guished from the spirits of the  dead, are related in the New,
exactly as in the  Old, Testament.  Angels announced the
births of Christ and John the Baptist: angels ministered to
Christ in the temptation, and in the agony in  the  garden of
Gethsemane;  an  angel  liberated the Apostles  twice from
prison, and  loosened their chains, and burst open the doors
when Paul and Silas were in prison at Philippi, &c.
   In all ages and countries, sorcery, or intercourse with evil
spirits, has been affirmed.   Modern philosophy, gliding over
the surface of human and other nature, and not penetrating 
SEVERAL CASES  OF SORCERY.           217
 into their depths, has dismissed the matter with a sneer as a
 credulous  delusion; the  delusion of a sneer being deemed
 by modern sciolists, on the homoeopathic principle, a remedy
 for all other delusions.  But modern experience perfectly
 corroborates the experience of antiquity, of the whole East,
 of the middle and all other ages.
   Sorcery is the evil side of the great reality of spiritualism.
 As we find  sorcery in the Old, so we  find it  in  the New,
 Testament.  There are several cases of it in the Acts of the
 Apostles.  There was  Simon the sorcerer of Samaria, who
 had used sorcery and bewitched the people of Samaria, who
 became convineed of the supernatural powers of Christianity,
 and wanted to purchase the power (viii.).   There was Ely-
 mas the sorcerer of Paphos, whom Paul declared full of all
 subtlety, and all mischief, a child of the devil, and whom he
 struck with blindness.   There were the  exorcists, the  seven
 sons of Sceva, a Jew  at  Ephesus, who,  seeing  the exorcist
 power of the Apostles, began to use the same names to expel
 devils: but one of them  answered that  he  knew Jesus  and
 Paul, but  asked who they were, and  leaped upon them,  and
 overcame them, so that they fled  out of the house naked  and
 wounded (xix. 14-16). - At  Philippi, Paul and Silas  got
 into much trouble by dispossessing  a young woman  of 'a
 spirit of divination, which brought her masters great gain by
 soothsaying.'  In  his first epistle, John  tells us  that there
 were both  these kinds of spirits  at work, the good and the
 bad, the latter of which would inevitably lead to sorcery, and
 he warned the disciples ' not to  believe every spirit, but to
 try the spirits, whether they were of God,'  before they held
 any intercourse with them,—a rule as safe and necessary now
 as then.   No one who  wishes  to convince himself of  the
 prevalence of sorcery all over the East has anything more to
. do than to refer to Wolff and nearly all travellers there.
    And here I must redeem  the  promise, given  in my notice
 of the spiritualism of the Old Testament, to show that Christ
 broke the  law of Moses, regarding ' seeking to spirits of the
    I.-19 
218
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
dead,' so far as good spirits are concerned.   This He did in
a most  emphatic manner.   Let the reader especially note
this ; for it is the most remarkable case in the sacred history,
because it demonstrates, and no doubt was planned by our
Saviour to demonstrate, that express abrogation of the Mo-
saic law regarding the spirits of the dead.  Christ abrogated
this law by Himself  seeking the spirit of Moses, the very
promulgator  of that  law, and  leading His disciples to  do
the same.  Christ conducted His disciples, PeterfcJames, and
John, up into the Mount of  Transfiguration, and introduced
them to Moses  and Elias.  Of  Elias we need not speak, for
having been translated, he might not strictly be called a spirit
of the dead: but Moses, we are told, died in Mount Nebo, and
that the Lord  buried him in a valley there.   Yet Christ
went to seek  this spirit, as if the case was studied literally.
He might have commanded Moses to appear before Him in
his own room ;  but no, as the law against seeking to the dead
was to be abolished, He went to the spirit of the great dead—
to Moses, the very man  who prohibited such an act by the
law in question, and there on the mount broke the law before
his face;  and by  His example taught His disciples, the
future proelaimers of his  new law to  the world, to do the
same.  It  must be confessed that there is no such complete,
pointed, and striking abrogation of a law in any history, sacred
or profane.  The  Lord  of life, who was  about to become
the Prince of the spirits of the dead, broke the law prohibiting
the intercourse with the spirits  of the dead, and in no other
presence than that of  the promulgator of that law, who had
long been a spirit of the dead, and at the same time in the pres-
ence of those selected by Christ to teach this  great  act to
posterity.  And  the disciples, admitted to a convocation which
would have brought the  penalty  of death on their ancestors,
found it so good for them that  they desired to  build  taber-
nacles, and remain with  those illustrious dead.   It becomes
us to  stand up face to face  with this fact, and confess, in a 
  THE LAW REGARDING SPIRITS OF THE DEAD REPEALED.  219

truly manly and Christian spirit, that this is a stone of testi-
mony rooted in the eternal ground of the gospel.
  The greatest of Christ's miracles, perhaps, were his resto-
ration of the dead to  life.  Even those who, like Count de
Gasparin, endeavor to  reduce all miraculous  phenomena to
the operation of certain physical though subtle laws, declare
these act§ of God, and of God alone, genuine miracles.   The
prophets,  as we have seen, in  the Old  Testament, however,
had exerted the  same delegated divine energy  in  several
cases.  Jesus exerted it in three, that of the son of the widow
of Nain (Luke vii. 11-16), in which case, the people, awed
and astonished, declared that  a great  prophet had arisen,
and that God  had visited His people,  a significant  expres-
sion, referring  to the long cessation before Christ of miracles
and the prophetic power — that dearth of the Word of which
we have  spoken, and which had  been long  predicted.   The
next was the raising from death  of Jairus's daughter (Luke
viii.  49 ; Mark v. 41) ;  and the third the resurrection of
Lazarus.  Had the case of Lazarus occurred in England,
we may safely  assert that it would have been represented by
the rationalists as mere contrivance betwixt Lazarus  ancV his
sisters, and Jesus.  They would  say, Lazarus was  laid in the
tomb  alive; his sisters supplied him with food, and Christ
arrived to complete the fictitious miracle.   The Jews never
arrived  at this condition of smart incredulity.   They knew
too well  the mode of  burial iu  their country,  the  muffling
head-cloth which would  completely  prevent  breathing, and
the public nature of  their funeral ceremonies,  to  deny the
miracle, and their descendants  to this  day retain the belief,
as I shall show.
  The power of raising the dead, in common with the other
miraculous powers, was consigned to His disciples by Christ,
and exercised  by them  in  the  cases of Dorcas,  by Peter
(Acts ix.  41),  and of the young man killed by falling  from
a window in  the third story,  by Paul  (Acts xx. 10-12).
This power of restoring the dead was claimed by the primi- 
220          HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
tive  church until the third century, at least; for Irenseus
expressly says, ' The dead have been raised and have lived
many years amongst us;' and the  Roman Catholic Church
still claims this as a power residing in the church, and gives
sundry instances of its  exertion in the  lives of their saints.
St. Dominic is declared  to have restored to life the Lord
Napoleon, killed  by a fall from his horse ;  to have restored
a child to life ; St. Francis is asserted to have raised several
people from the dead ;  St. Malachy to have raised a lady to
life.   I quote these cases merely to show how long a great
branch of  the Christian Church has retained this faith.
   Perhaps next to raising the dead, is the miracle of feeding
multitudes by a few loaves and  fishes, and having numerous
baskets  of fragments  remaining.   Perhaps these miracles,
recorded as recurring  twice at  the  hands  of  Christ,  are
 equally  great with  restoring  the  dead, for they are acts of
 absolute creation.
   There is a class of phenomena  in the New Testament as
 well as in  the Old, which have reappeared  in modern spirit-
 ualistic  phenomena, though in a degree  proportioned to the
 farJess  spiritual  and Christian character of  the age—those
 in which material bodies have been lifted  from the ground
 in apparent defiance  of the law  of specific gravity.  Such
 was the fact of Christ's walking on the water (Matthew xiv.),
 &c, in which case, though not lifted into the air, yet He was
 borne on the surface of a fluid in as direct opposition to the
 ordinary properties of nature.   His ascent  into heaven in
 His body,  which however had, no doubt, undergone a great
and glorified change ; and the person of Philip being carried
away after baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch on the road from
Gaza to Azotus ; for we are told that the Spirit of the Lord
caught him away, and  he was found near Azotus (Acts viii.
39, 40).                                         v
   However vastly inferior in degree to these great miracles
are  the  modern  ones  of tables, chairs, and other material
bodies being hfted  into the air,  and living persons borne 
PHENOMENON OF  FLOATING  BODIES.         221
through the air on such  bodies, or floated  of themselves, as
they have been witnessed  both in this country and in America
by a number of people now living ; yet they have raised a
storm of denial,  ridicule, and scorn in the so-called philoso-
phic, as opposed to all belief, because they are said to violate
the fixed laws of the universe.   Those who deny these mod-
ern marvels, must, in their hearts,  deny the relation of simi-
lar but greater things in the Bible, and  the Rev. Mr. Beecher
has reminded  them that  such denials sweep  their way thor-
oughly through the sacred records.  To those, however, who
have seen and therefore believe, these  modern cases, the be-
lief in the miracles of the Bible becomes a matter of course,
and thus Christianity receives a new confirmation ;  and one
amongst many answers is given to  the question of cui bono ?
  Here, again, the Roman Catholic reminds us how far Pro-
testantism has retrograded in vital faith since its  severance
from that Church.  Catholicism has always  maintained the
continuance of this miraculous power.   It  were  easy to cite
from the lives of their saints numbers of cases, where they
in their devotions were raised  from the ground ;   amongst
them are Dominic and Loyola.   Several of the female saints,
as St. Theresa.  Snch cases are said  to occur now, not un-
frequently, by  the Catholics.  A lady of literary reputation
of that Church, asserts herself to  be frequently  raised from
the  ground during her prayers ;  and we know a young Pro-
testant lady who ceased to attend a certain  church from feel-
ing herself repeatedly lifted up, and fearing to make a spec-
tacle of herself.
  There are  many incidents and  expressions in  the New
Testament on which  modern phenomena  throw a new  and
curious light.  The knockings of spirits have been a subject
of excessive ridicule  amongst the soi-disant wits of this age
regardless of the fact, that the Majesty of heaven lying  in a
manger on earth, is to a mere natural mind an infinitely more
ludicrous  idea.  But  Christ, the Prince of spirits,  uses  this
expression repeatedly, that  He will stand and  knock   He 
222          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
warns His followers to be alert on the watch for such knock-
ings, telling them that they are sure to come, and in an hour
when they do not expect it.   ' Let your loins be girded about,
and your lights burning, and  ye yourselves like unto men that
wait for their  lord when  he  shall return from the wedding,
that when he  cometh and knocketh ye may open unto him.
Blessed are those servants whom he shall find watching,' &c.
It may be thought almost irreverent by many to  name our
Saviour in connection with spirit-knockings ; but He tells us
plainly that He will not only come  and knock, but in Revela-
tions, that He stands knocking; and He here  adds, that He
will not only knock, but He  will gird Himself,  and  make His
disciples sit down  at table, and He  will wait  on them as a
servant (Luke xii.  35-37.)   He is not too humble to knock
and to stand  knocking, but He will  act the servitor of His
humblest followers.  He tells us not only that He will knock,
but that we are to knock, and that it shall be opened to us.
He  promises  still more.  '  Behold I stand at the door and
knock, and if  any man hear my voice and open the door, I
will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with me.  To
him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne,
even as I have overcome, and am  set down with  my Father
in His throne' (Revelations iii. 20, 21).  Now if Christ does
not disdain to knock at the  door of  our hearts, and to enter
as  we  open, and wait on us at table, is it any condescension
for His ministering spirits to knock on our walls, or doors, or
tables, as well as in our hearts, to arouse us from the deathly
trance of materialism ?  If  knocking at our hearts and con-
sciences will not do, is it at all improbable or ludicrous that
they should proceed to knock still more earnestly and palpa-
bly on material substances as the only mediums for reaching
 our torpid and  materialized senses ?  In so doing they are
 but imitating  their Divine Master, and in a future chapter I
 shall refer to  many occasions on which  they have done this to
 eminent servants of God.   But let the reader be sure of one
 thing.   If good spirits knock, evil spirits will come and knock 
THE  STIGMATA.
223
too, and have done it often enough.   Let all beware ; this is
when you are to  try the spirits, whether they be  of God  or
not.   This is why Christ says that His second coming will  be
' as a snare,' and ' as a thief in the night.'   It is because the
evil will inevitably dog the heels of the good and  endeavor
to prevent it.  This is why, in the words just quoted, Christ
tells us that He rewards those who overcome as He overcame.
We have  seen His contest with the devil, and His victory ;
and if we had nothing to overcome, Christ need not have de-
scended to save  us.  If we had nothing to overcome, there
would  be ' no cross, no crown.'  But we have to overcome
precisely what Christ  overcame, neither more nor less.   St.
Paul (Ephesians vi. 12) tells us plainly that' we  wrestle not
against flesh and blood, but against  principalities, against
powers, against  the rulers of  the darkness of  this world,
against spiritual  wickedness in high places.'
   Another class of phenomena, of recent years in  the Catho-
lic Church, are the stigmata exhibited in presence of those
called Ecstatics.   Lord Shrewsbury has written a volume  of
his own personal knowledge of such  ecstatics who had  all
the marks of the nails in the hands  and feet, the wound  in
the side, and of the crown of  thorns of our Saviour upon
them.  The celebrated Catherine Emmerich, a nun  of West-
phalia, not many years ago excited a wonderful sensation in
the literary circles of  Germany.  Amongst  those who  took
a lively interest in  this case were Windischmann,  Kaune, and
Count Stolberg.   She underwent close and repeated exami-
nations by Gamier, the director of police, and the  principal
physicians.  By all of them her marks and wounds were de-
clared supernatural, and the physicians said that such wounds
could not be made and kept  open by art without making
them  sore, which they were not  in the slightest degree.  Dr.
Wolff, who  was intimate  with  Couut  Stolberg,  residing in
his family, hereupon calls our  attention to the words of  St.
Paul,  plainly intimating that he had the very same  marks of
the Lord upon him.   ' From  henceforth let no man trouble 
224
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
me, for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord  Jesus'
(Galatians vi. 17).   Commentators have generally supposed
these marks to mean the  marks of the  scourgings which he
had received, but those were rather the  marks  of  Christ's
persecutors ; and in 2 Cor. iv.  10, he tells us they are the
marks of the dying of the Lord  Jesus.   ' Always  bearing
about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.'  A  most
expressive and exact description of the stigmata.
  Whilst we are  speaking of testimonies in  the flesh, it is
worth while to notice how violently  Christ  cut across the
most religious prejudices  of the  Jews, who had settled them-
selves so completely in forms and  in an exoteric  spirit.  He
continually shocked their notions of the sanctity  of the Sab-
bath, because they had wholly lost the true philosophy of a
Sabbath, which is at once for the  honor of God and the good
of man.  He healed upon a Sabbath,  which the  Jews called
work ;  He wandered with His disciples in the mountains and
the fields on that day, and He  even allowed them to pluck
and eat of their neighbor's corn.  But, far beyond this, was
His telling them that they must eat His flesh and drink Hi6
blood.   That, indeed, unless they did this they could  have
no life themselves.  ' Unless ye eat the flesh  of  the Son of
Man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you' (John vi.
53).   And, on the contrary, that  they who did eat His flesh
and drink His blood, He would raise him up  at the last day
(verse 54).   Now, of all things, the law of Moses had for-
bidden them to eat blood.  Like seeking to the dead, it was
made death.   God declared that he would cast off every soul
that eat any blood (Leviticus xvii. 10-13).  Blood was to
be offered on the altar, as an atonement for sin.  ' It is the
blood that maketh atonement for  the soul' (verse 11).  We
may imagine how horrible must have been this command, in
utter opposition  to  the law of  Moses, to eat blood.   They
were not spiritual enough to understand it.  They did recol-
lect that the Messiah  was to abolish the ceremonial  law;
and we are told that, ' after this, many of His disciples went 
   UNVARYING FEATURES OF OBJECTORS TO NEW TRUTHS.  225

back, and walked no  more with Him' (verse 66).   This is
precisely the process down to this day whenever a new truth
is announced.  It overturns all the old stock-notions of mere
surface men ; they are astouuded, and if they do not cry can-
nibalism (as, probably, the Jews did), they cry madness and
absurdity.  To these, new truths must ever be absurdities.
  And here let us observe how exactly the objectors of those
times were the prototypes of the objectors of these.  How
exactly they turned and wriggled in the same manner.  When
Christ fed the multitudes (five thousand at a time) with five
loaves and two little fishes, and had twelve baskets of frag-
ments left, the eaters did not think it anything of a miracle,
but immediately asked Jesus, ' What sign He showed that
they  might believe on Him ?  What dost thou work ?'  (John
vi. 30; Mark viii.  11; Matthew xvi.  1).   When John the
Baptist came eating neither  bread nor drinking wine, they
said  he had a devil;  when Christ came doing both, they
called Him a wine-bibber  and  a glutton.   This class  of
people will ever  find the new truth  wrong.  Like the  ob-
jectors to  spiritualism of to-day, they could  neither see, nor
hear, nor understand the miracles then done; and this befell
them, it is expressly said, because  they  had made  'their
hearts gross' (Matthew xiii. 15).   They had their ears dull,
and their  eyes closed to everything  spiritual;  therefore, it
was decreed, and had long been announced by the prophets,
that  ' hearing they should hear, and should  not  understand,
and seeing they should see,  and should not perceive'  (verse
14).   This is precisely the condition of numbers of the pres-
ent day, and especially of the ' scribes,' who, whilst millions
are seeing, go flourishing about boasting that they cannot
see.   As if it were a great merit to be blind; priding them-
selves on their lamentable deficiencies, and laughing at people
much better off.
  The blind and deaf of to-day think those who see and hear
are mad.  It was the same then.  When the prophet went
to Jehu to announce his advance to the throne, his jolly 
226         HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
companions at the table said, ' What does this mad fellow
want with thee ?'   The friends and relatives of Christ, when
He began to assert His Messiahship, ' went out to lay hold
on Him ;  for they said He is beside Himself (Mark iii. 21).
The Jews, when the Holy Ghost fell on  the disciples at Pen-
tecost,  thought they were drunk with new wine ; and Festus,
when Paul preached to him the new religion, declared him
mad.   It is a remarkable fact that Paul made no attempt to
work miracles in Athens, knowing the excessive learnedness
of the  Athenians, and that they could  not see the  plainest
miracle were it done, ' though in all things he found them
too superstitious.'   Such of the  Jews as were compelled to
believe in Christ's  miracles, immediately attributed them to
the same  agency as is done in like cases now — the devil.
The  modes of vulgar quibbling  are the  same in  all times.
That is a  fine scene where the man who had been blind from
his birth, has his eyes opened, and the learned Jews will not
believe it.  Though he had told  them  the whole story, and
they had called in the evidence of those who had known him
from his birth, they began again to ask him how it was done.
But  the  stout  fellow exclaimed,  ' I have told  you already,
and ye did  not hear; wherefore would ye hear it again ?
Will ye also be His disciples?'   On this they reviled Him,
and said  they knew Moses, ' but as for this fellow, we know
not whence he is 1'  On which the man answered crushingly,
'Why  herein is a marvellous thing!   That  ye  know not
whence he is, and yet he hath opened mine eyes !   Now we
know that God heareth not  sinners ;  but if any man be a
worshipper  of  God,  and doeth  His will, him  He  heareth'
(John  ix.  27-31).  Does any man doubt for a moment which
of these  parties had their eyes and senses most open ?  Or
which was the  most capable of receiving and giving evidence
of a miracle ?
   The  power of working  miracles was conferred by Christ,
as an eternal inheritance, on His church.   He told His dis-
ciples  that He  gave them power against unclean  spirits to 
     MIRACLE THE ETERNAL HERITAGE OF THE CHURCH. 227

 cast them out, and to heal all  manner  of sickness, and all
 manner of disease (Matthew x.  1).   The clergy have sedu-
 lously endeavored to prove that this power was only given to
 the Apostles ; but soon after Jesus sent out seventy disciples
 with the same full powers (Luke. x. 19).   That these prom-
 ises were for all that believed on Him in all ages is most clear
 from the declaration of Christ (John xiv.  12),' Verily, verily,
 I say unto yon, he that believeth on me, the works that I do
 shall he do also ;  and greater works than these shall he do,
 because I  go to my father.' This is spoken generally of every
 one who believes, and our Saviour makes it still clearer in
 Mark xvi. 17, 18, 'And these signs shall follow them  that be-
 lieve.  In my name  they  shall  cast  out devils; they shall
 speak with new tongues; they shall take up serpents, and ifc
 they drink any deadly thing, it  shall  not hurt them ; they
 shall lay hands on the sick and they shall recover.'   These
 are privileges conferred on all men who have entire  faith in
 Christ, and that to the end of time ; for  he says, ' Lo, I am
 with you alway, even to the end of the  world' (Matth. xxviii.
 20).   If these things  are not true, Christianity is not true  ;
 if it  and they are true,  the fault lies in ourselves; we have
 not real vital faith, we are only half Christians.  New tongues
 were immediately spoken;  they  were  spoken, as we  find by
 Paul's Epistles, largely in the  church.   They have been
 spoken in modern times by the  followers of Irving, by the
 Seeress of Prevorst, written by her and by many others, as I
 have seen in one case by a person in India.   Paul  verified
 the truth  of the promise   about deadly  serpents at Malta.
 The  powers of healing  and exorcism  were extensively exer-
cised  for several ages in the church, and have  always been
claimed  by the Catholic  Church.   I shall have  to give re-
 markable instances of  therapeutic power in modern times and
 in  cases of the utmost notariety both in  Catholics and Pro-
testants.
  These powers were neither  confined to apostles, bishops,
clergy, nor to the so-long favored Jews; they were extended 
228          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
to the Gentiles everywhere ; for Christ sent His disciples to
all the world.   ' Go  ye into  all the world and preach the
gospel to every creature ;  and he that believeth,' &c, was to
enjoy all the miraculous powers as just noted.  This extension
to the Gentiles of the privileges of the gospel was one of the
things the hardest for the Jews to see and receive of all.  It
had  been announced successively to Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob, ' In thy seed shall the nations of the earth be blessed.'
It had been proclaimed  again and  again by the  prophets
(Isaiah xiii. 1), ' I will  put my spirit upon Him; He  shall
bring forth  judgment to the Gentiles.'   Again, Isaiah lv. 5,
also  Ix. 3, and the rest of that magnificent chapter of the
coming in of the Gentiles to verse 16.   Also in Daniel vii.,
♦All people,  nations and languages,' are to  serve Christ.
Micah v. 4,  Christ is to  be 'great unto the ends of the earth.'
Again Zechariah  vi. 15 and  ix. 10.   Yet, notwithstanding
these very plain assurances, nothing astonished the Apostles
more than the verification of  them in the extension  of the
gospel to the Gentiles.
   Christ had for a time  declared that He was' sent only unto
the lost sheep of the house  of Israel,' and saying this, He at
first refused to heal the daughter of the Syro-phcenician woman,
though He  gave an intimation by saying, ' Let  the children
be first filled,' that the turn  of the Gentiles would come. He
forbade His disciples at first to  go into Samaria, or any city
of the Gentiles.   It was necessary that He should, according
to prophecy, be first rejected by His own nation.  When they
had done this by crying, 'Away with Him ; this fellow is not
fit to live,' and had put  Him to death, then, and not till  then,
did He say  to His disciples, ' Go ye  into all the earth, and
preach the gospel unto  every creature.'  St. Paul acted ex-
actly in the  same manner.   It was not  till the Jews at An-
tioch had violently rejected  the gospel, that he and Barnabas
said, ' It was necessary that the word of God should first have
been spoken unto you,  but seeing ye put it  from you, and
judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life;  lo !  we turn 
          PROPHECY RENEWED IN CHRISTIANITY.       229

 to the Gentiles.  For so hath the Lord commanded us, say-
 ing, I have set thee to be a light to the Gentiles, that thou
 shouldest be for salvation unto the ends of the earth.   And
 when the Gentiles heard  this they were glad, and glorified
 the Lord' (Acts xiii.  46-48).  Peter was shown in a vision
 to call nothing common or unclean, and so sent  to the Gen-
 tiles ; and whilst he preached to them the Holy Ghost fell on
 them, 'and they of the circumcision were astonished, because
 that on the  Gentiles was also poured out the Holy Ghost, for
 they heard  them speak  with tongues  and magnify  God'
 (Acts x.).
   Such are some of the most striking features of the super-
 natural in the New Testament.  In the Apostles, as in Christ,
 the spirit of prophecy was renewed.   Agabus prophesied the
 imprisonment of Paul (Acts xxi. 11), Paul prophesied the
 fate  of the ship and the passengers  on his voyage to Rome.
 John in  the Revelations prophesied  all the great events of
 the world till the second  coming of Christ.  The Apostles
 not only raised the dead, but through the power of God they
 pronounced  the doom of  the living, and it was  awfully ful-
 filled, as in the case of Ananias and Sapphira—a case  which
 in England would have necessitated a coroner's inquest, and
 would have brought Peter into great trouble.  A  remarkable
 exertion of  miraculous  power was  that by which ' handker-
 chiefs and aprons being brought to the sick from the body of
 Paul, they were  healed, and the evil spirits went out of them'
 (Acts xix. 12) ;  for we shall  find the very same power exer-
 cised through like things, in modern times, at the tomb of
 the Abbe Paris, and at Port Royal on the niece of the cele-
 brated Pascal.
   St. Paul particularly enumerates  the  miraculous gifts to
 the church in the twelfth chapter of the Epistle to the Cor-
inthians,  where  in the opening of the chapter, he  reminds
them that they  had been  Gentiles, another proof that this
charter of miracle was conferred on the  world at large.  It
is  worth  while  for those  who think  that miracles are only
   I. — 20 
230
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
given for a time, to note well the words of this chapter.  We
are told that there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit:
differences of administration, but the same  Lord ; diversities
of operations, but it is the  same God which worketh  all in
all.  That ' the  manifestation of the Spirit is given to  every
man to profit withal;'  and then the epistle enumerates these
manifestations; the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge>
faith, the gifts of healing, the working of miracles, prophecy,
discerning of  spirits, divers kinds  of tongues, interpretation
of tongues.   Some are  given to  one,  he tells us, some to
another.   ' But all these worketh that one and the self-same
Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.'
   St. Paul then illustrates  this by the body and its various
members.  The body is not, he says, one member, but  many,
and that if the foot were to say it was not  the hand, it is still
of the body.   If the body were all eye, where were the hear-
ing, &c.  ?  'And if they  were all  one  member, where were
the  body ? but now are  they many members,  yet but one
body.'   He then adds, ' Now ye are all the body of Christ,
and members in particular.   And God hath set some  in the
church, first apostles, secondly prophets, thirdly teachers, after
that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, governments, di-
versities of tongues.'
   How is it that those who contend for the cessation of mira-
cles, do not see the argument and feel the logic of St. Paul 1 If
his illustration be worth anything, then a church which has not
 for its members persons possessed of all these varied gifts, is
no more a church of Christ than a body is a human body
 without  its members.  A Christian, living church, must have
 members qualified and  endowed, from the spirit, with all these
 gifts, or it is  destitute  of its  members.   They are no more
 living, real members, than a wooden leg, or an artificial hand,
 or a glass eye is a real member of the human body.  A church
 must have its spiritual members, living and complete, or it is
 no body of Christ.  It may call itself what it will, but that
 will not make it any more a church.  It is a dead thing, as a 
       A CHURCH WITHOUT SPIRITUAL GIFTS DEAD.    231

body must be a dead thing deprived of its members, with all
their individual and consentient powers.   Let the Protestant
churches look to it, who have voluntarily abandoned all claim
to miracles, and tongues, and gifts of healing and discerning of
spirits, for as sure as they are without these, and as long as they
are without these, they are but withered fig-trees,  about which
Christ has left express orders. They are no more living churches
than a  statue, however beautiful without, is a living man.
   The  grand distinction of the Christian Church was the out-
pouring of the divine spirit  without stint or measure.   It
was poured out upon  thousands at a time (Acts ii. 41), and
in that condition they were full of gladness, ' praising God,
and in  favor with all the people;'  and it is noteworthy, that
in all great revivals  of the  church, this has ever been the
case; and the great reformers in all ages have been the same
men who have proclaimed  the  continuance of miracles, and
the manifestations of the spirit, as I shall show.  This was
the grand distinction of the Church of Christ.   As  Christ
Himself was known by  His miracles, so  must His followers
be known ; for  He is with us alway to the end of the  world,
and if  He is with us, He is with us in His eternal  and undi-
minished power.  ' Heaven and earth shall  pass away, but
my word shall not pass away.'
   It remains for me only to  show that as the prophecies of
the Old Testament were fulfilled in Christ, and on the Jews
for their rejection of Him, so  the prophecies  of Christ, of the
destruction of Jerusalem, were fulfilled in all their particulars.
But perhaps it may be as well here to say a  word on the evi-
dences  of  the truth of Christianity itself.   This, however, is
not my proper subject;  the evidences on this head have been
diligently collected by Paley and others, and to these writers
I must refer the reader  for ample  proofs on this  point.   I
will only here 6tate generally, that the fact of the whole his-
tory and doctrines of Christ being within  the first century
diffused throughout the  civilized world, and ac.cepted by hun-
dreds of thousands of people fully capable of knowing  on 
232
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
what ground  they believed, would in any other  case  have
been deemed most abundant proof of the historic  fact.  The
Apostles were themselves living, and  travelling in every di-
rection, during  the  first half of this  period.  The gospels
were in all hands and languages of any note.   Eusebius tells
us that Barnabas was  stoned to death at Salamis, by the
Jews of Cyprus, and we are assured  by after historians that
his body was  discovered in that island, in the reign of the
Emperor  Zeno,  about a.d., 488, with  the  gospel of St. Mat-
thew lying on his breast, written in Greek, by his own hand.
Eusebius  tells us that Philip the apostle was living at a late
old  age at Hieropolis, with his daughters, in the time of
Bishop Papias, and his daughters would be able to give di-
rect evidence from their father of the life and acts of Christ.
Nobody has ever denied that Paul was  resident  for years in
Rome, in consequence  of the events so graphically related in
the  Acts of the  Apostles, a narrative so truthlike that it
would have  been determined as sufficient of  itself, had all
other records been lost of the reality of Christ's history.
The unflinching firmness of the Christians of the early ages,
in suffering death rather than abjure Christ, shows that they,
close upon the time of Christ, knew well  enough the reality
of the gospel narratives.   The celebrated letter of Pliny to
Trajan, regarding the Christians, when  he was proconsul in
Bythinia, within the first century, is an unquestionable proof
of the truth  of the Christian history;  for Pliny was not a
favorer, but a persecutor of the Christians, though  a mild one.
   Lucian too, in ' De Morte Peregrini'  (t. 1, p. 565), in the
reign  of Trajan, when  the fact of the truth or falsehood of
these things was sufficiently notorious, pays a  fine tribute to
the virtues of the Christians, in contradiction of Tacitus.  ' It
is incredible what expedition they use when any of their friends
are known to be  in  trouble.   In a word, they spare nothing
upon such an occasion  —for these miserable  men have no
doubt  that they  will be immortal; therefore,  they contemn
death,  and many surrender  themselves  to  sufferings.  More- 
    THE TRUTH OF CHRISTIANITY SHOWN BY LUCIAN.  233

 over, their first lawgiver has  taught them that they are all
 brethren, when once they have turned and renounced the gods
 of the Greeks, and worship this master of  theirs, who was
 crucified, and engage to live according to his law.  They have
 also a sovereign contempt for all the things of this world, and
 look upon them as common.'
  A great argument of cavillers at Christianity is that it did
 not make more noise amongst the learned of Greece and Rome
 of that era, and is not to be oftener found in the histories of
 the time.   Those  who  raise this objection show themselves
 very ignorant  of the little notice which Jewish history at any
 time attracted out of their own country.  They were a people
 so diametrically opposite to all the heathen nations, in  their
 doctrines and  customs,  that their sabbath, as we have seen,
 was  represented as a gross  folly.  They were by this law so
 precluded from mingling with pagan  nations, that they  were
 regarded as a proud, gloomy,  fanatical, and exclusive race.
 Yet there  is no lack  of ample contemporary or immediate
 evidence of the knowledge of Christ's history amongst the
 Greeks and Romans.   Amongst the Romans, the masters of
 Judea, and therefore, the most likely to know these facts,  I
 have just shown  that they were well  known to  Pliny the
 Younger, who  says that the  Christians worshipped this Christ
 as God. Amongst the Greeks we have also had the testimony
 of Lucian.   Suetonius,  a contemporary of Pliny, shows at
 once his knowledge and hatred  of the  Christians:  'Affecti
 suppliciis Christiani, genus  hominum superstitionis nova? et
 malificse.'   ' The Christians  were  punished :  a kind of people
 of a new and  wizard superstition.'  Justin  Martyr, in  the
middle of the second century, in  his Dialogues with Trypho,
says that the acts and miracles of Jesus were not denied, but
attributed to magic, by th'e Greeks and Romans, as well as
by the Jews.   But the testimony of Tacitus, the greatest
 Roman historian, is  decisive.  He wrote his  annals about
A. D. 110.   He could still  have  direct information of what
had transpired regarding Christ by old officers and  soldiers
       20* 
234
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
who had been engaged in the Jewish wars under Vespasian.
He hated the Jews and the Christians, yet what does he say
(Annals lib. xv. cap. 44)? — that 'the author of this  name
was Christ, who  in  the  reign  of Tiberius  was brought to
punishment by Pontius Pilate the Procurator.' And he adds
that ' Nero, in order to stifle the rumor of his having set fire
to Rome himself,  ascribed it to  those people who were  hated
for their wicked practices, and called, by the vulgar, Christians.
These he punished exquisitely.'  He adds, 'For the present
this pernicious superstition was in part suppressed;  but it
broke out again,  not only over Judea, whence this  mischief
first sprung, but  in the city  of Rome also, whither do run
from every quarter, and make a noise, all flagrant and shame-
ful enormities.   At  first, therefore, those were  seized who
confessed ; afterwards a vast multitude were detected by  them,
and were convicted, not so much  as really guilty of setting
the city on fire, but as hating all mankind.   Nay, they  made
a  mock of them  as  they perished, and  destroyed  them  by
putting them in the dens of wild beasts, and setting dogs  upon
them to tear them to pieces.   Some were nailed to crosses,
and others burnt to death : they were also used in the night-
time, instead of torches, for illumination.  Nero had offered
his own garden for this spectacle.  He also gave them Cir-
censian  games, and dressed himself like the driver of a chariot,
sometimes appearing araougst the common people, sometimes
in the circle itself: whence a commiseration arose — though
the punishments were levelled at guilty persons, and such as
deserved to be made the most flagrant examples — as if these
people  were  destroyed, not for the public  advantage, but to
satisfy the barbarous humor of  one man.'
   That surely is  evidence which would  have  satisfied the
hardest  skeptic, if it had been against the reality of the origin
of Christianity ; and  it might inspire the opponents of spirit-
ualism with a passing reflection, that if, instead of now hurl-
ing their sarcasms comfortably from the bosom of an accepted
religion, they might  probably,  had they existed  in Nero's 
           TESTIMONY OF CONTEMPORARY JEWS.        235

 time, have served as torches  to  the  learned Romans as they
 watched the tortures of  those  detested, but now,  in their
 turn, detesting Christians 1
  •But, after all, the grand historic testimony of the truth of
 Christianity is that  given by the Jews themselves.  These
 haters of Christ, whose assumption of the Messiahship has at-
 tempted to supersede their expected Messiah, would have been
 the first to have proclaimed the fact,thatthe belief of the Chris-
 tians was a delusion, and that no such person had ever existed,
 no such miracles were ever done.  But, on the  contrary, the
 Jews neither then nor since have ever denied the existence or
 the miracles of Christ.   We have their Toldath Jeschu, or
 Toledath Jesu, or ' Generation  of Jesus,' their own ancient
 account of the life of Jesus,  from their own point of  view.
 In this they do not deny  his miracles, but attribute them to
 his having stolen the holy name out of the Temple, cut a gash
 in his thigh, and there inclosed this omnipotent name, by which
 he possessed the power to do any  miracle.   They deny, indeed,
 his  resurrection, saying, as the  Evangelist too  has told  us,
 that the disciples stole him away.   Yet  an  ancient Jewish
 author pretends that the  Jews themselves dragged  a  body
 about the streets of Jerusalem, as the body of Christ.  Even
 that is a sufficient testimony that he lived.  But of all  Jew-
 ish  testimony  that  of Josephus is the strongest, and  the
 nearest to the time of Christ, and on this account it has been
 most violently  attacked  as spurious, notwithstanding  that
 Josephus has  confirmed  many other facts  of the gospel, as
the  singular death of Herod, the marriage  of  Herod with
 Herodias,  &c.   It has been argued that Origen, in his com-
mentaries  on Matthew, and in his defence of the Christian
religion against Celsus, has not mentioned the  testimony of
Josephus regarding Christ, and  that, therefore,  it could not
be in his copy.   But what are the facts ?   Origen especially
quotes the  testimony of Josephus regarding John  the  Bap-
tist, as called the baptist  (Antiquities, B. xviii. 51);  and re-
garding James the Just, who, Josephus says,' was the brother 
236
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
of Jesus, who was called Christ' (Antiquities, B. xx. 9). And
he adds,  ' These miseries befell the Jews by way of revenge
for James the Just, who was the brother of Jesus that was
called Christ, on account that they had slain  him who was a
most righteous  person.'  Now, if Josephus had  made  no
other mention of Christ, these  facts  are sufficient to prove
Josephus's knowledge of him and his history.   But what
Origen says is, that Josephus did not admit that Jesus was
the Christ.  If this  assertion were true, it is also true that
Josephus did  mention him in some  manner, and in all the
copies  now extant, his mention of him is as follows :  ' Now
there was, about this time, Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful
to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works — a
teacher of such men  as receive the truth with pleasure.  He
drew over to him many of the Jews, and  many of the Gen-
tiles.   He was Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of
the principal men amongst us, had condemned  him to the
cross, those  that loved him at the first did not forsake him,
for he  appeared to them  alive again the third  day, as the
divine  prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other
things  concerning him : and the tribe of Christians, so named
after him, are not extinct at this day' (Antiquities, B. xviii. c.
111).   Now this is the manner in which Josephus has been
quoted by all  the great  ecclesiastical writers  from Justin
Martyr in the second century, Origen, Eusebius, St. Ambrose,
St. Jerome, Isidorus Pelusiota, Sozomen, Cassiodorus, Anas-
tatius Abbas, Gergius Sycellus, John Malela, Photius, Ma-
carius,  Suidas, Cedrenus Theophylactus, Zonaras, Glycus in
his annals,  Godfridus  of Viterbo,  Nicephorus Callistus,
Hardmannus Platina in his  ' Lives  of the Popes,' writers
ranging through almost every successive  age down  to Tri-
themius Abbas, an eccelesiastical author in the fifteenth cen-
tury.   This  must be held pretty ample evidence of the genu-
ineness of the passage in Josephus.  Whiston,  in fact, is of
opinion that Josephus was secretly an Ebionite Christian, or
Nazarene, believing Christ the Messiah, but still only a man. 
          TESTIMONY OF MANY  EARLY  WRITERS.       237

This is sufficiently proved  by the following passage in Jo-
sephus's ' Essay on Hades,' addressed to the Greeks : ' For
all men, the just as well as the unjust, shall be brought before
God the Word;  for to him hath the Father committed all
judgment; and he, in order to fulfil the will of his Father,
shall come as Judge, whom we call  Christ.  For Minos and
Rhadamanthus  are not judges, as you Greeks  do suppose,
but he  whom God, even the Father, hath glorified ; concern-
ing whom we have elsewhere given a more particular account
for the sake of those who seek after truth.'
  Eusebius,  allowed by all competent critics to be one of the
most reliable ecclesiastical  historians existing, who wrote in
the end of the third and beginning of  the fourth century,
when all facts of the origin of Christianity were fresh, not
only wholly confirms Josephus and Philo, but tells  us  that
Pontius Pilate reported  the proceedings regarding  Christ's
crucifixion to the Emperor Tiberius.   But more of this when
we come to Eusebius and the early Fathers.
  Justin  Martyr,  addressing Trypho the Jew,  says, in  the
middle of the second century, ' You Jews knew that Christ
was risen from the dead, and ascended  into heaven, as  the
prophets did foretell;' and  Origen,  addressing Celsus, who,
he says, personated a Jew, reminds him, with the same con-
fidence, of the full knowledge and admission of these facts
by the  Jews.   Such  has, in every age,  continued the  case
with the  Jews.  Denying Jesus as the Messiah, they fully
admit his -existence and  pretensions at  the time stated by
the gospels.  Dr. Wolff, himself a  converted Jew,  says, ' I
could not help looking upon the  Jews of Jerusalem as being,
in some sort, the representatives of the men who crucified our
Saviour.   Supposing this to be the case, I felt that there
would be some interest in knowing how the events of gospel
history were regarded by the Israelites of modern  Jerusa-
lem.  The result of my enquiry upon this subject was, so far
as it went, entirely favorable to the truth of Christianity.  I
understood that  the performance of the  miracles was  not 
238          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
doubted by any of the Jews in the place.  All of them con-
curred in attributing the works of our Lord  to the influence
of magic, but they were divided as to the species of enchant-
ment from which  the power proceeded.   The great mass of
the Jewish people, I believe, fancy that the miracles had
been  wrought by the aid  of  the powers of darkness; but
many,  and they were the  more enlightened,  would call Jesus
"the good  Magician."  With the European repudiation of
the notion of all magic, good or bad, the opinion of the Jews
of the  agency by which the miracles were performed is  a mat-
ter of no importance, but the circumstance of their admitting
that the miracles were in fact performed is certainly curious,
and perhaps not  quite immaterial.'
   After all the internal evidences of a religion, the divinity
of its  sentiments, and their adaptation to the needs and cor-
respondence with the instinctive aspirations  of humanity, are
amongst the very highest evidences of  its truth.   When to
these,  which  are  perfect  in Christianity, we add that every
event of the life of Christ, every feature  of his character, was
prophesied of him ages before, and that every prophecy of
his own regarding the lot of his own nation  was equally veri-
fied, and promptly — as evidenced by the greatest historian
of the last days  of that uation — we must submit that no
truth has ever yet been  so  completely substantiated as that
of Christianity.   Let us now see the remarkable fulfilment of
the denunciations of Christ on Jerusalem shown by Josephus
and other writers.
   Moses, as we have seen, predicted the most terrible calam-
ities to attend  the destruction of Jerusalem, and Christ an-
nounced these horrors to  occur before  the then existing
generation had passed away.  The event took place 74 years
after  his crucifixion.  Josephus, who  was present  at the
siege,  says, ' It appears to me that  the  misfortunes of all
men, from  the  beginning of the world, if they be compared
to these of the Jews, are not so considerable as they were.'
In Matthew xxiv. Jesus says, ' When ye shall see the abora- 
   DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM THE TEST OF PROPHECY.  239

 ination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel, stand in the holy
 place,  then let them which be in Judea flee  unto the mount-
 ains ! &c.  And woe unto them who are with child, and who
 give suck in those days 1  For then shall be great tribula-
 tion, such as was not from the beginning  of the  world to
 this time, no, nor ever shall be.'  The same things are stated
 by Mark and  by Luke  xxi.   The latter Evangelist adds,
 'And  when ye shall see Jerusalem compassed by armies,
 then know that  the desolation  thereof is nigh.....
 For these be the days of vengeance, that all  things which are
 written may be fulfilled.   .   .   .   And they shall fall by the
 edge of the sword, and  shall be led away  captive  into all
 nations; and Jerusalem shall be trodden down by  the Gen-
 tiles, until the times of the  Gentiles shall be fulfilled.  And
 there shall be signs in the sun, and  in the moon, and in  the
 stars, and upon the earth distress of nations,' &c.   Christ
 had before  declared that upon that generation must come all
 the righteous blood which had been shed, from that of Abel
 to that of Zacharias, who was slain between the temple and
 the altar.
   The  people of Jerusalem saw it surrounded by the armies
 of the Romans under Titus.   The Jews had flocked into the
 city from all quarters, and it was crowded by desperate bands,
 headed by as desperate leaders, especially Simon and John,
 who made  a  final resistance.  But Titus carried wall after
 wall, and cooped them up in misery and  starvation.  Titus,
 when master of the second wall, sent Josephus, who was his
 prisoner, to endeavor to  persuade the Jews to surrender,  but
 they refused with rage,  and  endeavored to  kill Josephus.
 The soldiers, enraged at their obstinacy, tormented  and cru-
cified such  as they took prisoners  in view of the city.   So
many were  thus crucified that both Josephus (' Wars,' B. v.
c.  xi.)  and  Reland say that wood was wanting to make more
crosses.  A  wonderful  retribution  for  the crucifixion  of
Christ!  Titus then enclosed the city with a wall of his own
to prevent  the escape of any, and to reduce  them by famine' 
240
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
The misery grew so terrible that  numbers endeavored to de-
sert to the Romans, but having swallowed their gold to pre-
vent being  plundered of it, the Romans becoming aware of
this, ripped them up to come at it.   Then, too, came upon
them  the  prophecy of Moses.   Driven to  desperation by
hunger they ate all kind of vile refuse, and the women took
to killing and eating their children.   Some of the famishing
desperadoes, smelling  a smell of roasting, rushed into the
house of a woman of rank, and found her cooking her only
son, a child.   On  the attack on the  temple, a Roman soldier
mounted on  the shoulder of another and  flung a firebrand
into the window and set it on fire.  The Roman soldiers —
seized, as it were, with frenzy — rushed forward, flinging in
fresh  fire on all sides.   In  vain did Titus  order them to de-
sist, and order them  to be beaten off by his guards: the
temple was doomed of God, and notning could save it.  It
was burned to the ground.  ' The fatal day,' says Josephus,
' was  come, according to the revolution of ages ;  it was the
tenth day  of the month Lous,  upon which  it was formerly
burnt by the King of Babylon.'
   Those signs  and wonders which Christ said should attend
the destruction of the city, came.  A false  prophet,  as He
foretold, appeared ; a dismal comet or sword-like star shone
over the city for a year; chariots, and troops of soldiers in
their  armor, were seen  running about amongst  the  clouds
and the surrounding towns.  As the priests were going into
the temple, before its destruction, to perform their ministra-
tions, they felt the rockings, as of an earthquake, and  a great
noise, as it were the  sound of multitudes, saying,  ' Let us
remove hence 1'   For four years before the siege took place
that  prophet of woe Jesus, the son of A nanus, from  day to
to day, and month to month, had gone through the  streets
of the city crying, ' Woe, woe, to Jerusalem 1'  In vain was
he forbidden to use that cry ; in vain was  he whipped to the
bone  ; he  still  continued it through the whole siege, till at
length, saying, ' Woe to the city, to  the people, and to the 
     DAUGHTERS OF JERUSALEM WEEP FOR YOURSELVES. 241

Holy House,' he added, 'Woe also to myself,' and was killed
by a  stone out  of one of the Roman engines (Josephus,
'Wars,' B. vi. c. v.).
  When the temple was burnt down,  the Roman soldiers,
who worshipped their standards more than any gods, 'carried
them thither, and  set them over against its eastern gate,
and  there did they offer sacrifices to  them, and there did
they make  Titus imperator, with the greatest  acclamations
of joy.'   And thus was the  abomination of desolation set up
in the holy place;  and there did the sacrifice  and oblation
cease, which was to take place at or soon after the advent of
the  Messiah.   And yet the Jews, spite of their own prophets,
after eighteen hundred and  sixty years,  still wait for him.
  I have already mentioned the statement of  Josephus, of
the  many thousands of Jews  led away and  sold into cap-
tivity, even to  such an extent that,  as Moses foretold, no
one would  buy them;  that 97,000 were so carried  away,
those above seventeen years old to labor in the mines of
Egypt;  and that 1,100,000 perished in the siege, being, in
fact, the population of the whole country round.   The Chris-
tians, warned by Christ's words, had escaped away previous
to the siege.  And thus were fulfilled, most literally,  all the
horrors and the destruction announced by Moses ages before,
and by Christ but seventy-four years before.
  One of the most striking injunctions of Christ when the
women bewailed him as he went to the scene of crucifixion
was, turning to them,  'Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not
for  me, but weep for yourselves and your children' (Luke
xxiii.  28).   And  through  every  age  since,  women have
resorted to the ancient site of the  temple, and bewailed its
destruction.   Our  travellers still find them prostrated there
' weeping for themselves and their  children.'   Miss Bremer-,
In her late visit to Jerusalem,  says 8he saw them gathering
every Friday,  near the great  mosque,  El Saharab, on the
site  of Solomon's  temple.   By the great  western wall, the
foundations of which are said to have been laid by Solomon
  I.—21 
242          HISTORY OF  THE  SUPERNATURAL.

she saw groups of women enveloped in long pieces of white
linen, which served them both as mantles and  veils,  bend
over the  large stones, the corners of which projected  here
and  there from the wall, kissing them and pressing their
foreheads against them, making the while  a low lamenting
wail.   Men, too,  were amid  the groups, reading from books
which  they had in their hands, and lamenting aloud.   These
books, probably, contained  the  hymn of  lamentation and
desire  for the restoration of  their temple and  nation, which
Dr. Wolff says he joined them in singing :

          The mighty shall build the City of Zion,
          And give her to Thee;
          Then shall He raise from the dust the needy,
          And from the dunghill the poor;
          The Blessed One shall build the City of Zion,
          And give her to Thee, &c.

   Another hymn expresses, intensely, the  impatience of an
expectation, now of more than eighteen centuries:

          Thou art mighty to build Thy temple speedily,
          Lord, build, build Thy temple speedily —
          In haste, in haste, in haste, in haste,
          Even in our days!
          Build Thy temple speedily.

   This remarkable hymn is also  from the  liturgy of the
Jews at Jerusalem:

   Rabbi.  On account of the palace which is laid waste,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep.
   Rabbi.  On account of the temple which is destroyed,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep.
   Rabbi.  On account of the walls which are pulled down,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep.
   Rabbi.  On account of our majesty,  which is gone,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep,
   Rabbi.  On account of our great men who have been cast down,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep.
   Rabbi.  On account of the precious stones which have been burned,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep.
   Rabbi.  On account of the priests who have stumbled,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep.
   Rabbi.  On account of our kings who have despised Him,
   People.  We sit lonely and weep. 
         ATTEMPT  OF JULIAN TO  BUILD THE TEMPLE.    243

     Finally, there  is a most remarkable testimony to the truth
   of the Scripture  prophecies regarding Christy and of the de-
   struction of the  temple according to His prediction, by a
   pagan writer.   Julian the Apostate formed the design  to
   nullify the prophecy of Christ, that the temple should be de-
   stroyed, and so remain till the fulness of the Gentiles  should
   be fulfilled.  For this purpose he proposed to the Jews  to
^  rebuild it, promising them the aid of his wealth and his au-
   thority.   They flocked from all parts of the world, and made
   immense preparations, but the ardor of the Jews, the  power
   and treasury of  the emperor, were useless.   God  Himself
   compelled them to abandon the attempt.
     Ammianus Marcellinus, who  gives the account of this at-
   tempt of Julian,  was a Greek by birth, but was an officer  in
   the Apostate's  army in the Persian war.   He wrote the ac-
   count of the reign of Julian in his history,  of which the first
   thirteen  books are lost.  Julian's reign,  however,  extends
   from the fourteenth  book to  the twenty-fifth.   The fact of
   Ammianus  not being a Christian makes  his evidence  the
   stronger, and Gibbon says of him, ' It is with regret that I
   must now take  leave of an  accurate and faithful guide, who
   has composed the history of his own times, without indulging
   the prejudices and passions which usually affect the mind of
   a contemporary.'   Such  also is  the opinion of other histo-
   rians regarding him.  -Let  us take his own text on the sub-
   ject,  that all doubt of its correctness may be excluded :
     'Julianus  imperii   sui memoriam  magnitudine  operum
   gestiens propagare, ambitiosum quondam apud Jerosolymam
   templum instaurare  sumptibus cogitabat  immodicis,  nego-
   tiumque  maturandum Alypio dederat Antiochensi, qui olim
   Britannias curaverat pro prsefectis.  Quam itaque  rei idem
   fortiter instaret Alypius, juvaretque provincial rector, me-
   tuendi globi flammarum prope fundamenta crebris adsultibus
   erumpentes,  fecere  locum,  exustis aliquoties  operantibus
   inaccessum;  hocque modo,  elemento  destinatius repellenti,
  cessant inceptum.'  That is,  the Emperor Julian, desiring
  to preserve forever the memory of his reign by the grandeur 
244         nisTORv of the supf.rnattral.
of his works, resolved to employ an immense sum in rebuild-
ing the famous temple of Jerusalem.   He charged with this
undertaking  Alypius of  Antioch, who  had  before  been
Governor of Britain ; but whilst Alypius was preparing for
this work, aided by the government of the province, terrible
globes of fire, issuing out of different parts  of the founda-
tions, rendered the place inaccessible, and burnt many of the
workmen in such  a manner, that this  element repelled all
their  efforts, and  forced  them  to abandon the enterprise
(Book xxiv.).
   The same account is given by Gregory Nazianzen, Chry-
sostome, Ruffin, Philostorgus, Socrates  Scholasticus,  Sozo-
men,  Theodoret,  and others, adding  many other circum-
stances of  earthquakes that threw  down  the  walls of the
buildings raised by the Jews and their  workmen, and bury-
ing many under them ;  of luminous crosses which were seen
in the air, and which the Jews found upon their clothes, and
were not able to get rid of, &c.
   Thus we have examined the spiritual manifestations amongst
the Hebrews from the commencement of their history to the
destruction  of their capital and the dispersion of their nation,
— a narrative at once the most important to us as immortal
creatures, the most extraordinary  in  its  details, and the most
complete and  lucid in its  statement.  At  once the  fullest
fountain of civilization and  of religion,  it is the most simple
and yet undaunted in its exposition of spiritual truth.   No-
where else do we expect to find such luminous and persistent
recital of spiritual  events and phenomena, none which is so
calmly confident of its announcements,  or so  indifferent to
the critiques of men;  yet  I now proceed  in  quest  of the
same great  lines of revelation  flowing from the primaeval
Source of all light and truth, over  the other early nations.
These, though becoming  more  obscured by ignorance, dis-
torted by superstition, and reduced to feebleness by the over-
loading  fancies and passions of  men,  are  still perceptibly
existent  and indestructible. 
THE SUPERNATURAL A  UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLE.    245
            CHAPTER  IX.

THE  SUPERNATURAL IN THE ANCIENT NATIONS.
           Meanwhile prophetic harps
In every grove were ringing.
                               Wordswokth.

Ein alter Stamm mit tausend Aesten,
Die Wurzeln in der Ewigkeit,
Neigt sich  von Osten hin nach Westen
In mancher Bildung weit und breit.
Kein Baum kann bliithenreicher werden
Und keine  Frucht kann edler sein,
Doch auch das ' Dunkelste' auf Erden —
Es reift auf seinem Zweig allein.
                                Kerner.
     WHAT is Spiritualism ?  It is simply the revival of the
      universal faith of  all past times and  nations in the
communion  of  God and his angels with the spirit of  man.
This is the essential, the substantial principle of Spiritualism
which I am  now about to demonstrate,  on historic  evidence,
to be as old as  the hills, and as ubiquitous as the ocean.  It
has its many modes and its many phases,  one or other of which
God seems to bring forward according  to  the requirements
of different periods and conditions of the human mind and
of society.   It has its  adaptation to the  saint, the savage,
and the sage, to civilization and uncivilization.  At one time
it is manifested by celestial  messengers  appearing in the like-
ness of men amongst men, announcing great events, doing
wondrous deeds ; at another, speaking through prophets ; at
another, exhibiting physical  manifestations  through them,
causing an" axe to float on water, a fleece to be preternaturally
wet or dry ; a cruse of oil or a barrel of flour to be full in
       21* 
246           HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

spite of draining ; rain to fall or not to fall, men to see, or
to become  suddenly blind.  At  others, it  comes in  the still,
small, but audible voice of God, to His  servants; at others,
by breaking the chains of prisoners, and bearing men through
the air, as  Philip was borne.  At all times by interior inspi-
ration.  And as amongst the chosen people, so in  all other
nations, unless  all history be a lie, by oracles, and signs, and
miraculous healings, by prophecies, and  spiritual teachings.
   These modes may vary ;  they may yet assume power that
they have  never yet assumed, because  human nature  shall
have assumed conditions hitherto unknown.  But spiritualism
is independent of all times, all people, and even  of its own
varying phenomena.   It is, in itself, specifically  and perma-
nently the  influx of divine and angelic agency into and  upon
the human soul.  To say that in our day, the rising  of tables
and the speaking of spirits through tables and alphabets, is
new, and, therefore, spurious and depraved, is to  say nothing
against spiritualism,  or the manifestations  themselves.  It
says nothing against spiritualism ; because, as I have shown,
and shall  farther show, it exists in permanence, independent
of its  manifestations, as the serpent exists independent of its
slough, or man  of  his  varying fashions.  It says nothing
against the manifestations because, as we see, these  are con-
stantly varying, as the conditions of humanity vary.
   When people, beginning to  believe the fact,  ask us what
is its use, they ask a platitude ; because  a fact has essentially
its use, though we may not be able to detect it.   Who has
yet discovered  the use of a flea, a musquito, a lion, or a deadly
serpent ?   Yet, undoubtedly, they have each their uses in the
divine ordination of things.  Let us satisfy ourselves that
anything is  a  fact, and we may rest satisfied that it has its
preordained  use.
   To  call spiritualism  indiscriminately sorcery is equally
unphilosophical; because many manifestations in the Bible
possess more or less  of the  same character.  True, sorcery
has existed in all times coincidently with the true, divine, and 
VARIOUS PHASES  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
247
  angelic intercourse.  It exists  as the shadow  exists,  and
 follows the sun.   It exists as a  certain  antagonism  exists
 throughout all life.  It exists because the devil and his angels
 exist, who are always working in this antagonism to God  and
 His angels—a fact, as we  shall find,  perfectly understood by
 most of the ancient nations.   It exists as the earth  exists
 with  night and day, with a light and a dark  side.  But the
 true  and the demoniac  spiritualism  are to be readily dis-
 tinguished.  How ?  By the divine  rule,  by  the  fruits they
 produce.   That is the heavenly criterion which  will  guide
 every one who will attend to it as unerringly as  the  needle
 will guide the ship through the tempestuous  and nocturnal
 seas, or the traveller through the pathless  desert.   Many of
 the Jewish prophets did things  under the direction  of  the
 Divine Spirit far more apparently ludicrous, undignified, and
 even immoral, than anything which is done by modern  spirit-
 ualism ; but, like modern spiritualists, they are to be judged
 by the fruits and not the appearances  of  their doings.   So
 long as modern spiritualism produces  new and purer life, a
 firmer faith, a more fervent love of God and man, we may
 rest assured of its  divine  paternity; when it produces evil,
 that portion of it is as certainly from the devil.
   We are now about to open views into the  pagan nations
 which  will present, amid all their darkness and their corrup-
 tions, this  great law at work in the heart of  heathenism as
 really, though not as purely, as in the Jewish nation  itself.
 We shall find amid the degradations of heathenism, in every
 ancient nation, bright lines of primal  and inextinguishable
 truths running.
   In Horst's great work on Magic it is ably said, 'All faith
 all superstition, all  truth, and all error in the  human repre-
 sentation of the supernatural; of mystery, wonder, magical
 power, and supermundane influence, are, from whatever point
you trace them, ultimately based on the common but highest
principle--faith in  a higher nature, good or bad, with which
men people the earth, all the elements, the stars, the collective 
248         HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
universe, as far as their views of it can extend.   We find this
faith, without exception, in the Old as well as in the New
World.  That which lies at its foundation amongst all people,
those of the highest and those of  the lowest scale of cultiva-
tion, is the darkly apprehended, or clearly known idea,— an
idea specifically dividing humanity from the brute — that the
visible and physical world is united to an invisible world of
spirits, good or bad, and stands in such relation  to it that
this world is subjected to that.
   'As the good spirits—let them be named and located in
the different popular mythologies as they will — as the good
spirits,  so can  also the bad  spirits—be  they named and
located as they may — come upon the earth.  As  the good,
so  the  bad exercise their influence  on  men,  work in and
through them, for  their benefit or their  destruction.   This
admitted fact which we, on the stand-point of our intellectual
culture, either reject as superstition or accept into  our intel-
lectual  system as a dogma—this axiom we find in all nations,
in  every  age,  in  every  climate,  let the  good  and the  bad
powers be named by different people as they may; and it
matters not what differences  of opinion as to their particular
activities, or  their relations to  men, may  be entertained.
The  faith in   it  is  there and everywhere  the same faith,
though it may show itself in one place as the true  faith, and
reveal itself darkly in another as a gloomy superstition.
   'Can it be otherwise  ?  It is, as it commonly happens, not
enough to say in explanation of it, that the faith in unknown
and more mighty existences, in a secret  power of nature, is
founded in the propensity of the  rude human spirit to accept
something supernatural whenever causes and their effects are
not yet discovered in their natural dependence. For whence
is this universal, first idea, this first projection of the super-
natural, which always  precedes  its acceptance, and lays it
down as a first principle ?

           Ach! zu des Geistes Fliigeln wird so leicht
           Kein Ktfrperlicher Fliigeln sich gesellen. 
           UNIVERSALITY OF SPIRITUAL BELIEF.        249

          Doch ist es jedem eingeboren,
          Dass sein Gefuhl hinauf und vorwarts dringt.—Goethe.

   'Very well — inborn !—That is saying everything.   This
 popular faith testifies  that man,  on no step of his descent,
 can deny that his inner life and being  are rooted, not in the
 materia], but in the spiritual, and  that his  faith, and  even
 this  superstition spring up in him  at  every step of his pro-
 gress ; for it is in him, and drives on to seek something and
 to believe in something, which,  though it be  outside and
 above his physical vision, as he feels,  is even indispensable
 to his interior life.   It  is on this account that the savage
 attributes every natural  phenomenon  that is inexplicable to
 him to immediate spiritual influence.  This  is so natural to
 him, and goes  so  far, that  every savage, like Campe's  man
 Friday, when he plunges his  hand into a boiling pot, rather
 imagines spirit and magic power in the cause of the smart
 than  seeks for it in  natural causes.   This universal popular
 faith in higher existences, both good and bad, is the founda-
 tion  of all truth, of all superstition, and especially so of faith
 in magic'
   Now, this  universal  and ineradicable faith in spiritual life
 and communion marks itself as a lex magna, a universal law
 of nature. No depth of savagery can extinguish  it; no light
 of philosophy can purge it  from the  human mind.   Being
 eternal and  indestructible, it is true.  It has been well re-
 marked that the same religious ideas underlying the mythol-
 ogies of all nations, however separated by time, distance,  or
 custom, point as a  certainty to  a time when  men were all
together in one place and held one common knowledge de-
rived from a primal  and superhuman  source.  That  epoch
was  immediately after the Flood, and  before the dispersion
 of the nations at the building of Babel.   Those who  would
 witness the  full development of the carrying away of this
common knowledge, and the gradual foundation of the dif-
ferent ancient mythologies from it, may find  this in the elab-
orate works of Bryant, Cudworth, Faber, Cory, and others. 
250         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
We will only take a summary view of this dispersion of na-
tions, and of the idolatries which they carried with them.
  After the Flood, the minds of men becoming rapidly ma-
terialized, they lost  the clear spiritual  vision, and began to
worship that which they could perceive by their outer senses,
the powers of nature.  These they next endeavored to sym-
bolize and represent in many forms of men, beasts, and birds,
with such distortions and degraded disguises as marked the
degraded condition of their inner nature.  The devils, taking
advantage of this,  as the whole of the  sacred  Scriptures
attest, assumed the personality of these fabled gods, and an-
swered  for  them in their oracles.   Not  only  so, but they
animated the whole of heathenism with their Demon Spirit,
and flooded it, as I shall presently show, with licentious-
ness, pride  of the most  haughty kind, and  blood, even hu-
man  blood, poured in torrents on their altars all the world
over.
   Every system of heathen  mythology had its origin in the
corruption of patriarchal worship before the dispersion at
Babel.   There the whole family of man was collected in the
descendants  of Noah's three sons, Shem, Ham, and Japhet,
and thence, at that time, they were scattered abroad by the
hand of God all over the world.  Japhet colonized the whole
of Europe ; all those northern regions  called Tartary and Si-
beria, and in process of time, by the  easy passage of  Beh-
ring's Straits,  the  entire continent  of America.  His son
Gomer  seems clearly to  have been the father of those who
were originally called Gomerians, and by slight variations
were afterwards termed Comarians,  Cimmerians,  Cymbri,
Cumbri, Cumri, Cambri, andUmbri;  and it later years Celts,
Gauls,  Gael, and Cambrians.   These extended themseves
over  the  regions north  of America  and Bactriana ; thence
over nearly all Europe, and first planted Britain and Ireland.
Magog, Tubal, and Mesech, as we learn from Ezekiel,  dwelt
far to the north of Judea, and  became the  ancestors of the
great Sclavonic or Sarmatian families; the  name of Magog 
          ALL MYTHOLOGIES FROM ONE SOURCE.       251

still existing in the appellations of Mogli, Monguls, and Mon-
golians ; those of Tubal and Mesech in Tobolski,  Moschici,
and  Moscow,  and  Moscovites.   Madia  was  father of the
Medes, and Javan of the original inhabitants of Greece, where
we may trace the name of his sons Elishah, Tarshith, Kittim,
and Dodanim, in Elis, Tarsus, Cittim, and Dodona.
  The posterity of Shem  was confined  to  Southern Asia,
where the Semitic  languages  now prevail;  founding by his
sons Elam or Persia, Ashur or Assyria, a province of Iran,
a great Assyrian empire of Nimrod, whose son Cush appears
to have subdued these descendants of Shem.   Arphaxad be-
came the  father of the Hebrews and other kindred nations;
his descendant Peleg founded Babylonia, and Joktan, stretch-
ing far towards the east, probably became  the father of the
Hindoos.   Ophir, one  of the sons  of Joktan, is often men-
tioned in  Scripture as dwelling in  a land of  gold, to which
voyages were made by ships issuing from the Red Sea, and
sailing westward; but Elam and Cush occupied the whole sea-
coast of Persia, as far as the Indus.  This, therefore,  brings
us to the great peninsula of Hindostan for the seat of Ophir.
Lud, the  fourth son of  Shem, is presumed to  be the founder
of Lydia; and Aram, the  fifth,  the father  of Mesopotamia
and Syria.
   Ham was  at first mixed with  Shem throughout Southern
Asia, and became the sole occupant of Africa.  Of his sons,
Cush became the founder of Iran, or Central  Asia, the great
Assyrian  Empire,  and  the progenitor  of  all those called
 Cushim,  Cushas, Cuthas, Goths, Scythes, Scythians, Scuths,
or Scots.   Mizraim peopled Egypt, and  thence, passing west
and south, spread over the greater part of Africa ; and Ca-
naan, it is well known, peopled the part afterwards inhabited
by the Israelites.
   Thus, it is said, was the world peopled, and that it was thus
 peopled we  learn, not only from  Moses,  but from profane
 writers, and find both  accounts confirmed by abundant evi-
dence in the manners, traditions, languages, and  occupance 
252          HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
of the different races at the present day.  Sir William Jones
thought he had  found only three  great original languages,
namely, Arabic,  Sclavonic, and  Sanscrit.  Great researches
into the radical principles of language very much confirm his
theory, though the Sclavonic is now known  as a branch of
the family of languages cognate with Sanscrit, and called the
Indo-European; and  the chief  Semitic languages,  or lan-
guages of the descendants  of Shem, are  the Armeean, that
of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Babylonia, the Hebrew,  Phoeni-
cian, and Arabic.  All these, however, clearly spread from
one  point,  Central Asia, whence by  consent of the most
ancient records  and traditions of the great primaeval nations,
their original ancestors spread.
   The fragments of  the ancient Chaldean and  Phoenician
writers, which have come down to us, fully confirm the Scrip-
ture history of  this  dispersion.   Berosus,  the historian of
Babylon, Sanchoniatho, the historian of  Phoenicia,  and
Epiphanius, quoting  from them, all say that  Babel was the
first city built after  the flood.   Nimrod, called  Belus, was
undoubtedly the Orion of the Greeks, as this  war of Nimrod
and the sons of  Ham against heaven is the war of the Titans,
from Titanis, the fountain  of light, or  the sun ;  the worship
of that luminary being the first idolatrous worship on earth,
and commencing  in  Chaldea.  Homer's Orion is precisely
the Nimrod of Scripture :
        Next I behold  Orion's towering shade,
        Chasing the savage race, which, wild  with fear,
        Before him fled in herds.  These he had  slain
        Upon the cliflFs and solitary hills,
        Armed with a  club of brass, massy and strong,
        Such as  no force could injure.—Odyssey, I. a. v. 751.
   The Sibyls were originally Chaldean priestesses, and one of
the most ancient Sybilline hymns describes the contest of the
giants at the tower of Babel.
        But  when the judgments of Almighty God
        Were ripe for execution; when the tower
        Rose to the skies  upon Assyria's plains,
        And all mankind one  language only knew, 
THE OLDEST HISTORIANS CORROBORATE THE BIBLE. 253
        A dread commotion from on high was given
        To the fell whirlwinds, which with  dire alarm
        Beat on the tower,  and to  its lowest base
        Shook it convulsed.   And now all intercourse,
        By some occult and overruling power,
        Censed among men: by utterance they strove,
        Perplexed and anxious,  to disclose  their mind;
        But their lip failed  them; and in lieu of words
        Produced  a  painful  babbling sound.   The place
        Was hence called Babel; by the apostate crew
        Named from the event.  Then severed far away,
        They sped uncertain into realms unknown :
        Thus kingdoms rose, and the glad world was filled.


   The Sibyl  speaks  of Cronus, Titan, and Iapetus, amongst
the giant crew who obtained great names and rule on earth;
and how exactly did Hesiod retail this to the Greeks !

        Now Jove no longer could withhold his ire;
        But rose with tenfold vengeance.  Down he hurled
        His lightning,  dreadful implement of  wrath,
        Which flashed  incessant, and before him move J
        His awful thunder with tremendous peal.
        Meantime storms raged; and dusky  whirlwinds rose.
        Still blazed  the lightning with coutiuual glare,
        The gleam smote on the Titan's heads, whose eyes
        Were  blasted as they  gazed; nor could they  stand
        The fervor,  but  exhausted sank to  ground.

The only difference between Hesiod and the Sibyl is, that by
Hesiod the Titans were not scattered over the earth, but ban-
ished to Tartarus.   The passage has certainly  been  admired
by Milton ; for it bears traces of the war in heaven, and the
fall of the rebel angels, and  after all, though the giants are
said to be driven down to  Tartarus, the concluding lines seem
to infer that they were somewhere on earth, with the dreary
bounds of earth, and sea, and air around them, heaven above,
and Tartarus  below.   In the Greek poet's mind, traditions of
the dispersion seemed to overcome, unconsciously the idea of
the Titanic fall:

        The gods, victorious, seized the rebel crew
        And sent  them, bound in adamantine  chains
        To  earth's deep  caverns,  and the shades of niKht
        Here dwell the apostate brotherhood,  consigned 
254          HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
       To everlasting durance.  Here they sit
       Age after age, in melancholy state,
       Still pining in eternal gloom, and lost
       To every comfort.  Round  them  still  extend
       The dreary bounds of earth,  and sea, and air,
       Of heaven above and Tartarus below. — Theogony, v. 676.

Amongst his fallen Titans, fallen  so deep, that an iron anvil
dropped into the abyss would reach  the  bottom only in ten
days, he names Cronus and Iapetus, as well as Crius, Phorcys,
Hyperion, and Cottus, who were  reckoned amongst the first
settlers in Greece.   In his ' Works and Days,' the same  poet
tells us that when the  inhabitants of  the golden age died,
       Jove raised them to be demons  of the air,
       Spirits benign, and guardians of mankind,
       Who sternly right maintain, and sternly punish wrong.

   And Athenagoras supposed the souls of the giants to be
wandering demons, that are ever roving about the world; an
idea clearly derived from Hesiod.
   The Rev. Isaac  Preston Cory,  Cains College,  Cambridge,
in his ' Ancient Fragments,' in which he has translated  the
remains of Berosus, Sanchoniatho, Manetho, &c, shows  that
they not only confirm these facts fully, but shows  also that
they identify  the  origin of all the  ancient mythologies  as
proceeding from this point, and based on the same principles.
He says : — 'It has been remarked that the theogonies and
cosmogonies of the heathen were the same.  By comparing
the  Hermetic, Orphic, and Pythagorean  accounts  in the
celebrated collection  of  Damascius,  with those of  Sanchon-
iatho, Berosus, and the rest, it will  be  seen that  the Ether
and Chaos of the philosophers,  or Mind  and  Matter,  were
regarded as the two universal, eternal, and  independent  prin-
ciples of the universe; the  one a vivifying and intellectual
principle, the  other a  watery chaos, boundless  and without
form, until put into motion  and form by mind, and brought
out of darkness.  From this union springs the Triad, Phanes,
or  Eros, a triple divinity ; the soul  and light of the world,
the  intelligible triad so largely insisted upon by the Plato- 
TESTIMONY OF SANCHONIATHO.
255
 nists.   There was a physical triad of Light, Air, and Earth,
 a spiritual one of Love, Intellect, and Will.
   'But we shall see that a triad pervaded  every mythology.
 In the third century, Ammonius Saccas, universally acknowl-
 edged to have been  a man  of consummate ability, taught
 that every sect, Christian, Heretic, or Pagan, had received
 the truth and retained it in their various legends.   He under-
 took to  unfold it from them all;  and from his  exertions
 sprung the celebrated Eclectic School of the later Platonists.
 To Ammonius, in the Platonic chair of Alexandria, succeeded
 Plotinus, Amelius,  Olympius, Jamblichus,  Syrian us.  and
 Proclus.   This school was closed  by Justinian, and  its last
 professors, Diogenes, Hermias,  Eulalius, Priscianus, Damas-
 cus, Isidorus, and Simplicius, retired to Persia under Chos-
 roes.'  From the writings of these  philosophers is collected
 the bulk of the oracles of Zoroaster.   The  same writers also
 contain many answers given by  spirits to theurgists.

                     Sanchoniatho.
   In the remains of the Cosmogony of this historian of the
 Phoenicians, we have the mythology of that people, present-
 ing the clearest testimony of the derivation of the Greek
 mythology from it.  The  Phoenicians, the  great traders to
 western Europe, carrying their ideas as well as their wares
 everywhere, planted them all round the  Mediterranean and
 much farther west.   Danaus  and Orpheus  are said to  have
 carried much mythologic knowledge from Egypt into Greece •
 but the Phoenician mythology  bears a  still greater resem-
 blance  to the Greek  theogony.  He says  that the  Winds
 or Ether  uniting  with Chaos, produced  Mot, or  plastic
 matter, and  from this watery matter, or mud, springs all the
 seed of creation.   Then light  broke through  Chaos  and
 animals, male and female, were  produced.   The human rice
commenced, and began to worship the elements, as the visible
motive powers, amongst them the winds, Notus, Boreas, &c
The two first men were .Eon and  Protogones.   Their son 
256         history of  the supernatural.
and daughter were Genus  and Genea, who settled in  Phoe-
nicia— in fact, in all mythologies, the first people are said to
have settled in the country of that mythology.  From Genus
and Genea came three children, Phos,  Pur, and Phlox, —
Light,  Fire, and Flame ; and these produced  giants.   From
Misor  descended Taautus, the Thoth  of  the Egyptians, and
Hermes of the Greeks.  He taught them letters.  Another
god mentioned is  Elioun,  called Hypsistus, or the Most
High,  evidently the Elohim of the Hebrews.  The son  of
Elioun was Ouranus or Heaven, who married Ge, the earth,
and had three sons, Cronus, Betylus, and Dagon, evidently
the three sons of Noah.  Cronus deposed Ouranus, and had
as children  Persephone  and Athena, the latter  of  whom
taught Cronus or Saturn to make a spear.  Cronus married
the daughters of the banished Ouranus,  Astarte, Rhea, and
Dione  (that is, his sisters), and had  by Astarte Eros and
Pothos, the  Eros and Anteros of the Greeks, as also seven
daughters,  called  Titanides,  or Artemides.  Dagon,  the
brother of Cronus,  is evidently Noah, for he came up out of
the water.  Cronus had also  three sons, Zeus, Belus, and
Apollo.  Typhon  also lived in these times — Typhon the
serpent so conspicuous in the  Egyptian  mythology.   Mele-
carthus, the original Hercules or Melech-Athor, or the Lord
Ether  had his first temple in Tyre, and thither Herodotus
travelled to see it, finding the image of Hercules only a
block of magnetic iron.  Poseidon was also of that time, the
Neptune of the  Greeks.   Astarte  is declared by Sanchon-
iatho to be Aphrodite, or Venus.   Athena, the daughter of
Cronus, founded Attica in Greece.  After Cronus had killed,
dismembered, and  sacrificed Ouranus, he had a son  called
Muth or Death, the Pluto of Greece.  The Cabiri, he says,
dwelt  in Phoenicia, the Cabiri being the Dii Potentes  of
Greece, the chief of them being Jupiter, Juno, and Pallas.
Cronus gave all  Egypt  to Taautus.   Taautus first intro-
duced  the serpent into the worship  of Egypt.   In the Phoe-
nician  cosmogony  we see not  only the Greek' one, but also 
TESTIMONY of berosus.
257
 Samson, the original  Hercules, drawn from the adjoining
 country of Judea.

                         Berosus.

   In the fragments of Berosus, the historian of Chaldea, pre ■
 served by  Alexander  Polyhistor, Apollodorus, Abydenus,
 Josephus, and others, we have the clearest confirmations of
 the Mosaic creation, the flood, and the building of the Tower
 of Babel.   He tells us that there was a time  in which there
 existed nothing but darkness  and an abyss of water, wherein
 resided most hideous beings.  They were creations in which
 were combined the limbs of  every species of animals.  Be-
 sides these  were fishes, reptiles, serpents which assumed each
 other's shapes, and that pictures of these were preserved in
 the temple of Belus at Babylon to his time.  When Belus
 divided the darkness, and separated heaven and earth, these
 monsters could not bear the light, but died.   What a lively
 representation of the saurian  and other monsters of the pre-
 Adamite ages!
   He says that an odd sort of a man, half-man,  half-fish,
 came up out of the waters  and  taught mankind the  arts, a
 dim  notion of  Noah, although Noah comes  more distinctly
 forward, as Xisuthrus or Sisithrus, who, warned by Cronus
 of a coming flood, built a vessel  and took his family and  all
 things into  it.   Having asked the Deity whither he was to
 sail,  he  was answered, 'To  the  gods.'   When this vessel
 stranded  on the mountains of Armenia, he sent out birds
 which came back  with their  feet  dirty with mud, and  the
 second time came no more.  When Xisuthrus went out  of
 the ark, he sacrificed to the gods, and then disappeared, but
 they could  hear his voice  in  the  air, admonishing  his chil-
 dren to worship the gods, and informing them  that he, his
 wife, and the pilot of the vessel, were translated to  them for
their piety — a faint memory  of Enoch.   Berosus says, that
in his time the remains  of the  ark lay on the Corcyreau
      22* 
258
HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
mountains of Armenia, and the people used to scrape the
pitch from it as endowed with inestimable medical properties.
  Berosus gives a succession of ten kings of Chaldea down
to Xisuthrus.  He says the winds assisted the gods in de-
stroying the Tower of Babel, that the gods then introduced
a diversity of languages, and that a  war arose between the
gods  and the Titans; another Greek parallel.   Josephus
gives  us  many particulars of the  later history of Babylon,
from Berosus down to its seizure by Cyrus.
  In  a fragment  of Megasthenes, preserved by Abydenus,
in his history of Assyria, we are told that Nebucodrosorns
exclaimed,  ' Oh !  Babylonians 1 I, Nebucodrosorns,  foretell
unto you a calamity which must shortly come to pass, which
neither Belus my ancestor, nor  Beltis  his queen, have power
to persuade the  Fates to turn  away; a Persian mule  shall
come, and by the assistance of your gods, shall impose upon
you the  yoke of slavery.'  Probably, Nebucodrosorus or
Nebuchadnezzar had this prophecy communicated to  him by
Daniel.
  We find the  same account of the  winds assisting in the
destruction  of Babel, in  Alexander Polyhistor, and in the
Cumsean Sibyl.   Eupolemus, in a  fragment of Chaldean
history,  says that Babylon  was built  by  the  giants, who
escaped from the destruction of Babel; and Epiphanius and
the Paschal Chronicle, that the period of barbarism extended
from Adam  to Noah ; that of  Scythism and the customs of
the Scythians to  the age  of  Thera, who commenced the
period of Hellenism or idolatry.  Thera is  Terah, the father
of Abraham.  Hellenism, carried  into  Greece  by the Phoe-
nicians or  Egyptians,  gave the name of Hellenes  to the
Greeks.   Cedrenus, of the  tribe of Japhet, had introduced
Hellenism.   Eupolemus and Nicolaus  Damascenus  confirm
the Hebrew history of Abraham.  Damascenus says  Abram
was King of Damascus, and that  in  his time a village was
still pointed  out where he  had lived.  Thallus says, Belus,
with the  Titans, made war on  Zeus  and his  compeers, who 
           ORIGIN OF THE GREEK MYTHOLOGY.        259

 are called gods; Castor says that the Cyclops assisted Jupi-
 ter against the Titans with thunderbolts, and that Hercules
 and Dionusus, who were  of the Titan race, also  assisted  to
 overthrow them.  Thus, these ancient writers, of whom  only
 mere fragments  remain, at once prove the Scripture history
 and the origin of the  Greek fable.

           Facts in the  History of  Egypt.

   Artapanus says that the daughter of Chenephres, King of
 Egypt, having no  children, brought up a child of the Jews,
 and called it Moyses; but amongst the Greeks he was called
 Musseiis, and that he was the instructor of Orpheus.
   The learned Jacob  Bryant  says, ' The whole theology of
 Greece was derived from the East.   We cannot, therefore,
 but  in reason suppose, that Clemens of Alexandria, Euse-
 bius of Caesarea, Tatianus of  Assyria, Lucian of Samosata,
 Cyril of Jerusalem, Porphyry of Syria,  Proclus  of  Lydia,
 Philo of Biblus, Strabo of Amasa, Pausanias of Cappadocia,
 Eratosthenes of  Cyrene,  must know more upon  this subject
 than any native Helladian.   The like  may be  said of Diod-
 orus, Josephus,  Cedrenus,  Syncellus,  Zonarus,  Eustathius,
 and  numberless  more.  These had  the  archives  of  ancient
temples to which they could apply, and had traditions more
genuine than ever reached Greece.   And though they were
posterior to themselves, they appeal to  authors far prior  to
any Helladians ; and  their  works are  crowded with extracts
from the most curious and the most ancient histories.   Such
are the writings of Sanchoniatho, Berosus, Nicolaus Dam-
ascenus,  Mocus, Mnaseas, Hieronymus,  Egyptiacus, Apion,
 Manetho, from whom Abydenus, Apollodorus, Asclepiades,
Artapanus, Philastrius borrowed largely.  We are indebted
to Clemens and  Eusebius for  many evidences from  writers
long since lost; even Eustathius and Tzetzes have resources,
 which are now no more'  (vol. i.  148).
   Herodotus attributes the theogony of  Greece  to Hesiod 
260         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
 and Homer.   Before their time, he says (which was above
 four hundred years before his time), nothing was known in
 Greece of the origin and generation of the gods.   In fact,
 it was, he adds,  because Pythagoras  had not then brought
 this knowledge  from  Egypt,  and all  the ideas of Greek
 mythology, he assures us, were thence derived.
   Thus, we  find,  from Central Asia, the same gods under
 different names,  proceeding to every region of the earth, and
 what is more remarkable, the  same primal doctrines of a
 triune and yet one God surviving everywhere under the most
 multifarious disguises.   Probably these truths  were the more
 strongly imprinted on the ancient mind, Noah, whom they
 deified, having three sons, whom they had come to regard as
 a reappearance of Adam and his three sons, Cain, Abel, and
 Seth.   Dr. Cudworth,  in his  ' Intellectual System of the
 Universe,' has expended an enormous amount of learning to
 show that the Greeks  held an idea of three superior gods,
 and yet that  this was but one supreme  God.  All the phil-
 osophers, he  says, believed in one  supreme God  above the
 other gods whom they worshipped, except the Stoics, Derao-
 critans, and Epicureans.  Except  these,  all believed in the
 immortality of the  soul; in  three hypostases or essences,
 literally understandings, in the Supreme Being, and in the fall
 of angels, and their existence as unhappy spirits.   Through
 their multitude of  gods and goddesses, nymphs and nereids,
 representing merely the forms of nature, we trace distinctly
 these original truths.   Empedocles,  the  great disciple  of
 Pythagoras, held  the notions of fallen  spirits, as we see in
 Plutarch De Exilio,  torn. ii.  601.'   Those Empedoclean de-
mons lapsed from  heaven,  and  were  pursued  by divine
vengeance,  whose  restless condition  is  there described in
several  verses of his.'
  But it is Plato who has developed the threefold  nature  of
God amongst the Greeks most clearly.   The enunciation  of
this doctrine will be found in his second epistle to  Dionysius.
He there tells us that there are three essences, or hypostases, 
            plato's idea of a triune  god.         261

in the Supreme Being.  The tovts ^ytjwdwj xai altiov rtdvta*
rtatrip.   The Father of the Prince and cause of all things.
Secondly, this Prince, the Nov*, or, as elsewhere by him called
the Aoyos, the mind, or intellect by which all things are made,
or the Word,  as the Gospel has it too.   And, thirdly, the
universal  and  eternal Psyche, or soul.   The Nov$ is declared
to be the  Demiurgos, or architect of the universe, under the
•Tfttpovawv, or superessential principle, and the eternal Psyche,
as existing in both, in other words, the Holy Ghost of Chris-
tianity.
   Cudworth professes himself greatly struck with the corre-
spondence of these principles in God to those of revelation;
and they can only be explained by supposing them to be the
remains of primaeval truth which had reached Plato upwards
of four  hundred years before the Christian  era, or were  a
direct revelation to him.
   The two principles introduced by Zoroaster into the Per-
sian  religion were a direct reform on the ancient mythologies,
intended to sweep  away all  the  elementary polytheism, and
yet did  not do it effectually by leaving the sun to be  wor-
shipped as the visible emblem of Deity. Of Zoroaster I shall
speak later, but here it is sufficient to say that his two prin-
ciples really included three.  Cudworth thinks that the Magi,
following Zoroaster, did not hold the  evil principle as self-
existent and of equal power with the good, as Plutarch and
the Manicheans did ; on the contrary,  Plutarch himself con-
fesses that they announced a fatal time at hand for Ahriman,
and  that he should  be destroyed.  The Magi held Ahriman
as the Christians hold Satan, and, indeed, Theodorus calls the
Persian Sathanas the head of the evil powers. Like the pro-
fessors  of  every ancient religion,  Zoroaster had his triad,
Ormuzd or the Supreme, Mithras as the second or Demiurgos,
and  the mundane Psyche  as the third.
   But a very  remarkable doctrine of the ancient world, that
God included in himself, as everything else, so both the sexes,
has  come up  continually in the spiritual teaching of to-day. 
262         history of the supernatural.

It has appeared  in  Swedenborg's  writings, and in spiritual
drawings and communications on various occasions.  Nothing
was more commonly received either amongst the Christian
or pagan writers of antiquity.  In the Orphic  Fragments
we find this line:
            ©<jAu$ <cai yevercjp Kpartpd; ©edj 'HpucanaTos.
        Female and Father is the mighty  god Ericapseus.
And again in the thirty-first Orphic Hymn :
            "Aporiv uiv Kal ©fjXuj t<f>V(,'no\v<ovvuS Mnri.

   The  gods were  represented of  all ages.  TTlpian  says
DionuSUS Was, xai yap  rtatSa, xal itpsofivttjv, xal ovopa ypa^ovtfHi
wvtov.   But in the sexes the caprice was sometimes extraor-
dinary.  Apollo  had rarely a beard, but Venus, says Servius,
was in Cyprus represented as Aphroditos with a beard, yet in
a woman's dress.  Calvus speaks of her as masculine, ' Pol-
lentem Deum Venerem ;' and Valerius Soranus makes Jupiter
the mother of  the gods :
        Jupiter omnipotens, Rogum Rex ipse, Deumque
        Progenitor, Genetrixque Deum; Deus unus et idem.

   In fact, Porphyry, than whom no one had more profoundly
investigated the history and characters of the gods, declared
them, male or female, all one  and the same.   ' Some,' says
Diodorus, 'think Osiris is Serapis ; others that he is  Dionu-
sus; others still that he is Pluto ;  many take him for Zeus or
Jupiter, and not a few for Pan.'   This, says Bryant, was a
very unnecessary embarrassment, for they were all one.  Like
confusion prevails in the accounts of those mysterious gods, the
Cabiri.   Some say  Zeus was their head, some  Prometheus;
others that  they were the  sons of Hephaistos, who is the
Vulcan  of the Greeks, but  in Egypt  regarded as the same
as Helius.   One of the most ancient temples  of these  gods
was at Memphis, and held  so sacred that none but  priests
might enter it.  Cambyses entered  and saw their statues, 
                confusion of pagan gods.             263

and that of their father  Vulcan, and had them  and their
temple destroyed.   From Egypt their worship travelled to
Canaan, and thence by the Phoenicians was carried to Greece.
They were also confounded with the Dioscuri and  the Cory-
bantes.   The Cabiri were carried to Italy, it is said, by the
Trojans, who had received them by Dardanus from  the island
of  Samothrace.   In Rome  they occupied the  Capitoline
Temple,  as Jupiter, Minerva,  and  Juno; 0eoi  Swarol,  Dii
potentes.  Here, again, was a change of sexes, from the sons
of Vulcan.
  But the most complete enunciation of this doctrine of what
Swedenborg calls the feminine or love principle in  the Deity,
as made  by pagans, is to be found in the  Orphic Fragments,
the celebrated passage commencing :

            Zeis irpuroy yivtTO' Zeif varans dpxucipawof.

Zeus the  First:  Zeus the  Thunderer is  the last.
Zeus is the head:  Zeus the middle, and by Zeus all things  were fabri-
    cated.
Zeus is male: Immortal Zeus is female.
Zeus is the foundation of the earth and  of the starry heaven.
Zeus is the breath of all things:  Zeus is the rushing of independent
    fire.
Zeus is the root of  the sea:  he is the  sun and moon.
Zeus is the king: he is the  author of universal life:
One power and one demon, the mighty prince  of all things.
One kingly frame in which this  universe revolves,
Fire and  water,  and earth  and  ether, night and day,
And Metis (Counsel) the primeval father, and all delightful Eros (Love).
All  things are united in the vast bodies of Zeus.

  As I have said, the idea was not only in paganism but in
the early church ; for Synesius, a bishop of the fifth century,
in one of his hymns to God, says:

                   Ti) irarhp, £v 6' teal uartjp,
                   Tv 6'  app"uv, So It SijXt*.
                   Tu pater, Tu es Mater,
                   Tu Mas, Tu Fcemina.

  But if the idea  of both masculine and feminine  principles
in  the Deity were common, that of a triad of principles in
him was universal.  Ion says,  'All things are there,  and 
264          history of the supernatural.

nothing more or less ; and the virtue of each one of these is
a triad consisting  of  Intellect, Power, and  Chance.'  Cory
thus sums up the triads  of ancient mythology : In India the
three great gods were Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva — the Crea-
tor, Preserver, and Destroyer—who was also the reproducer,
as Death is  the  reintroduction to life.   Brahma  was  the
supreme united Deity, including the three ;  and  his essence
was expressed in the  mysterious word O'm, or Aum, by which
the Jewish Cabala also  says God created the world.  The
Greek  triad  was  Zeus,  Poseidon, and Pluton, or,  as more
commonly used, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto ; in other words,
Spirit,  Water, and  Fire.  In  the  Orphic Cosmogony,  we
have Metis,  Eros, Ericapseus,  or Will,  Love, and  Life or
Life-giving.   In other places Phanes stands for Eros, being
the same person, Love  and Light.  In the Egyptian they
are Amnion, Ptha, and  Osiris; or Serapis, Dionysus, and
Osiris.   In other places Cneph and Emeph  figure in  the
triad, but they are resolvable  into the same gods.   In He-
rodotus, the three are Osiris, Horus, and Tophon, the latter
the destroying but reproducing principle, as Siva in India.
In the Syrian mythology the three were Cronus, Pothos, and
Omichles;  Cronus being also their god Bel.  In the Chal-
dean we find  Tauthe, Apason, and Moymis, meaning Father,
Power; and Intellect; or Air, Fire, and Sun.  In  the Per-
sian they are Ormazdes, Mithras, and Ahriman, the  latter
being the Siva of India and Typhon of Egypt.  In the Scan-
dinavian, they are Odin, Thor, and Loke, the last also Fire
or the  Destroyer.  The Druids of England had similar triads,
but they brought  them forward in a more intellectual shape,
as God necessarily consisting of three magi—the Greatest of
Life, the Greatest of Knowledge, and the Greatest of Power.
One God, one Truth,  one point of Liberty, where all opposites
equiponderate.  They expressed the characters of the Infi-
nite in the letters O I W, as the Jews in J A 0, and the In-
dians in Aum.   The Persians  called  the Supreme  Deity
Viracocha, but in him were the  three, the Lord Sun, the Son 
THE TRIADS OF ALL RELIGIONS.
265
 Sun, and the Brother Sun.  They also worshipped Tanga-
 Tanga, who, they said, was three in one.
   In all mythologies there was a farther division into almost
 innumerable gods  and goddesses,  mere powers and proper-
 ties of nature, which became most confused amongst them-
 selves, but for the  most part resolvable with labor into one
 god, or two at most, the sun and moon.   The highest minds
 recognized but one Supreme.   The Rev. Isaac  Cory says, a
 Trinity in unity has been from the beginning the fundamental
 tenet of every nation upon earth.   To this, however, there
 is one remarkable  exception, the Jews until the  advent  of
 Christ.   I  think we must  search in vain for  the faintest
 shadow of  such a doctrine in the  Old Testament,  and the
 reason of this, I think, is apparent enough in  the necessity
 of preventing the Jews falling  into the polytheism of sur-
 rounding nations.  Let them have understood these princi-
 ples in God, and it is clear, from their determined  proclivity
 to idolatry, that  they would soon have had thirty or more.
 This knowledge was not revealed to them till they had be-
 come thoroughly indurated in  monotheism.  Yet  it must
 have been a primal truth, for it spread with the peoples from
 the plain of Shinar to every region of the earth; and its ap-
 pearance and retention amongst all  nations admits of no
 solution, except that it was implanted in them somewhere
 and at some time when they were all in one place, and had
 one tongue.
  Besides the triads mentioned  by Cory, the Mexicans had
 one, consisting of Mexitle, or Vitzliputzli, Tlaloc, and Tez-
callipuca.   They, like all the American Indians, had an ark
and the traditions of the flood.  The  ark of the  Mexicans
was the same machine as that in which Ammon  or Osiris of
Egypt was  borne in  procession ;  the  same as  the ark  of
Bacchus, the ship of Isis  and the  Argha of Iswara.  His
dark complexion was that of the Vishnu of the  Indian and
 Cneph of the Egyptian triads.  He was oracular, like the
ship Argo  of the Greeks, the Bous of Ammon;" the chief
  I. —23 
266         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
arkite gods of all gentile nations.   He connects his city with
a lake, like the  Cabiri, like that of Buto on the  lake Chem-
mis in Egypt, and has  evident connection with  the lake and
floating islands  of all the pagan mythologies.
  A few words more  may demonstrate that, amid this wide-
spread tradition of heathenism, the doctrine of the unity of
the Deity still and equally prevailed, at least amid the priests,
teachers, philosophers, and  initiated;  for all  the ancient
mythologies, Chaldean, Egyptian, Syrian,  Greek, had  their
exoteric and esoteric teachings.  Plutarch tells us that this
was the reason that  the Sphinxes were placed before  all
Egyptian temples.  Clemens Alexandrinus, Origen, Hermes
Trismegistus, and the  Asclepian dialogue, all assert the same.
In the latter dialogue, we have again the  two sexes of the
Deity asserted, and at the same time the unity and  suprem-
acy of one God.  Iamblicus says  that over  the portal of the
temple at Sais was inscribed, ' I am all that hq,s been, is, and
shall be ;  and my peplum, or veil, no mortal hath yet with-
drawn.'  To every one of the great deities of Egypt was
equally attributed the supremacy, thus intimating that there
was really  only one God.   The Persian theory had not only
the feminine principle in the Deity,  as mader or mether, the
mother, but asserted the unity and supremacy of the original
Creator.   Plato and  the Christian fathers  accuse the Greek
poets of degrading the gods by  describing them as sensual
and quarrelsome ; yet they admit  that they asserted one Su-
preme Being, and a past as well as future eternity.
   But notwithstanding the great  primal truths surviving in
all paganisms, these systems  everywhere exhibited the broad
marks of the demon upon them.   This was manifest in the
licentious practices in all  the temples as an institution from
one end of the world to the other — in Rome, Greece, Egypt,
Babylon, and India.   In the spirit of  pride and vindictive-
ness which were taught, and thought by the most cultivated
pagans to  have a spirit of nobility in  it,  and  still more in
the thirst for human blood which  all the gods of the heathen 
         HUMAN SACRIFICES NEARLY UNIVERSAL.      267

displayed.   With a  summary glance at these horrors I will
conclude this chapter.
   In Salamis, formerly called Coronea, a man was annually
sacrificed in March  to Argaula,  the  daughter  of Cecrops,
and daughter-in-law of Argaulis.   This continued  to  the
time of Diomedes, and the sacrifice was then made to him.
This  custom lasted  till the time of Diphilus, who changed
the victim to a  bull.  Men were  sacrificed in Heliopolis, a
city of Egypt, till the time of Amosis.   Men were also sacri-
ficed  to Juno, as many as nine  in one day;  but Amosis
changed the victims  to waxen statues of men.   A man  was
sacrificed to the Omadian Bacchus  in Chios,  and also in
Tenedos.   The  Spartans,  according  to Apollodorus, sacri-
ficed men to Mars.  The Phoenicians and Egyptians, Cretans
and Persians, had similar sacrifices.   Philo Biblius  tells us
that the Phoenicians had a king named Israel, who sacri-
ficed his only son Jeust, which was the  origin of their cus-
tom.   It is easy to see that the origin of this tradition is in
the Bible, and Abraham is set aside for Israel.  The Curetes
sacrificed boys, and Pallas says that the sacrifices of men did
not cease everywhere till the days of  Hadrian the emperor.
A virgin was  sacrificed  annually in Laodicea  to Minerva,
afterwards a hart was substituted.   The Carthaginians  had
similar sacrifices till  Iphicrates abolished them.   The Dura-
atians of Arabia sacrificed annually a  boy.  The Greeks,
says Philarchus, generally sacrificed men before they went
out to battle*  The Thracians and Scythians did the same.
Every classical reader will recollect the attempted sacrifice
of  Iphigenia by her father, and  the  perfected  one  of  the
daughter of Erectheus and  Praxithia by the Athenians.  At
this time, says Eusebius, a man is sacrificed in Megalopolis
at the feast of Jupiter  Latiaris.   The  same had  been  the
case to Jupiter in Arcadia, to Saturn in Carthage.  In Lydia
Diodorus asserted that 200 of the  sons of the  nobles.,  and
300 of the  people at large, had been  sacrificed.   Dionysius
of Halicarnassus says that Apollo and  Jupiter had  at  one 
268         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
time demanded so many human  sacrifices of the aborigines
in Italy,  that  they actually  decimated themselves,  and, to
escape from the infliction, emigrated into distant regions.
This is said to have happened to the Telasgi in Italy :  that
it became the  ruin of the country, and notwithstanding the
emigration of  the young men, the oracles continued to de-
mand and the magistrates to  enforce these sacrifices, till Her-
cules put a stop to them.  We know what terrible sacrifices
of the same kind were made in India for  ages, and even to
our own times.  Awful proofs of demon influence, and of the
assertions of St. Paul and of Milton that the  gods of the
heathen were devils.
  The Persians buried people  alive.  The  Cyprians, the
Rhodians, the Phocians, the Ionians, the people of Chios,
Lesbos, Tenedos, all had human sacrifices.  The natives of
the Tauric Chersonesus offered  to  Diana  every stranger .
whom  chance  threw upon  their coast.   Aristomenes the
Messenian slew 300 noble Lacedemonians  at once, amongst
whom  was Theopompus, the King of Sparta,  at the altar
of Jupiter at  Ithome.   The Spartans, in return, sacrificed
their  captives to Mars.  Spartan boys  at  the festival of
Diamastigosis were whipped in sight of their parents before
the altar  of Diana with such  severity that they  frequently
expired.   Phytarchus and Porphyry assert that every  Gre-
cian State, before marching against  an  enemy, sacrificed
human victims.  The Romans did the same.  Livy says that
in the consulate of Emilius Paulus and Terentfus Varro two
Gauls, a  man and woman,  and two  Grecians, were buried
alive  at  Rome in the  ox-market, in  a place walled round
and made for such purposes.  Plutarch gives another instance
of this a  few years before, in the consulate of Flaminius and
Furius.  It is asserted that the principal captives led  in
triumph  by the Romans were, for a long time, despatched
afterwards at the altar of Jupiter Capitolinus.  Marius sacri-
ficed  his  own daughter to  the Dii Averrunci  for success
against the Cimbri; Clemens, Dorotheus and  Plutarch, all 
HUMAN SACRIFICES.               269
 affirm it.  Pliny and Cicero say that in their time the custom
 was discontinued:  but it was afterwards revived.  Augustus
 Caesar,  when  he took  Perusia,  sacrificed 300  men  of the
 equestrian and senatorial  orders to the manes  of his uncle
 Julius.  Porphyry says in his time a man was sacrificed every
 year at the shrine of Jupiter Latiaris.   Heliogabalus offered
 human victims to  the  Syrian deity which  he  introduced.
 The same  is said of Aurelian;  the  Gauls and Germans were
 so devoted  to human  sacrifices,  that  no business  of any
 moment was transacted amongst them  without  being pre-
 faced by human blood.  According to Lucan's  Pharsalia
 (lib. i. v.  444), the gods to whom  these  sacrifices were
 made were Thautates, Hesus, and  Taranis, and  that  in  the
 midst of gloomy woods, to increase the  horror.   Tacitus in
 his Annals (lib. xiii.), says that  the Hermanduri sacrificed
 all their prisoners  to Mars.  The Arduenna and Hyrcinian
 forests were terrible for these immolations at the hands of
 the Druids.  (See Claudian in Laudes Stiliconis, lib. i.).  The
 Massagetae,  the Scythian,  the  Getes, the Sarmatians, the
 Suevi, and all the Scandinavians, believed that  no blessings
 or security could be obtained  except  by such sacrifices to
 Odin and Thor.  The island of Rugen, but above all TJpsala,
 was famous for these horrors.  For abundant details of these
 gory  rites, in which the  kings  were  often  immolated,  see
 Hackberg's Germania Media, Snorro Sturleson  in Ynglinga
 Saga; Saxo-Grammaticus, lib. 10; Olaus Wormius, p. 28;
 Adam of  Bremen, Scheiffer of  Upsal,  Norway Chronicle,
 Johannes Magnus and many other northern writers. So also
in Ireland  ; see the Crymogea of Arngrim  Jonas.  Dithmar
 relates the same sacrifices to the god Swantowite in Zeeland.
 In fact, all Europe, including our own  islands  in Druidical
 times, was streaming with  human sacrificial blood.
  The same was the case  amongst the Mexicans and Peru-
 vians, and the King of Dahomy  in Africa  still keeps up the
 old practice  of Africa.  We know from Scripture that the
 people of  Canaan sacrificed children to Moloch,  the Tyrians
      23* 
270         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

and Carthaginians offered men and children to Cronus.  (See
examples of this in Diodorus Siculus, and Silicus Italicus.)
Hamilcar, being defeated in Sicily, not only  sacrificed a boy
to Cronus on the spot, but drowned some of  the priests to
appease  the god.   ' Tell  me  now,'  says Plutarch,  ' if the
monsters of old, the Typhon and the giants, were to expel the
gods, and to rule the world in their stead, could they require
a service more  horrible than these infernal  rites and sacri-
fices ?'
  To the foregoing examples may be added,  that the Druids
burnt men in  wicker  frames  to the gods.    The Natchez
Indians and people  of Bogota had like  sacrifices.   Two of
the officers of  Cortez, who  had counted the  skulls of the
natives who had been  thus sacrificed in Mexico, told  Gomara
that they amounted to 120,000, and  the Franciscan monks
who went to New Spain after the Spaniards  had possession
of it, report that these human  sacrifices amounted annually
to 2,500.   There needs no  other  proof  of the assertion of
the Apostles that they who  eat things offered to idols eat
the sacrifices of devils.  The whole of heathenism through-
out the world, not only in  the most ignorant and barbarous,
but the most civilized and philosophical nations, bore the
broadest stamps of demonism in immorality and blood.
  Yet, in every nation, however scientific  or however sunk in
ignorance, spiritualism maintained  its faith.  They might be
devils whom they worshipped as gods, but they thought  them
gods : and from them they received  oracles and dreams as-
suring them, by their agreement with  the subsequent events,
that there was a spiritual world ruling this world.   No nation
can become a nation of atheists; atheism is only  the  disease
of exceptional minds.   No nation ever gave  up the belief in
the existence of spirits acting with them and  for them.   The
nearness  of the spirit-world maintained its consciousness im-
perishably in the human soul.  The numerous oracles through-
out the pagan world  could not have  maintained  their credit
without a large infusion of supernatural knowledge  in  their 
         GENERAL BELIEF" IN MINISTERING SPIRITS.    271

 answers.   The reliance on the oracles, and their reliability as
 the cause of it, seems a direct inference from the universal
 use of them.  Cicero had much the same notion as the Apos-
 tles, that all spirits  are ministering  spirits to  men.  ' God
 distributing gods to all the parts of the world, did, as it were,
 sow some gods  in the  earth, some in the moon,' &c.   (On
 Plato's Timaeus, c. xiii.).  And  he says in his ' De Natura
 Deorum,' lib. i., Curius  and  Fabricus had  never been  such
 men as they were, but for the co-operation of God :  and in
 ' De Divinatione,' i.  1, ' Did  Greece ever send Colonies into
 JStolia, Ionia, Asia, Sicily or Italy, without having first con-
 sulted about every circumstance relative to them, either  at
 Delphi, or Dodona,  or  at the oracle of Ammon ?   Lucian,
 Astrolog. v. i. p. 993, says the same.   People would not ven-
 ture to build cities, nor even to raise the walls, till they had
 made proper enquiry among those who were prophetically
 gifted, about the success of their operations.   So, too, Callim-
 achus in his hymn to Apollo :

             'Tis through Apollo's tutelary aid
             That men go forth to regions far remote
             And cities  found.  Apollo  ever joys
             In founding cities.

 Pausanius i. Y, says  ' at  Patrae in Achaia, there is  a temple,
 and before the temple is the fountain of Demeter, and in the
 temple  an oracle which is never known to fail:—^avniw Sh

  But it will be asked — Did the devils  speak truth through
 all these oracles ?  Perhaps they did out of good policy, for
 their influence and worship depended on it, and devils, we are
 taught to believe, are very politic.  But, probably, God who
 says He never left men  without a witness of Him, conde-
 scended to  hear and answer their well-intended rather than
 well-directed prayers.  At all events, truth came to the pagan
 world through oracles, dreams, apparitions,  and other super-
natural means, or all ancient history is a lie. 
272          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
  I have thus gone at more  length than  my space warrants
into the origin, nature, chief  features, principles, and system
of pagan mythology in general, to clear it all away, and leave
me at liberty to state the facts of the  supernatural  amongst
all these nations, without perpetual necessity of reference to
their individual notions. 
ORIGIN OF  THE ASSYRIANS.            273
                  CHAPTER X.

THE  SUPERNATURAL IN ASSYRIA, CIIALDEA,  AND PERSIA.
When he found  any who could not satisfy themselves with
the  knowledge that lay within the reach of human wisdom,
Socrates advised thein to apply diligently to the study of div-
ination ; asserting that  whoever was acquainted with those
mediums which  the god~ made use of when they communi-
cated anything to man, need never be left destitute of  divine
counsel.
                       Xexophok, Memoirs of Socrates, iv.
   OF the Assyrians very little is  known, except as they ap-
    pear in the Bible, and from the  scanty mention of them
in the fragments of Berosus and Sanchoniatho. We are told
that Nimrod, the son of Cush, the son of Ham, commenced
the kingdom of Babel, afterwards Babylon.   These Cuthites
or Cushites, Jacob Bryant  regards  as  the  ancestors of the
Goths or Cuths;  and  if so, we  Europeans have  a  strong
strain of Ham  in  us.   The Goths,  who succeeded in their
wave of emigration the  sons  of  Gomer, the son of Japhet,
the Gomerians,  Cymmerians, or  Cambri, Cumbri, or Cum-
brians, in the Scandinavians and Normans, presented them-
selves as that domineering race which constitutes the ruling
or aristocratic class wherever they have settled.   According
to this  theory, our aristocracy, as well as the Negroes, are
descendants of  Ham.
   It would seem, however, as if the  sons of Shem and Ham
were dwelling together in the early times ; for though Nimrod
established Babel, we are told in  the tenth chapter of Gene- 
274         HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
sis that' Out of that land went Asshur, and  builded Nine-
veh, and the city of Rehoboth, and Calah, and Resin, be-
tween Nineveh and Calah, the  same is a great city.'   Thus
the empire of Assyria was founded by them, though it would
appear  afterwards to  have been absorbed into the Cuthite
kingdom of  Babylon.   Ninus, according  to Herodotus,
founded the  Assyrian Empire —that is, he extended it, and
made a more martial  kingdom of it than it  was under the
descendants  of Asshur.   It, according to his statement, con-
tinued 520 years.  The Bible  mentions none  of his dynasty
except Pul,  who was,  probably, the father of  Sardanapalus.
This  monarch, celebrated for his  effeminacy,  has become
celebrated for burning himself in his palace, rather than sur-
render to the invader.   He was the last  of the dynasty of
Ninus or of Belus, the ancestor of Ninus.
   In  the year a. m. 3257, Arbaces the Mede  paid a visit to
Sardanapalus, and despising him for his vice and luxurious
corruption, conspired with Belesis, the Governor of Babylonia,
to conquer Nineveh.   Diodorus Siculus says that Sardanap-
alus laughed at them, assured by an ancient  prophecy that
Nineveh could never be taken  by force, till the river became
the city's enemy.   Thus it is  clear that the Assyrians were
confirmed spiritualists at that day, and put full faith in su-
pernatural communications  and oracles.  In  fact, the few
historic traces that we  have of them, make them, as well as
the Babylonians, devoted to astronomy, astrology, and sooth-
saying.  They had become idolaters, but they had an un-
shaken belief in the  presence  and communication of the
spirits of the higher world.  Trusting in the prophecy, Sar-
danapalus maintained the siege for upwards of two years, and
in the third the  prophecy was fulfilled, in a manner, like
many other prophecies, wholly unexpected.  From excessive
rains the Euphrates overflowed its banks, and threw  down
twenty furlongs of the city wall, by which  the  enemy en-
tered.  Belesis had had much difficulty to keep Arbaces to
the prosecution of the siege, but being himself a priest and 
ASSYRIAN SUPERNATURALISM.           275
 soothsayer, as well as general, he lay out in the open fields
 all night  to watch the stars, and  receive,  through them,
 divine communication,  and he then confidently announced
 that they would receive such succors as would render them
 victorious.  The succors  came in the shape of an inunda-
 tion, and the prognostic was verified.   Sardanapalus,  seeing
 the prophecy thus  fulfilled, set fire to his  palace, and burnt
 himself, his wives, concubines, and eunuchs, with all his treas-
 ures in it.
   The fall of Sardanapalus, however, did not extinguish the
 Assyrian empire.   Arbaces reigned over Media, and Belesis
 at Babylon, and we find  a succession  of  Babylonian kings
 reiging in Nineveh from Tiglath-Pileser, to Sennacherib and
 Esar-haddon.   These  mouarchs, as the  Israelites became
 wicked and idolatrous, began  to  harass  them.   We find
 Tiglath-Pileser, King of Assyria, coming  up into  Israel in
 the days  of Pekah, King of Israel, about 770 years before
 Christ, and carrying  the  inhabitants of various cities away
 captive.   Ahaz, King of Judah, afraid of  the Israelites and
 Syrians uniting against him, sent to this Tiglath-Pileser, and
 bribed him by the plunder of the house of the Lord, to make
 an alliance with him.  Again Shalmaneser went up and took
 Samaria,  the capital  of the Ten Tribes,  and carried  them
 away into Halah and Habor,  and the  cities of the Medes,
 and brought them from Babylon (for it seems Assyria was at
 that time master of Babylon too) and from Cutha, and many
 other places, and peopled the lands of the Ten Tribes with
 them.  In the days of Hezekiah,  King of  Judah, the  King
 of Assyria sent three generals,  Tartan, and Rabsaris, and
 Rabshakeh, against Jerusalem, and made very violent de-
 mands on Hezekiah, but God sent 'a rumor  and a blast'
 against them,  and  they fled back to Assyria.  After that
 Sennacherib, the king himself, went up to besiege Jerusalem ;
 but God  gave him a most  amazing proof of spirit power, for
he sent his angel and smote, in the camp of the Assyrians, a
hundred  and four-score thousand of them, and when it was 
276         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
morning, behold, they were all dead corpses.   Esar-haddon,
the son of this Sennacherib, conquered  Babylon, and  the
Assyrians reigned there for three reigns, when Nabopolassar,
governor  of Babylon, united with  Astyages,  of Media, and
destroyed the empire of Assyria,  and divided its lands be-
twixt thera.   Thus  the great and  proud  empire  of  Assyria
was merged into Babylonia, or Chaldea and Media, for Chal-
dea afterwards to fall  before Media and Persia, and merge
into  the vast Persian empire.
   One of the most interesting  events of modern times has
been the discovery of the ancient capital of Assyria, Nineveh,
and  the  digging out of its remains by Layard.   Thus, the
fashion of the life of the Assyrians, after a burial of nearly
2,500 years,  has been  suddenly revealed  to  us, with all its
proud warriors in  their war-chariots and on their proud
steeds with their elaborately curled manes  and tails ; the men
as accurately curled themselves.  Here  we  have the life-
likeness of the very men who carried away the Ten  Tribes,
and whose fellows were struck dead  130,000 at a blow by
spirit manifestation.  Nor did they suffer only from  spirit
power.   They felt its presence, and sought  to it by oracles
and  through interpretations of stellar aspects, and by the
mysterious aid of soothsayers.  They may be ranked amongst
the oldest spiritualists of the world ; but what they were was
more fully seen in their successors, holding  the same  faith,
and distinguished by the same arts.
   The Chaldean  sages  were the priests, the professors of
science and philosophy in Babylon.  They were the primitive
professors of all the secrets of their theology, and added to
it magic,  or the art of invoking ministering spirits.
   ' The Chaldeans,  being the most ancient Babylonians, held
the same station and  dignity in the  commonwealth as the
Egyptian priests do in Egypt; for, being deputed to divine
offices, they spend all their  time in the study of philo.soj-.hy,
and  are  especially famous  for  the art of astrology.  They
are mightily given to divination, and  foretell future events, 
              CHALDEAN  SCPERNATURAU1SM.           277

and employ themselves  either by purifications, sacrifices, or
other enchantments to  avert evils, or procure good fortune
or  success.   They are skilful likewise in  the art of divina-
tion by the flying of birds, and interpreting  of dreams and
prodigies ; and are reputed the true oracles in declaring what
will come to pass by their exact and diligent viewing of the
entrails of the sacrifices.   But they do not  attain this knowl-
edge in the same manner as the Grecians do; for the Chal-
deans learn it by tradition from  their ancestors, the son from
the father, who are all, in the meantime, free from all other
public offices and attendances ; and because their pareuts are
their tutors.   They both learn everything  without envy, and
rely with more  confidence on the truth of what is taught
them ; aud being trained up in this learning from their child-
hood, they become most famous philosophers.' — Diodorus
Siculus, b. ii. c.  3.
  As they foretold things to come to other kings formerly,
so they  did to Alexander, who conquered Darius, and to his
successors Antigonus and Seleucus Nicanor; and accordingly
things  fell  out as they declared, which we shall relate par-
ticularly hereafter.  They likewise tell private men their for-
tunes so certainly,  that those who have found the things true
by  experience have esteemed it a miracle, and above the reach
of man to perform.'—Ibid, b. ii. c. 3.
  Herodotus says that  in the Tower of Belus, in Babylon,
there was a room on the summit, in which  a  woman slept to
receive communications from the god.  By the bed  stood a
table#of gold.  He says there was a similar custom at the
temple of Jove at Thebes, in Egypt, and at Patres, in Lycia.
These women had no intercourse  with men,  and  before di-
vining an oracle must sleep the preceding night in the temple.
  In the Babylonian  empire, in  its glory, under Nebuchad-
nezzar,  we  have the most complete view of  the spiritualism
of that  people,—the magicians,  and soothsayers,  and the
regularly established interpreters of the intimations  of Hea-
ven, — they were, as Diodorus  and Herodotus state, a dis-
  I. —24 
278         HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

tinct body, in high honor, having a system by which they
conducted all exjdanations of oracles, dreams, and prodigies.
  Not only had the Ten Tribes been  carried  away out of
Palestine by the Assyrians, but  the two tribes of Judah and
Benjamin  had been brought away from Judea, and planted
in Babylonia; their temple had been burnt down by Nebu-
chadnezzar, all  the vessels and treasures of the temple  car-
ried away,  and put into the temple of Baal in  Babylon.   As
we have the most distinct account of the magicians of Egypt
in the Bible, so we have the same of the magicians of Baby-
lon  in the same book.   Daniel was called before Nebuchad-
nezzar to tell him a dream that he had had, as well as its in-
terpretation.   He had  called  all the magicians,  and the
astrologers, and the Chaldeans to tell him these things;  and
they were ready to tell the king the meaning of the dream,
if he  let them  know the dream itself.   But the dream was
gone from him, and God had evidently expunged its  remem-
brance to  show him that there was a God above the god of
the  Chaldeans, and a power beyond what He  allowed them
to exert.  This is what He had  done by the Egyptian magi-
cians.   'The magic of the Chaldeans,' says Brucker, 'is not
to be confounded  with witchcraft, or a supposed intercourse
with evil spirits;  it consisted in the performance of certain
religious ceremonies  or incantations, which were supposed
through the interposition of good demons to produce super-
natural effects.'   It was what afterwards came to be called
White or Sacred  Magic.  But  their spirit  informers, which
had  availed them in so many extraordinary cases, were, here
quailed by the Omnipotent, and  Daniel, the prophet of the
true God, was alone permitted  to reveal the future of the
monarch.   The same  was the  case  as  regarded the writing
on the wall at the feast of Belshazzar, the successor of Nebu-
chadnezzar.  The Chaldeans and astrologers could not read
it, and Daniel was called and read it.   Vet this superiority
of the Hebrew  divination  did not long keep under a cloud
the  fame of the Chaldeans as soothsayers.  Their reputation 
    ANNOUNCEMENT OF CYRUS BY PROPHETS AND MAGI.   279

all over the world induced other people to take up their mys-
teries ;  and amongst the  Romans there was a class called
Chaldeans or  Mathematicians, according to Valerius Maxi-
mus, lib. i. c. 3, who had  grown such  impudent pretenders
that they were by an imperial decree banished Italy.
   The Babylonian empire was merged into that of Persia by
Cyrus ;  and it is very remarkable that this great conqueror
was prophesied  of by name by the prophets of Israel, more
than a century before his birth.  Isaiah  (xliv. v. 2S\ says :—
' Cyrus is  my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure,
even saying to Jerusalem, thou shalt  be built;  and to the
temple thy foundation shall be laid !'  And the next chapter
thus opens:—' Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus,
whose right hand I have  holden, to subdue nations before
him; and  I will loose the loins of kings, to open before him
the two-leaved  gates ;  and the  gates  shall not be shut.   I
will go before thee, and make the crooked paths straight;  I
will break in pieces  the gates of brass, and cut in sunder the
bars of iron.  And I will give thee the treasures of darkness,
and hidden riches  of secret places, that thou  mayest know
that I the  Lord, which call thee by thy name, am the God of
Israel.   For Jacob  my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect,
I have even called  thee by thy name, though thou hast not
known me.'
  Both in Isaiah (xliv.), and Jeremiah (xliv.), the taking of
Babylon by Cyrus  is foretold with very descriptive circum-
stances.   The gates which enclosed the  city on each  side of
the river are to be forced ;  and the river is to  be dried up,
as it was by Cyrus turning it into another channel.  In Jere-
miah (1., Ii.), Babylon was to be taken  by a snare or strat-
agem ; a drought was to be upon the waters, and they  were
to be dried up; her mighty men were  to be paralyzed, arid
become  as women within her, as was the  case, through the
surprise ;  according to both Herodotus and Xenophen.   In
Daniel (viii.) Cyrus is prefigured as the ram with two horns.
  Josephus, in the  second book and second chapter of his 
280         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
Antiquities,  says that the Jews of Babylon showed the pro-
phecy of Isaiah to Cyrus, where he  was foretold by name,
and that in the edict which he granted for their return, Cyrus
acknowledged that he received the empire of the world  from
the God of  Israel.   That God had described him by name
in the writings of the prophets, and foretold that he should
build him a temple at Jerusalem. But not the less remarkable
is the fact recorded  by Herodotus (Lib. I. c. 107), that he
and his  destinies were foretold by the soothsayers of Media.
He says that Astyages, the King of Media, dreamed that from
his daughter Mandane  should proceed  a power that should
overspread all Asia.   Alarmed at this, the jealous old  king
called for the soothsayers,  who explained the dream to mean
that his daughter should have a son who should conquer all
Asia.    As this seemed  to include his own dominions, Asty-
ages, a  man of tyrannic temperament, determined to marry
his daughter, not to a Median prince, but  to a mere gentleman
of the subject province of Persia.   He, accordingly; married
her to Cambyses, a Persian of an unambitious  character, and
only of  the  ordinary rank.   But, after the  marriage, he
dreamed again that a vine grew out of  his daughter which
covered all Asia.  He sent again  for the soothsayers, who
affirmed the dream to be of the same meaning as the former
one.  Astyages, therefore,  sent for his daughter home, where
she was delivered  of Cyrus, and the  old grandfather delivered
the child to  Harpagus, his  chief captain, to be destroyed.
Cyrus, however,  was  preserved as the son of a tradesman in
the mountains of Persia, and lived to dethrone his grand-
father, and literally to conquer all Asia.
   Astyages  is said to have discovered Cyrus when about ten
years of age, by his being brought before him  by a nobleman
for beating his son during a game  in which the boys had
made Cyrus  king !  Astyages sent in haste for the soothsayers
and asked what was to be  done. They replied that there was
now no  danger from the lad, for the dream had become  true,
in play,  and that predictions were  often  thus  oddly verified. 
CIMESUS TESTS THE ORACLES.            281
He accordingly allowed Cyrus to live  and verify the dream
In earnest.
   When Cyrus had deposed his grandfather, and had already
began to fulfil the Hebrew prophecies, that he should ' subdue
nations  before him, and loose the loins of kings,' Croesus the
King of Lydia, famed for his enormous wealth, proposed to
attack him before he was grown  too mighty.   For this pur-  •
pose he  desired to consult the oracles, but he first laid a scheme
to ascertain the reliability of the  oracles.   For this purpose
he sent  special messengers to the different oracles of  Greece,
and to  that  of Jupiter Ammon  in Libya, and commanded
these  envoys on a certain day to  ask them what the King of
Lydia was doing at that moment.   What were the answers
of the other oracles is not known, but that of Delphi  was:
  See! I number the  sands: I fathom the depth of the ocean:
  Hear even  the dumb: comprehend  too the thoughts  of the  silent.
  Now perceive I  an odor, an odor it seemeth of lamb's flesh,
  As boiling it seetheth, commixed with the flesh of a  tortoise,
  Brass is  beneath, and with brass is it covered over.
  When the envoys returned, Croesus, who had kept his pur-
pose close in his own heart, found that the Delphian oracle
alone had read it there ; for he had determined on this day
to do something which he thought it would be impossible for
the oracle to find out.   Accordingly, he had cut a lamb and a
tortoise to pieces,  and boiled them in a brass  kettle.   Satis-
fied that  the oracle  had  superhuman knowledge, he then
determined to win its good  word by a magnificent offering.
This consisted of three thousand oxen, a hundred and  seventy
golden  tiles, a golden  lion, many gold and silver vessels, a
female statue of gold  of three  ells high, adorned with  the
necklace  and girdle of his own  queen, of enormous value.
With this bribe to the oracle, Croesus desired his ambassador
to ask whether he should march  against the Persians.   The
oracle replied:
             KpoXtros, "AW lianas, pcya\f,v dpxhv iiaXioet.
   If Croesus pass the Halys, he shall destroy a great empire.
      24* 
282          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
      On  receiving this answer, Croesus was perfectly satisfied,
   not doubting for a moment that the great empire to be de-
   stroyed was Persia.   He sent, in his gratitude, a present to
   every inhabitant of Delphi, and put another question, whether
   his rule should long continue.   The  oracle  replied, ' If ever
   a  mule should become king  of the Persians, then, tender-
•  footed Lydian, flee to the rocky banks of the Hermos, make
   no halt, and care not to blush for thy cowardice.'
      Satisfied that no mule could ever  become King of Persia,
   Croesus marched against Cyrus, was defeated and  captured,
   and his kingdom incorporated in the Persian empire.  Then
   he upbraided bitterly the Delphian oracle, but this answered
   that he had solely his own carelessness to blame in not ask-
   ing what kingdom it was that should be destroyed, and as to
   the  mule, Cyrus was  that mule, for  he  was  the son  of a
   Mede and a Persian, of a princess and of a man of but humble
   condition.
      Another  question  which he had put  to the oracle was
   whether his son, who was dumb, would ever be able to speak.
   To this son, probably, the oracle  referred, when it said it
   could  read the thoughts of the  dumb.  The answer to this
   question was:
      Lydian, foolish of heart, although a potentate  mighty,
      Long not to hear the voice of a son in thy  palace:
      'Twill bring thee no good, — for know that his mouth he will open
      Of all days on the one  most unlucky.
   On the day that  Sardis was taken, a Persian  rushed upon
   Croesus to stab him, when the son,  breaking a life's silence,
   cried out, 'Man, do not kill Croesus.'
      Croesus had  another son, Atys, a young man distinguished
   above all his  contemporaries.   Croesus  was  warned in  a
   vision that  he should  be  killed by  a  sharp point of iron.
   Croesus, therefore, kept him from all warlike  pursuits, and
   even from hunting, but being  at last persuaded by a friend
   to allow Atys to accompany him to the chase, Croesus put his
   son under the special guardianship  of this friend, and in the 
       SUPERNATURAL  EVENTS ATTENDING CAMBYSES.   283

 fight with a boar, the spear of this very friend, missing its
 mark, killed Atys I Adrastus, this ill-fated friend,  slew him-
 self in remorse at the accident.
   Herodotus  says, that Croesus, when placed on  a pyre to
 be burnt alive,  prayed vehemently to Apollo, who sent a
 heavy thunder-storm and quenched the flame.  Cyrus hearing
 that  Croesus had called on the name of Solon repeatedly
 during his being bound on the pyre, and learning that Solon
 had refused to  call him happy till he  knew his  last hour,
 liberated him and retained him as a friend.
   The termination of the career of Cyrus was as completely
 prognosticated as his  commencement, at least by the pagan
 deities.   In his  expedition  against the Massagetae,  Cyrus
 dreamed that he saw  Darius, the son of Hystaspes, with
 wings on his shoulders, one of which overshadowed Europe,
 the other Asia.   He therefore sent at once for Hystaspes,
 and told him what  he  had seen, and that he was sure that
 Darius, who  was at home in Persia, was plotting against
 him, and the gods  had thus warned him against him.  He,
 therefore, sent Hystaspes home to take care of his son till
 his return.  But, says Herodotus, it was not that Darius,
 a  youth of only twenty years of age, was plotting against
 him,  but that the gods had foreshadowed to him that  he
 would be killed during that campaign, as he was, by Tomy-
 ris, the queen of the Massagetae, and that Darius was des-
 tined to succeed him (Clio, 210).
   Many supernatural  events,  according  to  Herodotus, at-
 tended the insane career of Cambyses, the son of Cyrus.   In
 his expedition to Egypt he determined to disinter the body
 of King Amasis, and after insulting it, burn it, an  abomina-
 tion to the Egyptians ; but the  Egyptians,  the  historian
 says, declared that Amasis, before his death, had been warned
 of this by the oracle, and ordered his body to be buried in a
 secret place, and another body put in his tomb, which Cam-
byses treated as he had threatened.  Cambyses, besides des-
troying the images of  the Egyptian gods, stabbed Apis, the 
284          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.

sacred bull, in the thigh, so that he died ; but in consequence
Cambyses went mad, and died himself eventually by his own
wound, piercing his  thigh  exactly iu  the  same spot, as he
mounted his  horse.  Cambyses dreamed that Smerdis had
usurped his throne in his absence, and was wanting to march
back to  Persia in a rage, when he thus met his  death.   He
sent word before him to put  his brother Smerdis to death,
which was done, but it turned out that the usurper was not
his brother Smerdis, but Smerdis one  of the Magi, and that
his throne was in the hands of the Magi, who pretended that
this false Smerdis was the  true one.  The oracle  had long
before declared that Cambyses would die at Ecbatana, and
on being wounded he enquired what the  place was called,
and hearing that it was Ecbatana, he knew that  his end was
come.
   Darius was encouraged by various  omens to avenge the
country  of Smerdis, and assume  the throne,  as he  did.
When Darius besieged  Babylon, a Babylonian tauntingly
said, when mules  produced young, then the  Medes might
take Babylon, but not till then.   In the twentieth month of
the siege, says Herodotus, a mule produced a foal, and the
omen  was received as a certain sign of the capture  of the
city, which soon after took place.
   The Chaldean doctrines were frequently quoted by the
Greek  philosophers, as  by Proclus  on  the Timaeus and
others,  and they call  them  (^6yta)  or oracles;  those of
Hierocles  being supposed to be a mere translation  of them.
Pythagoras is also supposed to have drawn much from them.
Julian, a Chaldean  and  theurgist, turned these  oracles into
Greek verse, his father Julian having before him written of
demons  and Telesiurgics.  This was  done in the  reign of
Marcus  Antoninus.   In  them are evident traces of theurgic
magic, especially in the mention of the Hecatine circle, and
the directions about it.
  The mythology of Persia met with  a sweeping reform in
the person of  Zoroaster.  All the gods  of the Chaldean 
         THE MYTHOLOGIC  SYSTEM  OF ZOROASTER.      285

genesis were brushed  away as the mere  flies of Beelzebub,
and the Supreme restored to his throne, yet not in undivided
occupancy.   Two  great powers  whom he  was admitted to
have created, Ormuzd and Ahriman, with their hosts of sub-
ordinate  spirits, good  and bad, rose  into a prominence which
hid from the general view the real divinity.   Neither did
Zoroaster,  as has  been represented, eradicate  the  worship
of the elementary  powers of nature,  and place fire as the
one great active principle best symbolizing the  Omnipotent.
Zoroaster  acknowledged the  one  uncreated  and  supreme
Deity, as all other systems before him had done, and he in-
troduced an  essentially spiritual  race of beings, as  govern-
ing the  universe,  or  as disturbing  this government, but he
left the  old root of the worship of the elements;  nay, of
every visible  thing, in his system ; and we  shall see that he
farther perfected the ritual of their  worship in the  great
book  of  his  laws,  theological and  civil, and left it in full
exercise.   What Zoroaster did was to hurl down  and de-
stroy the more sensual deities of the pagan  world, and  place
above the worship  of visible things,  that of essentially spirit-
ual and good essences; and under this worship he introduced
a more pure  and moral doctrine of  life, a higher and juster
notion of the Divine  nature, and  of our relation towards it.
Sensuality, the  great  and monster  vice  of all  other pagan
systems,  was put  under a stern  and terrible ban.  Every
tendency to sensual license was reprobated and made strictly
punishable, and the doctrine of a future and fiery retribution
was  enunciated  in unequivocal  terms.  The  fault of  his
system was, that he placed the great Father of all  life too
much in  the background, committed  the world so  much to
the rule of  the two great antagonist principles, Ormuzd and
Ahriman, the good and the evil powers,  that the Deity soon
was lost sight of, and the worship due to him was  lavished
on Ormuzd, and so downwards on all visible things, and on
all active laws of  life, in a manner which, though it left  his
system far above that of the rest of  the pagan world, placed 
286        HTSTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
U infinitely below that  of the true  revealer of the Divine
will.   This, in fact, was  an inevitable circumstance, for noth-
ing but  God  in  man,  manifesting  himself to  man,  could
unfold to the world the sublime purity, and glory, and benev-
olence  of the All-wise  and  the  All-good in his  celestial
kingdom.
  But  Zoroaster made a marvellous  step in the onward pro-
gress  of religious and  psychical development.  He demol-
ished the mere outward  idolatry of the nations, as Cambyses
demolished the  hawk-headed, bull-shaped,  and dog-faced
images of Egypt.   He  quenched  the infernal  pruriency for
obscenity and human blood, which stamped  all other pagan
hierarchies with  the mark of the fiend ; and he made a spirit
dynasty the direct object of  the public mind, thus knitting
up that  mind with  the spiritual  rather than  the  physical
world, and preparing it, not exclusively for this world,  the
mere  vestibule of life,  but for the  eternity  of life  itself.
That all  this was the result of spiritualism, that is, of a direct
spiritual agency  operating through  him, is a matter self-
evident.  Nothing but such agency can produce such effects.
To say that a man is a great religious innovator is simply to
say that  he is a  great medium of  spirit power, the  relative
purity of which is immediately seen  in the system produced.
Whether it be Christ, the highest  and purest of all promul-
gators of religion, God Himself assuming this office, to place
man in the possession of the eternal and undivided truth, or
Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha, Mahomet, or Joe Smith, each
wrapping some portion of the primal truth in the clay and
mud, the rags and finery of earthism and devilism,  nothing
but a spiritual energy,  acting  from  the spiritual world, can
give life  and  force to such apostleship.  In  the  lowest form
of all those emanations,  Mormonism, which many men super-
ficially attribute  to the motive power of imposture, there is a
demon potence operating on the degraded human mind which
could alone give attraction to such absurd teachings.   As in
drinking, so in these pseudo-religions, there is a devil in it. 
                  BIRTH OF  ZOROASTER.               287

 No mere taste for swallowing fluids could produce the  stu-
 pendous madness of drinking which curses this age, causing
 men to sacrifice life, health, everything to the vice.   It is the
 demon fire that enters the human bosom, burning, exsiccating,
 and frantically demanding fresh liquid flame to be poured on
 it, that could so far infatuate and  destroy mankind.  Zoro-
 aster was a medium of the  first class  as to power, and much
 superior as to quality, to everything then about him.
   The true history of Zoroaster, like that of  all  heroes  and
 founders of religions  of  very early  times, is involved in
 myths.  There is said  to have been a Chaldean Zoroaster,
 but this may have arisen from Zoroaster having  travelled to
 Chaldea, and studied the Chaldean theology.   Huetius says
 Clement of Alexandria represents Zoroaster, now a Persian,
 now a Mede.   Suidas calls him a Perso-Mede: many call
 him a Boeotian, others an Ethiopian, that is, of  the Asiatic
 Ethiopia, and, in short, says  Bryant, they have found a  Zo-
 roaster  wherever there  were  Magi.  Bryant  himself would
 reduce the name to that of  priest of Apis, Zor or Zor-Aster,
 belonging to  the bull, which was represented with a crescent
 moon on his side, and a star between his horns.  The relig-
 ious reformer who now bears the name of Zoroaster, was,
 in fact, a Persian of the reign of Darius Hystaspes, or, as he
 is called, Gustasp in the Zend-Avesta, about  550 years be-
 fore Christ.  His real name was Zerethoschtro, or the golden
 star.  It was gradually softened to Zoroaster.  M. Anquetil
 Du Perron, in his translation of the  Zend-Avesta, has  col-
 lected the various accounts which his followers  have given
 of him.   These  bear plainly the character of fable, which
 the devotees  of a national prophet  always heap "about his
 history.  He is said to have descended from the  kings of
 Persia both by his father Poroschasp and his mother Dogdo.
 Poroschasp was  rich, especially in horses, and  boasted  of
 being descended  from Djemschid, the  fifth descendant  of
 Noah,  and according to Persian  traditions,  endowed with
creative powers by Ormuzd;  and  also from  Feridoun,  the 
288         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

eleventh descendant of Djemschid, and  the first of  the Po<5-
riodekeschans, or administrators of the laws  of Djemschid,
who freed Iran of the Arabs, and chased  physical evils from
the earth.  He was given, as the consequence of prayer, to
his father, and his birth was announced  to his mother, not
by an  angel outwardly, but in dreams.  She saw a being
brilliant  as Djemschid, hurling a book  at the  Dews, or  evil
spirits, before  which they fled.   She  applied to a Magus for
an  interpretation  of these  dreams thrice   repeated,   and
learned that she was to bear a son to whom  Ormuzd would
deliver  his  law,  and who would  bless  the  world with it.
That the evil powers would  be all up  in arms against him.
That  she herself would suffer  much on  account of her  son,
but that he would triumph over all his enemies, and a king
would  arise who would  receive his law, and make it that of
his kingdom ;  that it should prevail everywhere ; Zoroaster
should mount to heaven, and all his enemies descend to  hell.
   These and many other circumstances seem  to have been
engrafted on his history by his followers  after the  Christian
era.  It is said that Zoroaster laughed the  moment that he
was born, and that his head pulsated so  violently that it lifted
the hands that were laid on it.  The Magi,  alarmed at the
portent, conspired  to  destroy him.  The Dews,  Devs, or
devils, joined him in the endeavor.  The  reigning  king,  like
Herod, but more  prompt, rode off  to  kill the embryo pro-
phet himself, but when  he attempted to cut  him  in two at
his mother's breast with his sword, his arm was withered up,
and he fled with all his  court.   The Magi then made a bon-
fire, and stealing away Zoroaster from  his mother,  flung him
into it;  but the child received no injury from the fire, which
felt under him like soft water.   His mother found  him thus,
and carried him home.  Numerous other  attempts were made
to kill him by driving fierce bullocks and horses over him,
throwing him to wolves, and  offering him  poison;  all in
vain ;  God protected him.
   When he was thirty years old, the age  of Christ, he began 
REVELATIONS TO ZOROASTER.
289
 his public career.  He proceeded into Iran to the court of
 Gnstasp.  He  was accompanied by  many  of his relatives,
 and  arriving on the  banks of the Araxes, as there was no
 boat, he ordered his attendants to follow him, and he walked
 over the water, and  his friends  seeing  this followed,  and
 walked over  too, without wetting their clothes.   Iran then
 extended from  the Euphrates  to  the Indus.   Zoroaster,
 warned  in a  dream of a combined attack of the  Dews  and
 Magicians, turned aside and ascended  alone into the moun-
 tains of the  Albordi.   In these mountains he prayed that he
 might see the glory of God and Bahman,  the second of the
 Amschaspands, the six highest of the celestial spirits.   Or-
 muzd appeared, and bade him shut his eyes  and  follow him.
 When  he opened them  he found himself in the midst of
 heaven,  in the presence of Ormuzd in the  splendor of his
 glory, and surrounded by hosts of angels.   Here Zoroaster
 conversed with Ormuzd, and prayed him  to confer  immor-
 tality upon him; but he refused, saying if man  were made
 immortal there could be no resurrection.  Ormuzd gave him
 something to eat like  honey, which made him clairvoyant of
 everything in heaven  and  on earth.   He  related to him all
 that  had occurred since  the creation of man,  and which
 should  occur  till the resurrection.  Ormuzd taught him all
 that  concerned  him,  the revolution of the  heavens, of  the
 good and bad influences of the stars, the secrets  of  nature ;
 of the greatness of the Amschaspands,  and the equal felicity
 of all beings  in heaven.   Zoroaster saw  down  in  hell  the
 terrible visage of Ahriman; and delivered from his power a
 soul which on earth had done both good  and evil.  Ahri-
 man saw Ormuzd deliver the divine law to  Zoroaster, and
 raging, endeavored to tear it from his hand; but  in'vain.'
 Ormuzd then told him to  return to  earth, and  teach the
people the whole of that law, and say to them, ' That  my
light  is hidden under all that shines;' a  beautiful  expres-
sion,  intimating that the  glory of this world  appears to
extinguish  the glory  of the world  above;  but  it remains
  I. — 25 
290         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
indestructibly radiant, though hidden  from eyes dazzled by
worldly splendor.  Truth beams on eternally, and divine good-
ness does not cease, though clouds of earth hide them from men.
  Having received the book of the law, Zoroaster was  suc-
cessively accosted by the other Amschaspands, who gave to
him their respective powers over all the creatures, elements,
and seasons of  the earth.   Ardibescht gave him the  fire
which should be kindled in every city  destined to it, in honor
of God, as the glory of fire comes from the glory of God,
and that neither water nor mud  should be able to quench it.
Mobeds, Destours, and Herbeds, priests and officers to tend
the fire and discharge the functions of religion, were appointed.
Zoroaster is said, in returning  to the mountains of Albordi
or the Balkan, to have made in a cavern the first temple to
Mithra, the Creator, which was opened in Persia, but after-
wards imitated in all parts of it.
  The Dews and Magicians again made a furious attack on
Zoroaster to secure  and destroy the Zend-Avesta, but he re-
peated a chapter of it, and put thera to flight.   He then set
out to  Balkh, the capital of Gustasp,  to announce his inter-
view with Ormuzd,  and to show the book of the law.  Ashe
could not procure  admittance to the  king, he miraculously
cleft the roof of the palace, and  descended through it to the
royal presence.  The courtiers and  magicians fled in dismay.
Gustasp assembled  them again,  and Zoroaster, seated on a
carpet in the middle of the assembly,  answered all questions
put to  him on  all ancient sciences, or  whatever else of diffi-
culty they could propose.  Gustasp was perfectly  satisfied,
but the courtiers, the ministers, the  Magi, the generals, were
all filled with fury that their ancient customs and  laws should
be thus set aside by one man; and the account  of  attempts
they made to destroy his credit, and of the miracles which Zo-
roaster performed to confound them, are too voluminous and
too eastern in character to admit of detail. In a word, Zoroas-
ter succeeded ; his law and the new religion were established.
  This law was both theological and civil.  Zoroaster sought 
          THE GOOD IN ZOROASTER'S DOCTRINES.       291

to be to Persia  what Moses was to the Jews.  The Zend-
Avesta means the Living Word, and this, of which we have
but the twentieth  section, is divided  into three grand divi-
sions ;  the Izeschne, the Visfered, and the Vendidad.  These
are again  subdivided into Nosks,  Fargards, Cardcs, Has, &c.
They include a Litany, a Liturgy, and a general code of laws.
There is much confusion amongst them,  parts of one being
strangely  mixed with parts of another, and the prayers, which
are almost endless, are extremely wordy and  long ; in fact,
they are  a  perfect example of Christ's  statement of  men
thinking to be heard for their much speaking.   These prayers
are for every possible  occasion. -  When you cut your nails or
your hair, when you see a herd of  cattle, a leprous persoa,
mountains, a cemetery, a city, a country, water, before sleep-
ing, when you sneeze, when you make pastry and sweetmeats,
when you see pools, rivers, the  sea, great  reservoirs, when
you kill cattle, or kill vermin, and on  a thousand other occa-
sions.   And not only are there  prayers  but ceremonies for
these occasions.   You begin cutting the nail of the finger on
the right  hand next to the little finger, uttering proper words
as you cut with a knife made expressly for  this purpose.
Next the index finger, and so in a certain prescribed order.
You divide each fragment of nail cut off with the  knife, say-
ing, ' It is the will of Ormuzd,' &c.   The cuttings are then
to be  collected in a paper, the paper laid on a stone, three
circles  drawn round  the stone,  with  proper ceremonies at
each stage  of the process, and turning towards the sun,  and
accompanying  prayers.  Then  you are to lay earth on the
paper three times, accompanied with certain prayers.
   Yet, amid all this folly and trifling, there  are  sound and
excellent laws laid down.   As Persia is very hot, there are
plenty of washings and purifications prescribed, though there
is one disgusting custom made very general and sacred, that
 of washing in the liquid secretions of cattle.   Priests practise
this in  public worship, ladies in private worship ; new-born
babes are first washed in this liquid.   This is because the bull 
292         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
is sacred; the tradition being, that not only men, but all other
animals, issued from the body of a great bull created by Or-
muzd, undoubtedly originating in the issue of man and beast
from the ark, which used to be drawn with pointed stem and
stern standing up like horns, and eventually by imagination
exalted into  an  animal, a bull with expanded horns.  This
bull was worshipped by the Persians.
  In his theology,  Zoroaster was more tolerant than many
Christians.   It is one of the dearest beliefs  of a large-part
of the Christian  world  that  their wicked neighbors shall be
eternally tormented in fire.   So precious is this hope to thera
that it would appear impossible that they could enjoy heaven
without the firm  persuasion that this eternal horror was going
on.  On the contrary, Zoroaster taught, that Time without
Bounds, or the  Eternal, created Ormuzd  and Ahriman, the
good and  evil principle to  contend together, supported by
their respective hosts of Amschaspands, Izeds, Ferouers, &c,
or good spirits, and Dews or Devs, our devils or bad spirits,
the myrmidons of Ahriman.   Ormuzd made  pure men, pure
beasts, trees bearing good  fruit, and flowers yielding pure
fragrance, everything, indeed, for the benefit and  pleasure of
man.  Ahriman corrupted man, and, therefore, made impure
and wicked men, oppressors, tyrants, thieves, murderers, mur-
derers of  reputation, base lawyers, corrupt judges, wooden
wee-chancellors.  He  created all kinds of vermin, and  de-
 stroyed or corrupted the fruit with it;  instilled poison into
 plants and flowers; threw  venomous snakes and scorpions
 amongst them.  His Dews were everywhere spreading blights,
 raising storms,  effecting wrecks, breathing out malignant fe-
 vers, plagues and diseases.  Inflaming devilish lusts, and light-
 ing up the evil  eye to  blast and wither whatever was happy
 and good.   This state of things was to last for twelve thous-
 and years.   The first three thousand years were to be under
 Ormuzd, almost inclusively ;  the next six Ormuzd and Ahri-
 man were jointly to occupy;  the last  three would be given
 up to Ahriman, and at the end Ormuzd would pronounce the 
        zoroaster's  a wholly  spiritual system.   293

 Omnipotent word Honover, by which Ahriman and his hosts
 would be vanquished.  He would then repent;  Ormuzd would
 enter into a solemn contract with him before the Eternal, and
 he and all his Dews would be forgiven and restored.   Hell
 itself would be reformed, and every part of creation purged
 of evil  and suffering.   As for men, all  of them, whatever
 saints they might think themselves, must go into it for a time,
 but no man would be punished beyond his deserts, and none
 forever.
   So far, however, from the followers  of Zoroaster worship-
 ping only God, very little is heard of the Supreme in his sys-
 tem.  Ormuzd is the great object of worship, and  from him
 downwards every good power and spirit, and every object in
 creation.  There are numerous horizons in which stars, winds,
 water, woods, animals, fruits, corn, men, and every imaginable
 thing is done homage to, on the plea that Ormuzd has created
 them  good.  There are two powers in his system, which it
 it is not easy to see where they are placed : —the living crea-
 tive  Word, and  Mithra.  As  I  have stated,  some persons
 think the Persian triad consisted of Ormuzd, Mithra, and the
 great mundane Psyche, but it appears rather to consist of the
 Eternal, the Creative Word, and Ormuzd.   But where, then,
 and who is Mithra ?  No doubt, the  sun was generally re-
 garded  as Mithra, but Herodotus (Clio. I. 132) says that it
 was the Assyrian goddess Myletta, or Venus, called  by the
 Arabians, Alitta, and the Persians, Mitra.  If this  be the
 case, we have here again the feminine principle in the Deity.
  On the whole, the system of Zoroaster was a pure and
 sublime  system for pagans.   Like all  other systems it be-
 came  corrupted  and sensualized.    Mahommedanism drove
 it out of Persia  in the  seventh century, and took its place.
 Many of the Guebers, or  Fire-worshippers, as the Mahom-
medans  called them, fled into India,  where they still con-
tinue, and  in the deserts of  Kerman  under  the name  of
Parsees.
  No system was a  more spiritual system.   It  was  intro-
      25* 
294         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
duced by assumed revelation and miracles; it introduced  a
world of good and  bad spirits, and  established a firm faith
in them.   In other words, under other names it introduced
God, Christ, the devil, and  all the attendant angels, arch-
angels, thrones, principalities, and powers ; guardian angels,
and familiar spirits.   These  same realities lie at the bottom
of all systems, however worked up to  appear novelties.  Ma-
homed copied many things from  the  Zend-Avesta, as his
journey to heaven,  his praying  towards the  East, his rejec-
tion of images, &c.
  The end  of the great Persian kingdom, which stretched
from  Greece to India, was attended by miraculous events,
and to the last moment the Magi showed  their spiritual in-
sight.    Alexander,  who destroyed  this great empire, was
foreshown by the prophecies of Daniel; and as we have seen
on the  authority of Josephus, that  as he was warned in  a
dream not  to perpetrate any  mischief in Jerusalem, and
obeyed  the  warning, so  he was attended,  like Cyrus, by the
spiritual warnings of the Magi.
  When  Alexander of  Macedon made his second visit  to
Babylon, when he was three hundred furlongs from the city,
the Chaldeans sent a deputation of  their most famous and
experienced Magi to warn  him on no  account to enter the
place, as their art showed him that if  he did he would cer-
tainly die there.   They assured him  that if he would pass by
the city, and build the sepulchre of Belus, which the Persians
had  destroyed, the danger would be avoided.  He was  so
much impressed by the statement that he sent many of his
friends  into  the city, but himself camped two hundred fur-
longs from  it.   But the philosophers, the followers of An-
axagoras, and others, went  out  and  so ridiculed the notion
of the Magi foretelling events, that he quickly despised all
divinations whatever, and especially that of the Chaldeans, so
famous all over the  world.
  After  burying his favorite,  Hephaestion, a circumstance
occurred which considerably startled  him.   For when he was 
CHALDEAN  PROPHECIES.
295
anointing himself, and had laid his royal robes and crown on
the throne, one of the inhabitants, who was confined, found
his chains suddenly drop off, and without any of the guard
noticing him, he marched directly into the palace, put on the
crown and robes and seated himself  on the throne.   Alex-
ander, amazed at the strangeness of  the thing, went up to
him,  and asked the  man who he was, and who advised him
to do so ?  The man simply replied  that ' he knew  nothing
at all.'  The augur being called to explain the circumstance,
recommended that the man  should be put to death, and this
was done.  But the circumstance sunk deep into Alexander's
mind, and reflecting  on what the Chaldean had foretold, he
cursed the philosophers who had ridiculed the prognostic, and
felt a renewed  respect for the wisdom of the Chaldeans.
   A second omen added to his perturbation.   He went out
accompanied by several vessels to view the harbor of Baby-
lon, but bis ship was soon  parted from the rest, and went
tossing  about  for some days, so  that his life was despaired
of.  At length the vessel was thrust into a  narrow  creek
overhung with bushes and trees, where his turban or diadem
was  plucked by a bough off his  head, and thrown into the
water.   A sailor jumping  out of the vessel  swam  for and
recovered the  diadem, putting it  on  his own head  that he
might the more readily regain the ship.   The  circumstance
was regarded by himself and the Chaldeans as ominous, and
he was advised to sacrifice to the gods.
   When Calanus, the Indian philosopher, ascended his fune-
ral pile, as I have  already stated, he announced to  Alexan-
der that he would follow him in two  days.
   At the feast attending the proposed sacrifices, he drank
off at a draught a great cup of wine, called the cup of
Hercules, gave a great sigh, seemed  struck as with a thun-
derbolt, and was led out to his  death-bed.   The cup was
suspected to have been  poisoned by Cassander, the son of
Antipater.  Thus the great conqueror died, the victim of the
shallow wisdom of the materialistic philosophers of the time. 
296          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
  Afterwards, when Antigonus went to Babylon and quar-
relled with Seleucus the governor, Seleucus, fearing the fate
of Python, made his escape with  a party of horse, intending
to join  Ptolemy in Egypt.   The Chaldeans informed An-
tigonus  that it was decreed that if Seleucus got safely away,
he would become lord of all Asia, and  would kill Antigonus
in a battle with him.  On this Antigonus sent after Seleucus
to intercept him, but in vain, and every particular of the pro-
phecy became verified.
  Such  was the ancient faith of these  great primitive em-
pires.   I  shall have  to show that  over  the whole region
which they once occupied, notwithstanding changes of theo-
logic systems, the present population, as indeed  of the whole
East, retains the fixed persuasion of spiritual influences on
mankind. 
MYTHOLOGY OF ANCIENT EGYPT.
297
         CHAPTER  XI.

THE SUPERNATURAL IN  ANCIENT  EGYPT.
  Multarum rerum naturas  nostram superare  scientiam et
fallere.              Augustine, De Civitate Dei, L. xxi. c. 4.

De nos  jours, le passe" glorieux de l'Egypte, de l'Assyrie, de
la Grece et de Rome n'est qu'une lettre morte pour les sav-
ants; les muse"es, remplis de  chefs-d'oeuvre, n'ont de l'attrait
que pour les artistes, amateurs des belles formes; mais il y a
la plus que de vaines formes; une realile vivante se d^roule de-
vant nos yeux 6tonn6s, lorsque nous voyons ces chefs-d'oeuvre
animus  par le souffle  puissant de l'esprit qui jadis a vivifie"
leurs modeles corporels.
      Le Baron Guldenstubbe, Pneumalologie Positive, p. 50.
I HAVE given so much explanation of the mythology of
    the Egyptians in my chapter on the  original religion of
the ancient nations, that we may here dismiss that part of the
subject.  We may regard  Egypt,  next  to Chaldea, as the
great school  and  mother of mythologic spiritualism.   The
Egyptian system was carried into Greece  by Danaus, Cad-
mus, and Orpheus.   Some make Orpheus a Thracian, others
a Theban, but the greatest authorities make him an Egyptian.
He would  seem to have travelled  over various regions ere
he reached Greece.   The story of his descending  to Hades
to recall his wife Eurydice is referred to the descent of Horus
to the shades.   Some say that he lived  eleven ages  before
the siege of Troy.  Bryant would convert  him into a city  in
Pieria or Peonia.  Others think Orpheus was a general name
for one of the Magi;  others that Orpheus and Cadmus only
represent Egyptian colonies settling in Greece, and bringing 
298         HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
mysterious and oracular songs with them.  These colonies,
it is said,  spread  over  various countries  like  a deluge.
Amongst them went Canaanites and Caphtorim of Palestine.
They settled in  Colchis, Thrace, Phrygia, Sicily, Etruria.
Istrus and  Diodorus Siculus speak largely of them.  These
matters were so  well known in Egypt, and the  very recent
civilization of the Greeks derived from them that Solon was
mortified to hear the priests in Egypt say that the Greeks were
but children, and had derived everything from them, as tes-
tified by the names of most of their gods, goddesses, men and
women; as Cecrops, Ion, lone, Codrus, Helen, and the like.
The Pelasgi were Egyptians, and as Zonaras says, ' All these
things  came from Chaldea to Egypt, and from thence were
derived to the Greeks.'
   There is something remarkable in Egypt as  connected
with the spiritual history of  man.  It is described in the
Bible as the land of darkness and of bondage, and yet as a
land famous for its wisdom.  The patriarchs, one after an-
other, had to descend into Egypt and to be brought up out
of it again.   This was the  successive case with Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob.   Joseph was sold into Egypt and yet had
his bones carried up again  into the  Promised Land.  The
Israelites were carried as a nation into Egypt, and brought
up again in triumph.  Christ was carried down into Egypt
in accordance with prophecy,  which said,  ' Out  of Egypt
have I  called my son.'  He was brought up  again thence
to fulfil His great career, and  to free the human  race  from
spiritual bondage and darkness.   The French, under Bona-
parte, had  to descend into Egypt, and the English had to go
down there in pursuit of them.   We are all  spiritually sent
down into  Egypt, into darkness, bondage  of soul, gloomy
doubt,  and despair, till we  are called up thence in the foot-
steps of Christ, the  Redeemer, of whom Moses was the type.
Yet  it is the land  of much  abstruse wisdom ; Moses  was
learned in it, and it was diffused by pen and the colonies all
over the west through Greece,  whose philosophy, based  on 
REMARKABLE CHARACTER OF EGYPT.        299
Egypt, we are  sedulously taught to this day.   The day of
redemption from  Egypt  has  not yet  corae to our schools,
where  it reigns  triumphant over Christianity  in classic
studies.
  What  wonder, then, that Egypt was the great mistress of
arts  and  philosophies, patent  and occult,  in  the ancient
world 1   There is no doubt that the power of Egypt lay in
the retention  of an ampler portion than other nations of the
same epoch of  the original knowledge and power of human
nature, of that primal period when man still held much of
that spiritual clairvoyance and sympathy with the spirit-
world which  he possessed before the Fall.  ' The ancient
wisdom  of the  Egyptians,' says  Dr.  Ennemoser,  ' is not a
creation  of history,  a gradual development, as in natural
objects;  for man  is not a production of nature, he is an im-
mediate  creation  and image  of God,  which  resembles  him
and  is perfect in soul  and body.   That ancient natural
wisdom  of early nations  was but fragmentary, for the  ori-
ginal perfection had been lost before recorded times.   These
sealed temples  were  illuminated by but a faint  ray of that
originally pure  spirit, a  small and confused consolation to
fallen man;  here a  few blossoms of prophecy  appeared
occasionally on the barren stem.'
  And Schubert  says in like manner, An old  tradition, a
prophecy of the Voluspa, appears to  announce  that nature
first became conscious through the living world, through the
soul of man.  The word,  however, appears as a higher reve-
lation.    We know that among the Persians a creative spirit
and  a power  over nature  and the being of things is ascribed
to the living world.   Language,  like  the prophecies of the
poet and seer, was created by a higher inspiration.   To the
speaker of the living word the future and past were revealed,
because the eternal spirit, in which the future as well as the
past is contained, spake in him.  In  the early  ages of the
world, speech was an immediate  result of inspiration ;  and
certainly the  theory that social wants  had created  it by de- 
300         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

grees, from various simple sounds, could only "be of modern
date.   This view of the early ages which  derives language
from inspiration, can only be appreciated  through the most
ancient natural philosophy.   According to this, all beings
exist in and by the high influence which is common to them
all.  This is the flame in light, the spirit  in language, love
in marriage.  This belief in the one  common  spirit of all
things is perceptible in the religious doctrines  of the Per-
sians, the Indians, and Egyptians.  By these theories it was
plain through what means man  became acquainted with the
secrets of nature, futurity and the past; by inspiration and
prophecy.   That higher, universally common spirit, in which
the laws of the change of  time, the cause of everything,
future as well as present, becomes the connecting  medium,
through which the souls of those who  are separated by time
 and space approach each other;  and the mind, when, in the
moments of inspiration,  it is sunk  into the depths of the
spirit of nature, is placed  in a spiritual communication with
all things,  and  receives  the power  of  influencing  them.
Those portions of knowledge which  among  us have only
been drawn forth singly, after a long and  tedious investiga-
tion, are but a small portion of that comprehensive knowl-
edge which antiquity preserved.'
   This was the knowledge which lay  at the bottom of ' the
wisdom  of Egypt,' and which was preserved  with  so much
secrecy in the recesses of their temples.  Whence  came the
higher and more spiritual philosophy of Greece ? that philos-
ophy which in Plato has been  matter of  astonishment, and
has been pronounced to approach to the sublime doctrines of
Christianity !   It was brought from Egypt by the successive
sages  of Greece, who went down into  Egypt, like the patri-
archs,  to come up laden with the spoils of the Egyptians —
Orpheus, Thales, who was said first to proclaim the immor-
tality of the soul in Greece, Pythagoras, and Solon.  It was
in Egypt that the great lawgiver of Greece was taught that
the Greeks were yet in philosophy but children.   And so 
THE  FATE OF PYTHAGORAS.
301
carefully was this primal knowledge guarded by the Egyptians,
that Pythagoras is said by Iamblichus to have spent twenty-
two years  before he could penetrate into the core  of their
mysteries.   Not all the power of Amasis, the Egyptian king,
could induce the priests to reveal this sacred knowledge to a
stranger, till he  had  been sent from temple to temple, and
made  to undergo  severe discipline.  Pythagoras returned
only to fall a martyr to the  great psychologic truths that he
first poured out upon  the astonished mind of Greece.   He
wandered throughout Greece, in Delos, and Crete, in Sparta
and Elis;  everywhere neglected or regarded but  as a mad-
man, till he was driven from Samos and passed over into Italy.
There he taught, and, as it is said,  wrought miracles in the
different colonies of  Magna  Grecia, Crotona, Metapontus,
Rhegium, and Agrigentum.  But the martyrdom of new truth
pursued him.  At Crotona  his opponents burnt down his
school, destroying in the flames forty of his chief disciples.
Flying to  Metapontus, he  himself was compelled to  seek
refuge  in the temple  of  the  Muses, and there perished  by
starvation.   This was the penalty of Pythagoras for  intro-
ducing spiritualism into Greece.   After he had opened the
way, along train of good men sought in Egypt the fountains
of ancient  truth,  which they clothed in new forms—Daedalus,
Homer, Democritus of Abdera, JEnopis, Euripides, Eudoxus,
Herodotus, Solon, and others.
  But the priests imparted their  secret and divine  sciences
unto them  charily; and Homer represents his  sorcerers as
Egyptian,  as Xenophon and Plato  represent their ideals as
Persian.   The secret of the musical sounds emitted by the
statue  of  Memnon at sunrise,  has never transpired.  Yet
all ancient authors attest the  fact, and that it still continued
to do so after Cambyses had it opened to see whether it was
caused by  machinery.— (Scholiastes Juvenalis.)
  So  profoundly secret did the Egyptian  priests preserve
their knowledge, that the vulgar  multitude  was suffered to
worship all  kind of animals :  cats, apes, bulls,  crocodiles
  I.— 26 
302         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
(which had their sacred waters), and even winds and  herbs.
Diodorus Siculus, speaking of the gross superstition of the
common people  of Egypt, says  that such was their worship
of cats, that every one killing one was put to death, and that
in Ptolemy's time, a cat being killed by a Roman, the people
flew to his dwelling, and that neither the fear of the Romans,
who were  making  a league with Ptolemy, nor the influence
of the princes sent to persuade them, could deliver the  man
from  the popular rage.  Of  this, Diodorus says that he was
an eye-witness (b.  i. c. 6).
  The priests seem to have considered their esoteric  know-
ledge as too sacred  except for their own caste,  and for  the
use of the State.  Amongst the items of this knowledge, how-
ever,  the paintings on the walls of their temples, as copied by
Denon, Montfaucon, and  others, show that mesmerism and
clairvoyance were well known to tbem, and that, through these
and other ancient knowledges, they derived spirit communi-
cations, and practised extensively in their temples the art of
healing.   As in the  Grecian  temples afterwards, these prac-
tices,  derived from Egypt, were in general use.   Amongst
the paintings in their temples are the figures of priests in the
attitude of  making mesmeric passes, and  others of patients
under manipulation, or thrown into the magnetic sleep.   Not
only were bronze hands found in the temples, with the fingers
in the form for manipulating (see Montfaucon),  but these
were  carried in the festivals of Isis.   Anubis is seen leaning
in the sacred pictures over the bed  of the sick, and  putting
his hand upon them.   The patient  is variously seen  in  the
sleep, as awaking, and  as arising.  A French  author in  the
'Annalen  der Magnetisme Animal,' has shown fully the mes-
meric nature of these Egyptian representations.   ' Magnet-
ism,'  he says, ' was  daily practised  in the temples of  Isis,
Osiris, and  Serapis 1'   And  this is borne out  by all the an-
cient  historians who visited Egypt.   Diodorus Siculus says,
' The Egyptians declare that Isis has rendered them good
services in  the healing sciences, through curative  methods 
MESMERISM  PRACTISED IN  EGYPT.
303
which she revealed to thera ;  that now, having become im-
mortal, she takes particular pleasure in the religious services
of men, and occupies herself particularly with their health :
and that she assists them in  dreams, revealing thereby her
benevolence.   This is proved, not by fable, as among the
Greeks, but by authentic facts.  In reality, all nations of the
earth bear witness to the power of this goddess in regard  to
the cure of diseases by her influence.  In dreams she reveals
to those who are suffering, the most proper remedies for their
sickness; and by following exactly her orders, persons have
recovered, contrary to the expectation  of the  world, who
have been given  up by all the physicians.'
   This is exactly in accordance with the practice of modern
mesmeric clairvoyance ; and it is curious that Herodotus tells
us that Rameses, the Egyptian  king, descended to the man-
sion of death, and after some  stay returned to the light.  The
anniversary of his return was held  sacred as a festival by the
Egyptians.  There can  be no doubt but this descent  of
Rameses was in  the mesmeric trance.  The  same processes
went on in  nearly all the temples of Egypt.  In the  temple
of Serapis  at Canopus, Strabo says, ' Great worship  is per-
formed ; many miracles are done, which  the  most  celebrated
men believe and practise, while others devote themselves to
the sacced sleep.'  At Canopus, Serapis was visited  by the
highest personages with great  veneration, and  in the inte-
rior were, according to the same authorities  (Greek  histori-
ans, who went  thither, and spoke  of what they themselves
saw), all  kinds   of  sacred pictures,  portraying miraculous
cures.   Still more celebrated was the temple at Alexandria,
where the sacred or temple-sleep was continually practised,
and where sick persons were entirely cured.  I shall have to
notice  the miracles of Vespasian performed here, as  related
by Tacitus, when I come to Roman spiritualism.
   As I have said, not only the mythology of Egypt, but its
mysteries and oracles were planted in Greece.   As we shall
have to revert  to the subject  there, it  is needless to dwell 
304         HISTORY OF TnE SUPERNATURAL.

longer on these subjects here, especially as the Bible, in the
books  of Moses, has so fully  demonstrated the spirit power
of the priests of Egypt.  I shall, therefore, close this section
of my subject with a few remarks on the doctrine of metemp-
sychosis, and of an example or two of  oracular prognostics.
The  superstitious  veneration  of the common  people  arose
from this doctrine  of transmigration, as taught in the sacred
books  of Hermes  Trismegistus.  The Egyptians  believed
that  the souls  of men  at  death passed into other bodies,
either  men or animals.   That, according to the degree of
purity or impurity of life here, they passed into pure or im-
pure  animals.   That it required three thousand years for a
human soul to continue its  transmigrations through  every
species of bird and beast.   At the end of that time, if the
soul  was  thoroughly purified, it passed to  heaven, and be-
came free of the  law of migration, residing with the gods.
If not then sufficiently purged, it  passed  again into bodily
forms.  According to Herodotus and Clemens Alexandrinus,
the following  prayer was uttered at Egyptian funerals : —
' Deign, ye gods  who give  life  to men, to  give a favorable
judgment of the soul of the  deceased, that it may pass to the
 eternal gods.'
   As  we shall  see amongst the Greeks, washings, bathings,
rubbings, and  fumigations,  attended  the temple cures of
Egypt.  The incense used, Plutarch, in  his  treatise on Isis
and  Osiris, says, was called  Kyphi, and consisted of six dif-
ferent ingredients.  That  in procuring  prophetic sleep  it
was  assisted by the music of a lyre, which the Pythagoreans
used also for the  same purpose.   It required all these means
to reduce the action of the body, and to  place the soul free
from it, and above it, in  uninterrupted  rapport  with the
spirit-world.  The Egyptian priests described to Herodotus
the descent  of King Rhampsinitus into this purely spiritual
existence, in which he conversed with the gods.
   Amongst the most striking announcements of the oracles,
besides those celebrated ones of Jupiter Ammon, in the case 
THE  EGYPTIAN  ORACLES.
305
of Croesus and others, we  may notice the following as given
by the Greek historians.   An oracle pronounced that My-
cerinus, the son of Cheops, had  only six years to live, and,
though he remonstrated, he could not get the doom reversed.
Sethon, who  had been a  priest of Vulcan,  ascending  the
throne, was alarmed  at the approach of Sennacherib, King
of Assyria, and the warrior tribe deserting  hira, he entered
the temple  of Vulcan, and implored his aid.  The god sent
him a vision as  he stood before his image, telling hira not to
fear, for he himself would fight  for him.  Accordingly, Se-
thon marched against Sennacherib with a crowd of mechanics
and tradespeople  ; and the night before the battle, a legion
of field-mice invaded  the Assyrian camp, and devoured the
quivers and bowstrings of the enemy, so that Sethon gained
an easy victory over them.
  After the death of Sethon, twelve kings reigned in Egypt,
dividing it, says Herodotus, into so many provinces; but the
oracle announced that he who made a libation from a brazen
cnp in the temple of Vulcan, would become the  sole king.
On one occasion Psammeticus,  finding himself without the
usual  golden cup when  the  twelve had to  pour libations,
plucked off his helmet, stretched it  out to receive the wine,
and made  his libation.   The rest  of  the kings, seeing the
oracle fulfilled, instead of hailing him king, banished  him
into the marshes on the sea-coast.   Hence he sent to consult
the  oracle how he  should avenge himself of this  wrong.
The oracle replied that vengeance would come when brass
men arose  from the sea.   To Psammeticus this appeared a
hopeless response,  but soon afterwards some Ionian  and
Carian pirates in brass armor landing (a thing never seen
in Egypt before), he saw the  meaning of the oracle, engaged
these foreigners, and by their aid won the throne.
   The same historian was told in Egypt, that when the king
Amasis was  a youth, he was  connected  with a band of
revellers and pilferers.   Those robbed by  him  frequently
carried him  before the oracles, some of which pronounced
       26* 
306
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
him guilty, and others did not.   On coming to the throne,
he neglected the temples of all the gods who acquitted him,
and would give nothing towards the repairs of those temples,
having satisfied himself that they were  false oracles;  but
those which had convicted him, he attended with the greatest
care, as being truthful gods, and pronouncing just judgments
(Euterpe, 114).   He was, moreover, informed that a  depu-
tation  of Egyptians being sent into Lybia to the temple of
Jupiter Ammon, the Aramonian king, Thearchus, told them
of a neighboring nation, the Nasamonians, who were all
necromancers. 
THE VEDAS.
307
              CHAPTER XII.

THE SUPERNATURAL IN ANCIENT  INDIA AND  CHINA.
Tapaoaci touj dvdpuJTrovs oi ra  wpayjiara,  dXXo ra nepi rue itpayadrmv
l&yuara. — EP1CTETUS.
They are not facts which perplex men, but the opinions about
these facts.

Oh then, let us daily ask God to form around us an immense
void in which we shall see nothing but Him, a profound silence
in which we shall hear nothing but Him.   Let us beseech
Him to raise our souls to an elevation where fear of the judg-
ments of the world shall not reach us; where the world itself
shall disappear and sink away beneath!  Let us entreat Him
to envelope us in His radiance, and inspire us with the holy
folly of His gospel, and especially to penetfate our souls with
a love to Him  that has loved  us with a love  so intense and
dominant, that it would cost us as much to descend from that
height to the world, as it has cost us  to ascend from the world.
                             Vinet's  Vital Christianity, 76.
   EXCEPT that the Brahminical and Buddhistic gospels are
     not  literally our gospel, we may use this  aspiration of
the eloquent Swiss theologian, as expressing the fundamental
aim  and doctrine  of the Indian theology of both  its great
schools.   The aim of  the religion of Brahma was to raise
men  from the thraldom of the senses, and introduce  them into
the pure liberty of God.  The Vedas, which, with the laws
of Menu, are the most ancient sacred  books of the Hindoos,
as they believe wholly inspired,  teach  the same doctrine  as
the Platonists, that the soul is enveloped in a vehicle of pure
ether, sukshonas-arira, a finer body.   In this it becomes  en-
dowed with  self-consciousness, and excited by a host of sen- 
308         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

sations, which it is the business of buddhi, reason, to com-
mand.  It is then  introduced into  the  physical  body, and
passes through a succession of such bodies, like an actor who
assumes a variety of costumes and characters.   When it has
run this round of transmigrations, it appears before the judge
of the dead, Yamas, and, according to its moral condition, is
condemned to pass through the different purifying hells, or is
translated to the paradise of  Indra.   When it becomes per-
fectly pure, it is  absorbed into  the divine  nature, and is in
unity with God, but by no means loses in this state its indi-
viduality.  This is, in fact, the  general  resurrection into the
coming world of light, a doctrine  with  equal plainness an-
nounced by Zoroaster (see Colebrooke's Transactions, 32, and
Asiatic Researches, ix. 290).   To attain this state of conquest
over the senses, and of unity with the Deity, the various de-
votees of India, from the most ancient times to the present,
have undergone  incredible sufferings.  The Fakirs and Yo-
gis,  who were well  known to the Greeks  and Romans  (see
Strabo, in various  places, Lucan,  Plutarch,  Cicero  in his
Tusculum, Pliny, vii. 2, &c), under the name of Gymnoso-
phists, have, in all ages, from the highest antiquity (see Papi's
Letters,  Sir  William  Jones,  and all  writers on Indian an-
tiquities), like the  Egyptian  anchorites, devoted themselves
to year-long and life-long exposure to attain this highest end
of existence.   The laws of Menu  prescribe  minutely such
inflictions.  ' Let the devotee,' they say, ' push himself back-
ward and forward on the ground,  or stand on his toes the
whole day, or continually sit down  and  rise again ;  let him
go  into  the water at sunrise, noon, and sunset, and bathe;
in the hottest season  of the  year surround  himself with five
fires, and in the winter stand constantly in a wet garment, and
so let him proceed, ever increasing  his penances in severity'
(Menu, 6, 22).   Thus in the Ramayann, they are represented
as sitting betwixt fires, lying  in winter in cold water, stand-
ing on tiptoe, living on dried  leaves and water, clad in bark
of trees,  or, as  in Sakontala, buried in  ant nests, and their 
         SPIRITUAL PURIFICATION BY ASCETICISM.      309

necks involved in prickly creeping plants, and bird's nests
built on their shoulders.  Others lie on beds spiked with sharp
nails, and a common penance of the votaries of Siva was to
have a hook stuck through the flesh of their backs, and were
thus twisted up and swung  through the  air.  These terrible
penances, which were  existing in  the time  of Alexander of
Macedon, as we learn from  Megasthenes, have continued to
our time.  Alexander von  Humboldt, in Astrachan, saw an
Indian Yogi who  had continued for fifteen years to sit naked
in the portico  of the temple, through the severest winters,
more like a wild beast than a man, with his hair grown into a
mass, and his  form shrunk, rigid,  and death-like.  Though
the Vedas strongly condemn suicide, yet we know to what
dreadful  extent self-immolation has gone, in deaths by drown-
ing in the sacred  Ganges, by the followers of Vishnu, by fire
by the followers of Siva, flinging themselves under the car of
Juggernauth, and by widows burning on the funeral piles of
their husbands, until the British put an end to many of these
horrors.
  But if the Brahminical sects held this great notion of as-
cending  to a union with God by severe  sufferings and quel-
lings of the flesh  and of all fleshly desires, still more clearly
avowed is this the foundation doctrine of Buddhism, but di-
vested of its savagery.  It is not necessary here to enter into
the vast  chaos  of religious literature of India, in which the
most practical  students become involved in as many and as
endless mazes as the Christian disputants on free will. I have
already noticed the common  features of the mythologies of
India, Egypt, and Persia, as well as the visible  kinship be-
tween the Greek  and Indian gods.   Full demonstrations of
this fact  may be seen in Colebrooke's ' Miscellaneous Essays,'
and  in Paterson's ' Origin  of  the  Hindu  Religion ;' in the
eighth volume  of the 'Asiatic Researches,' in  Stevenson's
'Translation of the Sanhiti of the Sama Veda,' &c.
  A  very  curious circumstance in  the Roman  mythology
shows how Indian gods have travelled westward.   The Anna 
310
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
Perenna of the Romans,  celebrated by Ovid, and to whom
festivals were  held  on the  banks of the Numicius and  the
Tiber, and who was fabled to be the sister of Dido, who was
turned into a nymph, has been shown by Mr. Paterson, in his
treatise  on the Hindoo religion, to  be  no other than Anna
Puma Devi, the Hindoo goddess of abundance.   Ammonius,
the founder of the Neo-Platonic school of Alexandria, con-
fessedly borrowed his idea of the Yoga, or mode of rising to
the Deity by contemplation and mortification of the body,
from the Brahmins.
   Indeed, Egypt  and Persia alike have their  three chief
deities, resolvable into the attributes of one Supreme Creator;
all particularly honor the cow ; their theories of the cosmog-
 ony have the same features as  we see in the Puninas:  all
have deteriorated  amongst the common people into a legion
of gods,—the Indian Pantheon containing, it is said, no fewer
than  three  hundred and thirty million deities.   Like the
Egyptian and Greek mythologies, the Indian has its two sexes
in the Deity (see  preface to Professor Wilson's translation
 of the Vishnu Puraua, p. lxi.), it has its  lesser gods and spirits
 appearing in human form, and being honored amongst their
 ancestral gods (see Abul Fazl, Ayeen Akbery, i. 4).   There
 are no fewer than seven classes of Pitris, or sons of gods and
 sons of men.   We are assured in the fifteenth chapter of the
 second  book of the Vishnu Purana, that your ancestors, if
 properly  worshipped, will grant all your desires.  And in the
 following chapter, that sesamum cast  over  the  ground will
 drive away  malignant spirits.   The Brahmins light a partic-
 ular lamp for the same purpose.
   Both Brahmins  and Buddhists believe in the repeated de-
 scents of the Deity into  the human form to renew the world,
 and to  correct the evils with which man has filled it.  To
 Vishnu these incarnations are chiefly assigned  as the great
helper  and  reformer.  The Brahmins,  however, describe the
incarnation  of Buddha as a delusion sent to deceive men who
paid  honor to the Daityas, or demons, than to the gods. 
BUDDHISM.                   311
Vishnu is said, in the sixteenth and eighteenth chapters of
the third  book of the Vishnu Purana, to have emitted from
his body an illusory  form, Buddha, who went to the earth and
taught both Daityas and men to condemn  the Vedas, or the
sacred books of the Brahmins.  In this the destruction of
all such  heretics is denounced, and all  men are  warned to
avoid them.  This is precisely what Buddha  did,  and hence
the mortal enmity of the Brahmins to his followers.
   Not only Vishnu, but the followers of  Buddha, the seventh
incarnation of Vishnu, deified men, have, according to the
Buddhist books,  become repeatedly incarnated for the same
purposes, and are called Bodhisattvas.   But not  only  do
spirits thus, according to the ancient Indian creeds, descend
to associate with men ;  they appeared and  still appear in a
variety of ways.   They are sent down  in thousands  as the
agents of the Trimurtis,  or  three great gods.   Some are
guardian angels of individuals, of cities, Kshetrapala, of vil-
lages,  Gramadevata;  others  are  haunting  spirits  of the
night,  of  woods, caves,  and  solitary  glens.  These, on the
fall of the giants,  the Asuras, who rose against the gods,
first  learned that they were mortal, and became eager for
the preparation  of  the Amrita, or  liquor  of immortality,
which, if they once  quaffed, they lived forever.   The demi-
gods, like the demi-gods  of Greece, were mortal.  As the
spirits of different  degrees pass to and fro amongst  men,
they surround themselves with an ethereal veil, as  Maya and
the nymphs, and are thus invisible  to mortals.   Their eyes
are brilliant as stars, and they never wink, as was  said to be
the case with the Egyptian gods.  They wear garlands which
never wither, and the  astral  gods beaming circles of light.
The goddesses wear garments  rich with the most delicious
perfumes; all the gods have some Vahan, or attendant ani-
mal :  some of them  are benignant, others terrible and venge-
ful :  their motion is swift, and they travel  on chariots and
ships.  They carry  each a weapon or a flower in their hand,
and every one has  a tree or  flower sacred to him or her. 
312         HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
Everything in nature is, moreover, quickeued with a portion
of the Divine Spirit.
  In the eighth avatara, Vishnu seems to have incorporated
with himself the other two gods; for, in the Bhagavadgita,
he is said, on this occasion, to have appeared as Krishna, the
unborn, the  Lord of life, the Creator of the world, its sup-
porter and destroyer.  Greater than Brahma, he was Vishnu,
the Sun,  Siva,  Indra, Jagannatha, in short, the iv xai, rtdv,
who, through the mystic word  Om, demands all reverence.
By the very drawing together of his brows, it was said, he
could create millions of gods and goddesses, in every variety
of form, rank, and character.
   The ninth avatara of Vishnu took place in the person of
Buddha.  Into the enormous labyrinth of Buddhist  litera-
ture and Buddhist points of dispute, it is not requisite here
to enter.  My business with Buddhism is only as it exists, a
thoroughly spiritual system.  There would appear to have
been numerous  Buddhas.  M. Burnouf, in his 'Introduction
a l'Histoire  du Buddhisme Indien,' says that the last Buddha
was the seventh ;  but if we are to judge of the various dates
assigned  to the appearance  of  Buddhas, there  must have
been more : and, indeed, almost every one who,  by entire
abandonment of the pleasures and dominance of the  senses,
became united to God, became  Buddha.  In Bohlen's 'Alte
Indien'  we have thirty dates  of the advents of Buddha,
ranging from 2420 years before Christ  down to 543 B. o.
These  are dates assigned by the  natives of Thibet, Ceylon,
Japan, China,  Birraah,  Cashmere,  &c.   The last Buddha
was named, before his  becoming Buddha, Gautama.  He
was the son of Sudhodanas, King  of Kikata, or Magadha,
the  present Behar.   His mother's name was Maya.  Some
of his followers declare that he  was  then a mere mortal man,
and became Buddha by his  sanctity and union with God.
Others  assert that  he was Vishnu incarnated in the  son of
this king and queen.  That Maya  means  illusion, and was
merely the divine idea in which Buddha was immersed.  All 
DOCTRINES  OF BUDDHA.
313
these  matters we may leave  to connoisseurs in Buddhism.
Enough for us is that we find Buddha mentioned by Alexander
Cornelius Polyhister eighty years  before Christ, as  quoted
by Clemens of Alexandria.   Clemens says in another place,
his  followers  regarded 'Butta' as God.  In  Herodotus's
account of Alexander's expedition to India, the two great
sects of India are named as Brahmins and Garmans.  These
latter, called by themselves  in the early ages Samanaer, or
Ever-the-same,   were  unquestionably the Buddhists, from
being called also the Abstinents. Arrian mentions a Buddha,
or Bovfivaj, as the son  of  King Spatembas  at  the  time of
Alexander's invasion of India.
  The doctrines of Buddha were of the most pure and humane
kind.   He at once denounced the  castes of Brahminism as
inimical to the freedom and progress of the human race:  he
protested against all sacrifices of living  things, whether of
man or beast;  against self-immolation ;  against eating  or
injuring  animals of any kind, even the smallest  things.  To
such a length have  some sects of  his followers carried this
doctrine, that they wear a piece of musliu over their  mouths,
lest insects should be inhaled by the breath and destroyed;
and they carry a soft brush with them to  brush  away insects
from the ground before they seat themselves upon it.  Buddha
rejected the Vedas and Puranas as having no claim to  au-
thority, or as sanctioning the unholy practice of  living sacri-
fices.   This, and the high claims of his followers, for in the
Sutras he is represented as enunciating his doctrines in  the
presence of gods and  men, brought down  the fury of the
Brahmins on the Buddhists, who  were persecuted  till they
were driven out of Hindoostan Proper,  but  only to spread
over the country beyond the Ganges, over Nepaul,  Birmah,
Affghanistan, Thibet, Mongolia, China, Ceylon, Japan,  and
other countries.   Hassel calculates  that the relative followers
of different religions in the world are : —
I.—27 
314
HISTORY  OF THE (SUPERNATURAL.
Christians of all denominations .	120 millions
Jews, nearly ....	4
Mahommedans	. 260
	. Ill
	. 315
  So that there are of the two Indian sects 426 millions — a
vast family of spiritualists 1  But there are some millions  of
other religious sects in India alone, as the Jaines and others,
who  are  equally believers in  the  incarnations  and other
spiritual processes.  The Brahminic and other devotees be-
lieve that on reaching the divine unity, they become lords of
the elements, and capable of working miracles.  ApoUonius
of Tyana  travelled  to  India  to obtain  initiation  into the
Indian  philosophy and  theurgy.  He was no  sooner intro-
duced  to the chief Brahmin than he was  thus  addressed  by
him : —' It is the custom of others to enquire  of those who
visit them, who they are, and for what purpose they come;
but with us the first evidence of wisdom  is, that we are not
ignorant  of those who  come  to us.'  And he immediately
informed  ApoUonius who he  was, of both his father's and
mother's families; what he did at Aegae ; how Damis came
to accompany him on his great journey, of all that had hap-
pened on  the  way, what they had talked of, and what they
had heard.  He related  the whole as fluently and perfectly
as if he had  been their  companion the whole way.  Apol-
lonius became duly initiated, and on his return astonished all
Greece by his theurgic power.  He informs us that the sages
of India had the power of understanding and  speaking  the
languages of those who came to them from the most distant
countries.
   ' I have seen,' said  ApoUonius,  ' the  Brahmins  of India
dwelling  on the earth and not on the earth; living  fortified
without fortifications, possessing nothing and yet everthing.'
Damis, who accompanied him, thus  explained  this.   The
Brahmins sleep  upon  the  ground, but  the  earth  furnishes
them a  grassy couch of whatever  plants they desire.   Ho
says he had seen them  elevated two cubits above the surface 
ANCIENT MARVELS  MODERN FACTS.        315
of the earth, walk in the air—not for the purpose of display,
which was quite  foreign to  the  character of the men, but
because whatever they did, elevated in common with the sun
above the earth,  would be  more acceptable to that  deity.
Having bathed, they formed  a choral circle, having Iarchus
for their Coryphaeus, and striking the earth with their divining
rods, it  rose up, no  otherwise than  does the sea under the
power of the wind,  and caused them to ascend in the air.
Meanwhile they continued to chant a hymn, not unlike a paean
of Sophocles which  is sung at Athens in honor of ^Escula-
pius.'—Philostratus, Vita  Apollon. Tyanens., 1. iii. c. 15, 17.
Diodorus Siculus  says that the Brahmins of his time foretold
future events, and if these did  not occur they were forever
after treated with contempt:  b. ii. c. iii.
  Here  are then marvellous things, which have been set down
as mere fables, and  which all of  us  a few years ago  would
have treated as such.  But all these, the intuitive knowledge by
mediums of your secret thoughts, and of your very history —
see  ' Life of Zschokke:' the power  of  their understanding
other languages — see the ' Letters of Judge Edmonds,' and
the  fact of being elevated into the  air — see the accounts
of Mr. Home and of the  whole Catholic Church, corrobo-
rated by numerous living witnesses of most perfect reliability,
— are fully supported by recent phenomena.
  Colquhoun, in  his ' History of Magic, Witchcraft,' &c,
says very truly,  that all those things which were regarded by
the  modern world as empty mystical fables, have been demon-
strated by physiology and  a careful comparison  with  recent
phenomena to accord perfectly with  fact; that the visions
and  ecstatics of  the Greek, Egyptian,  Indian, and   other
temples are in strict analogy with modern clairvoyance, &c;
that the most striking parallels to the last phenomena have
been adduced by Bemier,  Colebrooke, Passavant, Schlegel,
Windischmann, and  other enquirers into  the  knowledge,
habits, and literature  of the  Hindoos; that the revelations
obtained by the Indian seers, whilst they held  themselves to 
316
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
be in immediate communion with the Deity Himself, related
to the origin, nature, connection, and destiny of all things,
and  to  the  rank and condition of  spirits and souls of men,
both in this world and in that to come.   According to Cole-
brooke, the  spirit, so long as the doors or senses of the body
are open, has no essential  personality, for the senses are
divided and act  separately; but so soon as these are closed
the soul retires  to the cardiac region, there awakes, and its
faculties become one common sense, which perceives  and con-
verses with  Deity.  In this state the body is totally insensible
to pain.
   To reach this state,  the  Indians  made  use of what they
called the Soma drink, prepared partly from the Asclepias
acida, or Cyanchum viminale, which was said to  promote
clairvoyance, and thus unite the soul to Brahma.  In ancient
times it was taken as a  holy act, a species of sacrament; and
the victims in human sacrifices were treated to it under magical
ceremonies  and  incantations.  All sects, the Brahmanists,
the Buddhists, the Jaines, believe alike in and strive after the
liberation of the soul from the tyranny of the senses.  They
seek by asceticism and abstraction  to reach  that  heavenly
state of  the Nirvana or Ananda, in which, according to the
sixth book  of the laws of Menu, it  possesses happiness in
this world, and eternal beatitude in the other.   Being enfran-
chized from all mundane affections, and  insensible to all op-
posing conditions, such  as honor and dishonor, it is  absorbed
forever into Brahma.
   It is not the  business of this work to defend either Brah-
minism or Buddhism from the common charges that this final
absorption of the soul into the Deity is atheism, and is anni-
hilation.   No systems more positively  and persistently pro-
claim theism than these; and, as I have before observed, it
implies  no more than Christ's doctrine, when He says that
He lives in the Father and the Father in Hira, and that the
true  disciples shall live both in the Father and Him.   And
of the apostle, that when Christ has put all things under His 
     SIMILARITY OF BUDDHIST AND CATHOLIC RITES.  317

feet He will surrender the kingdom to  the  Father, and God
shall be all in all.   Even in this  low and embryo condition
we are  said in God ' to live and move and have our being ;'
how  much more so in a state freed from all  sin  and death,
and exalted into harmony with that Divine nature which per-
vades all space and all eternity, made  ' perfect as He is per-
fect?'
  For many astonishing evidences  of the supernatural  in
Buddhism in Thibet, the reader may refer to M. Hue.  The
Grand Lama  is there considered a perpetual incarnation;
the spirit of the Bodhisattva of Sakyamuui  passing  out  of
one  body by what is  called death, and entering  another  by
birth, of which  the priests receive spiritual  intimation, and
fetch the reincarnated Lama  often from very distant and ob-
scure places.  Perhaps no pagan religion ever approached
so near Christianity in its  benignant spirit and doctrines as
that of Buddha ; certainly no other church of any kind ever
 approached so near to the  Catholic Church in its ritual and
 ceremonial.  It has its splendid hierarchy and ecclesiastical
 constitution.  It has  its towers with  rings  of bells, and its
 bells in the process of worship.   It has the tonsure of priests
 and swarming monasteries in Thibet to such a degree that
 the  monks and priests are said to make nearly half the popu-
 lation.   In Birmah and Japan are found Buddhist convents
 for  women.   The  priests  have  splendid  yellow robes and
 pointed Armenian  caps.  They carry in  processions, for they
 have religious processions like the Catholics,  a sort of crosier,
 and the crook  is carved with the arms of  the nation, as in
 Ceylon and Birmah, or painted in bright colors. The Budd-
 hists have their rosaries, and tell their beads as zealously as
 Catholics.  But the Buddhists have carried  still  farther than
 the Catholics their prayer system.   In India  parrots were
 formerly taught to repeat prayers, to  save the people  the
 trouble • but in many Buddhist countries they inscribe prayers
 on  weathercocks, so  that they may  be always in  motion.
 They have also  machines for winding off  prayers  in  the
        27* 
318
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
rosary style, and  these stand  in  the  vestibules of temples,
furnished with bells, so that the people passing in or out can
have a prayer or  two told off easily.  M. Hue says the Thi-
betians have  improved on this, and people carry about little
prayer wheels, which they keep  in  motion, and thus as they
walk tell off great numbers  of prayers ; and, most ingenious
of all, they place these little wheels  in  running streams, so
that they are incessantly working off prayers for  their pos-
sessors.  How many prayers amongst us, that never spring
from  a deeper source than the  lips, might thus much more
easily be consigned to machinery !
   The Buddhist priests are  bound,  like Catholic ones,  to
celibacy, but quite as easily, as they, like Catholic priests in
many countries,  are  allowed housekeepers,  around  whom,
unaccountably, families spring up, and  are  styled nephews
and nieces.  The Buddhists have their  penances and  absti-
nences, their pilgrimages and begging  duties.   In Birmah
the begging  monks go through the streets in a subdued
style, carrying in one hand  their  staff, in  the other an earthen
pot, on which is  a painting of Buddha.    This pot the pious
housewives fill with victuals, which  are carried to the monas-
teries, and after  the monks are  fed,  the remains are distrib-
uted  to the poor.  On their religious pilgrimages they sing,
like the Catholics, hymns.  Their festival days are four times
a month, besides many other  sacred  days, on which they go
with  their banners  and resounding  music,  especially enor-
 mously long trumpets, the  priests  in their yellow or purple-
 and-gold  robes,  their rosaries and censors, to the temples,
the people prostrate  in  the  dust  on each side of the way.
As for baptisms and sprinklings with holy water, they have
abundance of them;  and if they have  not  exactly a  sacra-
ment supper, the priests throw handfuls  of coin amongst the
people, accompanied by sacred hymns.   They have relics of
their saints, and, in fact, so many practices parallel to those
 of Catholicism,  that when all this  was first discovered in
 Thibet, Fathers Griiber and Maffie  sent word to Europe that 
LAO-TSE IN CHINA.
319
the devil had set up a most shameful mock of the ritual and
paraphernalia of  the true church.
   We need not dwell long on the ancient spiritualism of the
Chinese.  From all that we can learn, they ran through the
usual routine of subsiding from the knowledge of one supreme
God into the worship  of the elements, and thus into a mul-
tifarious idolatry.  The  ancient  emperors, says  Gutzlaff,
' sacrificed on high mountains, with various ceremonies now
become obsolete, and frequently called  upon Shang-ti, or the
Supreme  Being,  an act of  devotion  now  very  rarely per-
formed.'  Seeing  the frivolity of the people, and that it was
necessary to  have some public  recognition of religion,  the
Chinese legislators set  up a religion  of the State, and the
rulers of the  country assumed the office of its priests  them-
selves.  In this religion was introduced the worship of a host
of spirits, demons, gods, and  invisible powers.   The spirits,
presiding over every part  of nature, had their recognition,
and temples were built to them.  The people also erected
altars to their parents, and placed  them close to the tablets
of their ancestors.   The  objects of worship became innu-
merable ;  heaven, earth,  and every imaginable  thing, had
their pervading spirits.  The ancestors of the reigning family
were regularly deified, and the ancestral spirits, adored in all
ancient nations, had no such honor paid them as in China.
Great annual and national festivals were instituted, in which
the  Emperor and all  his  officers of state  appeared in  full
costume, the  sacrifices  being offered by the Emperor himself
or his deputies.
   Such seems to  have been the  spiritual condition  of China
till about the year 604 before Christ, when there  appeared
a  great religious  reformer, Lao-tse.   He found the Chinese
grown very corrupt and worldly, caring  little for  anything
but the prosecution of  their worldly affairs.   Yet there  was
an outline of spiritual faith left, and there were solitary sages
who endeavored in vain to keep alive its doctrines.  They
taught that the souls of illustrious  men presided in  the  in-' 
320         niSTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

visible world as lords and  governors, under the name of
Heen, or sages.  That spirits not perfectly pure occupied the
region betwixt  heaven and  earth — the  same middle realm
as the  Hebrew Scheol and Greek Hades,  and these appeared
as genii, elfs, hobgoblins, &c, under the  name of Seen,  hov-
ering about graves, mountains, and dark recesses — the idea
of Plato.   That the souls of wicked became kwei, or demons,
and  descended to hell, or haunted the  earth, bent on  mis-
chief.   Lao-tse placed himself at the head of these solitary
teachers, and  professing to have ascended to the invisible
world, and to have lived amongst the Seen, he came back to
teach them  a purer and truer faith.   He found it impossible
to draw to him the  mass of the worldly  Chinese, was perse-
cuted  by them, and  retired  to the  solitude of  the  sages to
pass his life in religious contemplation.   Yet  his opinions,
by degrees,  prevailed, and became the  Taou  worship, the
Taou resembling the Logos of the Platonists.   Lao-tse left
behind him a work  called Taou-tih-king, containing his re-
ligious philosophy.  So far as we can see into the system of
Lao-tse, it very much resembles that of  Buddha, asserting a
power, by prayer and self-denial, of raising the soul from its
carnal  bondage into a divine  unity.  There is a clear recog-
nition of a fall from a better state, and that, notwithstand-
ing  that fall, God  has not abandoned  man, but is always
seeking to restore hira.  Lao-tse teaches that the moral and
religious truths have  been  brought down to men by Divine
messengers.   That this had been  the case more frequently
of old than in his  time, when only the faint traces of the
ancient  illumination  remained.  He taught that the things
visible have been made from the things  invisible, a doctrine
precisely that of St. Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrews.  The
school of the Tao-tse, founded on  the doctrine  of Lao-tse,
or Lao-tseu, maintained the fact of apparitions, and the  ar-
ticles  296 and  297  relate  the punishment of a  materialist.
This man, named Tcheu, boasting of his  disbelief in a spirit-
world, a demon appeared to  him;  termed him  an impious 
CONFUCIUS.                    321
wretch to deny what  all the greatest  men of antiquity had
affirmed, and showed himself in such terrors that he died on
the spot.  It teaches  that good and evil spirits are always
operating in human affairs, to promote  or thwart them.  The
Tao-tse taught that there existed guardian spirits ; that ma-
terialists are the fools and imbeciles of creation.   The grand
doctrine of Lao-tse is  that of Buddha,  that by spiritual con-
centration and purification, man, with  all other spirits, will
eventually ascend into the Divine nature.
   Lao-tse may be regarded as the deepest thinker of Chinese
antiquity.  He was quickly followed by Kong-fu-tse, or Con-
fucius, who appeared  b. c.  552, when Lao-tse was growing
old.   He was of the  royal  house of Schang.   His system
was very different to that of Lao-tse.   It was rather one of
morals than of metaphysics.   He  deplored the degeneracy
and demoralization of his countrymen, and  endeavored to
call them back to the ancient simplicity, without withdraw-
ing them from active  life.   He taught that it was necessary
for men to  fulfil  their social and natural duties, to  honor
their parents, to be truthful  in daily affairs, to be faithful to
their friends, and, above all, to pay obedience to the govern-
ment,  and  pay duly their  taxes.  His system was  one of
almost slavish obedience.   Yet he did not fail to teach also
that there remained in the heart a seed of the celestial  na-
ture, an inner light which must be followed, and which would
teach men to subdue  their passions,  and attain  to a temper
of peace and cheerfulness.   These doctrines he left in his
book, the Kings, consisting of speeches, proverbs, songs, and
a history which has since been continued.
   His writings appear to be the essence of the ancient tra-
ditions; in  fact, he says in the Lun-Yu, book i. c.  7, § 19,
' I am a man who has loved the ancients, and who has made
every effort to acquire their knowledges.'  Amongst these
ancient traditions is that of the fall of man,  and the fall of
the angels.   The first  of  the  angelic rebels, according to
him, was Tschi-Yeu; and the flags which the Chinese  use 
322
HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
still to drive away evil spirits are called the  flags of Tschi-
Yeu.   Another of the ancient traditions is that of the pre-
existence of the soul.  All the universe, according to these
traditions, constitutes but one family, the heaven, the earth,
the world of pure  spirits, the  spirifs  of the dead, and the-
whole  order of nature forms but one empire, governed by
the eternal reason  of Schang-ti.   They  taught that  the
visible world is in constant rapport with the  invisible :  both
good and evil spirits surround us, nay, are within us.   They
watch our tendencies, and if we give way to evil,  the  evil
spirits rush in, push the good ones aside, and become strong
over us, by their affinity to our condition.  So, on the other
hand,  evil spirits retire from good men, and  good ones take
their place.  They are cognizant of our most inmost thoughts,
and recount  them  in  heaven.   The  household spirits, or
petlates, record all our actions, and  deliver in  their account
to heaven on the last day of every moon.   Apparitions  were
extremely frequent, according to tradition, in  the early times,
and good and great  men were taught  of God  in  dreams.
 Confucius complains in one place in  the  Lun-Yu, that he
had not, for a long time, seen God in  a dream.
   Such were  the doctrines  of the olden time, which Confu-
cius sought  to  revive, and which bear  unmistakable traces
 of the primal  knowledge.  His followers, according to Hang,
formed a sect which reminds us of the Hebrew prophets.
 They  fought against the spirit of the times with fiery energy,
but not against the sluggishness and the passive spirit of the
 Chinese.   To remove that  would require even  more than
 the high  inspiration of  the  Hebrews.   Yet all the writings
 of Lao-tse and Confucius represent the ancient faith of China
 as thoroughly spiritualistic.   As we have just seen,  they be-
lieved  themselves  not only  surrounded  by legions of spirits
 good  and bad, but, in  strict accord with the Jewish  faith,
possessed by thera.   They not only influenced them,  but ap-
 peared visibly to them.  Kircher, and the other early mis-
 sionaries, relate, that though this faith had degenerated into 
THE  TRAVELS OF DIVINE  IDEAS.          323
something more like demonology than anything divine,  it
still existed in all its strength.  That from the earliest times
sickness had been cured by the laying on of hands, by breath-
ing on the affected  spot, and by  other like means.  Osbeck
and Torceno, in their journey to the East Indies  and China
in 1765, declare that it had  always been customary among
the Chinese  to strengthen weak, sickly, and exhausted per-
sons, by means of a gentle pressure of  the hands  on various
parts  of the body.  Thus the ancient Chinese, like the an-
cient Hindoos, Egyptians, Persians, Chaldeans, Greeks, and
Romans, were  not  only familiar  with spiritual phenomena,
but with those  magnetic  phenomena  which are always  in
connection with these,  and occupy, as  it were, the vestibule
of the spiritual world.
   Gutzlaff and other travellers assure us that all the ancient
notions regarding spirit life  have come down to the present
day amongst the Chinese.  Though no nation has less sub-
lime views of religion, they not only confidently believe  in
a populous spirit-world around them,  but  hold daily inter-
course with it, and that whether Taouists, Buddhists, or any
other of the numerous and populous sects of China.  As we
shall  see in a following chapter,  they place tablets in  their
temples on which they inscribe messages to their ancestors,
and inform them of everything which happens to them.  In
every temple the apparatus  for divination is always kept in
readiness:  and though the  law  severely prohibits sorcery
and magic, and interdicts the publication of wicked and cor-
rupting books, Dr.  Macgowan informs us that these go on
daily  and  hourly.   Such was antiquity everywhere, east and
west,  north and south; for, in the  words of Sophocles, quoted
elsewhere:
        This is not  a matter  of to-day,
        Or yesterday, but hath been from all time;
        And none hath  told us whence it came or how.
   The how  and the whence  had  not, indeed, come to Soph-
ocles  or the Greeks, but  they came in the Gospel.  In the 
324         HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

words of Dean  Trench, in his ' Unconscious Prophecies of
Heathendom,' 'We say that the Divine  ideas which had
wandered up and down the world, till oftentimes they had
well-nigh forgotten themselves and their origin, did at length
clothe  themselves in flesh and blood.   They became incar-
nate with the incarnation of the Son of God.  Iu  His  life
and person the  idea and the fact  at length kissed each other,
and were henceforward wedded forever.' 
ORIGIN OF  SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY.       325
          CHAPTER  XIII.

THE SUPERNATURAL IN ANCIENT SCANDINAVIA.
Oss mano ..Esir bioda
Er'at sytandi daudi.
All must the Asar call,
And without grief I go.
       Death Song of Ragnar Lodbrok.
   THOUGH ancient Scandinavia lay in northern  Europe,
     its mythology and faith were those of the Easte1. j world.
 They were, like the Scandinavians themselves, but a section
 of that primal East which we have been  traversing,  and
 thence following its moving tribes westward.  The faith of
 old Chaldea, of Egypt, of India, and  Greece, was  the faith
 of Scandinavia.   Their gods, Odin, and  Thor,  and Loke,
 were but Vishnu and Siva, Horus,  Osiris, and Typhon,  Ju-
 piter, and Pluto, and Mars, under other names.  Whoever
 studies the ancient Eddas  of Scandinavia finds the direct
 and  permanent proof of the Eastern origin of the people,
 their  religion, and their psychology.   To  quote  our  own
 History of Scandinavian Literature : — 'To the antiquity of
 these songs it would be vain to attempt to fix a limit.  They
 bear  all the traces of the  remotest  age.  They carry you
 back to the East, —the original region of the Gothic race.
 They give  you glimpses of the  Gudadem, or home of  the
gods, and of the sparkling waters of the eternal fountain of
  I.—28 
326          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

tradition.   They bear you in that direction  towards the
primal period of one tongue and  one religion, and, in the
words of the Edda,  of that still greater God whom no one
dared to name' (p.  29).
  ' Our Northern  people are a people  of Eastern origin.
Odin and his Asar declared themselves to be from the great
Svithiod, a country which appears to have been the present
Circassia, lying between the Black and Caspian Seas.  They
brought with them Eastern customs — those of burning their
dead and burying them under mounds,  such  as  are yet to
be seen on the plains of Persia and Tartary.  They practised
polygamy,  and always looked back with  patriot affection to
the great Svithiod, to the  primitive district of AsgSrd, and
the city of Gudahem, or home of the gods.  But, more than
all,  in  their religious creed,  they transferred  the  faith of
Persia, India, and Greece,  to the snowy mountains of Scan-
dinavia, and there modified it so as to give it a most distinct
air of originality, without destroying  those primal features
which marked their  kinship to the  East.   The Asar and the
giants  were  in  constant hostility, like the  gods of Greece
and the Titans.   They had  their  three  principal deities,
Odin, Thor, and Loke, the  latter the evil  principle, the Pluto
of the Greeks, the Ahriman of the Persians, the Siva of the
Hindoos.  They had their gods of  thunder, of war, of elo-
quence, and of the sea.  They had the actual Venus of the
Tanais, the great deity of  the Persians, the very name Van-
adis suggesting that of the  Hellenic Venus.   They had in
Balder the  Vishnu  or the Krishnu of  India,  and  a  more
beautiful Pan.  The gods of Scandinavia  are actually de-
scribed as  sitting on  Idavalla,  or Mount  Ida;  and Odin,
Thor, and Loke, like Jupiter,  Mercury, and Mars of Greece,
make excursions among mankind, indulge  in singular  love
adventures, and  place themselves often in circumstances that
are anything but consistent with the  dignity of  great deities.
You  have  the strife of light and darkness in Balder and
Hoder, as  in Ormuzd  and Ahriman; you have a tripart 
THE  TREE OF  LIFE.
327
divinity,  the  Jove,  Neptune,  and  Pluto  of  Greece,  the
Brahma,  Vishnu,  and Siva  of India, in Odin,  Thor, and
Loke.  Instead  of the bull Apis, or the ox  Abudad, we
have the cow Audumbla;  instead of genii, nymphs,  dryads,
and nereids, we have elves, dwarfs, and trollquinna.   All the
powers of nature are shadowed forth  in the various deities
of the various systems;  and there is  a  great  and  sublime
deity, far above all semi-human deities,  that stands in  greater
proximity to man, and then comes a final fire, Regnarok, like
that of the Persians, and the grand mundane catastrophe of
the Christian creed.   Through  the  whole, indeed, we  trace
the earliest traditions of the primitive world ; the  Adam and
Eve in Ask and Embla, the Meshia and Meshiane  of  Persia;
the very Fates are there  in  the Nornor;  the Dog of  Hell,
and the Tree  of Life.   That tree in  the Scandinavian my-
thology has assumed,  through  the grand imagination  of
poet-priests of unknown ages, a magnificence which is  with-
out a parallel; and with  its Asgard,  its Midgard,  and its
Nifelhem, its rocky region of the Rimthursur, or giants of
frost,  and  all  its  light elves, elves of darkness, its giants
mighty in magic, its dwarfs cunning in metallurgy, its Val-
kyrior, and its heroes, descended from its gods, and armed
with omnipotent  runes, it possesses  an originality and a  '
piquancy for the imagination that are wonderfully  refresh-
ing'(p. 38).
  This being the case, we may spare ourselves the details of
ancient Scandinavian faith.  In exhibiting that of any  great
nation of antiquity, we have exhibited it.  The preceding
quotation shows how completely the system of it was a spir-
itualistic system.   We need, therefore, only refer to a few
of its  more  modified features:  its identity with that of all
other ancient people is indisputable.   If  we wanted a proof
that even the very words  of the central East have travelled
along  with  its creed, we  have  only to take the  following
passages. 
328          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

   In the Orphic hymns we have these lines :

  First was Chaos and Night, and black Erebus, and vast Tartarus;
  And there was neither  Earth,  nor  Air, nor Heaven: but in the
    boundless bosom of Erebus.
  Night with her black wings, &c.

   In the  first book of the Vishm'i Purana, where  Brahma,
prior  to  creation, is spoken  of,  follows: —' There  was
neither day,  nor night, nor sky, nor earth, nor darkness,
nor light, nor any other  thing, save only one incomprehen-
sible by  intellect,  or that  which  is Brahma and Puman
(spirit) and Pradhana (matter),' p. 12.

   In the opening of the book of the Edda, called ' Voluspa,'
is this stanza:

                It was time's  morning,
                When Ymer lived,
                There was no sand, no sea,
                No  cooling billows;
                Earth  there was none,
                No  lofty heaven ;
                Only the gulf  of Ginunga,
                But no grass.

   Thus in Greece, in India, and  in Scandinavia,  we have
ancient bards and sages chanting in almost the identical words
the ante-creation period.
   Amongst the  peculiar features of the Scandinavian mythol-
ogy are  the Valor, or prophetesses.  The 'Voluspa' is the
prophecy of Vala, one of the greatest  of these  mysterious
women.   They  are parallels of the Pythonesses  of Greece,
of the Alrunes of the Germans, but they do not come  so dis-
tinctly before us as either of these classes.   They  were the
northern  Sybils, but still more mysterious and  indistinct.
Amid the bright sunshine of a far-off time, surrounded by
the densest  shadows  of forgotten  ages, these Valor, or pro-
phetesses, seated somewhere unseen in that marvellous heaven,
pour forth an awful song of  the birth of gods  and the des-
tinies of men.  As Ulysses  and  Apneas  descended  to the
Shades to seek counsel from  Tiresias or other long-past seer,
so Odin descended to consult the Vala.   The scene, though 
SCANDINAVIAN  MYTHOLOGY.            329
thoroughly un-Scandinavianized, is familiar to English read-
ers by Gray's ' Descent of Odin.'   Odin calls the prophetess
from her tomb, not from the host of spirits ;  and  how long
6he had been there may be imagined by her  words:
             I was snowed over with snows,
             And  beaten with rains;
             And  drenched with the dews;
             Dead have I long been.

  Another class  of gifted women in the Scandinavian my-
thology are the Valkyrior, who were endowed with the power
of flight, and appointed by Odin  to select those who  should
die in battle.   They were a sort of martial  fates ; yet they
were mortal,  but  possessed  of wonderful powers  of  magic,
whi'd they exercised through runes, or spells, written in the
ruae characters of the north.   Brynhilda  explains  in the
Brynilda Quida, or song, all the various runes to Sigurd.
Drink-runes to retain love ; runes of Freedom giving power
to rescue others;  Storm-runes to raise tempests;  Flesh-runes
to cure wounds or  sickness;  Speech-runes to inspire  elo-
quence ;  Mind-runes to  confer  spiritual supremacy.   The
Scandinavians had belief in every kind of magic.  Like Ciroe,
they could turn men into other shapes, could stop  the flying
spear in battle, put out  fires,  arrest magicians even in mid-
air by superior spells, and those  possessed  of it by singing
behind their shield on the battle-field could insure victory to
their fellow-warriors.   Volund, the smith, whence  the Way-
land Smith of tradition, meaning simply the flying smith, had
wonderful magic power.  We find ghosts and processions of
them in the ancient Sagas of Scandinavia.   In the song of
Helge that hero is seen riding  at the head of his soldiers into
his cairn or tomb on a summer's evening.   But in the later
Sagas  of Iceland, which purport to be the histories of real
events, we have the most extraordinary narratives  of ghosts.
In the Eyrbyggja  Saga we have a number of ghosts on whom
all other means failed, regularly ejected from the house which
they  haunted  by  a legal process; the only instance, I im-
       28* 
330         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

agine, on record.   The occasion of  the  appearance of  these
ghosts was the neglect of a person  to burn the clothes and
other effects left by a woman of rank named Thorgnnna, as
she had desired and the man  had  promised.  Not having
kept this pledge, his  house  became haunted  by Thorgunna,
his servants died of pestilence, a light used to appear  every
night and  moved all round the  great room where the family
sate, till they all fled out.  Then Thorodd, the  man himself,
had to depart to sea, and soon after his  departure the meals,
as they were placed on the table, were thrown off, the dried fish
suspended from the ceiling were flung about. After that Thor-
odd and his sailors appeared all dripping with wet, having
been drowned in a storm at sea, and every night came and
seated themselves round the fire.   The  clergy, having  tried
in vain to dislodge the ghosts, they were regularly cited to
appear in court, which citation they obeyed, and, having a
judgment of ejectment  pronounced against them, they sub-
mitted to  it, and withdrew, Thorodd saying to his followers,
' We have no longer  a  peaceful dwelling here, therefore we
will remove.'  And no farther was heard or seen of them.
   In one  of these  Sagas, the story  of Burnt Njal, translated
recently by Dr. Dasent, the English reader  may find  abun-
dant evidences of the faith of the Icelanders in  the super-
natural.  They are represented to have  the clearest presenti-
ment of coming events, and in all the Sagas are impressed
truly with  the approach of the  future.   In  the  Eyrbyggja
Saga, just quoted, Geirrida,  a seeress, says to Gunlaugar,
' Thou shalt not  depart to-night, evil  spirits are abroad;'
but he disregarded the warning, and  paid the penalty  of his
obstinacy.
   The Berserkir  class  in Scandinavia was a very extraordi-
nary one.  They  were warriors on whom came  periodically
fits  of inspiration,  under the influence of which  they put
forth supernatural strength.  In their paroxysms they flung
off their clothes,  whence the name ' bare-sarks,' or men in
their shirts, and appeared in a state of  frenzy, performing in 
THE  DRUIDS  AND ALRUNES.            331
it acts of most  amazing valor.   After the introduction of
Christianity miracles are  represented  to  have taken place,
and various examples of  these  are recorded as performed
through King Olaf  Haraldsson  the saint.   And this  may
suffice  for  the  spiritualism  of ancient Scandinavia.   The
period, for  the most part, lies  beyond that of historic proof,
but we may accept it as demonstrating its  firm exercise of
the universal faith of antiquity — a faith which could  not
have maintained itself for vast ages without  substantial facts
to feed upon.
  Voluminous evidences of the same supernaturalism in the
other nations of  Europe in the same ancient times might be
collected.   Druidisra was essentially spiritual.
  In Pomponius, Pliny, Vopiscus, Tacitus,  and in Grimm's
German Mythology,  we are assured that the Druids in Gaul
and Britain, as well  as the Alrunes, their  prophetesses,  pre-
dicted  future events, and cured diseases.   Pomponius says
that on the coast of Brittany in the island of  Sena, was an
oracle presided over  by  nine virgin priestesses, called Galli-
cenes, who  possessed  these supernatural powers.
  The  Druids had that firm  opinion  of  the  reality of  the
future world that they would  lend  money on  the  condition
that it  should be repaid in that world,  if not in coin, in what
there was of equivalent value. 
332
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
CHAPTER  XIV.
THE SUPERNATURAL IN  ANCIENT  GREECE.
' There are two kinds of men.  One of these, through aptitude,
will receive the illuminations of divinity, and the other through
inaptitude, will subject himself to the power of  avenging de-
mons.'                                Plato, Republic, b. x.

' One  Supreme Providence governs the world ; and genii par-
ticipate with him in its administration.  To these genii have
been given amongst different people, different names and dif-
ferent honor.'                   Plutarch, in  Iris and Osiris.

' Spiritual forces move the visible world.'
                          * Empedocles, Carmina, v. 11-15.

' Souls are the motive forces  of the universe,  according to
Thales.'                                 Dioo. Laert. i. 14.

' All these invisible  beings are as substantial as the  material
beings.'                        Aristotlk's Physics, iv. 2, 3.

' Spirits announce to man secret things and foretell the future.'
                       Pythagoras in Dioo. Laert. viii. 32.

' The  demons  direct man often in the quality of guardian
spirits, in all his actions, as witness the demon  of Socrates.'
                                    Plato, Apol. p. 31, 40.

'Our  discoveries in the domain of the occult sciences are very
imperfect, because  they are made merely at the  portal of our
senses, but little as we know of them they are of the more
value, because those studies have reference to divine things.'
                                Aristotle, De Colo, ii.  12.
    NO people ever possessed more of that aptitude for spirit-
      ual  receptivity, of  which  Plato speaks, than  his own
nation, the Greeks.   They  had  not the  same  magnificent
opportunities for insight into  the  invisible world as the He-
brews had, but they made a bold and  honest use of the pri- 
          PHILOSOPHICAL THEORIES OF  GREECE.       333

mal rays of knowledge left amongst thera, and of the teach-
ings of the Egyptian sacred philosophers.   Undeterred  by
the skepticism of a small sect amongst them, those who were
cursed with the inaptitude so  happily pointed out by  Plato,
their  great men,  heroes, statesmen, philosophers, poets, art-
ists, and  historians, all  accepted  the invisible realities of
nature  as fully  as the  visible.   They knew  that gods and
presiding spirits  existed, because they saw  a  grand  and uni-
versal providence at work  in  the  world, and because they
themselves, opening their souls to spiritual life, saw and heard
in  their temples  the  most  unequivocal  evidences of  unseen
beings, who saw  not only what was, but what was to  be.
   It  was this heroic  recognition of the spiritual which  en-
 dowed them with such sublime ideas of  art, which presented
 beauty, grace, and truth to them  from  an  inner and  higher
 sphere ; which filled their temples  with  sculptured  forms of
 such divinity of presence, that the world yet worships thera
 aesthetically, and which in philosophy guided Socrates, Plato,
 and Aristotle by different  processes to  psychologic  truths,
 which astonish the children of a more open revelation.  The
 enquiries of their philosophers into the nature of soul and of
 the essence of higher beings, are most interesting, because
 they are at  once so surrounded by difficulties, and  yet are
 attended by such flashes of supernal radiance.
    Empedocles,  like  his master  Pythagoras, asserted that
 souls were immortal  and pre-existent, and  were real entities,
 distinct from the body in which  they may for a time be en-
 veloped.  So says  Euripides,  in  Chrysippus, that  nothing
 dies or utterly  perishes, but  that vital things only change
 their dress.   So Plato, in Phasdo, the living  are made out of
 the  dead, as the dead are out of the living :  that  is, that
 those whom we  call dead, those in the invisible world, are
 the only really living souls.   So Aristotle,  though seeming
 in some parts of his writings to believe only in  the  passive
 mind  as  in  some  degree material, yet  at the same time
 asserts that  the active mind or intellect is  incorporeal and 
334         HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
immortal, ovSi yap ovvrov ty tvtpyeia xowuvn  uojuafixij ivtpytut
(De Generat. et Corrupt, lib. ii.).  The  Stoics thought the
universe made of matter, and to be some sort of a great ani-
mal that lived because  there was nothing else  to interfere
with it;  and  the Atoraical atheists,  that everything  was a
congenies of atoms,  because matter could be separated into
particles, and  that, therefore, there could be no  indivisible
incorporeal  being.   Some of the Greeks  assert Thales to be
the first amongst them  who declared  the  immortality  of the
soul; on the  other  hand, Aristotle thinks  him the founder
of atheism,  because he  declared  that  all  things came out
of the water, omitting  to  add that  Thales also  asserted a
primal mind operating upon the waters, much as the Mosaic
theory does the  Spirit brooding over  the  waters.
   In contending with all these  old atheists, or materialists,
the Hylopathians, or believers in fay and the nderj trj< vy>7f,
matter,  and the qualities of  matter, as  Anaximander, and
his Ionic disciples down to Anaxagoras, then  the Atomic,
or followers of Democritus and Leucippus, the Hylozoic, or
Stratonical, from Strato, who  believed that all  particles  of
matter had  a certain life in themselves, which moulded them
successively into spheres and animal forms,  called afterwards
the plastic theory, and  revived  again to-day as the develop-
ment theory of Darwin  and  others, — Plato had to  bring
forward a mass  of ideas which  astonish us, as so nearly ap-
proaching to the ideas of revelation.  Anaxagoras cut short
the Ionic philosophers or Hylopathians, by introducing mind
as the presiding principle of the universe; but Plato pro-
duced  this  mind in a threefold form,  which, though  in  its
details it did not perfectly accord with the Christian Trinity,
yet was startling by its nearness. There is another curious fact
in the theories of Anaximander, namely,  that men were first
generated in the bellies of fishes, or other animals—most prob-
ably a stray  tradition of the abode of Jonah  in the fish's belly.
  Aristotle  laughs at the Hylozoists for supposing that any
innate principle  of matter can of itself  fashion so extraordi- 
THE  GREEK MATERIALISTS.
335
nary and multiform a world as this, by saying that it is just
as if a carpenter, joiuer, or carver, were to give this account
of the building of a house, namely, that their axes, planes,
and chisels happened to fall so and so upon the timber, cut-
ting it here and there, and therefore  it was  hollow in one
pl5ce and plain in another, and the like ;  and so  the whole
chanced to issue in such a form ! (De Part. An. lib. i. c. 1).
And Epictetus shows us that these old  atheists and mate-
rialists are precisely the same genus of animals which abound
amongst us to-day.   He  says if  any man will oppose  or
contradict the most evident truths av nj ivCatijvai *p6$ -co, iyav
Ixfavij, &c, it will not be easy to find  arguments with which
to convince him.  And this  not from any inability in the
teacher, nor from strength of wit  in  the denier, but simply
from a certain disease or dead insensibility in the man  him-
self.  He says  such  men have  a  double ariovixpu>oi<,  or
ortwxiewfft?, mortification, or petrifaction, of the  soul.  Such
a person, he says, is not to be disputed with any more  than
a dead  corpse.  And he asks rtoiov ainZ, «tp  ^ noiov ai.hrtf>ov
rtpoadyu; &c.   What sword or what fire can  one bring,  by
burning or slashing, to cut down through  the  thick hide of
such a  creature, to  reach  any life in him ?   And if he  be
alive and will  not  acknowledge it, then  he  is worse  than
dead, being castrated as to that honesty and  conscientious-
ness which make the true man.  (Epictetus  apud Arrian.
lib.  i. c. v.)
  This  might be the Rev. Mr. Le Bas of our day, calling
this state of mind  a disease.   It  is  the  very  assertion  of
Goethe  on the title page of this volume : —' The spirit-world
is not closed : thy sense is closed, thy heart is dead.'  But
what concerns us more immediately  in the  philosophy  of
Greece  is the  evidence it furnishes  that  the sense of the
Greeks  was open, that they believed in the sensible commu-
nication of the gods and spirits with men.   Even the Atomic
philosopher Democritus admitted apparitions.   The atheists
of those times,  as well as those of this time,  and as many 
336         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
professed believers in spirits do  now, refused to  admit of
apparitions, and endeavored  to explain them away by as-
serting that  people  confounded  their dreams  or waking
fancies with realities, asserting that sense is the only ground
of certainty.  On this  Dr. Cudworth pertinently  observes
that ' if prudent and intelligent people may be so frequently
mistaken in confounding their own dreams and fancies with
sensations,  how can there be any certainty of knowledge at
all from sense ?  However, they here derogate so much both
from sense  and from  human testimonies, that  if the like were
done in other cases, it  would plainly  overthrow all human
life.'  (Vol. ii.  p. 114.)
   Other atheists, seeing  the folly of utterly  denying the
numerous testimonies of  the most complete kind of appa-
ritions, chose to explain them as the work of  imagination, as
if imagination, says  Cudworth, could create not only fancies
but realities.  They  were  afraid that if they admitted appa-
ritions, they must admit  a  God too : and there is nothing too
absurd, he  observes, for them to  suppose, in order to keep
out the existence of a God.   But Democritus, to escape both
difficulties, asserted them to  be a kind of  permanent beings,
independent of the imagination, and superior to men, which
he called tiSuxd or images, but not having souls.  Sextus the
philosopher said that Democritus thought some of them were
of an evil  and  others of a good  nature, of great longevity,
capable of foretelling future  events, but not immortal.  He,
therefore, argued that a God could not be assumed  from their
existence, though he was much blamed by the atheists for
such an admission as that they existed at all.
   The existence of  apparitions, however,  led the Greeks, as
well as the Fathers of the Church after  them, to speculate
greatly on the nature of departed spirits ;  and  most of them
came to the conclusion that the soul was a pure spiritual
essence, but that it had during its abode in the body also an
inner and more refined but not purely  spiritual  body.   They
had from  Plato downwards a difficulty in imagining spirit 
       GREEK SPECULATIONS ON DEPARTED SPIRITS.    337

a substance perfectly palpable to other spirits, but  imper-
ceptible to the physical senses.   They could not reach to the
height which St. Paul did at once by revelation, that ' there
is a natural body and there is a spiritual body,' and they,
therefore, imagined the vehicle of the soul, as Plato called
it, composed  still of matter, but of a subtle and  permanent
kind.   Plato said the Demiurgus placed the soul in a chariot,
or movable vehicle, and from  an expression in his Epinomis,
he believed after death that we should not have the variety
of senses that now we have, but one  uniform body,  and lea4
a happy life.   Aristotle also, in his Metaphysics, says  that
properly there is but one sense and seusorium, meaning this
uniform,  subtle,  airy body, which  Proclus, commenting on
Plato's Timaeus, seems to think lucid, splendid, and sufficient
for all things.   The Alexandrians or Neo-Platonists con-
tended for this inner, subtle body, and some of them  assumed
the Chaldaic idea, that there were two inner bodies, one much
heavier and grosser than the other, and that the grosser one
became evolved and left behind in Hades, as the purified soul
advanced  nearer to the Deity.   Plotinus,  Porphyry,  Philo-
ponus, Hierocles, and others, all held this idea of the pneu-
matical, or spirituous body, not  spiritual  in  the scriptural
sense; though they differed  among  themselves as  to their
conception of it.   They contended that souls  after their de-
parture hence found themselves in a finer or more heavy and
corrupt body, according to their lives  and tastes here.  For
this spiritual body, they asserted, imbibed certain matters as
a sponge imbibes water.  That it becomes clogged and  loaded
by it, if the life has been gross, earthy, and immoral;  and
that they, therefore, hang about their old haunts and  tombs,
the receptacles of their physical bodies, and  are, by means
of this grossness, capable of being seen by  men.   They were
also quite aware of the wonderful  power which spirits have
of assuming any shape or costume that is necessary to iden-
tify themselves — a fact which continues to puzzle people to
this day.
  I.—29 
338          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
  Philoponus  says  the inner or lucid, luciform and  starlike
body (owjuo avyouAhs, oipdvwv xo.1 aiQipiov), when fresh from earthy
particles and affections or lusts, is carried aloft into purer re-
gions.   The souls of demonized natures,  on the contrary,
grow dark, opaque,  and descend into regions of  like charac-
ter.  Suidas, Isidore, Pletho, on the Chaldaic  oracles, and
many others, held this doctrine; but Origen strongly con-
tended  that in the future  state there would be nothing but
pure incorporeity ;  and the monks of Alexandria were vehe-
ment with  the Bishop Theophilus to  denounce the writings
of  Origen on this account;  and  the  famous Maimonides
amongst the Jews, like Origen, believed that there would be
no body of any kind in the future  world.  To answer those
who accused him of teaching annihilation, he wrote his work
called Iggereth Teman.  But Origen did not mean that there
could not be a spiritual body after death, but that such body
only could  extend to Hades, and must be purged away, leav-
ing only the starlike and ethereal form.  In that, most of the
ancient Fathers were of the same faith.   Tertullian  (De An.
p. 300), imagined impure souls loaded with a very impure spir-
ituous  body; and Irenaeus, in the forty-second chapter of his
second  book,  contends, with Tertullian, that  our souls will
possess the same form, color, and stature, as the bodies they
inhabited.
   Most of the  Fathers held  that demons  were not only
inhabiting dark and foul bodies, but such as were capable of
sucking up all kinds  of odors and flavors, and  therefore,
delighting in the  smoke and fatty vapors of sacrifices. Jus-
tin Martyr, Athenagoras, Tatian, Tertullian, St. Basil,  St.
Austin, and numerous others,  believed this.  Marcus,  the
Thracian  monk, not only believed this, but that such gross
ones could be cut  into and  would feel exquisite pain in it;
and this is the opinion  of people of  the East, who believe that
demons can be shot, and on such occasions leave a sediment
or caput mortuum  of  matter behind them (see Mrs. Poole's
account of the shooting of an  effrit in Egypt).  Angelical 
THE  OPINIONS OF SOCRATES.
339
bodies, the Fathers contended, were so pure, that they could
pass through any matter, however solid.
  Now  these  opinions, though not exactly according with
those of St. Paul's, accord, in a great  degree, with it.  They
intimate a still more intense  and more  spiritual body,  aud
agree extremely with the  phenomena of modern times, and
the natures of spirits as shown in the history of the Seeress
of Prevorst, and of still more recent manifestations.  They
warn us to live purely  here if we mean to reach pure society
in the world after death.
   Socrates, according to Xenophon's  memoirs   of him,
(b. i. p. 2), held the truly distinguishing ideas on these sub-
jects.   He did not, like the Times and other authorities of
to-day,  wish us to employ Spiritualism to learn what we can
learn through  our senses, but to employ  our faculties for
outward affairs and spiritual ppwer for spiritual affairs.  He
would have been declared, says Xenophon, an enthusiast, or
a boaster, if he had openly declared that notices of the future
had been given him by the Deity.  Yet he esteemed all those
no other  than madmen, who, excluding the Deity, referred
the  succes.s of their designs  to nothing higher than human
prudence.  He likewise thought those not  much better who
had recourse  to divination on every occasion, as  if  a  man
 was to  consult the oracle whether  he should  give the reins
 of his chariot into the hands  of one  ignorant or well versed
in the  art of driving, or place at the helm  of his  ship a
 skilful or unskilful pilot.   He also thought it a kind  of im-
 piety to importune the gods with enquiries concerning things
 of which  we  may gain the knowledge by  number, weight,
 and measure, it  being, as it seemed  to him,  incumbent on
 man to make himself acquainted  with whatever the gods
 have placed within  his power;  but as for such  things as
 were beyond his comprehension, for these  he ought  always
 to apply to the oracle, the gods being ever ready to commu-
nicate  knowledge to  those whose care had been to render
them propitious. 
340          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

  Such were  the opinions of  the most eminent philosophers
of Greece, and of those in succeeding ages who were in-
fluenced  by  them;  and, if we open their poets,  we find
them  steeped from beginning to end in the spiritual essence.
It may be said  that poets, everywhere, deal in  fiction, and
employ machinery in which  they put no  real  faith.  But
that is not here the question ; the question is, what was the
popular faith of a people ? and there  are no more accurate
exponents of this than the  poets.  They build on the public
heart and soul, because these are  the  sources of the neces-
sary sympathy.   A poet may be an utter infidel, but when
he  assumes the  language  of the people he assumes a fact.
In  the two  great poets Hesiod and Homer, we have more
than  simply  poets, we have  the acknowledged founders  of
the theogony of  Greece.   They stand  forward as vates and
teachers of the  theosophy o£ their nation.  'As to  whence
each  of the  gods sprung,' says Herodotus (Euterpe, 53),
' whether they had  all existed from eternity, what they were
as  to form,  such things were  only known  of yesterday, or
the day before, to use a trivial expression.  For I consider
 Homer and Hesiod older than myself by four hundred years,
 certainly not more, and they  were  the poets who framed the
 Hellenic  theogony, gave distinctive names to the gods, dis-
 tributed amongst them honors and professions,  and pointed
 out their respective forms.'   Diodorus Siculus,  in his first
 book, seventh chapter, asserts the same, that is, these his-
 torians  mean to say  that these poets did not invent, but
 arranged and detailed the knowledge of the gods brought
 from  Syria  and Egypt by  Danaus, Cadmus, Orpheus, the
 Cabiri, and  Pelasgians.  The whole of their system is one
 of divine supervision and interference in the affairs  of man.
 The  gods not only direct human events by their  counsels,
 but personally appear to men, and co-operate in their aims
 and achievements.   To quote  all that bears directly on this
 subject  in these two  poets, would be to embody the Iliad,
 the Odyssey, the Theogony, and the Works and  Days, in this 
HESIOD AND HOMER FOUNDERS OF GREEK THEOGONY. 341
work.   I have already shown how  completely Hesiod has,
in his battle of the Titans, described the scene at the Tower
of Babel.   Both  Homer  and Hesiod  proclaim  the ever-
present and retributive  eye  of God.  ' Whoever,' says He-
siod, 'does evil and unkindly deeds,  Jove will avenge it.'

      Alike  the man of sin is he confest
      Who  spurns the suppliant and  who wrongs  the guest.

   Homer has the very same  sentiment:

        "■  Illustrious lord! respect the gods and us
          Thy suitors; suppliants are the care of Jove
          The hospitable:  he their wrongs resents,
          And where the stranger sojourns,  there is he.

   But  not only as regards  the  'poor  and  the  wanderer;'

Hesiod declares that whoso  injures  any one any way —

          On him  shall Jove in anger look from high,
          And deep  requite the dark iniquity.

   Hesiod   declared himself  prophetically  inspired  by  the
Muses.  He says the daughters of Jove —

                      Gave into my hand
        A  rod of marvellous growth; a laurel-bough
        Of  blooming verdure;  and within me breathed
        A  heavenly voice,  that  I might utter forth
        All past and future  things,  and bade me  praise
        The blessed  race of  ever-living  gods.
                                          Theogony, p. 103.

   Hesiod repeatedly avows his firm belief in guardian spirits,

as well as of spirits who note and avenge crime :

       Invisible, the gods are ever nigh,
       Pass  through the midst,  and bend the all-seeing  eye;
       The  men who grind the  poor,  who wrest the right,
       Aweless of heaven's revenge,  stand naked to their sight.
       For  thrice ten thousand  holy  demons rove
       This  breathing world,  the  delegates of Jove,
       Guardians of man, their glance alike surveys
       The  upright judgments and the unrighteous ways.
            r              Works, Elton's Translation, p. 32.

   In another  place he tells  us the inhabitants of  the golden

 age were  made spirits of this tutelary kind :

       When earth's  dark womb had  closed this race around,
       High Jove as demons  raised them from the ground.

        29* 
342          HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
      Earth-wandering spirits that their charge began,
      The ministers of good,  and guards of man.
      Mantled with mist of darkling air  they glide,
      And compass  earth, and pass on every side;
      And mark with earnest vigilance of eyes,
      Where just deeds live, or crooked wrongs arise.
      Kingly their state, and delegate of heaven,
      By their vicarious hands prosperity is given.
                                              Ibid. p.  19.
  The reader  of the  Iliad  and Odyssey need  not be told
that the gods and goddesses of all degrees are in continual
action, holding counsel in heaven regardiug human affairs:
descending to earth invisible or  visible,  in  their  own  or
assumed forms : taking active part in battles, accompanying
favorite  heroes on their voyages and wanderings, and  in
short occupying themselves incessantly in the  concerns  of
hnmanity.   Occasionally they take severe vengeance, as  in
the slaughter of Niobe's children in the Theogony of Hesiod,
or in sending the spirits of destruction to sweep away the
evil  race.   The  whole  poetical  system  of  Greece was  a
spiritual system.  Thus when Minerva deprived Tiresias  of
his sight, she gave him the gift of prophecy, a great spiritual
truth, the inner eye being opened when the outer is closed.
   The great tragedians are as earnestly spiritual as the heroic
poets.  All their topics are drawn from the national mythol-
ogy  or the mythic times, and  are  treated with the force  of
realities.   The  prognostics  of the  oracles are worked out,
the judgments of the  gods are carefully developed, and the
most apparently improbable  events are  brought  about  in
accordance with prophecy.
   Sophocles, in both (EdipusTyrannus  and QMipus Coloneus,
fulfils  his  mysterious  destinies as foretold by  the  oracles.
Orestes., in Electra, acting by the advice of  the oracle, avenges
the murder of his father.  In Antigone the old blind prophet
Tiresias appears and predicts horrors which speedily follow.
In Ajax and Philoctetes the whole story moves on the agency
of solemn  oracles.  In the Bacchse of Euripides we have a
god  the chief character of the  drama ; in Jove, the whole 
     THE SUPERNATURAL IN THE GREEK TRAGEDIES.   343

machinery is supernatural, and  Minerva herself appears  in
person; Apollo does the same in Alcestis; in Medea we have
not only spiritualism but magic, as Homer had already given
us a sample  of it in Circe the aunt of  Medea.  Ovid makes
Medea fly from Attica to Colchis — a bold flight!  In Hip-
polytus both Venus and Diana appear on the stage ;  and such
is the supernatural basis of every one of the tragedies of both
Euripides and iEschylus.
   These great writers, no doubt, believed that what they de-
scribed had taken place in earlier times.   They saw around
them great  families gravely  maintaining their descent  from
the gods; they saw the oracles in active operation, and every
day witnessed the realization of their declarations.  If  we
go to the lyric or the pastoral poets the case is the same;
Pindar is full of the honor of the gods and of the assertions
of their personal interference in human affairs.  Of Pindar's
opinions  these  brief extracts  may be sufficient evidence:
 'Then they came to the steep rock of Cronus; there the god
 gave him a double treasure  of divination;  first,  to hear the
 voice  that  knows not falsehood,' &c.  (Olympian vi.).   '0
 Olympia, mother of the golden-crowned  games, queen  of
 truth !  where prophetic men, divining by sacrifices, explore
 the will of  Zeus if he have aught to tell concerning  men,
 .  .  .  and there is an accomplishment granted to prayers in
 return for  the piety of men' (Olympian viii.).  Theocritus
 abounds with spiritualistic passages.   Theocritus introduces
 the most spiritual facts and sentiments into the sylvan retreats
 in which he rejoices.  Every species of Greek poet spoke at
  once his own faith" and the faith of his nation.
    Let us turn now to the historians, the men of matters of
 fact.  Here the case is precisely the  same as with th"  poets
  and philosophers.   Supernatural events, the  open communi-
 cation with the spiritual world by means of oracles, prophets,
  prophetesses, soothsayers, and  interpreters of dreams,  stand
 as things the most publicly accepted and acted upon.   As
  Cicero has said of the Greeks — so we are bound to say — 
344
niSTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
those wisest people, those people on whose literature that of
all modern nations is carefully built, did nothing without first
consulting  these oracles, or persons considered qualified to
speak from spiritual intimations, or, in modern phrase, me-
diums.  And these sources of supernatural intelligence were
found, from experience, to be so reliable that they calculated
on them as they would on any result  of the most  ordinary
process.   If we are to believe Herodotus as well as Cicero,
they had  great  cause  to  do so; for if we examine  any of
their histories we find the events about to take place stated
by the oracles with wonderful accuracy.  There were occa-
sions on  which they  spoke  with a studied ambiguity; but
even on these occasions  the event made the prophecy per-
fectly clear, and no one need be told that there  are very few
prophecies that are fully understood  till after the event. There
were occasions also when the oracle was bribed or otherwise
influenced; but these occasions were rare, and the corruptors,
as well as the Pythonesses  thus corrupted, were generally
punished  by signal misfortunes and the latter by dismissal.
   This was the case when the Athenians bribed the Pythia
at Delphi to give continual orders  to  the Lacedemonians to
send help to Athens against the Pisistratidae.   (Herodttus,
Terps. 65.)   The Lacedemonians,  who had themselves cor-
rupted  the oracles, were  soon punished by the very  same
means thus retorted on them by the Athenians;  and we find
them sorrowfully confessing  it.  They helped the Athenians
to  expel  the Pisistratidae,  only  to  render the Athenians
powerful,  and  to  find  them  aggressive  and  ungrateful.
'Friends,' they say to their allies,  'we acknowledge that we
have ourselves acted  unjustly, for,  induced  by lying oracles,
we have driven from  their country men  strictly bound to us
by hospitality, and have delivered the State into the hands of
an ungrateful people,' &c. (Terps.  91.)  So again in Herod-
otus, (Erato 66,) that Cleomenes, having bribed the Pythia
at Delphi through Cobon, a  Delphian, to pronounce his col-
league Demaratus  illegitimate,  and thus get him  deposed,
Cleomenes became mad, and was himself deposed and con- 
                THE  ORACLES OF GREECE.             345

fined, after having been deceived by the oracle himself.  For
having been told that he  should take Argos, he made an ex-
pedition  against it, but only took and burnt a grove called
Argos.   The Spartans attributed his madness to his having
corrupted the oracle, and he died in a most miserable man-
ner by slashing himself to pieces with a knife.   The bribery
having been discovered, Cobon, his agent at Delphi, fled, and
Perialla,  the chief prophetess, was deposed  from her office.
(Erato, 66, 75, 76, &c.)
  Whoever will convince himself what an establishment of
daily use for ages amongst the Greeks were  the oracles, and
what apparent cause they had for confidence in them, have
only to  refer to their historians.   In Herodotus alone  we
find the most  striking proofs of this in almost every page;
and as to the veracity of Herodotus, let us state what his
translator, the  Rev. Thomas Gaisford, Dean of Christchurch,
and Regius Professor of Greek at Oxford, says on this head :
— 'It can hardly be doubted that one who took  such pains
to ascertain the truth would be equally scrupulous in offering
nothing but the truth to his reader;  and, indeed, strange as
it may sound to those who have been in the habit of hearing
Herodotus stigmatized as a  liar, by persons who ought to
know better, there is probably no author, whether ancient
or modern, the inspired  writers excepted, who  deserves to
be placed before him in the scale of truth and accuracy.'
(Introduction,  p. xxxi.)
  In Herodotus himself occur upwards of seventy instances
of oracular responses, dreams, omens,  prodigies, &c, all of
which are related  by the historian as facts, and as  having
been singularly verified by the events.   Of his own firm be-
lief in the reliability of oracles, this is proof.   The  oracles
plainly told the  Greeks that Xerxes would ravage  Attica
and burn down Athens ;  but it, on subsequent enquiry, gave
assurance of final victory by the Greeks.  On this Herodotus
says :—' I cannot reproach the oracles with falsehood, or feel
any inclination to destroy those which speak clearly, when I 
346         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

consider such  as follows:—" But when, after sacking with
mad hope  glistening Athens, they shall hide with ships the
sacred shore of  Dian girt with the golden sword, and sea-
bound Cynosura, then  shall Divine Vengeance quench Pre-
sumption, son of  Insolence, fiercely rushing  to the onset,
resolved to overturn  all things.   For  iron with  iron shall
clash, and Mars shall  redden the main with  blood.   Then
wide-thundering son of Cronus and godly Victory will bring
the day of freedom to Hellas."  When I consider, I say,
these events, and reflect that Bacis (an  oracle so called after
a famous soothsayer of Boeotia)  has spoken so distinctly, I
dare not myself say anything in contradiction  of oracles, nor
do I approve  it in others' (Urania, 77).
   Some of the  more  remarkable of the  oracles and other
supernatural  events related by Herodotus deserve our par-
ticular attention.  A considerable number of these relate to
Egypt, Persia, &c, and have been referred to under the heads
of those nations.  The very first relating to Candaules, King
of Lydia, is  very remarkable.   Candaules, having grossly
insulted his queen, she  induced Gyges, one of the body-guard,
to kill the king, and  she then married him and he became
king.   The Delphian  oracle acknowledged Gyges (his act
being to a certain degree provoked), but declared that ven-
geance would also be vouchsafed  to the  Heraclidae, the family
of Candaules, in the fifth  generation of Gyges.   This took
place in the person  of the  celebrated Croesus, when  he had
fallen under Cyrus; and when that monarch sent to Delphi
to remonstrate with the god for his  harsh treatment of him,
the reply was : —'It is beyond the power of a god to evade
the fatal doom.  Croesus has made reparation for the wicked
deed  of his fifth progenitor, who, being but a guardsman to
the Heraclidae,  abetting a woman's fraud,  murdered his sov-
ereign lord, and grasped  a dignity which,  in no manner, ap-
pertained to him' (Clio 12, 91).
   In Clio. 63, we have Pisistratus marching to seize Athens,
and on encamping in the sacred enclosure of Minerva Pallena, 
FULFILMENT OF  ORACLES.
347
Amphilytus, a prophetic seer, suddenly becoming inspired,
pronounced  a couple  of lines  of verse which  showed Pisis-
tratus how he would succeed.  In  the  same book the Lace-
demonians are taught by the Delphian oracle to seek and
discover the bones of Orestes at Tegea.  These bones, being
carried to Sparta, gave the Spartans  constant victory over
the Tegeans.
   In Thalia, 124, 125, we find that Orcetes, the Persian vice-
roy of Sardis, laid a trap to secure the person of Polycratcs,
the tyrant of Samos, by luring him to his court by promising
to put his treasures in his possession, on pretence that he did
not feel them safe from Cambyses.   The daughter of Polyc-
rates warned him against  going, saying she had seen him in
a vision, high aloft, washed by the  rains, and anointed by the
sun.  Spite  of the warning, his avarice overpowered him;
 he went, and Orcetes put him to death, and then hung him
 on a gibbet.
   The Scythians, Herodotus says,  had  their soothsayers who
 foretold events  by means of  bundles  of willow rods.   He
 relates a strange account of Aristeas, a poet; mentions that
 he travelled far amongst the  Scythians,  inspired by Apollo.
 That he entered a fuller's shop at Proconnesus and fell dead.
 The fuller ran out for help, but returning no body was found.
 That seven  years  after Aristeas  reappeared  and wrote his
 poem, the Arimaspen, and again disappeared.  Three hundred
 and forty years after, the people of Proconnesus said he came
 again, and  ordered them to  erect an  altar to Apollo;  aud
 vanished.  On enquiring of the Delphic oracle, it commanded
 them to obey the phantom, and that their city would prosper.
 Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, was warned of his coming
 fate from Aristogiton and Harmodius by a vision.
   The story of Aetion and his grandson Periander, the tyrant
 of Corinth, is full of the supernatural.  Aetion married a lame
 wife, and the oracle of Delphi announced that she would bring
 forth a crag which should fall on the Bacchiadae, who were in
 power.   To prevent this the Bacchiadae, on  hearing  of the 
348         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
birth  of  a son to Aetion, went to kill it, but were prevented
by the mother hiding the child in a bin, whence he was called
Cypselus. Cypselus, on reaching manhood, fulfilled the oracle,
and another oracle declared that he should retain the rule of
Corinth,  and his sons, but not his sons' sons.  This was lit-
erally fulfilled.   Periander, the son of Cypselus,  a bloody ty-
rant, amongst other crimes murdered his wife Melissa.  After
her death he found that she alone knew of a sum of money,
deposited by a stranger, and he sent to the Thresprotians of
the Acheron, to  the oracle of the dead,  to call up his wife,
and questiou her on this point.   Melissa being evoked, ap-
peared, but declared that she would neither show nor tell in
what place this deposit lay; for that she was chilly and naked,
since the use of the garments which had been buried with her
was none, as they had not been  burnt:  and as a proof to
 Periander that what she said was true, she added that Peri-
 ander had placed the loaves in a cold oven.   When this was
reported to Periander, he was  quite satisfied; for he  had com-
 municated with Melissa since her decease, and  immediately
 after the return of the  messenger, he caused a proclamation
 to be made that all the wives of Corinth should assemble at
 the temple of Juno.   Imagining it a summons to  a festival,
 the women all went, clad in their best apparel; and Periander,
 having  stationed his guards for the purpose, stripped them
 all alike, both free women and servants, and having collected
 the dresses  in  an excavation, he  invoked Melissa and burnt
 them.   Having so  done,  and sent a second time,  the ghost
 of Melissa now appeared, and disclosed in what spot she had
 placed the pawn of the stranger (Terps. 92; Thalia, 50-53).
    The  Delphian oracle  announced to  the  inhabitants  of
 Miletus that the women  should wash the  feet of  the long-
 haired strangers, and that they should destroy the  temple of
 Didymi, which was strictly fulfilled; the  women and children
 being carried away into Persia (Erato, 19).
    The Dolonci, inhabitants of the Hellespontine  Chersone-
 sus,  being harassed by the Apsinthiens, sent their kings  to 
                FULFILMENT OF  ORACLES.            349

Delphi to enquire how they should defend themselves* and
were told to take along with them the first  person who in-
vited  thera to his table.  As they passed through Athens,
Miltiades, the son of  Cypselus, and  brother of Periander,
saw these  strangers passing in a foreign costume and carry-
ing their javelins, and  sent  to enquire who they were.   On
learning, he  invited them to lodge in his house.  They then
told him the words of the oracle, and he immediately agreed
to go with them,  as he  wished to  get away from Pisistratus,
and he  effectually defended them, both by building  a wall
across the isthmus, and by the friendship of Crcesus, who
told the Apsinthiens that if  they troubled  him he would cut
them off like a fir tree.   Learning that the meaning of this
was that a fir tree was the only tree which, being cut off,  did
not shoot again, they saw that he meant by it utter extermi-
nation, and kept  quiet.  But Miltiades, at his death, in ac-
cordance with the oracle in the case of his grandfather Aetion,
left no issue to succeed  him (Erato,  34-37).
  Cleomenes, one of the Kings of Sparta, wished to depose
his fellow King Demaratus, and for this purpose he asserted
that he was illegitimate.  Now the father of Demaratus was
Ariston, who had compelled a friend  of his to give up a
beautiful wife, and had  married her.   This woman, as a child,
was monstrously  ugly,  and  the nurse had  every day carried
it, closely wrapped up,  to the temple  of Helen to pray for
its being delivered  from its deformity.  One day a woman
met her and  demanded  to see the child, but, being forbidden
by the parents to let any one see it, she refused. The woman,
however, persisted, and the nurse  at length complied.   The
woman then put  her finger on the head of the infant, and
said she should  exceed in beauty all the women of Sparta.
This came to pass;  but Demaratus, being a seven months'
child,  doubts were cast on his being the son of Ariston.  The
mother asserted that he was, and the  case was referred to
the oracle  of Delphi.   It was  on this  occasion,  as already
stated, that Cleomenes  managed to bribe  the priestess to a
  I.—30 
350
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
lie, and Demaratus was  deposed,  and Cleomenes died mad
and by his own hands.
  Pheidippes, an  Athenian courier,  being on  his way to
Sparta to solicit aid against the Persians, declared that near
Mount Parthenion, near Tegea,  Pan  met him, and, calling
to him by name, bade him ask the Athenians why they paid
him no honors, though he had done thera services, and  meant
to do  so again.   On Pheidippes reporting this, the  Athe-
nians built the temple  of  Pan beneath the Acropolis.  At
the battle of Marathon, an Athenian, named Epizelus, sud-
denly lost his sight, and remained so till  his death, though
he had received no wound.   He  said that  a gigantic warrior
stood  before him,  whose  beard  covered  the whole   of his
shield ; that  he  passed  him by, and  killed the soldier next
to him, and  he saw nothing afterwards (Erato, 117).   The
mother of Pericles dreamed that she was delivered of a lion.
  Xerxes was stimulated to invade Greece by a false  phan-
tom in dreams, which appeared repeatedly;  for he was arrived
at that pitch of arrogance which Heaven punishes, and as in
the Scriptures, so  here, a lying spirit was sent to him, and
also to his  uncle Artabanus, who  at  first opposed the expe-
dition.   (See Polyhymnia,  13, 17,  18, 19.)   Various por-
tents also,  Herodotus asserts, attended him on his way.  On
his march  from Sardis to Abydos, it  suddenly became dark
as night without any assignable cause. Just as he had crossed
the Hellespont, a  mare foaled a  hare, which Herodotus in-
terprets to mean that, though he went in unexampled  pomp,
he would flee back like a hare.  Thus it appears that the
Greeks were familiar with  all  the modes of spiritual intima-
tion known amongst the Hebrews, direct communications by
oracle, by dreams, by apparition  of spirits, and that they had
their prodigies, their interpreters of dreams, their individual
mediums, and not only their temples for enquiry of the gods,
but others  for enquiry of the dead, as the one in Thresprotia,
to which Periauder sent.  In the whole of the great struggle be-
tween the Greeks and the Persians, the oracles were extremely 
THE  PREDICTION OF ARISTONICA.
351
explicit, and always correct:  and, as Herodotus was then
living, he  could  draw his information from these most un-
questionable sources.
  The Athenians, alarmed at the  approach of the Persians,
sent to consult the oracle at  Delphi.  Aristonica, the Pythia,
replied: — 'Unfortunates! wherefore seat yourselves?   Fly
to the verge of the earth : forsake your houses and the lofty
crags of your wheel-shaped city.   For, neither does the head
abide firm, nor does the body, nor the lowest feet, nor,  there-
fore, the hands, nor  aught of the middle, remain — all is
ruined.  For fire and griding  Mars, driving the Syriac car,
overturns her, and he destroys many  other  towering  cities,
not yours alone; and to the  devouring fire delivers many
temples  of the  immortals, which, even now, stand dripping
with sweat, shaken with fear.   Down from the topmost roof
trickles  black blood,  token of woe unavoidable.  Begone,
then, from the shrine, and pour the balm of courage into the
wound of  calamity.'
  The Athenians were stricken with despair at this message,
and sent again a more humble  and suppliant party.   But the
priestess said Jove could not relent, her speech  must be firm
as adamant; but she added : —' When all is  taken that
Cecrops' hill within itself contains,  and the fastnesses of
sacred Cithaeron, wide-knowing Jove gives unto the goddess
Triton-born a wooden wall,  alone to abide inexpugnable  :
this shall  save  you and your  children.   Await not quietly
the throng of horse and foot that  invades your land, but turn
your back, and withdraw: the time shall be when you, too,
will stand against the foe.   Godly Salamis !  thou  shalt see
the sons  of women  fall, whether Ceres  be scattered or
collected!'
  The oracle was fulfilled to the  letter:  Athens was burnt
and ravaged; Attica was burnt  and sacked.  In vain did
the people desperately defend  the Acropolis, because  it had
once been surrounded by a hedge, which, though it had long
given way to a wall, they imagined must be the wooden wall 
352         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
referred to by the oracle.  But the wooden wall consisted
of the Greek ships, and it was off Salamis that they encoun-
tered and beat the Persians in sight of Xerxes (Polyhymnia,
140, 141).
  The Argives, who had lately been  severely beaten by the
Spartans, were solicited now  to join them, but they con-
sulted the oracles, which advised them to sit quiet and they
would be safe;  and it  turned  out so.  The Delphians con-
sulted  their oracle, and  were told ' to offer their devotions
to  the  Winds, for the  Winds would be powerful allies to
Hellas:'  and it  proved so; for  the Winds  attacked  and
dispersed the Persian fleet, and did  more mischief than the
 Greeks themselves.*  For the services of the Winds on this
 occasion, Herodotus says,  the  Delphians continued, in  his
 time, to offer sacrifices to them.  The Persian Magi, on their
 part,' also offered propitiatory  sacrifices  to the Winds, and
 appealed to them with  magic chants.  At the very beginning
 of  the war, the  Pythia at Delphi  had announced to the
 Spartans that the city of Sparta must be destroyed, or one
 of  their kings must fall.  Leonidas fell at Thermopylae, and
 Megistias, the divine, who also perished at Thermopylae, the
 day°before the  attack,  inspecting the victims  sacrificed, de-
 clared that death awaited them on the morrow.  That night
 the Persians found a  way over  the mountains, surrounded
 them in the pass the next morning, and all, to  one man, were
 cut to pieces.
    The oracle of Bacis had said to  the Euboeans before the
  Persian invasion : —' Beware  of him who speaks a barbarian
  tongue ; when  he  shall cast a byblus yoke across the sea,
  from Eubcea drive the bleating flocks' (Urania, 20).  Xerxes
  made  a bridge of byblus rope across the Hellespont, but the
  Euboeans  took  no  heed,  and their flocks were destroyed
  both by Greeks  and Persians.   After the invaders had sacked
  the neighboring towns, they skirted  Parnassus, and prepared
  to plunder the temple of Delphi, and present its vast treasures,
  including the magnificent offering of  Croesus, to Xerxes.  The 
FULFILMENT OF ORACLES.            353
Delphians,  in  consternation,  consulted  the  oracle, whether
they should carry the treasures abroad, or bury them securely
somewhere ; but the Deity forbade them to be moved, saying,
'he was himself sufficient to  preserve  his  own  property.'
The Delphians, on receiving this answer, left all care of the
temple, and  sought their own  safety and that of their prop-
erty in the mountains.  Sixty men only, and the prophet,
remained in the town ; and then, to their amazement, saw the
holy armor, which  it was not  lawful for  any man to touch,
brought out of the temple and laid in front of the fane.  As the
barbarians came hurrying up to plunder the temple, thunders
and lightnings broke loose, and two crags, rushing from the
sides of Parnassus, bounded  terribly into the midst of the
marauders,  crushing  numbers of them amid loud shouts  of
war from the temple itself.  The Persians fled, and the na-
tives, seeing their flight from their hiding places in the rocks,
descended, and  made  havoc of them in pursuit.  The Per-
sians declared that two gigantic  warriors, more  huge and
terrible than men, pressed on  their heels in their flight, and
slew many of them.   The two crags, Herodotus  says, still
remaiued lying, in his time,  near  the  precinct of Minerva
Proncea (Urania, 37, 38).
  The Athenians, finding that the sacred serpent in the tem-
ple of the Acropolis had refused its usual monthly offering of
a honey-cake, immediately concluded that this was a sign that
the tutelary genius of the  place had  abandoned  it, and at
once quitted the city.   Herodotus says, the sacred olive tree
in the shrine of Erecththeus in the Acropolis, the day after
the fire  in which it was consumed, put up a shoot a  cubic
long, as a sign of the restoration of the  city and  the Athe-
nian prosperity.
  Before the battle of Salamis, Demaratus the Lacedemo-
nian, who had gone  over to Xerxes, being with Dicaeus, the
son of Throcydes, an Athenian fugitive, not far from Eleusis,
they beheld a cloud of dust arising from  Eleusis, as from a
march of thirty  thousand people,  accompanied by cries of
      30* 
354         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
' Iacche ! Iacche !'  Demaratus asked Dicaeus, who had been
initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, what this could mean ;
and  he replied, that it could bode no  good to the Persian
king, for the  sound heard was the hymn called  the ' Mystic
Iacchus,' the  burthen  of which was 'Iacche!'  That this
hymn was sung at the  annual festival of  Ceres  and Proser-
pine, and that, if the sound took the way  of  Salamis, the
fleet of Xerxes would be surely cut off.   It did take that way,
and thus Demaratus and Dicaeus knew beforehand the catas-
trophe.  This they used afterwards always to assert as truth,
 and appealed  to  other witnesses (Urania, 65).   During the
 battle  of Salamis, the phantom of a woman appeared, and
 cried  to the  Greeks so loud as to be heard by the whole
 fleet: — ' Dastards !  how long will you continue to  back
 your oars V   It is related, says Herodotus, that when within
 a certain time any misfortune was  to befall  the Pedasseans,
 who lived about Halicarnassus, the priestess of the temple  of
 Minerva in that country had a long beard (Urania, 104).
    The Lacedemonians had adopted Tisamenus, an Elian, as a
 citizen   This Tisamenus  consulted the oracle  at Delphi as
 to  his fortunes, and was  told that he should win five  great
 combats.   These, he  imagined, were combats in the  Olym-
 pian  games,  and, therefore, he cultivated  gymnastic  exer-
 cises • but in these he suffered defeat, and it eventually turned
 out that they were five great battles that  he  was to win; and
 he did so   These were Plataea, in which he had the princi-
  pal share ; that of Tegea; one  in the Dipaean territory;;  one
  near Ithome;  and the last near Tanagra.  Tisamenus officia-
  ted as the divine at the sacrifices at Ptaa; and Mardoniu.
  had sacrifices offered for the Persians on the other side.  On
  both  sides victory was promised  to those who stood on the
  defensive; and accordingly, for ten days, neither army would
  cross the Asopus to attack  the other.   At last, the Pers.ans,
  thinking the Greeks were retiring, crossed the river, made the
  attack, and were defeated at Plataea.
     Such are  some of the principal oracles, and their iulul- 
   INSPIRED KNOWLEDGE OF LANGUAGE IN PRIESTESSES. 355

ment, according to Herodotus, fully justifying the assurance
of Cicero of their reliability, and of the consequent faith in
and daily use of them by the whole pagan world.   There is
a passage in Homer's Hymn to Apollo, v. 156, which is re-
markable, seeming to establish the fact, that the priestesses
under the influence  of  the Deity possessed that  power of
speaking languages to them unknown, as the primitive Chris-
tians did,  and  as the mediums  of modern times have shown
numerous instances of.   So amongst the Irvingites, and see
also the Letters of Judge Edmonds for a considerable number
of well-attested examples.
                    Crowds around
         Of every region,  every language  stand
         In  mute applause, soothed by the pleasing lay,
         Versed in each art and every power of speech,
         The Delians  mimic all who come:  to these
         All language is familiar; you would think
         The natives  spoke of every different clime.
  The celebrated Helen is said to have been a mimic of this
sort;  and those female attendants  on  the oracle appear on
no occasion to have found any difficulty in communication with
people of  the most distinct languages.
  Pausanias  says (VI.  xvii. 494), that  Amphiarus, the
great-grandson of Melampus, had no suspicion  that he was
a prophet, when, having one  day entered a house at Phlias,
and having passed the night there, he immediately grew in-
spired.  The house was  immediately shut up.   Nothing  is
more  common  now-a-days  than for this influence to attach
itself to those who  visit mediums  or  join  in  seances.  A
gentleman assured me that, after having been present at some
extraordinary manifestations at Knebworth, the knocking fol-
lowed him home, and continued on his walls, doors, and bed
for a  long time.  The same influence has been left in our
house for weeks after a remarkable medium  had spent some
days  with us.   Parties who have attempted to  ridicule
seances in disbelief, have suddenly found themselves, like the
conjuror's apprentice, to have evoked a power which they 
356         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
could not readily lay again.  I could name some very well-
known instances.
  The Oropians raised a temple to Amphiarus, according to
Pausanius, and those who sought communication by dreams
in that temple lay down on the skin of the victim.  We find
Mardonius, the Persian augur, sending one Mys, a native of
Europus, to consult various oracles, and amongst them this
of Amphiarus.   A curious thing also occurred to Mys at the
oracle of Apollo at Acraephia.   The  answer was given in a
language which the priest did not understand, but Mys,  on
reading  it on  the  tablet,  at  once understood  it,  and pro-
nounced it Carian.  (See Herodotus, Urania, 135.) The son
of Amphiaras, Amphilocus,  was also prophetic, and Livy,
XLV. xxvii., mentions his temple at Oropus.  Plutarch, De
Orac. defectu, 412, says that the oracle of Amphiarus warned
Mardonius that he  would be defeated, not by a  king, but  by
the servant of a king, and from a blow from a stone, both of
which circumstances  befell him.   Melampus, the father  of
Amphiarus, was a celebrated prophet, and equally celebrated
as a therapeutic.  He appears to have been most successful
in curing  insanity, having restored the daughter of Praetus
of Argos, and also  many other Argive women  who had re-
ceived the insanity  by contagion.  Telmisus of Caria was a
great interpreter of dreams, and Clement of Alexandria says
that he exercised divination there.   Timerias of Clazomense,
according to Julian, consulted the oracle of Delphi respect-
ing a colony which he wished to found.  The answer was :—
 ' You are about to conduct a swarm of bees, which will soon
be followed by wasps.'  Both Plutarch and Herodotus show
that  this was true; for he founded the city of Abdera, but
was soon driven out of it by the Thracians.
   Plutarch relates a great number of such cases, even whilst
criticizing oracles.   Hipparchus, the son of Pisistratus, who
was killed by Harmodius and Aristogiton, saw Venus sprink-
ling blood on his face from a certain cup.   Hipparchus pre-
tended to despise  the dream, but made expiations to avert 
      RUINOUS  CONSEQUENCES TO  A FALSE PROPHET.   357

it.  The dream was literally fulfilled, for he was murdered
for an insult to the sister of Harmodius.  Pausanias, II.
xx. 157, and Plutarch, De Virtutibus  Mulierum, II. 245,
relate a  singular fulfilment of  an oracle.   Cleomenes  of
Sparta consulted the  oracle whether he should take Argos,
and received this answer, that the female should overcome
the male.   He attacked Argos, but Telesilla, the celebrated
lyric poetess, armed the women,  and posted the slaves  and
those who were  incapable  of bearing  arms  on  the walls.
Cleomenes was  thus repulsed.
   Of the overwhelming consequences when a prophet failed
in a  prediction,  Conon  gives this instance.   Calchas, the
seer, after retiring from  Troy, at  Colophon, predicted that
if Amphimachus, the King of Lycia, went to the war, he
would be victorious.  Mopsus predicted the contrary; but
Amphimachus followed the prognostications of Calchas, and
was defeated.   Calchas,  in despair and  shame, killed him-
self.  And mark the persistency  of oracles.  The gods hav-
ing ordered the Achaeans to found Crqtona,  Myscellus, on
reaching the place prepared to seize Sybaris, built on a river
of that name.   He then consulted the oracle again whether
Sybaris would not be the  better place for his  colony.   The
answer was : —' Depart hence,  hunchback, and instead of
seeking to appropriate what is  not thine own, be thankful
for what is given thee.'
   Such cases as  these, almost innumerable in their amount,
Cooley, in his  notes  on  Larcher,  gets  rid of flippantly, by
saying the Greeks were very superstitious ; like a blind man,
thinking that others cannot see.    These men cannot perceive
that they are speaking of a people of much  finer psychical
constitution than themselves.
   Diodorus  Siculus,  whilst  denouncing superstitious and
mere lying fables, gives the following and many other cases
of spiritual interference.
   Laius, King  of Thebes, was warned by the oracle of Del-
phi, not to have children; for, if he had a son, he would 
358         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
kill him.   Notwithstanding, he married Jocasta the daughter
of Creon, and had GUdipus, who was exposed to be carried
off  by the wild beasts, but being rescued and  brought up,
unknown  to  his  father, fulfilled the  oracle by killing  him
without knowing  who he was.
  Adrastus, King of  Argos, making war on Thebes was at
first defeated, and his seven generals slain.  The oracle of
Delphi being  consulted,  promised them  victory, if Amphi-
arus, the  son  of  Alcmaeon,  were made general.  This  was
done, and Thebes was  taken  and razed to  the  ground
Amongst the captives  was Daphne, the  daughter  of the
celebrated blind  seer, Tiresias, whom the Argives carried
away, and made priestess of Delphi, where she became very
famous, speaking the most  remarkable prophecies in verse,
whence she was  pronounced  one of the  first Sibyls,  and
Homer is said to have quoted some of her prophetic poems
in his works.
  Althsemenes, the son of the King of Crete, consulting the
oracle, was  told  that, like GSdipus, he would  kill his own
father, Catreus.  To  avoid  this, he voluntarily abandoned
his country,  and  settled at  Camirus,  the  metropolis  of
Rhodes;  but his father,  after a time, longing to see his  son,
went over to Rhodes, and landing in  the night, some alter-
cation took place betwixt the inhabitants and his  followers,
and Althaemenes, rushing out to quell the disturbance, killed
his father before  he recognized him (V. iii.).   Diodorus de-
clares  that few  persons  escaped  the divine vengeance  for
perjury perpetrated in the  oracular temples, and that many
such were struck blind  as  they went out of these temples,
especially at that of Palicon in  Sicily.
   The Athenians being assured by the oracle that the plague
in  the  island of Delos  was owing to the number of dead
bodies buried there, purged the island by removing the bones
to  the  next island, Rhene,  and forbidding farther funerals
there.   Apollo thus  took a very early lead of our sanitary
commissioners.   In the  sea-fight  at Argiuusae, between the 
   CONSEQUENCES OF COMPELLING A FALSE PREDICTION. 359

Spartans and Athenians, it was foretold by the catastrophe
to the sacrifice on one side, and the general's dream on  the
other, that  Callicratides,  the  Spartan  general,  would be
killed, and  seven  generals  of the Athenians; but that  the
latter would conquer;  all of which occurred (XIII.  xiv.).
Lysander, the  Spartan  general, some time after, sent  to the
oracles of Delphi, Dodona, and even to Jupiter Ammon, in
Lybia, to bribe them to his purpose of destroying the Herac-
lidae, but all refused, and the  Lycian oracle  sent a deputa-
tion to Sparta to expose and denounce Lysander's attempt.
   When Philomelus the Phocian seized the oracle of Delphi,
and compelled the priestess to speak as he pleased, he thought
he had gained his purpose.  An omen also greatly encouraged
him, for an eagle descended and pursued the sacred pigeons
that were kept and  fed in the temple, even snatching some
of them from the altar.   In his blind elation, he did not see
that he  was the eagle, and  the priestesses  the doves, subject
to his violence; but he was not long left in this delusion, for
the Boeotians soon came upon him, routed him, and compelled
him to  throw  himself from a  rock — the  due reward, says
Diodorus, of his sacrilege.  Ouomarchus, his colleague, how-
ever,  encouraged by  a  dream, persisted in the conduct of
Philomelus towards the  oracle.  He dreamed that the brazen
colossus dedicated  to  Apollo by  the Amphictyons,  and
standing in the temple at Delphi, was made  much larger by
his own hands.   This, he thought, signified that he himself
should become very great; but it in reality meant  that the
Amphictyons would  bring  heavy  fines  in brass on the Pho-
cians for their sacrilege, which was  the  case, and soon after
Philip of Macedon  defeated Onomarchus, and hanged him,
throwing  into the sea his companions in sacrilege.   Divine
vengeance  still seemed  to pursue the Phocians; for  being
driven by the Boeotians  into the temple of Apollo at Abae, a
fire caught  the straw-beds  which they  had  laid  round the
temple,  and consumed them and the temple altogether. Still
farther, Archidamus, King of  Sparta,  having assisted the 
360
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
sacrilegious Phocians, was killed fighting in Italy ;  and many
of the mercenaries who fought under him, and had been con-
cerned in  robbing the oracle, were  killed by the Lucanians.
Phalaecus, one of them, having escaped, was killed by a thun-
derbolt  at the siege of Sidon, and others fighting against
the Elians were taken prisoners, and put to the sword  by
the Elians for this crime.   Thus, says Diodorus, all the sac-
rilegious robbers, and those  who took part with them, met
the due punishment for their wickedness.   The  most famous
cities that shared with them in the impiety, were subdued  by
Antipater, and deprived of their  liberty.   Nor did the wives
of the robbers escape ; for, adorned with the plundered jewels
of  the  temple, they  met  with awful  fates, which Diodorus
relates.   On the  contrary, Philip, who appeared in defence
of the oracle, ever prospering from that  time for his  piety,
was at  last  declared  supreme governor of all  Greece, and
gained the largest kingdom in Europe (XVI. x.).
  But Philip himself, becoming too much puffed up,  con-
templated invading Persia, and  consulting  the oracle was
told that the  ox  was crowned when his  end was near, and
that a man stood ready to sacrifice him.   This, as  Croesus
had done before, his  wishes made father to the explanation
that he  should seize the crowned King of Persia, and sacri-
fice him, but  the meaning lay the other way; that he should
be knocked down like  an ox  in the moment of unsuspecting
triumph. This was speedily fulfilled; for Philip, having mar-
ried his daughter Cleopatra, he gave a great fete on the oc-
casion at  ^Egea,  in Macedon, and invited distinguished men
from all parts of  Greece.   These came presenting him festal
crowns  of gold.   As  he  entered the  theatre where sports
were about to take place, in royal robes, and with images of
the twelve gods carried in procession, his own image making
a thirteenth,  also clothed as a god,  he was suddenly stabbed
by Pausanias, one of  the esquires of his body (XVI. xv.).
  Diodorus relates many striking oracles  and  omens in the
career of Alexander the Great, the son of Philip.  When  he 
             CASES  FROM  DIODORUS  SICULUS.          361

determined to exterminate Thebes, an ominous cobweb, as
large as a cloak, and of all colors of  the rainbow, stretched
itself out in  the temple of Ceres;  the statues sweated drops
of water all over them ; and the waters in Dirce looked like
blood,  all of which were declared  by  the oracle forerunners
of fatal results.   In India,  as Alexander was about to storm
the city  of the  Oxydracae, Demophoon,  a soothsayer,  en-
deavored to dissuade him from his design, as it was revealed
to him that, if  he did,  he would receive  a severe wound.
Alexander persisted, and was wounded accordingly, narrowly
escaping with his life (XVII. x.).
   In India, Ptolemy, afterwards King of Egypt, was wounded
by a poisoned arrow, the poison being the venom of serpents.
Alexander dreamed that a serpent appeared to  him with a
certain herb in its mouth, which, it told him, was a cure for
the  poisoned wound.  The king sought for the herb, found
it, and had a poultice  of it applied,  which quickly relieved
 Ptolemy, assisted by a draught of its juice.
   But the most  remarkable fact is that of the Magi of Baby-
 lon, as Alexander approached that city, sending to advise
 him by no  means to come into it, or that he would certainly
 die  there.   After at first following their advice, and camp-
 ing  outside of  the  city, he  was persuaded  by the Greek
 philosophers that the prognostic was  mere superstition.   He
 went in and died.  Of this  I have given the  particulars in
 the  chapter on Assyria and Chaldea.
   The story of Agathocles, the tyrant of Sicily,  as given by
 Diodorus,  presents a striking case of the truth of an oracle.
 His father, Carsinus, was a  Greek of Sicily.  He sent by
 some  Carthaginians who were going to  Delphi, to enquire
 what would be  the fortunes  of his child yet unborn.   The
 Carthaginians faithfully brought  back the answer, though  it
 was that the child, a boy, would bring dreadful calamities
 on both the Carthaginians, and all Italy.   The father", there-
 upon, exposed him, but he was saved by the mother, and he
 was afterwards  acknowledged by  the father, and  apprenticed
   I.—31 
  362          HISTORY OF THE .SUPERNATURAL.

  to a potter.  By one stroke of fortune after another, how-
  ever, he grew to  be general  of the  Sicilians, seized on the
  government, and fulfilled the oracle, by becoming one of the
  most bloody  and cruel  scourges  which either Carthage or
  Sicily ever had (XIX. i.).
    Diodorus, on the  authority of  Aristobulus, relates that a
  woman  of Syria, declaring herself to  be divinely inspired,
  followed Alexander from place to  place, and was  at first
  ridiculed by him  and his courtiers; but finding  that what-
  ever she foretold came to pass, she was admitted to the king
  at any time, night or day.   A conspiracy being set  on foot
  by  Hermolaus, Antipater, and others, it was determined to
• kill him as he slept, part of these conspirators belonging
  to his  body-guard.  The  woman appeared, warned Alex-
  ander of imminent danger, and advised him not to go to bed
  that night, and  to  remain amongst his  friends.  Judging
  that the warning might be  divine, Alexander followed her
  advice,  and the next day the conspiracy was betrayed, and
  the conspirators punished.
     Some instances of predictions by lots — sortes — are very
  remarkable.   Shortly  before the  battle  of  Leuctra, the
  Lacedemonians  received a  significant warning.   In the
  temple  of Hercules the weapons clashed together  of their
  own accord, and the statue  of Hercules  itself was  covered
  with  perspiration.   At the same time, according to Callis-
  thenes, the locks and  bolts  in the  temple of Hercules, at
  Thebes, flew open, and the weapons which hung upon the
  walls were found lying  upon the floor.   The Boeotian sooth-
  sayers  announced  victory to  the Thebans.   The reverse at
  Leuctra was also predicted to the Lacedemonians in several
  ways;  for the  statues of Lysander,  who was  the noblest
  Lacedemonian, which stood at Delphi,  were overgrown with
  plants, and the golden stars, which were placed on  these
  statues after the naval victory of Lysander, fell down a short
  time before the battle of Leuctra.   But the most significant
  sign of all happened at Dodona, when the Spartans enquired 
PAN  IS DEAD.
363
 of Jupiter concerning the coming contest.  The bag con-
 taining the lots  was placed  on  the ground, and an ape,
 which was kept for amusement by the King of the Molossi,
 scattered them to the winds.   The  priests at once answered
 that the Lacedemonians ought rather to consider their safety
 than the battle.

                      Pan is Dead !

    This is Plutarch's account  of this remarkable event in his
 Defeat of Oracles.   In the time of Tiberius certain persons
 embarking in Asia for Italy,  towards the evening, sailed by
 the  'Echinades,'  where, being becalmed,  they heard from
 thence a loud voice calling one Thamus, an Egyptian mari-
 ner amongst them, and after the third time commanding hira,
 when he came to  Palodes, to  declare that the great Pan was
 dead.   He, with  the advice  of  his company, was resolved,
 that if they had a quick gale, when they came to Palodes, he
 would pass by silently, but  if they should find  themselves
 there becalmed, he would  then perform what the voice  had
 commanded; but when the ship  arrived thither, there  was
 neither any gale of wind nor agitation of water, whereupon,
 Thamus, looking out of the  hinder deck towards  Palodes,
 pronounced these words with  a loud voice, 'O fisyas  no* tiSvnxt
' —the great Pan is dead ! which he had no sooner done,
 than he was answered  by a  choir of  many voices, making
 great  howling  and  lamentation, not without a certain mix-
 ture of admiration.   Plutarch adds that  Tiberius was ex-
 ceedingly interested  in ascertaining the truth of the relation,
 and made  great enquiries, and fully satisfied himself  of the
 reality of  the  occurrence.   This taking place  at the very
 time of our Saviour's death,  sufficiently identifies  him as the
 great *6 riav, the artificer and inhabitant of all things.
    I might go,  in the same minute manner, through the great
 historian Thucydides, but I have done that already; for the
 history of Diodorus Siculus is the history of Thucydides, as 
364          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL
far as Thucydides goes —namely, through the Pcloponnesian
wars — Diodorus avowedly basing himself upon him in the
narrative of  that  period, and the  miraculous portions are
common to both.
  Lucian, De Syria  Dea, says that in her  temple in the
Libanus, the statue sweated,  moved, and gave oracles, and
often, when the temple was closed, a cry was heard within,
P017 iyivtto.   Damascius, in the life of Isidorus, says, he met
with a consecrated woman yvvtuxL itpa, who possessed a super-
natural endowment after a wonderful manner.  She saw, by
looking  into a glass of water,  the phantasms (^do-fiata) of
future events with the utmost certainty.  Damascius says he
himself  had seen the same  thing.  It is a well-known phe-
 nomenon at the  present day, and  is  of the same class as
 crystal-seeing,  and the looking into a black liquid by the
 Egyptian magicians of to-day.
   Now what is the real  result of all this Grecian  evidence
 of philosophers, poets, and historians — of those men whose
 writings the whole civilized world at this hour places higher
 than any other human learning, and in which all our  wealthier
 youths are  industriously indoctrinated, as the noblest exam-
 ples of man's  intellect and sagacity ?  It must be precisely
 what Cicero represents it: '  To natural divination,' he says,
 'belongs  that  which does not take place from supposition,
 observations,  or  well-known  signs, but arises from an  inner  *
 state and activity of the mind, in which men are enabled by
 an unfettered  advance of the soul to foretell  future things.
 This takes place in a dream —per furorem vaticinautis—and
 in  minds  of great constitutional purity.  Of  this description
 are the oracles, not such as are grounded on acquired  signs,
 but those which arise from an inner and a divine source. If
  we laugh at predictions drawn from the sacrifice of animals
  as folly ;  if we turn to  ridicule the Babylonians and  Cauca-
  sians, who  believe  in celestial signs, and who observe the
  number and course of the stars ; if, as I have said, we con-
  demn all these for their superstition and folly, which, as they 
CICERO ON THE  ORACLES.             365
maintain, is founded upon the experience of fifty centuries
and a half;  let us, in that case, also call the belief of ages
imposture — let us burn our records, and say that everything
was  but imagination.   But is the history of Greece a  lie,
when Apollo foretold  the future through the oracles of  the
Lacedemonians and Corinthians ?   I will leave all else as it
is, but this I must defend, that  the  gods influence and care
for human  affairs.   The Delphian oracle would never have
become  so  celebrated nor so overwhelmed  by presents from
every king and every nation, if every age had not experienced
the truth of its predictions.  Or has its fame departed ? The
power of the earth which moved the soul of the Pythia with
its divine breath, may have vanished through  age, as rivers
are dried up, or take  other courses; but the  fact is there,
and always will be, without we overturn history itself.'
   The opinion of Cicero is the opinion of all the great minds
of antiquity.  ' No one nation of antiquity,' says  Dr.  Enne-
moser, ' was so generally convinced of the truth  of divination
as the  Greeks, not even excepting the Jews.   Such an  en-
lightened people must have devoted much attention to that
which could not alone arise from priestcraft and  the system
of oracles.   The poetic talent being expanded to such a  de-
gree  with them, it was perfectly natural that they should pay
a proper attention  to the inner voice of the mind, not only
in dreams, but also in presentiments ; and they justly ascribed
their revelations to the gods, for  they  know everything past
and to come, and  impart it to man from affection to him,
either unsolicited or in answer to his prayers, and give him
signs — arista — by.which he may be guided.'
   We might draw a  very large  volume from  almost every
writer of antiquity in confirmation of this opinion ; we could
draw them from authors  whom we have not room to quote.
Aretaeus, Arrianus, Hippocrates, Galen, Xenophou, Diony-
sius of Halicarnas-sus, and hosts  of others.   Man, say they,
cannot entirely lose the power of the seer; for, according to
nature,  it is imperishable.  Socrates  and  Plato  attest  the
       31* 
366         HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

prophetic power of the dying.  In dreams of the higher kind
the ancients had the firmest faith.   'The souls of men,' says
Xenophon in the Cyropoedia, viii. 7, 21, ' appear to be most
free and divine in sleep, and in that state throw glances into
the future.'  'In sleep,' says Josephus, 'the soul, in no way
disturbed by the body, holds conference with God, to whom
it is related, and floats  to  and fro over things  past and to
come.'   When Calanus ascended the funeral pile, Alexander
asked him if he were  in need of anything, and he replied,
'Nothing ! the day after to-morrow I shall see you.'  And
his words were verified by  the event.  Cicero, in another
place, says, ' Divine prophecy lies  hidden and confined in the
inner recesses of the mind, and the soul, without reference to
the body,  can  be  moved by a divine impulse.'   The later
Greeks  and Romans sorrowfully lamented  the cessation  of
the oracles.  Lucan, in his Pharsalia, where he gives a lively
description of the inspiration of the priestess at Delphi, when
Appius  applied for information regarding the war between
Pompey and  Caesar,  laments the loss of oracles.   ' The
greatest misfortune of  our age  is to have lost that admirable
gift of  Heaven.   The oracle  of  Delphi has become  silent
since kings feared the future, and no longer desired to hear
the verdict of the gods.'
  ' The Greeks,' says a great writer, ' possessed a vitality of
genius ;  what are called their ideals spring from a creative
mind.   The Greek was  a seer and a poet, who  lived in a
spiritual as well as physical world, and, therefore, the emana-
tions of his mind  proceeded from a universal harmony.   It
is, therefore, easy to see whence came tljeir pre-eminence in
poetry and the  arts.'   Like the  painters  and poets of the
Catholic ages, they had  maintained  their citizenship of the
inner world, and were  crowned with its gifts as their rightful
heritage.  The divine  revealed itself to them in the shape of
life-like  ideals, behind which they anticipated, if they did  not
perceive, the  eternal Creator,  as a miraculous and incom-
prehensible Being.   In the oracles, the voice of the hidden 
       THERAPEUTIC PRACTICES  IN GREEK TEMPLES.    367

Divinity  revealed counsel and  unknown truths;. and  the
priests offered up prayers, and performed  sacred ceremonies
and sacrifices in their magnificent temples in the name of the
people, to maintain themselves in worthy communion with
the supernatural powers.   God showed Himself  gracious to
them, as to all His earthly children ;  He permitted them to
find Him in their own manner, and even made Himself known
to them in miracles, which, in fact, were in no wise  rare in
heathendom.
  But in these temples not only were oracles delivered ; health
was sought, and cures performed.   The temples of  Greece
were the great therapeutic halls of the nation.  As the gods
gave them knowledge of future events, so they believed they
exerted their divine powers to heal the diseases and remove
the sufferings of men.  Those who, like ^Esculapius, became
celebrated for their healing  powers,  were elevated  to  the
rank of gods, and had temples erected to them, whither the
sick flocked in crowds for relief.  This system, as  well as the
mythology of Greece, was  brought from Egypt, where  the
priests were the physicians,  and, as it now appears, practised
mesmeric and magnetic science for the cure of diseases.  The
most celebrated temples in Greece for healing were those of
Isis at Pithorea in Phocis, of Serapis at Messene, and also
at Athens, expressly Egyptian gods.  Those which had be-
come  more nationalized, as Apollo, the god of physic  as well
as of music  and poetry,  Jupiter, Juno,  Hercules, were  all
healing gods.  Apollo was expressly called ricuaK, the physi-
cian.   Then the temple  of Melampus in Argos,  those  of
^Esculapius at Epidaurus and at Pergamns, in Athens  and
at Cis, that of Amphiarus at Oropus in Boeotia, and temples
in many other places, were the great resorts of those afflicted
with any kind of  ailment.   In  them they  received baths,
frictions, fasts, besides medicines ;  but the chief reliance was
on the prayers of the priests, and  on dreams  received in a
Bacred sleep.   For this sleep there were cells constructed in
the temples, and  the patients lay on consecrated skins,  and 
368
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
were soothed by music and choral hymns.   In fact, the sleep
was  obviously the magnetic  sleep of modern times, inducing
clairvoyance, in which state the patients prescribed both for
their own ailments and for  those of others.  Water-drink-
ing,  as well as baths, was prescribed; so that hydropathy is
but a revival of the old  classical temple practice.   Rubbings
and  manipulations accompanied the bath.   Aristides,  the
orator, living in  the time of Marcus Antoninus, has left us,
in his Orationes Sacrae,  a full account of his treatment in the
temples of JSsculapius, which he seems to have visited several
times, when the doctors could do nothing for hira.   On  one
occasion he had been ill ten years,  yet he was fully restored,
and found  himself remarkably  strong  and  active.   In  the
dreams into which he was thrown,  he related things actually
taking place at a distance, and others did the same.  Those
who heard thera were  astonished.   In  his  dreams Apollo
and JEsculapius  ordered him to make verses, and sing them,
which he did, though he never could do  it in his normal con-
dition.   He describes his feelings  in this  condition as most
delightful, and that Plato, Demosthenes, and Sophocles often
stood at the foot of his bed and conversed with him.  In his
sleep a voice announced to him that he was perfectly healed ;
he awoke, and  found  it so.   (See  the works of  Aristides
published by Jebb at Oxford in 1772, and in earlier editions
by Canter in  1604.)  These temples were crowded with gifts
and offerings brought thither in grateful testimony of cures
which no ordinary physicians had been able to effect.  Such
are the practices of the far past and the present ages, meet-
ing on  the page  of history to guarantee their foundation in
truth against the terrae filii, however learned in routine learn-
ing, but ignorant of history.
   But amongst the recorded facts of Grecian literature which
show that what  scientific men of to-day have ludicrously de-
clared  to be empty delusions,  were well-known  truths of
 ancient science, not now first discovered, but only rediscovered
 after being lost in the dark ages ; there is a very singular one 
TWO GREEK SWEDENBORGS.            369
with which I will close this chapter.   It is that Greece pos-
sessed a Swedenborg 2,400 years ago.  Epimenides, a poet
contemporary with Solon, had  precisely the same power
which Swedenborg asserted himself to possess, and of which
he gave such proofs that Kant and Schlegel  were compelled
to admit them — namely, the power of quitting his body and
of conversing asma spirit with spirits.   When he went into
his trances, he continued so  long in  thera sometimes that it
gave rise to the fable that he once slept for forty, or accord-
ing to Pliny, for fifty-seven years, the  origin of the legend
of Rip Van Winkle.  He frequently, however, fell into trances
in which he lay as one dead, but  on awaking again informed
his friends of what he had seen and heard in the spirit-world.
The  Athenians held him  in great honor,  because by his
spiritual knowledge he taught thera  how  to  get  rid of the
plague which ravaged the city, and after his death they wor-
shipped him as a god.
  Hermotimus, or,  as Plutarch names him, Hermodorus  of
Clazomene, is said to have possessed the same power of quit-
ting his body as Epimenides,  for as long a time, and  as often
as he pleased.  But he had enemies, as all men of endowments
not credited by their contemporaries have, and they at last
persuaded  his wife that he was really dead.  She, therefore,
had him placed on the funeral pile, and burnt, thus  effectually
barring his return to the body.  It was perhaps fortunate for
Swedenborg that he was not married; as he might have found
the return  to his body cut off, not by the funeral pile, but  by
a coffin lid.  But what  say our wise ones to  these identical
natural phenomena  presenting themselves 2,000  years and
more apart? 
370
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
        CHAPTER  XV.

THE SUPERNATURAL IN ANCIENT* ROME.
Multa esse naturae miracula incompertae rationis et in naturae
majestate penitus abdita. — Plint, Hist. iV., xxx. 1.
In this state of corruption, who so fit as a good honest Chris-
tian-Pagan for a moderator between Pagan-Christians?—Sir
Roger L'Estrange.
I HAVE gone at such length into the supernaturalism  of
    ancient Greece,  that it is not necessary to dwell long  on
that of ancient Rome, for they are identical.  The poetry,
the philosophy, the theology of Rome, were all imported from
Greece, as Greece had imported them from Egypt.  The very
laws  of Athens were introduced in the year of Rome 301.
The poetry of Rome, the dramas of  Terence,  Seneca, and
even of Plautus, are but reflexes of those of Greece.  It is the
same with the epic and the lyric departments of Latin poetry.
Virgil's machinery in the JEneid is the reproduced machinery
of Homer, the same gods, the same creed, in part the same
heroes.  JEneas conquers monsters like Hercules, and descends
to the Shades like Ulysses.  Lucan asserts the miraculous in
the Pharsalia,  and Horace gives us both  spiritualism  in  his
descriptions of Roman life and its magic,  the dark side of it
in Hecate and Canidia. Horace believed that Pan interfered
to save his life on one occasion:

       A tree when falling  on my  head,
       Had surely crushed me to the dead;
       But Pan, the  Poets'  guardian, broke
       With saving hand,  the destined stroke. — B. II. Ode xviii. 2. 
ROMAN IDEAS OF DIVINE AGENCY.
371
 He reverts to the falling tree again in the Ode to Calliope,
 and adds that the superior powers saved  him from serpents
 when  sleeping on the  ground in the woods,  and also at the
 battle of Philippi, though, on the last occasion, it seems to
 have been rather a good pair of legs. Lucan in his  Pharsalia
 draws an astounding picture of the powers of witchcraft in
 the person of Erichtho.   But we will pass over the poets for
 the reason assigned, or we might quote the whole  of  Ovid's
 Metamorphoses, which are built entirely on the ancient theory
 that the gods could  not only present themselves in  any form
 they pleased, but could turn men and women into any form
 of animal, vegetable, or mineral life.  The same idea which
• was transmitted  to  magic.   Ovid gravely assures us that, in
 a very fatal  sickness amongst the people  an  Rome, Quintus
 Apulinus was despatched to Epidaurus to enquire of the oracle
 of JEscnlapius the remedy.   The ambassador was assured in
 a dream that the god in the form of a serpent would himself
 return with him, and he adds that in presenting himself at the
 shrine, a serpent rolled out of the temple, made its way to the
 ship, lay coiled up in the  cabin during the  voyage, and on its
 termination, planted itself in an island of the Tiber, as a sign
 that a temple must  there be erected to uEsculapius, and that
 it was done.
    In fact, says Wachsmuth, amongst the Greeks, and so also
  amongst the Romans,  ' everything  was explained  by divine
  presence and divine power, and any phenomenon which could
  not be explained was  regarded  as  a *ipa* sent by  the gods ;
 it was, therefore, not miraculous  but something unusual; it
  was the  evidence of divine  anger,  and so  forth.   On this
  rested the worship  of the gods, as also prayer, thanksgiving,
  and penitence.  And if a man knew more, and could perform
  more than  others,  it was regarded as a divine gift: and in
  this class was reckoned a knowledge of the supposed miracu-
 lous powers of  nature' (p. 214).   This being the case, we
  shall no  farther notice the facts  than as indicating a knowl-
  edge of  something else.   Neither need we  repeat the cere- 
372         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
monies of the temple therapeutics;  for they were precisely
the same as those of Egypt and Greece.   Sleep was obtained
in the temples by the same  means, and curative answers ob-
tained.   ' Incnbare dicuntur proprie hi, qui dorraiunt ad ac-
cipienda  responsa, unde ille incubat Jovi, id  est dormit  in
capitolio, ut responsa possit accipere.'  (Servius super Vir-
gilium.)  According to Livy, Hygeia, Isis, Minerva, Mercury
and Hercules, besides Jove and JEsculapius, were worshipped
as healing gods.  What is now called mesmerism was every-
day practice in these temples.   ' Unquestionably,' says Kluge,
' was the  manipulation with strong contact, rubbing and strok-
ing with  hands, the  oldest and  most general of all manipu-
lations.'   Seneca in his sixty-sixth epistle says, ' Shall I deem *
Mucius happy who handles fire, as if he had lent his  hand to
the magical  performers?' .The fire  streams  so  frequently
now seen from the fingers  of mesmeric  manipulators, were
thus plainly well known to  the Roman public.   Martial says
(Epig. lib. iii. 82):
         Percurrit agili corpus arte tractatrix,
         Manumque doctam  spargit omnibus membris.
And Plautus in Amphitryo:  ' How if I stroke him  slowly
with the  hand, so that he  sleeps ? '  These magnetic means
of cure were not only practised, but were inscribed on sacred
tables and pillars, and their mode of  use  explained  by pic-
tures on  the temple walls, so that all might understand them.
Pausanius says  that  in his time there were six such  inscrip-
tions in  the  temple  of  Epidaurus in Greece, and in  modern
times, a marble tablet with four different inscriptions, from the
temple of JSsculapius, were dug up in the island of the Tiber,
all referring  to magnetic  modes  of treatment.   These were
published by Mercurialis in his ' De Arte Gymnastica,' and
have been copied by Fabret, Tomasius, Hundertmark, Spren-
gel, and  Wolff.   Such  monuments were  also  dedicated to
Serapis, and Marcus Antoninus thanks the gods for the means
of cure revealed  to  him in this  sleep.   Apuleius furnishes
similar evidences of the ordinary  practice of the Romans of 
THE  ROMAN FAITH IN  ORACLES.         373
magnetic manipulations to induce clairvoyance, and thus ob-
tain spiritual revelations  of cure.    The Romans, however,
being merely imitators of the Greeks in medical theology,  as
in everything else, were not equally profound in it.   All the
tribes of Italy which surrounded early Rome partook of the
same  knowledge even before Rome.   The Etruscans, who
were  of Egyptian  origin,  were indeed the teachers  of the
Romans in  both temple  therapeutics and  magic.    They
boasted all the old enchantments of their ancestors, the Egyp-
tians.   The  Marsi and the Daunians, Italian tribes (the lat-
ter deriving  their descent from Troy), had temples dedicated
to the same curative rites as the Greeks, and the same somnam-
bulic  phenomena were regarded as miraculous.
  The Romans, to the very era of Christianity, continued  to
consult the oracles of Greece, and, according to  Suidas and
Nicephorus,  Augustus sent to enquire at the oracle who
should be his successor, and was answered : — 'The Hebrew
child, whom all  the  gods obey, drives me hence.'  Yet, for
some time after Christianity, some  of the oracles continued
to speak, as  may be seen in Plutarch and  Suetonius.   Nero
and Julian the Apostate consulted the Grecian oracles after
the time of Christ, and received answers.
   But, in the time of the Romans, the Sibyls assumed  an
importance superior to the oracles.  These prophetic women
 are occasionally  met with  in the history of Greece ;  but in
that  of Rome they  stand remarkably prominent, and their
books became an institution, and were  kept under charge of
 public  officers, and  were  consulted on  all occasions  of na-
 tional difficulty.   The mode in which  the  Sibylline books
 first  acquired importance was this :   A  little old  and un-
 known woman  came to  Tarquin  the Proud (the  king in
 whose  reign kingship was  abolished by the Romans), with
 a number of books. According to  some writers,  she had
 nine;  according to  Pliny, only three.   Those who assert
 that  there were nine say, that she asked a  high price  for
 them, which Tarquin refused,  whereupon  she  flung three of
   I.— 32 
374         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

them  into the  fire, and demanded the same price for the six.
The  king still refusing, and thinking her mad, she burnt
three  more, and  asked the same  price  for  the remaining
three,  demanding whether he  would  now  purchase thera.
Tarquin, astonished at the conduct of the woman, paid the
price, upo>n which she departed and  was never seen again.
On examination,  the prophecies in  them regarding  Rome
were  found so extraordinary, that  Tarquin committed  their
custody to two keepers.  These were increased to ten, and
afterwards by  Sylla to fifteen.  These decemviri, or quin-
deceraviri,  gave no answers out of the books,  except  on
command of the senate in crises of difficulty.
   Livy, Suetonius, and Tacitus, state that these books were
kept in the Capitol, and afterwards in the temple of Apollo
Palatinus.   Both  these temples were burnt  down, but the
Sibylline books, being kept in  a vault in a stone chest, were
not burnt.   The  books of the Cumaean Sibyl were held in
most  esteem,  and next to them those of the Erythraean.
Dionysius of Halicarnassus  says, that these books remained
uninjured in a subterranean vault of the  Capitol till  the
Marsian war.   It appears that, notwithstanding the  careful
keeping  of them, numbers of copies by some means  were
abroad.   Augustus sent all over Italy, and collected all that
he could find,  and selecting  the spurious from those  which
were  ancient, burnt them.   The ancient ones preserved he
had transcribed into the current Latin  of the age, as they
could not otherwise be read without much difficulty. Tacitus
and Suetonius assert that many thousands of spurious ones
were  in circulation,  and the government copy was burnt,
according to Crasset, in the reign of Constantine the Great,
in the year 339 A. D.,  by one Stilikon, who  introduced the
Goths into the country, and destroyed the  Sibylline books
beforehand that no aid might be obtained from them. . We
have editions of Sibylline books both in Greek and Latin,
and an English translation of them by Sir John Floyer, but
it is not to be  supposed that half of these are genuine.   Yet 
           EMINENT BELIEVERS IN  THE SIBYLS.       375

there were a great number, and those  containing  the most
direct and explicit prophecies of Christ, which were strenu-
ously defended  both by  Christians and pagans in the first
ages of Christianity as genuine.  So much  was this the case,
that these books were forbidden by the emperors in the first
ages of Christianity to be read.   Justin Martyr complained
loudly of this prohibition in his  defence, because they con-
founded the incredulous, and because the Christians persisted
in reading  them;  they were called  Sibyllines, as  we learn
from Origen against  Celsus.   In  fact, it  has been asserted
that there is no subject  on which the  testimony of all his-
torians, poets, and philosophers is so agreed as on  the truth
of the Sibylline books as they existed in the  time of Augustus.
Amongst the strongest supporters of the truth of  exclusive
and extraordinary prophecies by the Sibyls we must reckon
Plato,  Aristotle, Strabo, ^Elian,  Pausanias, Apollodorus,
Lucian, Homer, Aristides, Plutarch, Varro,  Cicero, Diodorus,
Tacitus,  Suetonius,  Livy,  Florus, Valerius, Dionysius of
Halicarnassus, Pliny, Virgil, Ovid, and  Juvenal.   Amongst
the Christian Fathers,  the  most  ardent  advocates of the
authenticity of the Sibylline  books,  are Justin Martyr, Ori-
gen, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch,  Eusebius, Lac-
tantius,  Clement of Alexandria, St. Ambrose, Jerome, Au-
gustine, and Isidor of Seville.   Constantine the Great had
the books of the Sibyls ;  and his speech on thera, attributing
full authenticity to them, was read in the first council  of the
church at Nice in a. d. 325.  The words of  Tacitus  are  very
strong: ' Pluribus persuasio inerat autiquis sacerdotum litteris
contineri eo ipso tempore  fore, ut valesceret oriens, profec-
tique Judaea potirentur.' (Hist. V. Lib. xi.)   Suetonius and
Livy, enemies of the Christians, yet declared that these books
affirmed that one born in Judaea should become master of the
world.   The Emperor Aurelian, one of the  most fierce per-
secutors of the  Christians, forbade the books of the Sibyls
to be publicly read ; yet, when in trouble, in the Marcoman
war, he commanded the senate to open them, and  not to allow
• 
376          HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

them to belong only to the Christians.  What the Christians
believed in thera may be shortly summed up in the words of
St.  Augustine, De Veritate xviii.  23, where,  quoting the
Erythraean Sybil regarding Christ, he says, ' He will fall into
the hands  of the  wicked ; with  poisonous spittle they will
spit upon  him; on the sacred back they will strike him;
they will crown him with a crown of  thorns;  they will give
him gall for food, and vinegar for drink.   The veil of the tem-
ple shall be rent, and at mid-day there shall be a darkness of
three hours long.  And he will die ; repose three days in sleep ;
and then, in the joyful light, he will come again  as at first.'
  Now, how much or how little of the present  books called
Sibylline be  genuine, the fact is  plain, from  the general
assent of  people  of the highest reputation  and  means  of
knowing, who lived at or near the times of the  Sibyls,  both
pagan and Christian, that the Sibyls did announce important
prophecies.  They are to the heathen what the  prophets
were to the  Jews.  They are, therefore, a great  and  sub-
stantial feature  of the spiritualism of antiquity,  and  pre-
eminently of  Roman antiquity.   Varro and Lactantius enu-
merate the most celebrated of the  Sibyls.   There were ten
of these, but  no doubt, through the  long course of ages, they
were   numerous.   The most celebrated were  the Cumaean
Sibyl from the district of Troy, the  Erythraean from Chaldea,
and the Delphic,  one  of the Delphic priestesses,  to whom
some of the most famous oracular responses are attributable.
Before the Cumaean Sibyl came into  Italy,  Carmenta, the
mother of Evander, was, according to Pliny,  famous for her
vaticinations.  It is the  Cumaean Sibyl  whom Virgil has
described in  the sixth book of the JEneid:
         Deep in a cave the Sibyl makes abode,
         Thence full of fate returns, and of the god.
In the delivery of the oracle to iEneas, she  is  described as
convulsed,  and —
         Struggling in vain, impatient of her load,
         And laboring  underneath the ponderous god;
♦ 
     THE SIBYLS INTRODUCED INTO CHRISTIAN HYMNS.  377

         The more she tries to shake him from  her breast,
         With more and far superior force he pressed.
         Commands his entrance, and without control
         Usurps her organs, and inspires her soul.
The violence of the paroxysm usually attending the divina-
tion of pagan priestesses, reminds us of scenes in the  revi-
vals.   The  prophecy of  the  Cumaean Sibyl, introduced  by
Virgil  into  the  fourth  Eclogue, is remarkable, being  thus
quoted  by him forty years before the birth of Christ, and
probably written  ages before :
          Ultima Cumaei venit jam carminis  aetas;
          Magnus  ab  integro saeclorum nascitur  ordo.
          Jam redit et Virgo, redeunt Saturnia  regna.
          Jam nova progenies ccelo demittitur alto,
          Tu modo nascenti puero, quo  ferrea primum
          Desinet  ac toto surget gens aurea  mundo,
          Casta fave Lucina.
This is 'A new race is sent down to us from heaven ; the
last of the ages sung by the Cumaean  Sibyl,  &c.   Therefore,
chaste  Lucia, be  gracious to this boy who shall be  born,
through whom the iron age shall  cease, and the golden one
shall be brought into the world.'  Virgil,  notwithstanding
the oracle, applied the  prophecy  to another purpose in this
eclogue.  The name of Sibyl was compounded of (h6j, ^Eolica
voce, for 0*6?, God, and p<n>\ri, council, by  the council of God.
Of the deep hold that  these prophecies had  taken of the
early Christians,  we have a striking proof in  the name  of
the Sibyl being introduced into the mass for the dead :
                  Dies irae, dies ilia,
                  Solvet seclum in favilla,
                  Teste David cum  Sibylla.
   These facts being borne in mind,  we shall not  wonder at
the prominent position  which both  the oracles and  Sibyls
occupy in the history of  Rome.
   With  the  philosophy  of Rome we need  not concern our-
selves.    It  was essentially Greek; Greek professors taught
it, and  scarcely any Romans can  claim the title of  philoso-
phers,  except it  be  Seneca  and Cicero,  and they originated
       32* 
378          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
no new systems.  I  will make one  quotation  from Seneca
as a  moralist, which  shows hini essentially as a spiritualist,
and  I  shall add  a few quotations from  Cicero's De Divi-
natione, and De Natura Deorum, rather as historic evidence
of the  same faith than anything else.
   Seneca says : —' There is a great difference  betwixt phil-
osophy and other  arts;  and  a  greater  yet,  betwixt that
philosophy itself, which is of divine contemplation, and that
which  has regard to things here below.  It is much higher
and  braver; it takes a larger scope ; and being unsatisfied
with what it sees, it aspires to the knowledge of something
which  is greater and fairer, and which nature has placed out
of our ken.   The one only teaches us what  is done upon
earth;  the other reveals to us that which is actually done in
heaven.   The one  discusses  our errors, and  holds the light
to us, by which we  distinguish the  ambiguities of life;  the
other surmounts  that darkness which we are wrapped  up in,
and  carries us up to the fountain of life itself.   And then it
is that we are in a special manner to  acknowledge the infi-
nite grace and bounty of the nature of things ;  when we see
it, not  only where it is public  and common, but in the very
secrets of it, as being admitted into the cabinet of the Divin-
ity itself (Seneca's  Morals).   And in continuance  he goes
on to show  what a spiritual philosophy does.  He says that
it puts an end to that denial of God's freedom in  his own
universe, which wretched sophistry  or the lugubrious meta-
physics of to-day so miserably entraps itself in : — ' There it
is that we are taught to understand what is the matter of the
world, who is the author and preserver of it.  What God
himself is ; and  whether he be wholly intent on himself, or at
any time condescends to us.   Whether he has done his work
once for all, or whether he be still  in action.   Whether he
be a part of the world, or the world  itself.   Whether he be
at liberty, or  not, to determine anything anew to-day, and to
control  or  derogate from the law of Fate.   Whether it be
any diminution  of his wisdom, or any confession of error, to 
MORAL COWARDICE OF CICERO.          379
do and undo;  or to  have made things that were afterwards
to be  altered.   For the same things must,  of necessity,
always please  him who can never be pleased but with that
which is best.   Now this is no lessening either of his liberty
or his power ;  for he himself is his own necessity.  Without
the benefit and  the  comfort of these thoughts  it had been
well for us never to have been born.'
   As to Cicero, he must be regarded  rather as a sophist and
a pleader  than a philosopher.  The two works in which he
has more  particularly treated spiritual subjects, De Natura
Deorum, and De Divinatione, are artfully written  in dialo-
gue, so that he might escape  the responsibility of attacking
popular opinion.  In the Deorum he  attacks the belief in the
herd of accepted deities, and from the elaborate way in which
it is done, you must  suppose that it is his real  opinion ; but
 he puts the arguments against them intp the mouth of Bal-
 bus; he argues earnestly against a providential care  of men
 on historic grounds,  but this he puts into the mouth of Cotta,
 and makes hira say that he has argued thus rather for the
 sake of calling  forth a defence of Divine Providence than
 from his real belief.  So, again, in the De Divinatione, though
 he himself takes the part against oracles  and divination, he
 does it so evidently  as a disputant, and with so much more
 sophistry, and  puts  into the  mouth  of  his brother Quintus
 such an array of historic proof in their favor, that the reader
 feels that the  truth of the argument  lies on that side.  But
 in all  these cases, what are the real  opinions of Cicero are
 left  dubious.   There  is  an  insidiousness  in  this mode of
 treating such matters,  which has brought down on Cicero the
 severe comments of  ancient writers, and Lactantius especially
 brands him with moral cowardice.   Under the lash of the
 Christian Father he appears a Faraday and a David  Brew-
 ster rolled  into one.   Still, after all  his arguments  against
 predictions and dreams, in one place he seems to forget him-
 self, and to speak his real sentiments, professing to  approve
 of the doctrine of  the Peripatetics,  of old Dicearchus and 
380          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
Cratippus,  that  in  the  spirit  of  man dwells  an oracle by
which the future may be perceived, either when the soul is
excited  by  divine  inspiration, or when, through sleep, the
soul expands herself unfettered.
  Taking,  however, Cicero's facts  without his sophistries,
they are striking.   In his first book  of Divination, he  tells
us that  Sophocles the poet, when  a  golden goblet was stolen
from the temple of Hercules  in Athens, had  it revealed to
him in a dream who had taken it.   He neglected the dream,
but, it being repeated several times,  he laid the matter be-
fore the Areopagite council; the thief was arrested  and  con-
victed,  and the cup restored.  The temple was thence after
called that of Hercules the Indicator.  He adds  a similar
case from Roman  history.   He it is who  gives  us  the well-
known  account of the two friends from Arcadia, who, arriv-
ing at Megara, met«vith this event.  The one went to sleep
at  a friend's house, the other at an  inn.   The one at the
private  house dreamed that the other  at the inn appeared to
him, and entreated him to corae to his assistance, as the inn-
keeper  was about to murder him.  The dreamer awoke in
horror,  but thought it  a mere fancy, and  lay down again ;
but his  friend again appeared, and said that,  as he had not
come to his aid, he trusted he  would at least see him avenged
of his murderer.   That the innkeeper had thrown  his body
into a cart, covered it with manure, and in the morning he
would convey him  thus  into the country.  That he should
be at the city gate to stop him.    This the friend executed.
 He stopped the cart, found the body as described, and had
the innkeeper arrested and capitally  punished.  He assures
us that dreams are divinely sent, and are often distorted by
 an  inordinate  eating and  drinking.   That, by keeping the
body in temperance,  the divine communications in  sleep are
 purely  and distinctly conveyed, and that this is genuine divi-
 nation ; and he confirms this  by the words of  Socrates.  He
 informs us that Siraonides escaped  shipwreck  by  attending
 to a dream.   He asserts that, when Brennus  and the  Gauls 
THE  SUPERNATURAL IN LIVY.
381
 attacked the  temple of Delphi,  the  oracle  declared that
 Apollo would provide his own means of defence, and virgins
 in-white, which came to pass; for the  Gauls were repulsed,
 and by the aid of young women fighting against them.  He
 says that Chrysippus, Diogenes, and Antipater asked what
 farther proofs would we have of the truth of  divine  mani-
 festations, when events, peoples, nations, Greeks, barbarians,
 when the greatest men, poets, philosophers, the wisest law-
 givers, builders of cities and founders  of States, were all
 agreed on  the point 1  Would we have the very beasts  to
 speak and add their consent to that of  men ?   He refers to
 the auguries  of  the Chaldeans, the  Persians, Phoenicians,
 Phrygians, Arabians, Gauls, and British Druids, as well  as
 of the Greeks and their own.  He asserts  that Castor and
 Pollux appeared in the battle of Regillum fighting on horse-
 back for the Romans against the Latins, and that there ap-
 peared a young man named Vatienus, and  announced that
 Perseus, the King of Macedon, was taken.  The senate put
 Vatienus in prison,  but letters  arriving from  Paullus, the
 general, declaring his capture of Perseus  on  the very day
 named, Vatienus was liberated with honor and  a grant of
 land.   As these  are, however,  historic proofs, we may  at
 once turn to the historians;  and here the mass of evidence
 is so  great that we  might quote a very large  volume from
 Livy, Sallust, Caesar,  Tacitus, Suetonius, &c.
  In Livy alone I have marked  above fifty instances  of his
 record of the  literal  fulfilment of  dreams, oracles, prognos-
 tics by soothsayers and  astrologers, as well  as from the an-
 gurial  inspection  of  sacrificed animals.   The  Romans sent
 frequently to consult the most celebrated oracles of Greece.
 Every year they had an account of all prodigies  and portents
 sent up officially from every part of the empire, and expia-
 tions were made by the pontifex, immediately after the elec-
tion of the consuls, before any other  business,  to  avert the
divine displeasnre  which might be indicated by them.   They
were not yet arrived at that age in which Livy says men  cease 
382
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
to reverence the gods, and  ascribe every event to secondary
causes ;  as if a First Cause did not rule the world and decide
the fate of nations.  The accounts of prodigies sent up often,
and especially preceding and during the invasion of Italy by
Hannibal, were  something  extraordinary.  Besides strange
misbirths of men and  animals, the showers of stones and of
earth, and the  destruction  of the  temples by lightning, and
rivers looking like blood, were extremely frequent.  I must
refer the reader to Livy himself for the bulk of his  records
of supernatural events ;  they are too voluminous for my pages.
Suffice it to say that the predictions were in  most cases de-
livered before all Rome, and fulfilled often in direct opposition
to all immediate prospects.   I may name one or two.  Accius
Naevius, a celebrated  augur,  gave advice  very much  against
the wishes  of  Tarquin the  Proud, who, thereupon, to  show
the emptiness of the augur's  pretences, said,  'Come,  you di-
vine, discover by your augury whether what I am now think-
ing of can  be  accomplished.'  The augur, after consulting
his signs, replied that it could.   ' Well,' said  Tarquin,' what
I was thinking of was, whether you could  cut a whetstone in
two with a razor.   Take these, then, and perform what your
birds pretend to be practicable.'  On which, it is asserted,
that Accius without any difficulty cut  the whetstone in two
with the razor.
   Junius Brutus, going with the sons of Tarquin to Delphi
to consult the eracle, they were told that the  one of the three
who, on their return, first kissed his mother, would  become
ruler of  Rome.   On  landing  Brutus, perceiving the real
meaning of the oracle,  pretended  to stumble and kissed the
earth.  The oracle was  fulfilled.  In the  year of Rome 364,
a plebeian,  Marcus Caedicius, gave information to the tribunes
that, in the dead of the night, a voice louder than that of a
man  announced an invasion  by  the Gauls.   The Gauls were
 scarcely known by name at Rome at that time, and the mean
condition of this man  caused the information to be treated
 with contempt.  Notwithstanding, the Gauls came  and de- 
THE  SUPERNATURAL  IN LIVY.
383
vastated  Rome.  During the Gallic  invasion, in a  single
combat between Marcus Valerius and a gigantic Gaul, a crow
settled on the  helmet  of the  Roman, and  remained there
during the conflict, occasionally  flying  at the eyes of the
Gaul.  After the Gaul  was killed, the crow soared away out
of sight,  and the young Roman had Corvus added to his
name, which descended  to his family in memory of the divine
interposition.  Marcus Valerius Corvus became the greatest
general of the age, and interrex of the nation.  In the year
of Rome 452, the augur  having been  found guilty of falsify-
ing the responses, was placed in the front of the battle against
the Samnites, and there  fell at the very  first throw of the
spears.  Hannibal had a dream in which Jupiter called him
to invade Italy ; he  thought he obeyed, but looking  behind
him  saw a large serpent, and  all behind that dark, stormy,
and  full of thunder—a most exactly  prophetic dream.   In
the year of Rome 540, there was an order to seize all books
of soothsaying amongst the people ; and in one of them, be-
longing to Marcius, a  celebrated  soothsayer, was found  a
distinct prophecy of the battle  of Cannae, so fatal to the
Romans, and announcing all  its  horrors.  In the year of
Rome 544, before the two consuls proceeded  to meet Han-
nibal, near Brnttiura, the  aruspices prognosticated the loss
of the heads  of the army; and  one consul, Marcellns, was
killed by an ambuscade, and the other, Crispinus, was mor-
tally wounded.  In 569 of the year of Rome, the people sud-
denly saw with  surprise the fulfilment of a prophecy of the
soothsayers — namely, that tents would inevitably  be pitched
in the forum.  This had been regarded  as  the omen of an
invasion, but they were relieved by seeing the people pitch
tents there to defend themselves from rain during the public
games.  On all perplexing public occasions the books of the
Sibyls were carefully examined.  The history of Livy extends
over nearly 600 years, from the building of the city to the
days of the proud pre-eminence of the commonwealth.  Nie-
buhr, the  rationalist German  historian, has  picked  all the 
 384         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

 supernatural recitals out of him as myths — a mode of pluck-
 ing history which leads to  results  worthy  of notice.   The
 same  system may be applied to the Bible,  and what then ?
 This is probably what he intended.   But what shall we  say
 to Tacitus — Tacitus, whose annals  and history relate to the
 times  of the highest civilization and knowledge of Rome ? —
 to Tacitus, the  Roman so-called rationalist, whose skepticism
 has been asserted by some  to  amount almost to atheism ?
 We find this man of the world, this man of high rank,  the
 son-in-law of  Agricola, this philosophic historian, who  for
 his sagacity, strong reason, and lucid style,  has been placed
 on the very highest elevation  of historic fame,  setting out
 with a bold  avowal that all preternatural  manifestation is
 mere superstition.
   On  Tiberius retiring  from Rome to Capreae, the sooth-
 sayers declared that, from the position of the  planets, the
 emperor could  never return to his capital.  On this Tacitus
 remarks that ' the art of such as pretend to see into futurity
 was discovered  to be vain and  frivolous.  It was  seen how
 nearly truth and falsehood are  allied, and how much facts,
 which happen to be foretold, are involved in darkness.  That
 Tiberius would  return no more was, as prophesied, verified
 by the event; the rest was altogether visionary, since we find
 that, long after that time, he appeared  in the neighborhood
 of  Rome,  sometimes on the adjacent shore, often  in  the
 suburbs, and died  at last in  extreme old  age' (Annals,
 iv.  58).
   Now all that the astrologers predicted was that Tiberius
 could  never return  to his capital,  and the event was,  as
 Tacitus says,  exactly  fulfilled.   He approached  the city,
 entered the suburbs, appeared on the opposite shore of the
 Tiber,  but never entered  the city.  All  that the soothsayers
said was true ;  what was  visionary, were the expectations of
the people, that he would die soon; but this  he did not,
making the wonder the  greater  that he  should  live eleven
years and yet never again return to his capital.  The reason- 
PREDICTIONS BY TIBERIUS.             385
ing of the historian  is  here  extremely feeble, but it is not
long before events compel him to abandon his skepticism and
confess the truth of prophecy.   In the sixth book, twenty-
first section  of the Annals, he  relates that Tiberius, during
his youthful days in  the island of Rhodes, studied judicial
astrology under the instruction  of one Thrasullus.   He had
adopted  a summary  way of testing  the  prescience of the
astrologers whom he consulted.  After  one of  them  had
prognosticated to hira future events,  he  sent  him to  walk
with a powerful servant along the edge of  the cliff on which
his house stood, and there the man pushed the  astrologer
over the cliff into the  sea.   That he should not have seen
his own  approaching fate, was, to Tiberius, a proof of his
ignorance of the future.   But  Thrasullus not only saw by
the stars what concerned Tiberius, but his own instant dan-
ger, and  from  that hour Tiberius had  the  most perfect faith
in him.
   In  stating this case,  Tacitus, at first, is so  much  shaken
that he  says  he cannot decide whether  there  is truth in
such matters or not;  but he reviews the different systems of
philosophy as to the future of man, and the question whether
the gods take  care  of him or not, and he finally admits that
'though  what is  foretold and  the  events that  follow  may
often vary, the fallacy is not to be imputed to the art itself,
but to the vanity of pretenders to  a  science respected by
autiquity, and in modern times established by  undoubted
proof.  In fact, the reign of Nero was foretold by the son
of this very Thrasullus.'   Nay, Tacitus shows us that Tibe-
rius had  a  vein of prophecy  in himself.   He  foretold to
Galba that  he  would ' have a taste  of sovereignty,' which
long after was so exactly fulfilled that he  arrived at the im-
perial dignity,  only to be  assassinated after a reign of eight
years, and whilst he was warned by the augur, from  the
appearance  of  the sacrifice,  that treachery menaced  hira.
Tiberius also  foretold  to Caligula that  he  would  kill the
youngest of Tiberius's  grandchildren — a boy —and would
   I.— 33 
386
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
himself  also be assassinated, "both of which predictions were
fulfilled.   Tacitus  relates prodigies during  the reigns of
those devils  incarnate,  Tiberius,  Caligula,  and  Nero, as
amazing as  those  related by Livy, and  these  occurring in
the face of all Rome, and with expiations in consequence by
the senate.   He says  that Nero seut  to  Delphi to consult
the oracle, which'warned him to be aware of seventy-three
years.   As he thought this meant that he should live to that
age, he  was greatly elated ;  but it  referred to Galba, before
whom he fell, and who was seventy-three when he succeeded
him.
   But we  may pass over all other preternatural  events to
note the miracles  by Vespasian, attested both by Tacitus
and Pliny.   The  fortunes of Vespasian  and his  son Titus
had been early prognosticated.   ' Oracular responses,' says
Tacitus, 'foretold the grandeur of the family,' and Suetonius
confirms this, saying, in Tito  s.,  2,  that  'Narcissus, the
favorite freedman,  consulted a soothsayer  as  to  the fortunes
of Britannicus, the son of the Emperor Claudius, who gave
an unfavorable answer, but  added that Titus would become
emperor.   Britannicus was  poisoned by  Agrippina to make
way for  her  son Nero.   Titus reached the imperial throne.
Titus, on his way to Syria, enquired at the oracle  of Venus
in Cyprus, and had the former response confirmed.   But the
most remarkable  spirit  manifestations came to his father
Vespasian.   These which I shall  now quote verbatim from
Murphy's translation of Tacitus (History iv.)  have proved
most difficult of digestion to the whole literary world.   They
have endeavored to get rid of these troublesome miracles by
asserting that they were played off to flatter  the  emperor.
But, in  the first place, Vespasian was the least accessible to
flattery  of the whole succession of Roman  emperors.   He
hated anything like sham or over-delicacy ; told his cour-
tiers when they smelt of  perfumes, he  had rather they smelt
of garlic, and was pleased  when Arsaces, King of Parthia,
addressed him by  letter,  'Arsaces, king of kings, to Flavius 
MIRACLES BY VESPASIAN.             387
Vespasianus.'   In the  second place, Tacitus  wrote  his
account o/ these miracles from eye-witnesses after the family
of Vespasian  had ceased to reign,  and when  people were
only too glad to reap up  the follies or assumptions of the
emperor.   Hume, in his Essay on Miracles (192, 193),  de-
clares these miracles the best attested in  all history.  ' The
gravity, solidity,  age, and  probity of so great an emperor,
who, through  the  whole  course  of his life, never  affected
those extraordinary airs of divinity assumed by Alexander
and Demetrius.   The  historian,  a contemporary  writer,
noted for candor aud veracity, and withal  the  greatest  and
most penetrating genius perhaps of all antiquity, and so  free
from every tendency to superstition and  credulity  that he
even lies under the contrary imputation of atheism and pro-
faneness.   The persons from whose  testimony he related the
miracles, of established character for judgment and veracity,
as we may well suppose, eye-witnesses of the facts, and con-
firming their verdict after the Flavian family were despoiled
of  the  empire, and could  no longer give a reward as the
price of  a lie.   Truly,  no evidence can  well be supposed
stronger.'
   ' Vespasian spent some months at Alexandria.  During his
residence in that city, a number of incidents  out of the ordi-
nary course of nature, seemed to mark  him as the particular
favorite of the  gods.   A  man  of mean condition,  born at
Alexandria, had lost his sight by a defluxion  on his eye.  He
presented himself before Vespasion, and falling prostrate on
the  ground, implored  the  emperor  to  administer a  cure for
his blindness.  He came, he  said, by the admonition of Serapis,
the god whom the superstition of the Egyptians holds in the
highest veneration.  The request was, that the emperor with
his spittle would condescend to moisten the poor man's  face
and the balls of his eyes.  Another who had lost the use of
his hand, inspired by the  same god, begged he would tread
on the part affected.  Vespasian smiled at a request so absurd
and wild.  The wretched objects persisted to  implore his aid. 
388          HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

He dreaded the ridicule of a vain attempt;  but the importu-
nity of the men and the crowd  of flatterers prevailed upon
the prince not entirely to disregard their petition.
   ' He ordered the physicians to consider whether the blind-
ness of the one and the paralytic affection of the other were
within  the reach of human assistance.  The result  of the
consultation was, that the organs of sight were  not so injured
but that, by removing the film  or cataract, the patient might
recover.  As to the disabled limb, by proper  applications and
invigorating medicines,  it was  not impossible to restore it to
its former tone. The gods, perhaps, intended a special remedy,
and chose Vespasian as  the instrument of their dispensations.
If a cure took place, the glory of it would add new lustre to
the name of Caesar; if  otherwise, the poor  men would bear
the jests and  raillery of the people.   Vespasian, in the tide
of his affairs began to think that there was nothing so great
and  wonderful, nothing so improbable or  even incredible,
which his good fortune could not accomplish. In the presence
of a prodigious multitude, all erect with expectation, he ad-
vanced with an air of severity, and hazarded the  experiment.
The paralytic  hand recovered its functions, and the blind man
saw the  light of the sun.  By living witnesses who were
actually on the spot, both events are confirmed at this hour,
when deceit and flattery can hope for no reward.'
   Strabo and Suetonius, in Vesp. s. 7, confirm this account
and the following.   Tacitus proceeds :
   ' Vespasian was now determined to visit the sanctuary of
Serapis, in order to consult the god about the future fortune
of the empire.  Having given  orders to remove all  intruders,
he entered  the temple.   While he adored  the  deity of the
place, he  perceived, in  the midst of his devotion,  a man of
principal note amongst the Egyptians advancing behind him.
The name of this person was Basilides, who at that moment
was known to bo detained by illness at the distance of many
miles.   Vespasian  enquired of the priests whether they had
seen Basilides that  day in the temple.   He asked a number 
      THE SUPERNATURAL IN PLINY  THE YOUNGER.   389

of others, whether they had  met him in any part of the city.
At length, from messengers whom he despatched on horseback,
he received certain intelligence that Basilides was no less than
fourteen miles distant from Alexandria.   He, therefore, con-
cluded that the gods had favored him  with the preternatural
vision, and from the import of the word Basilides (royal) he
inferred an interpretation of the decrees of heaven in favor
of his future reign.'
   This last is an instance of that most curious of all phenom-
ena, the apparition  of a living person, of which so many
cases have occurred at the present day. I may here state that
not Vespasian alone amongst the Roman emperors, but Con-
stantine and Hadrian possessed the gift of healing by laying
on of their hands, and Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, could cure
affections of the spleen by passing his foot over the  sufferers
as they lay prostrate.
   The last Roman author whom I will cite shall be Pliny the
Younger.  He had perfect faith in dreams and  apparitions,
and gives the following proofs of their real significance — of
special ones amongst the former, and  of the actuality of  the
latter.  He says  his uncle  Pliny wrote twenty books on the
German wars, being a complete view of them ; and this he did
from a suggestion of Drusus Nero in a dream, who implored
him to rescue his memory from  oblivion, which he did, Drusus
having been very victorious in  those wars.
   In b. v. epistle v., he says that Caius Fannius had written
three admirable books of the reign and cruelties of Nero, but
that Nero appeared to him in a dream ;  came and sat down
upon the bed ; took  the first book that he had published of
his  crimes, turned it over from beginning to end,  and then
retired.   That  this dream  was  repeated three nights,  and
 Fannius  considered it a prognostic that he should not finish
that history; for, as it  happened to all those who offended
 Nero in  his  lifetime, that they were soon cut off, so he be-
lieved that it would  be the case now.   And it was so: he
soon after died, and left the work a fragment.
        33* 
390          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

   In a remarkable letter on apparitions, b. vii. let. xxvi., he
relates the following cases.   Curtius Rufus, in the lowest con-
dition of his fortunes and reputation, attended  a governor to
Africa,   In the decline  of the day, as he walked in a portico,
the figure of a woman larger and fairer than anything human,
presented herself to him.  She told him, trembling as  he was,
that she was Africa;  that  he should go  to Rome;  be ad-
vanced ;  should return governor of that province, and should
die in it.  All  this exactly followed.   The same figure ap-
peared to him as he landed at Carthage, intimating his death,
which very soon followed.
   Pliny tells us that Athenodorus the philosopher arriving in
Athens, noticed a large  and fair  house shut up and deserted,
having a notice posted upon it that it was for sale.  The
terms required were so low that Athenodorus felt that  there
must be some  mystery about it;  he enquired and found that
a spectre, drawing a chain along with him, had driven every
one from the house who had lived in it.  He bought it, and
sate up waiting to see the apparition.  At midnight the ghost
appeared, clanking its irons, and beckoned to him;  he made
a  motion that  it  might wait, and went on with  his writing.
This was several  times  repeated, till at length Athenodorus
rose and followed it into an inner court, where it  vanished. He
laid some weeds and leaves on the spot, went to bed, and the
next day waited on the magistrates, and desired them to send
men  to search the spot.   This was done, and  a  skeleton,
bound  up and  entangled with chains, was discovered, and
duly interred; and the house was  free from the apparition
ever, afterwards.
   Pliny relates that two of his servants, one after the other,
saw figures come  into their room in the night and cut their
hair, retreating, as they had entered, through the window.
In the morning, each time, it was found  that the hair had
really been  cut.   Pliny  regarded this as a sign that he had
escaped a fatal  accusation by Domitian, for people capitally
accused let their hair grow.   Domitian died at this time, and 
           X11E iMURDER OF  CAESAR  PREDICTED.       391

in his escritoire was found  an information against Pliny by
Carus, which would have produced his execution had Domi-
tian lived but a few days longer.
   Dreams and apparitions of  most remarkable character took
place amongst the Romans.  Every one knows that Calphur-
nia, the wife of Julius Caesar, had clear prescience of his mur-
der in a dream.  The night before his assassination, as they
were in bed, the doors and windows of the room flew open
at once.   Caesar found his  wife soon  after in her sleep utter-
ing groans and  inarticulate words.   She was dreaming that
he lay in her arms murdered.   She, therefore, entreated him
most earnestly not to go to the senate the next day; or, if he
was not moved by her  fears, to seek some surer divination.
He, therefore, offered sacrifices, and the augur found the to-
kens ominous.  He resolved not to go out;  yet Decimus
Brutus, who came  in,  and who, as well as  the  other Brutus
and Cassius, was one of the conspirators, prevailed on him to
go.   On  leaving his house he saw a certain soothsayer who
had before warned him to beware of the ides of March, and
 said to him laughing, ' The ides of March are come,' to which
 the soothsayer  answered in  a  low voice, 'Yes, but they are
 not gone.'   Caesar went on,  and was assassinated.
   Brutus himself, according to Plutarch, was visited  by the
 ghost of Caesar, which said,  ' I shall meet thee  at Philippi;'
 and at Philippi Brutus fell.   Marius dreamed  that the bow
 of Attila was broken, and that night Attila died.  Caracalla,
 according to Dion Cassius, was foreshown his own assassina-
 tion in a dream ;  and Sylla was warned of his death in the
 same manner, the night before it happened.
    Pliny and Strabo say,  that in the time of Augustus  the
  priests of the goddess Feronia, at the foot of Mount Soracte,
  walked with their naked feet over a great quantity of live coals
  and cinders (Strabo lib. v.).   Strabo also  says (lib.  i. 12, p.
  811) that the priestesses of  the goddess Asta Bala, in Cap-
  padocia, used to  do the same.  The same fiery ordeal was in
  use amongst the Brahmins of India in the most ancient times. 
392         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

  Macrobius (Saturnal 1.  i. c. 23) says  that the  Emperor
Trajan, being  about to invade Parthia from Syria, was de-
sired by'his friends to consult the oracle of the Heliopolitan
god, which was enquired of by sealed packets.  Having little
faith in this method, he sent a sealed packet and desired a
sealed  reply.   On  opening the reply, he was astonished to
find it contain  a mere blank paper, which  was the true reply,
for his packet had contained  only a blank paper.   It may
be imagined that the priests had contrived to break the seal
and see the interior of the packet, and, therefore, the experi-
ment does not  seem so striking as at first sight, though sim-
ple  clairvoyance  was  enough for the occasion;  but the
second message was answered more remarkably still. Trajan,
being struck with the first response, sent to ask whether he
should return  to Rome after finishing the war;  and he re-
ceived  a vine cijt into pieces, and wrapped  in a linen cloth,
intimating that thus his bones would be carried back to Rome,
which was the  case.
  But  what is very curious, the Romans at  a later period
(rather the Greeks living among them), had  discovered the
mode of conversing with spirits by the alphabet, supposed,
like so many other things, to be a discovery of to-day.  This
is the account  of it by Ammianus Marcellinus.
  ' In  the days of the Emperor Valens, a. d. 371, some Greek
cultivators of  theurgy, who in  those days usurped the name
of philosophers, were brought  to trial for having attempted
to ascertain the successor to the throne by magical arts. The
small table or tripod, which they had  used for this purpose,
was produced  in court, and, on being submitted to the tor-
ture, they gave the following  account of their proceedings :
—" We constructed, most venerable  judges, this  small, ill-
omened table  which you  behold,  after the likeness of the
Delphian tripod, with the wood of laurel, and with solemn
auspices.   Having duly consecrated it by muttering over it
secret spells, and by many and protracted manipulations, we
succeeded at  last in making  it move.   Now,  whenever we 
   SPIRIT-CONVERSE THROUGH THE ALPHABET ANCIENT.  393

consulted  it about secrets, the process for making it move
was as follows : —It  was  placed in  the centre of a house
which had been purified  by Arabian  incense on every side ;
a round dish, composed of various metallic substances, being,
with the needful purifications, set upon it.   On  the circular
rim of this dish the four-and-twenty characters of the alphabet
were cut with  much art, placed at equal intervals, which had
been measured with  perfect exactness.  A  person  clad  in
linen garments, in slippers also made of  linen,  with a light
turban wreathed  about his  head, and carrying  branches  of
the sacred laurel in his  hand, having propitiated the  deity
who gives the responses, in certain  prescribed forms of in-
vocation, according to the rules of ceremonial science — sets
this dish upon the tripod, balancing over it a suspended ring
attached to the end  of a very fine linen thread, which  also
had  previously undergone  a  mystic  initiation.   This ring,
darting out, and  striking at distant  intervals the particular
letters that attract it, makes  out heroic verses, in  accord-
ance  with the  questions  put, as complete  in mode  and
measure as those uttered by the Pythoness, or the oracles of
the Branchidae.
   ' "As we were, then and  there, enquiring who should suc-
ceed the present emperor, since it was declared that he would
be a finished character in every respect, the ring, darting out,
had touched the  syllables ©EO, with the final addition of the
letter a (making Theod), some one  present  exclaimed  that
Theodoras was  announced  as appointed  by fate.  Nor did
we pursue our enquiries  any farther into the  matter, for  we
were all  satisfied that Theodoras was the person we  were
asking for.'"
   Theodoras was a  man  most popular for his virtues and
talents, and, on this evidence, Valens, in his jealous fear, had
him put to death.  But  the person who really succeeded was
Theodosius, the  letters of whose name were the same, so  far
as the spiritualists had read them out by the ring; as Gibbon,
who notices this case, remarks.  This transaction is confirmed 
394         HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.

by the early church  historians, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozo-
men, &c, who add that Valens put  to  death many distin-
guished men whose names commenced with the letters Theod,
and the pagan philosophers into the bargain.
  It is clear from this  that our American friends of to-day
must  surrender the  discovery  of conversing  with spirits
through the  alphabet to the ingenious Greeks of the fourth
century.  The tripods in the oracular temples  had often been
seen to dance about without apparent aid ; but this  is, I be-
lieve, the first instance  of the introduction of the alphabet
into spiritual seances, and proves that this  mode was well
known amongst the later Romans.
  We ought not to close  this chapter without adverting to
the  universal  belief of  the Romans  that every house  and
every city—nay, every nation, had its Lar, or  Penas—plural
Penates — its Lemur,  or guardian spirit.  They had also
Lares Marini, which presided over the  sea and sea-goers.
Plautus represents the Lar as hereditary :

                  I am the family Lar
       Of this house whence you see me coming out.
  k     'Tis  many  years now that I keep and guard
       This  family: both father and grandfather
       Of him that has it now I aye protected. 
SKEPTICS  THE MISBIRTHS OF HUMANITY.      395
                 CHAPTER  XVI.

SHOWING  THAT  IN ALL THESE NATIONS THE SAME  FAITH
     AND  PHENOMENA REMAIN TO  THE PRESENT TIME.
Caprice and effervescence are the characteristics of human
opinion: stability and eternity  of the  laws of God.  Like
Himself, they are the same yesterday, to-day, and forever.
                                            Iren.s:us.
     WE have now traversed all the great natipns of antiquity,
      and have found everywhere the most profound belief
in the action of invisible spirits,  guiding  the destinies of
man,  and revealing by seers, by oracles, by Pythonesses, by
Sibyls,  by dreams  and augurial diagnoses,  glimpses  of the
events which-awaited him.  Everywhere the soul of man has
acknowledged the impingement of soul in  disembodied life,
and,  like Thisbe, has listened  through the broken wall of
flesh  to the whispers of the near yet unseen Pyramus.   It is
true that, in al) lands and ages, there has been a small sec-
tion  of the  race  defective in  the  spiritual vision and the
spiritual  ear, as  there  have been  others  defective  in the
corresponding  outer  organs.   There  have been  the  blind
and the deaf, physically and spiritually.   But blindness and
deafness, whether psychical or  organic, have been the condi-
tion, not of  the race, but of the deficient of the race; in the
language of the common people, it has been ' not all right
 with them.'  Whether these  unfortunates have  borne the
name of Sadducees,  Pyrrhonists,  skeptics, atheists,  or ra-
 tionalists, they have always been few till our  time,  when
 Protestantism,  which Goethe   has represented  under the 
396         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
character  of Mephistophiles, the principle  of denial,  has
produced  these  deaf, dumb, and paralytic  progeny in  an
alarming brood:
      Mephistophiles:—Ich bin der Geist der  stets verneint.
                    I am the spirit that still denies.
  Such, as  we have  seen, was  not  the case of old.   But,
says Dr. Ennemoser, ' There  are  now false critics, who, like
false prophets, rather accuse  the whole former world of folly
and deceit than confess that they do not know how to grap-
ple with undeniable facts, and who, with their own  statutes
and  foolish  imaginations, fall far short of the prudent sim-
plicity of  old, which taught harmony and  a  regular corres-
pondence  between the visible and invisible world ; which is
truly little acknowledged because, besides the clear brilliancy
of the outward eye, it requires a certain unction of the inner,
whilst  the mere  6to<.%cia tov xospov do not contain the  sub-
stance and origin of things.'  He adds, ' There are so-called
philosophers who admit of no  miracle, and who pass  their
lives in believing nothing — not even  believing what  they
see,  especially if they do not understand it.   The most  won-
derful point about these is that their own braiii is  not a mir-
acle to them.'
   But all history shows that these men are the misbirths of
humanity.  Every age  and  every nation is,  on  the whole,
loyal to the instincts of eternity.  My proofs of this in an-
tiquity I could have  extended  to numerous and  large vol-
umes.   I  might  have passed into the  nations of less  bulk
and figure in the world, but the result would  have been the
same.   Tacitus found spiritual  belief in Velleda,  and other
Alrunes  or  prophetesses  amongst the Germans ;  it was the
same with the Druids  of Gaul and  Britain, amongst the
Scythians according to  Suidas;  and if we turn now to the
descendants of these great nations we find  them still holding
fast the great truth of spiritual communion, in spite of the
Mephistophilean philosophies of the present day.  For nearly
two thousand years, sound in heart  and intellect, they have 
       SPIRITUAL BELIEF EXISTS IN ALL  NATIONS.     397

held fast this faith.  It still  exists in its strength and its
weakness, in  good and in evil, in its highest and lowest con-
ditions, exalted as  worship, or degraded as sorcery.   It is
still Spiritualism, though, in many cases, its actuation is by
spirits of an  indifferent or earthward order.  It has, in many
places, changed the objects of its faith ; but the faith in in-
visible life and motivity, in spiritual princedoms, principali-
ties, and powers,  colaborators and instructors, is  the same.
Greece  and Rome  have abandoned their  ancient  gods, but
they, through the vast regions of their supremacy,  hold firm
the belief in the miraculous heritage of Christendom.   Over
the immense  East, whether Mahomet, Brahma, Buddha, or
Zoroaster dictate  the  creed,  the  belief in  the miraculous
foundation of their religion is immovable; and men seek, by
deep devotion and stern asceticisms,  a spiritual union with
God, which lifts them into the unseen, and makes them free-
holders in its marvellous  activities.  Through all these re-
gions, Spiritualism, in its less exalted form — that of magic
— is as universal as the light.   Magic may there, indeed, be
said  to have thoroughly debauched the human mind;  for
whatever bases itself on low influences becomes a weed, and
infects where it was  meant to elevate.  Wherever Moham-
medanism prevails  its followers imagine magic limitless in its
powers, and missionaries tell  us that this is the  almost in-
surmountable impediment to their  work of Christian conver-
sion.  The  miracles of Christ are at once  accepted as the
results of magic,  and, therefore,  as nothing very remarkable,
and  as, consequently, no reason for  assigning to  his faith
any superiority over their own.  We cannot open a book of
travels to any part  of the East without meeting  with  the
evidences of all-prevailing magic.  Some of the most strik-
ing examples of this have been collected by the  very able
and  industrious  writer giving  the initials 'T. S.' in  the
 ' Spiritual Magazine ' (vol. ii. p. 107).  As they may be read
there, and still more  fully in the works there  referred to,  I
shall satisfy  myself with a short narrative of them.   The first
   I—34 
398         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

relate to Egypt, and are familiar to many readers already in
Dr. Joseph Wolftvs 'Travels and Adventures,' and in Mr.
Lane's 'Modern Egyptians.'   I have Wolff's  own account
now before me, as well as the article of ' T. S.'  I shall add
some other particulars.  Wolff was asked, in Egypt, whether
he believed in magic ? He replied,' That he believed in every-
thing to  be found in the Bible : in magic, witches, wizards,
in spirits in the air, in instigations of the devil, and that he
can still enter heaven to calumniate man,  for all these things
are stated as truths in the Bible.' He says, ' He was dining
with Mr.  Salt at Cairo.  There were  present Bokhti,  the
Swedish  Consul-General, a nasty atheist and infidel;  Mr.
Ross, of  Rosstrevor, in Ireland, a gentleman of high char-
acter ; Spurrier, an  amiable English gentleman ;  and Car-
viglia, captain of a  Genovese  merchant-vessel — the only
believer in magic there, except Wolff.  Salt complained that
he had been robbed of some silver spoons, knives and forks.
Carviglia  said he must send for the magician.   Salt and  the
rest laughed, but they sent for one.   He came, and prom-
ised to corife again the next day at noon, when 'they must
have  ready a pregnant woman, or a boy seven  years of age.
Bokhti, the scoffing infidel, declared that he would unmask
the impostor, and brought a boy who had come only a week
before from Leghorn, who had  never been out of his house,
knew nobody there, and spoke no word of any  language  but
Italian.  The magician appearing with a large pan in  his
hand, poured  some black liquid into it, and  bade the boy
stretch out his hands.  The boy not knowing Arabic,  did
not move, but Wolff  interpreted in Italian  what the ma-
gician said, and the  boy stretched out his hands.   The ma-
gician put some of the black liquid upon his palm, and asked
him if he  saw anything.  This being  interpreted, the  boy
shrugged his  shoulders and  said, ' Vedo niente 1'—I see
nothing.    This was repeated twice without  any effect, but
the third  time the  boy suddenly exclaimed,  ' Io vedo uu
uomo 1'—I see a man !—at which all started and, Wolff says, 
MR. LANE  AND THE MAGICIAN.           399
trembled.   More black liquid was poured into his hand, and
he screamed out, ' lo vedo un uomo con un capello !'—I see a
man with a hat! — and from repeated enquiries, he  so  com-
pletely described a servant of Salt's that all exclaimed, ' San-
tini is the  thief!'  Santini's  room  was searched,  and the
missing articles found.   Wolff says no one  except the boy
could see anything.
   Mr. Lane, hearing of this transaction from Mr. Salt, was
desirous to  test the matter himself, and was introduced  to
the magician, an Egyptian Sheikh, who professed to produce
the wonders through the agency  of spirits.   Every one  is
familiar with what took place.   A boy suddenly brought in
from  the street from amongst a number playing there,  on
having the black liquid poured into his hand, and the magi-
cian muttering words and burning successively slips of paper
in a  chafing dish, on which Arabic figures  were inscribed,
saw first a man sweeping, then a number of flags brought, a
tent pitched, a troop of  soldiers ride up and encamp round
the Sultan's tent: then a bull brought, killed, and cooked :
then  the Sultan arrive on horseback,  describing his dress;
alight and take coffee, &c.   Afterwards Mr. Lane  desired
that Lord  Nelson should be called, and the boy described
the great admiral both as to  his person, his dress, and his
one arm, the empty sleeve being attached to the front of his
coat.   The boy, of course,  knew nothing of Lord Nelson.
He afterwards described an Egyptian gentleman resident  in
England, and who had adopted the English  dress.  This
person had long been an invalid.  The boy described him  as
lying on a couch wrapped up, pale, and in all respects  accu-
rately.  Mr. Lane gives other instances equally remarkable.
   Mr. Kinglake records, in his ' Eothen,'  that he  was not
successful  in  obtaining such results.  But what is remark-
able, he offered a sum of money to the magician to raise the
devil, and  he engaged to do  it on a certain day; the day
arrived, and not the magician, who had died of cholera 1 He
was considered the chief magician of Cairo. 
400         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
  Mrs. Poole, the sister of Mr. Lane, in her 'Englishwoman
in Egypt,' written more than two years afterwards, says that
her brother thought he had then become  able to explain the
mystery of these things, but his  explanations are only that
there are leading questions, good guesses, and that the inter-
preter helps in the  matter.  Every one  must see that these
explanations  explain nothing,  for in the  case  of Mr. Salt's
spoons, the  boy had only Mr.  Wolff for  interpreter, and
knew nothing of Santini, the thief whom he described.  But
M.  Leon  Delaborde purchased the secret from Achmed, a
magician, and found it connected with physics and magnet-
ism.  He says he could produce the same results through
boys who could know nothing  whatever of the persons and
things  which they saw ;  and though he could produce them,
he  could  not  understand  how.  The phenomena were  ob-
tained  by him either in his  own room, in the open air, or in
a boat  on the Nile.   ' The  exactitude and detailed descrip-
tions of  persons, places, and things could by no possibility
be  feigned.'  Baron Dupont obtained the same results  in
Paris through  persons  selected  on the  moment from  his
audience: but these persons, unlike the boys in Egypt, did
not recollect  what they had seen when the crisis was over.
An English gentleman, quoted by the ' Quarterly Review'
in its notice of Mr. Lane's book, bears testimony to the ab-
sence of all collusion betwixt the magicians and the boys
selected  as mediums.  He says  that it  is  only those who
know little or nothing of these things who think they can so
readily  explain  them.  He distinguishes these magicians
from the  swarm of clever  conjurors who abound in Egypt,
and says they do not perform for money, and the one  whom
he  employed was a physician  attached to the Cadi's  court.
He adds, that on one  occasion M. Delaborde asked  for  'le
Due de  la Riviere.'  The  boy said a cavass was  gone for
him, and  he  appeared in  uniform, with silver lace round  his
collar, cuffs,  and hat.  M. Delaborde said that was most
extraordinary,  as M. de la Riviere  was the only officer in 
         EXPERIENCES OF DR. WOLFF AND  OTHERS.    401

France whose uniform was decorated with silver lace.  It is
the uniform of le grande veneur.  The boy being asked how
he knew that the Sultan — for  such was the  representation
— had sent for M. de la Riviere, he said he saw the Sultan's
lips move, and heard the words  in his ear.
  A Nubian  boy was brought in, and one of the party asked
for Shakspeare.   The boy  burst  into  a   laugh  and said,
' Here is  a man who has his  beard  upon his lip, and  not
upon his chin ;  and he wears on his head a candeel (a glass
lamp shaped like  a tumbler with a  narrow bottom) upside
down.'   On  being  asked by another person,  'Where did he
live ?' he replied, ' It was in an island.'
   Mr. Salt,  Dr. Wolff, Lord  Prudhoe,  Major  Felix,  and
others subjected the Sheikh  to long and severe examination,
and all came to  the conclusion that what  occurred in their
presence was effected  by  supernatural power.   Miss Mar-
tineau, as well as others — as is the  case in clairvoyant  and
spiritualistic  seances frequently — met with failure ; but she
took the  place  of  the boy,  and soon found  such influences
operating  upon her, and such figures passing before  her
eyes, that she cut short the  operation, and  concluded that it
was mesmeric, of which there  can be no  doubt, for in all
spiritual developments mesmerism has its agency.
   Mr. Lane  says that magic, in Egypt, is  divided  into  two
kinds — 'il'wee or high, soof'lee or low;  the  one is believed
to depend on the agency of  God and good spirits,  the other
on the devil and evil spirits, or  unbelieving genii.  Mr. Lane
gives this example  of the power of Aboo Roo-oo's, a very
celebrated magician of the  holy kind : — 'One of the most
sensible of ray Mooslim friends in Cairo informs me that he
once visited Aboo  Roo-oo's, at Desoo'ck, in company with
the Sheikh El-Emee>, son of  the Sheikh El-Erae£r El-Kebee'r,
Sheikh of the sect  of the Ma'likees.  My friend's companion
asked their  host to  show  them some proof of his skill in
magic; and  the latter complied  with  the  request.  "Let
coffee be  served to us," said the Sheikh El-Emeer, "in  my
       34* 
402         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
father's set of finga'na and zurfs, which are at Musr."  They
waited a few minutes, and then the coffee was brought; and
the Sheikh  EbEmeer looked  at the finga'ns and zurfs, and
said they were certainly his father's.  He was next treated
with sherbet, in what he declared  himself satisfied  were his
father's ckool'lehs.   He  then  wrote a letter to his father,
and giving it to Aboo Roo-oo's, asked him to procure an
answer  to it.   The  magician  took the  letter, and  placed it
behind a cushion of  his dewa'n, and in a few minutes after,
removing the cushion, showed  him that  this letter was gone,
and that another was in  its place.   The Sheikh El-Emeer
took the latter, opened  it and read it;  and found in it, in a
handwriting which, he said, he could have  sworn to be that
of his father, a complete answer to what he had written, and
an account of the state of his family, which he proved on his
return to Cairo, a few days after, to be perfectly true.'
  We  are assured, by those familiar with the Arabs, that
their familiar belief in genii, good  and bad, and  their inter-
course  with  men,  is  faithfully described by the 'Arabian
Nights.'  They have  not  altered a whit in their opinions on
this head.   As for efreets, or  earthy spirits,  they  seem to
abound  as much in the East as they do here.   Mrs. Poole, in
her' Woman in Egypt,' gives us a most extraordinary account
of what happened to themselves,  that  is,  herself  and Mr.
Lane, her brother.  She professes not to believe in ghosts; but
if we are to credit her own account, and  she says we may en-
tirely, what does she believe in  1  They took an eligible house
in  Cairo, but in a  few days were greatly disturbed by con-
tinual knockings ; and the servants began to quit them. Two
maids left almost directly.   They said the house was haunted
by efreets.   They themselves were  greatly disturbed by these
knockings;  and one  morning, hearing  a noisy  dispute be-
twixt their servants, they demanded the cause of it, and were
informed that there  was a devil in  the bath ; that nobody
had been able to live in the house for a long time on account
of this devil; only one  person, who had soldiers  and slaves, 
A HAUNTED HOUSE IN CAIRO.           403
had been able to hold out nine months—for the rest a month
at most was enough.
  This was agreeable intelligence, and it now came out that
a former tenant of the house had murdered a poor tradesman
who had entered the court, and two slaves, one of these a
black girl, in the bath.   The efreet continued to annoy thera
by marching round and round the gallery leading to the dif-
ferent rooms, as if in clogs:  striking the doors as he passed,
as if with a brick.  They hunted after him, but could detect
nobody.   One night a servant shot at the efreet,  and for
some time  they were quiet; but it began  again.  The loud
knockings went on ; heavy weights  seemed to fall under the
window of the room  in  which they sate;  there were loud
tramplings,  as in clogs, and blows on the  doors  and the
water-jars placed in recesses  in the gallery.  These noises
continued the  greater part of the night, and one servant left
after another.  At length they were compelled to quit too;
and Mrs. Poole,  at the  time  of her writing, said that six
other families had gone in, and were driven out again, their
windows and  their china being  demolished even in the day
time.  Mrs. Poole, though not professing to believe in ghosts,
is obliged to confess that' 't is passing strange.' The strangest
thing is, that people can witness such things, and yet have
any doubt about the cause.
   Throughout Syria, once the country of wonderful divine
manifestations and of inspired prophets, the same belief in
spiritual agency, and the extraordinary proofs of it, prevail
as in Egypt.  I need not do more than refer the reader to an
article in ' Once  a Week' for  September, 1860.  The writer
is an Englishman  who had spent six months amongst the
Druses of Mount Lebanon.   He informs us that  these  re-
markable people are divided  into 'Akkals, or initiated, and
Djahils, or .the uninitiated.'   The Akkals are not, however,
separated from  the rest of  their countrymen by their initia-
tion, but in other respects are found living  like  the rest.
Amongst the most famous  of the  Akkals was the Sheikh 
404
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
Bechir, who afterwards  fell in the terrible outbreak between
the Druses and Maronites.   The writer says that an English
gentleman long a resident in Lebanon, and  whose word may
be implicitly relied on, gave him the following information :
That he had seen the  Sheikh cause a stick to advance alone
across the room, and an empty jar move across the room to-
wards a full one, and  the full one advance to meet it, and
pour its  contents into it, when each jar returned to its own
place.  At the request of this gentleman, he caused a jar full
of water to spin  round on the floor without any one touching
it, till the water inside made a singing  noise as  if boiling.
He could cause the  jar,  by  certain motions  of his hands and
certain recitations, to move or stop as he pleased.  He did
this, however,  with reluctance, because he made it a rule not
to have anything to do with unseen powers, except for "heal-
ing sickness.   He assured  this gentleman, on being  ques-
tioned, that his  power depended  on  spiritual agency.  His
cures, the same  gentleman  asserts from his own knowledge,
were most  wonderful, especially of epilepsy and  confirmed
madness.   These cures he performed by merely making mes-
meric passes, and repeating incantations ;  or, if at a distance,
he sent a piece of twine for the patient to tie round his wrist,
and the fever  or sickness vanished.  The wife of a relative
of the Sheikh's had  been  afflicted with  a  tumor for three
years.  The European doctors at Beyrout had tried all their
power without effect, when the Sheikh was  consulted.   The
Sheikh shut himself up in  his  room for thirty days, living
only on bread and water, before he attempted the cure. What
European doctor would do  as  much for any patient in the
world 1   He then took the case in hand, and making several
passes over the  woman's body, she was in five minutes per-
fectly  cured.   The Englishman had the account from  the
husband of the woman himself.
  'But what surprised  me'more,' he says,  'than anything
else about the  Sheikh, was the singularly correct  description
he gave  of countries,'towns, and even  portions of towns 
       THE SHEIKH BECHIR--INDIAN ASCETICISM.    405

which he could have never seen —having never been out of
Syria — and even of some of which he could  not have  read
much.   He can only read Arabic, in which tongue  works of
information are very limited, and the  number of Europeans
with whom he has  had any intercourse whatever  might be
counted on his ten  fingers.   Moreover, he had  never  been
farther from his native,mountains than Damascus or  Bey-
rout, and that for only short periods, and at long  intervals.
He asked me to name any towns in which I had resided, and
which I wished him to describe to me.  I mentioned, amongst
others, London, Edinburgh, Calcutta, Bombay, Cabool,  Can-
dahar, and  Constantinople, each of which he literally painted
in words to the very life, noticing the various kinds of vehi-
cles, the dress of the different people, the variety of the build-
ings, and the peculiarities of the streets, with a fidelity which
would  have been a  talent in any one who had visited them,
but in a man who had never seen them was truly marvellous.'
   If we proceed to India, the case is the same there.  In the
country of  Calanus,  the philosopher who, on his funeral pile,
told Alexander of  Macedon that on the third day  he would
be in the spirit-world with him, the same spiritual  clairvoy-
ance, the same prophetic powers, still live.   Whether the
people are  followers of Brahma, Buddha, or Mahomet, they
all  pay homage to  the invisible, and  believe  it present and
active around  us.  What India  was in religious belief thous-
ands of years ago it is still.   The  Fakirs, Djogis, and other
devotees seek the same inward illumination,  enjoy the  same
divine vision, and relate the same  spiritual wonders as  their
predecessors ages ago.   According to Colebrooke, the philo-
sophic conditions of the Brahmins are transferred from gener-
ation to  generation, maintaining this contemplation in full
activity.   They endeavor to draw to  the central  light  of
Brahma, and pray  that  he  who illuminates the seven uni-
verses  may unite their  souls to his.   They have prescribed
forms for the shutting up the outer senses, and the descend-
ing into the great cavity of the  heart, where burns  the small 
406        HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

flame of Atma —the soul.   By this light they come to see
Brahma himself, and so become Brahma-Atma.  Atma re-
veals the form of Brahma in a light a hundred times greater
than  that of the sun.  In this  sublime condition all things
become visible to them — the past, the present, the  future.
There is neither  day nor  night,  nothing  but Atma :  and
Brahma is everything.  The same is the doctrine of Buddha,
who was the  ninth incarnation of  Vishnu ; by contempla-
tion and rejection of the outward  men must  finally be ab-
sorbed  into the Deity, and become one with hira.  As it is
said in  the Gospel, Christ himself must in  the end yield up
all to the Father, and God be all  in all.
  Even in the  lower forms of Indian spiritualism the Hindoos
believe  in  the direct agency of spirits.   ' Ghost-seers  and
astrologers,' says Forbes,  'are innumerable in  India,  and
millions believe in their supernatural powers ;  many wander
about like  gipsies,  but a  few Brahmins  use the prophetic
powers with a certain dignity and modesty.'  Even the Indian
jugglers are held to have  intercourse with demons ;   and
though many of their feats are done by legerdemain, in others
they themselves claim to require the aid of  spirits, and after
thousands of years no one has ever yet succeeded in explain-
ing some of them on any other principle.
  In  'All the  Year  Round,' April 19, 1862,  one of those
swallow-the-camel-and-strain-at-the-gnat writers  who make
the most violent efforts to avoid a plain fact which they do
not happen to  like, has alluded to these Indian jugglers, as a
proof that everything in the world that his poor brain won't
take in is jugglery.   He confesses  that the mode  of effecting
this jugglery has never yet been discovered.  Surely, if it be
discoverable, it is time ; for these things have been doing in
India, before the open public, for many thousand years.   He
contents himself with saying simply and exultingly, ' It is all
jugglery ! sheer jugglery !'  But he does not explain it.  The
only wonder is  that he has not included the miracles of Christ
as clever jugglery.   The Mahommedans say they were mere 
INDIAN  JUGGLERS.                407
magic, and it is just as easy for this voluble asserter to say
they were jugglery.  A thing  is soon  said, but we wait for
the proof, and  this writer confesses  we must  wait in  vain.
Well, an Indian juggler appears in a public square.   He  is
as naked as Adam, except for a tight cloth round  his loins.
He has a light tallish basket in his hand.   You look into it
—it is quite empty.  Around the square stand closely ranked
a regiment of soldiers.   The juggler points to the ground,
where there is  nothing but the earth.   You may examine it
as much as you please ; dig  it up if you like.   He lays his
basket over it, and  with a few gesticulations, and a few ' waff!
wuffs !' or sounds  very like that, he  takes up the basket, and
behold something is  sprouting out of the earth.  It may be
a bean, a mango, or a pine-apple. From time to time he  puts
his basket over it, repeats his gesticulations and form of words,
and on each time of removing the basket the plant has rapidly
growji. Thus, in a very little time, it shoots up, flowers, goes
into fruit, the fruit ripens, and you eat it.  I am speaking of
what thousands have witnessed ; and of what friends on whom
I can rely have themselves seen and  tasted.   This the camel-
and-gnat writer in 'All the Year Round' says is mere sleight
of hand;  but then it has never been  explained, and cannot
be explained !   On what ground, then, does he pronounce it
sheer jugglery ? The jugglers themselves say that they require
spirit aid.  The feat of Houdin at Saint Cloud, which he gives,
was either done by great previous preparation and collusion
on  the part of the people of the palace, or it was not mere
sleight of hand. To send several handkerchiefs out of a room,
in the presence of spectators, into  the palace  garden, intro-
duce them into the tub of an orange tree guarded by officials,
into an old* iron chest, and under the root of the tree, requires
something more than the cleverest legerdemain.  The camel-
and-gnat writer might as well tell us that the Fakir who was
buried, at Lahore  in 1837  for six weeks,  in a closed chest,
suspended in a vault, that the white ants might not eat him,
and was thus buried, and taken up again in the presence of 
408         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
British officers, kept his life in him by legerdemain.  Captain
Osborne, who, with other officers, saw the man thus closed up
and the lock and seal of Runjeet Singh put on the tomb ;  and
Sir Claude Wade, who saw the opening of the tomb, on which
the seal  had not been broken, nor  the lock forced, nor the
mortar with  which the door up to the lock was covered over,
disturbed ; who saw the chest opened, and the stiff, emaciated
body of the  man  resuscitated by a careful process, have re-
lated the whole circumstances, which may be found in Captain
Osborne's book, and in Dr. Braid on Trance.
   Such cases of interment have often taken  place in  India;
the tomb sunk into the ground having  been covered  with
earth, sown  with  barley, and the barley  grown and  reaped
before  the  tomb was  reopened.   To  this  easily satisfied
writer, where  it suits him to be satisfied, it would  suffice to
say ' mere jugglery !'   But this and the like reasoners, who
always sit with  monkey grimace on one  horn of dilemma,
leave out of their account the tens of thousands of cases
where most wonderful spiritual phenomena have taken place,
and still  take  place, in private families and amongst friends
who are neither conjurors  nor  legerderaainists;  who could
neither explain nor perform the least of  Houdin's, Robin's,
or  Frikell's  tricks, but who daily witness  things much more
surprising, and more morally satisfactory.  To  have daily
conjuring in thousands of sober  and unartistic families, with-
out conjurors, is a feat beyond Houdin, or this clever  writer,
who rejects  Spiritualism, but believes  in  old  ballads, as  the
' Oak Tree of Ashwell Thorpe in Sir Thomas Knevet's Time,'
or Jack-the-Giant-Killer, as facts.
   All of us  have seen more clever legerdemain than we can
explain ; but when  phenomena  take place in the»absence of
any legerdemainist — and  spirits announcing themselves,  and
often showing themselves, bring intelligence from the unseen
world, and  from friends long ago  departed into  it, which
your own secret consciousness attests must be true, which is
based on facts known only to yourself,   and which effects 
THE  BRAHMIN'S  PREDICTION.           409
great and good changes which mere legerdemain, however
perfect, never does — it  requires no  conjuror to tell you the
mighty difference betwixt the two things.   To return to our
Indians.
  Equally wonderful with what we have already stated are
the prophecies which the most respectable Brahmins  some-
times make.  My space does not allow me more than a single
mention of such prophecies, and I take the following from
'Forbes's Oriental Memoirs,' London, 1813.
  When Forbes arrived at Bombay, in 1766, there were three
parties in the government.  At the head of one stood Spencer,
at that of the  other Crommeliu ; the third  was under the
leadership of Mr. Hodges, who, it  was said, had been de-
prived of the  governorship in  an unjust  manner.  Hodges       *
had on this  account written a violent letter to the governor
and council, and was, as he refused  to  retract what he had
written, removed from his governorship at  Surat, recalled to
Bombay, and dismissed  from the  Company's  service.  The
government of  Bombay  had sent a report of these things to
England.   Mr. Forbes thus continues :
   'A Brahmin, when a  young man,  had made the acquaint-
ance of Hodges.   He was but little known to the English,
but was  much celebrated  amongst the  Hindoos,  at least on
the west coast of India.    I believe that Hodges had become
acquainted  with  him when he was  English Resident in
Bombay.   Both became as intimate friends as the difference
in  religion and caste would permit.  The Brahmin, an up-
right man, often admonished his friend  never to depart from
the path of virtue, which would lead him to success and
honor, and  to  eternal happiness.   To  impress this exhorta-
tion upon his  mind, he  assured him that he would rise from
the situation he filled in  Bombay to higher posts in the Com-
pany's  service ; after that, he would be Collector of Telli-
cherry and  Surat, and lastly, Governor of Bombay.
   ' Mr.  Hodges often   mentioned  these  prophecies  to  his
friends,  but himself paid little attention  to them   It was
   I.—35 
410        HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
only when he gradually rose to those posts of honor that he
placed more confidence  in  the Brahmin, particularly when
he was named Collector of Surat.   When, however, in conrse
of time,  Spencer was named Governor, and Hodges was dis-
missed from the service of the Company, he sent to the pro-
phet, who was at that time living at Bulpara, a sacred village
on the banks of the Tappj.   He went to Hodges and listened
to the disagreeable end of his hopes and endeavors.   Hodges
finished  by saying that he should sail for Europe, and, there-
fore, did not expect the brilliant fulfilment of the Brahmin's
promises.   It is even said that he let fall some reproaches
during the conversation, on account of those  deceitful pro-
phecies.  The Brahmin listened  to  all with  the  greatest
composure, did not move a muscle, and said, " You see this
ante-chamber, and that room to which it leads.   Mr. Spencer
has reached the  portico, but will  not enter the palace — he
has placed his foot on the  threshold,  but  he will  not enter
the house.  Notwithstanding  every appearance to the con-
trary, you will reach the honors and fill the  elevated post
which I have foretold, and to  which he has been appointed.
A black cloud hangs before him."
   'This surprising prophecy  was soon known in Surat and
Bombay;  it was the topic  of conversation in every society.
Hodges had, however, so little confidence in it, that he prepared
to commence  his voyage  home.  In the meantime, however,
the despatches had been received from Bombay, and an an-
swer was returned with unusual rapidity.  The Court of Direc-
tors condemned Spencer's proceedings  as Governor of Ben-
gal, reversed his appointment to the governorship of Bombay,
dismissed  him from the  Company's service, and Hodges be-
came Governor.
   ' From this time the Brahmin gained the greatest influence
over his mind, and he undertook nothing of importance with-
out having asked the counsel of his friend.   It is remarkable
that  the Brahmin  never prophesied  anything beyond the
government of Bombay, spoke of his  return home; but it 
THE  BRAHMINS  PREDICTION.            411
was well known  that he maintained a mysterious silence re-
garding the time after the year 1771.  Hodges died suddenly
in the night  of February 22, 1771.'
  Forbes gives a second account of the predictions of this
Brahmin to  a widow who was mourning for her son.   The
prediction was literally fulfilled.  A third is as follows: — 'A
few months before my return from  India,  a gentleman who
was to fill a high  situation iu India, landed in Bombay with
his wife.   Both were young, and they had one child.   He left
his wife with a friend, and went to Surat to arrange his house-
hold : she was to follow him in a short time.  On the evening
before  she was to set out for Surat, the friend with whom
she was staying  entertained a large company,  and  amongst
others the Brahmin.  He introduced him to the company, and
begged him in joke to foretell the future of the young couple
who had just arrived from Europe.  To the astonishment of
all present, particularly the young lady, the Brahmin cast a
look of pity upon her, and said,  after an impressive pause, to
the master of the house, in Hindustanie, " Her cup of happi-
ness is full, but rapidly vanishing.   A bitter draught remains,
for which she must be prepared."   Her husband had written
that he would be at Surat with a barque.  He was not how-
ever there, and in his stead came one of my friends with the
message that her husband was dangerously ill.  When she
arrived he was suffering from a violent attack of fever, and
died in her  arms.  I returned  in the  same vessel  with the
widow.  During the passage the anniversary of her husband's
death took place.'
  The Karens, an extensive tribe who inhabit the mountains
of the south  and east of Burmah  proper, and the provinces
of Tenasserim, extending into the western portions  of Siam,
and northward into the Shyans,  have had the Baptist Ameri-
can Missionaries laboring amongst them.   The Rev. Howard
Malcolm and the Rev. Dr. Francis Mason, two of those mis-
sionaries who have lived long enough amongst them to know
them well, assert that Spiritualism is universal amongst them. 
412          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

Their only religious teachers are  a kind  of prophets called
Bokhoos, who predict events, and  are greatly venerated  by
the people.   Besides these there is a more numerous body of
wizards called Wees, who profess to cure diseases, to know
men's thoughts, and to converse with the  spirits.   The Rev.
Howard Malcolm gives the people  a high character for truth
and honesty.   Dr. Mason was much opposed to their Spirit-
ualism, which, he says, has  existed amongst them from time
immemorial.   The Karens, he  says, believed that the spirits
of the dead are  ever abroad on  the  earth.  ' Children, and
great grandchildren,' said the elders,  ' the dead are amongst
us.   Nothing separates us from them but  a white veil.  They
are here, but we  see thera not.'  Other genera  of spiritual
beings are supposed to dwell also upon the earth, and a few
gifted ones (mediums, in modern language) have eyes to see
into the spiritual world, and power to hold converse with par-
ticular spirits.  These accounts are confirmed by others.
  Amongst the  scientific  residents of  Ghizni,  during  the
reign of Mahmoud, was Abu Rihan, sent by Almanor from
Bagdad,  where  he was venerated almost  as the rival of
Avicenna.  Besides metaphysics and dialectics,  he studied
deeply what are now called magical arts.  Of this, D'Herbelot
relates a remarkable  instance.  One day  Mahmoud sent for
him, and ordered him  to deposit, with  a  third  person, a
statement of the precise manner in which the monarch would
quit the hall where he then sate.   The paper being lodged,
the king, instead of going out by one of the numerous doors,
caused a breach to be made in the wall, by which he effected
his exit; but how was he humbled  and amazed when, on the
paper being examined, there was found a specification of the
precise spot  through which he penetrated.  Hereupon the
prince with horror denounced Rihan as a  sorcerer, and com-
manded him to be instantly thrown out of  the window.   The
barbarous sentence was presently executed, but Rihan,  who
had also seen this event, had had  a soft cushion laid there,
so that he fell unharmed.   He  was then called before Man- 
CHINESE MAGIC.                 413
moud and requested to say whether, by his boasted  art, he
had been able to foresee the proceedings of the day.  The
learned  man here desired his tablets to be sent for, in which
were found regularly predicted the whole of the above  sin-
gular transactions.
  Proceeding to China, we find the ancient spiritualism there
equally  active now.  As the Chinese have always been more
addicted to the  pursuits of  ordinary life than to religion, in
spite  of the  efforts  and doctrines of Lao-tse,  Kong-fu-tse
(Confucius),  and Buddha, whose faith spread from India to
China,  their  spiritualism  is  rarely  of a  high character.
Since the very earliest ages, according to Kircher and other
missionaries,  they have cured  sickness by the laying on of
hands, by breathing on the  affected spot, and, according to
Osbeck  and  Torceno,  they strengthen  weakly persons  by
gentle pressure  on various parts of the body by the hands.
These are mesmeric operations, but they combine with them
consultation with  the  spirits of their ancestors, and  receive
prescriptions  from them.  It is part of the duty of the Em-
peror to observe dreams, and the  phenomena of nature, as
well as the eclipses and positions  of the stars,  and then to
become  the public oracle.   In all  cases of difficulty he must
consult  the oracle of  the Tortoise or the plant Tsche,  and
act accordingly.   As they have no regular priesthood, they
are the  more  disposed to seek information from the spirits
of their ancestors.  M. Hue says the followers of Confucius
have  temples, chapels, and oratories, dedicated  to  their an-
cestral spirits and to Confucius, in which are large  tablets
of chestnut inscribed with large characters, indicating that
these  tablets  are the thrones or seats of the particular spirits
to whom they are inscribed. They  address the spirit to whom
the tablet belongs, and they inform their ancestors thus of
whatever has  happened to  their descendants.   The Tao-tse
of China, Cathay, and the  other Eastern countries, have
priests and  priestesses, who maintain celibacy,  and practise
magic, astrology, and necromancy.  Mr.  Medwin  confirms
      35* 
 414         TTTRTORV OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

 this, saying the followers of Taou believe in demoniacal pos-
 session, and  are said to perform wonderful  effects  through
 magic.   They profess to have intercourse with, and control
 over, the demons of the  invisible world; and another writer
 says they say there is a kind  of spirit called the Wu-tung,
 which makes rappings about houses, and can cause flames to
 be seen.
   Mr. Newton, an American writer  in the  ' New England
 Spiritualist,' says  that some years ago the spirit of a China-
 man  presented himself  repeatedly at  a  spiritual  circle in
 Boston,  and congratulated them on  being able  to pursue
 their investigations into the spirit-world in security, as  such
 was not the case  in  his native country.   That  spiritual in-
 quiries were extremely ancient  there, but  of late more ex-
 alted spirits had  come forward, and endeavored to impart
 light to  his  countrymen,  to give them purer religion and
 freer government.   That this had excited the opposition of
 the governing classes, who had  put the inquirers  to death,
 and himself amongst the rest.   He  announced a rebellion as
 having broken out, and this  he did  two weeks before  the
 news  of  this rebellion had reached America.   But  perhaps
 Dr. Macgowan, through the  'North China Herald,' and by
 lectures in this country,  has thrown the fullest  light on the
 present  ordinary  spiritualism  of the  Chinese.   Table-turn-
ing,  he  says, was  frequent  amongst them, the  table being
placed upside down,  and boys  placing their hands on the
legs.  To enable the table to  move freely,  it was placed on
a couple  of chopsticks laid  at right angles on a mortar or
bowl.  They obtained writing by making a  clumsy sort of
planchette  of a  basket, turned  down, and  a reed or  style
thrust through it,  so as to write when the planchette  moved,
in sand, dust, or flour sprinkled  on  a  table.   They then in-
voke the spirit, and generally not in vain, the basket often
moving rapidly, as it rests on the tips  of the  fingers of two
boys, and writing perfectly intelligible  communications.   Dr.
Macgowan says it was in great  practice when he arrived at 
SPIRITUALISM  TN  TARTARY.
415
Ningpo in 1843, and was the revival  of  an old custom.  A
club of  literary  graduates were  in  the Pau-teh-kwan, a
Taouist temple, near the temple of Confucius, for practising
the Ki, as  the ceremony was called, and many and marvel-
lous were the revelations said  to  be  obtained.  They were
required to desist by an intendant, on the  pretext that evil
might  result from these communications with  the Kwei, or
spirits.   The reason of this soon became apparent.   A Mr.
Li, in the village of Manthan, near Ningpo, was greatly con-
sulted.   He  gave prescriptions from the Kwei,  which,  Dr.
Macgowan says, were found to be  quite proper; but he also
announced from  the  spirits a new pretender to the throne.
Three of the invoking party were arrested  and beheaded;
Li escaped, but was  obliged to conceal himself.  This per-
fectly  corroborates what  the  Chinese  spirit announced in
 America,  anticipating  the news by the mail.   At first the
communications  of this'spirit were treated with incredulity,
but Mr. Newton says they were found, in course of time, to
 be  perfectly in accordance with  the events afterwards re-
 ported in the newspapers  of a  revolution in China, and the
 tortures and death inflicted on those  concerned in it.
    M.  Hue says also, that in the thirteenth century Rubruk,
 the French Ambassador to the Khan of Tartary, witnessed
 magic 'by  rapping  on  a table.'  This was done  by the
 soothsayer, who was  summoned on the occasion of the illness
 of the mother of the  Khan.   He says that table-rapping and
 table-turning were, at that period, familiar  to the Mongols
 in the wilds of Tartary, and that the soothsayers frequently
 asked the spirits by the sound of the tambourine.
    Dr. Brownson says, that in Cochin China it is customary
 to invite the tutelar genii of the towns and villages to games
 on public festivals, who give  visible  proofs of their presence
 and strength.   He  says  he  saw a  loug  heavy barge,  with
 eight  benches  of  oars, pushed along by  the  spirits  on the
 floor  of a large hall without any water.
    We might follow the like manifestations over all  the far 
416          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
East.  Travellers  find them  in Cochin  China ; in Thibet,
M.  Hue gives us striking instances of spiritualism amongst
the people there.   The Grand Lama is said to be afresh in-
carnated as one dies, and the priests discover him by spiritual
direction.   He gives  other instances of spiritualistic prac-
tices.  We have already seen  them amongst the  Siberian
Scharaans, who use narcotic substances to  procure clairvoy-
ance, in which state they relate the most remarkable things
passing even  in distant countries.   This  acts like the  Soma-
drink which the Hindoos use for  the  same purpose.   It is
the same amongst the East and West  Jakes, the Samoyeds,
the Tunguses, Burates, Katschinzes, and other north Asiatic
people (see Pallas's Travels).   The Lapps vaticinate in the
same manner, passing, they say, according to Hcigstrom,  out
of the body, entering  the regions of the dead and conversing
with  them.   They are so  easily excited  that they are often
thrown  into a trance  state in the church when the  preacher
speaks too loud or gesticulates too much.
   The  Turkish  Dervishes see visions after their whirling
dances.  From Europe and Asia we might pass  to Africa,
for the  African race is especially susceptible of the spiritual-
istic influences, and has  carried with it  to America and the
West Indies  its wild  Obi  faith.   Friends of mine who have
gone much  amongst  the Negroes in  the  Southern  States.
found them full of spirit-influence and illumination, and many
of their women  acting as fortune-tellers  to the white  ladies.
Negroes are  asserted, by those who know thera, to be much
opener  to such influences for good and  for evil than the white
race; whence they throw themselves with so much ardor into
religious exercises and  excitements.   Those who  would see
what are the practices and opinions of the Abyssinians, may
consult Brace's Travels in that country.   I shall in the next
chapter give  a  separate recital of the ancient  and present
spiritualism of the American  Indians, from north to south of
that great continent.   They who would  see the full account
of the spiritualism of the Lapps both in ancient and modern 
LAPLAND MAGIC.
417
times, may consult the translation of Schnffer's  History of
Lapland,  published in Loudon in  1704.   To this is added
the travels of Dr. Alof Rudbeck in Lapland.   From these
authorities we learn  that  the Lapps, from the most ancient
times, have held familiar intercourse  with spirits.   Olaus
Magnus, Olaus Petri, Tornaeus, and other old authorities, are
adduced.   The Lapps consult their spirits by means of a
magical  drum, having a  number  of hieroglyphical  figures
written  on the skin with  which it is covered.  They have a
brass ring or a lump of brass in  shape  of  a frog,  which they
place on the skin or parchment of the drum, and beat it with
a sort of hammer.  As the brass dances about they note the
figures over which it passes, and from this learn the meaning
of  the response.   After  the  drumming,  the magician  falls
down, places his face downwards, lays  the drum on the back
of his head and sleeps, and in this sleep  gives spirit-messages.
Sometimes he  does  not use the drum, but leaps about, and
twirls round exactly like the Schaman of  Siberia, then falls
down in  convulsions, and so  becomes clairvoyant.  In this
state the Lapps relate what is taking place at great distances,
see apparitions and visions, dictate cures, and foretell future
events with wonderful  accuracy.   As  the  Chinese call their
spirits Kwei, the Lapps call theirs Sveis.   No woman is al-
lowed to touch or go near the drum.   Like Epimenides, and
 Hermotinus, the Greeks,  and Swedenborg, they have persons
 who say their spirits  leave their bodies,  the bodies lying as
 if  dead during the time, and the faces  black.  They lie often
 for twenty-four hours thus, and in other cases for days. They
 profess to have power over the winds, and the  captain and
 scientific men sent on  a voyage  of northern discovery in 1647
 by King Frederick III. of Denmark,  give an extraordinary
 account of their purchasing a wind.   Where, indeed,  are we
 to go not to find the most palpable traces  of this great law
 of humanity ?  It lives amongst the Esquimaux of the north ;
 it is everywhere  amongst the Australian natives at the antip-
 odes.  The native Australian will not turn out at night be-
 cause the Dibble-Dibble is abroad.   Like the  highest and 
418         HJSTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.

the lowest of his human brethren, he feels the proximity of
the spirit-world;  and he is not philosopher enough to deny
the instinct of universal  nature.  He touches by his spirit
the spirit of the departed, and  lest he should bring hira start-
lingly before him in his  solitary traverses of the forest, he
never more mentions the name of the dead ; and if that name
be synonymous with any other word in the language, as Fox,
Wolf, and Smith are amongst us, he expunges that word from
his language, and coins a new one.
   In  many  of these countries spiritualism has sunk  to  its
lowest grade, mere  magic and  necromancy, but even these
are spiritualism, though in  disgrace.   They are moved by a
spirit-power as real, though not as pure and exalted, as in
its highest and  holiest forms.  Just as the power of life is
equally shown in health and disease — life still, whether nor-
mal or abnormal.  In the very lowest manifestations, as in
the Australians and Negroes, the eternal law is still operating(
though under mountains of incumbrance.  0 ! sacred force
of eternal inextinguishable truth in the simplicity of nature,
which  lives through the universe, as lives the electric fire,
though appearing to sleep all around us, yet waking now in
a spark, now in a thunderstorm ; yet in its faintest movement
acknowledged by all manner of men, all ages, all creeds —
denied by none but the philosopher who has lost this instinct
in addition to those which we all have lost—a blindness from
too much light, the  ophthalmia of the schools.
   In here taking leave of the pagan world, and all its confu-
sion  of gods, now melting  into each other, now branching
out of one another in endless chaos, we may, in the following
passage from the Vishnu Purana, show, what we have so often
found  asserted  by the pagan  philosophers, that the  whole
race  of such gods consisted but in the various powers of na-
ture  deified:
   ' I adore him, that first of gods, Purushottama, who is with-
out end and without beginning, without growth and without
decay, without death ; who is substance that knows not change.
I adore that one inexhaustible spirit who assumed  sensible 
           BRAHMINICAL CONCEPTION OF DEMY.       419

qualities; who, though one, became many, who, though pure,
became as it were impure, by appearing in many and various
shapes ; who is endowed with  divine wisdom, and is the  au-
thor of the  preservation of all creatures.   I adore him who is
the one conjoined essence and object of both meditative wis-
dom and active virtue.....I constantly adore hira
who is entitled heaven, air, fire, water, earth, and ether ; who
is the bestower  of all objects which give  gratification to the
senses ; who benefits mankind with the instruments of fruition ;
who is perceptible, who is subtle, who is imperceptible.  May
that unborn, eternal Hari, whose form is manifold, and whose
essence is composed of both nature and spirit, bestow upon
all  mankind that blessed state  which knows neither birth nor
decay' (p. 665).
   This is a striking exponent of the highest idea of pagan-
ism.  In the words of Dean Trench, ' Though Paradise was
gone, man  kept in his  soul the  memory of that which once
had been, and with the memory, the confidence and the hope
that it would be again ; that, perhaps, though his eyes could
see  it nowhere, it had not wholly vanished  from the earth.
If there bloomed  no Paradise  in  the present, at least there
lay one before  him and behind.  If it lay not near him, yet
in  the distance—in  the happy  Iran — among the remote
Hyperboreans — in the land of the blessed Ethiopians.'
   ' Yet,' in the words of the same writer,' each of the great
divisions of the Gentile world had but a fragment, even in
thought, of the truth; the Greek world, the exaltation of
manhood ;  the Oriental — the glorious humiliations of God-
head ; and thus  each of these,  even  as a  speculation, was
 maimed and imperfect' (Unconscious Prophecies  of Hea-
 thendom, 58).
    It was in the gospel alone that the perfect whole was to be
 found, and in the next chapter but one we shall have arrived
 at the times of the gospel.   In the next we must notice more
 particularly the spiritualism which has remained amongst the
 aborigines of  America to the present moment;  for it de-
 mand a chapter of itself. 
420          Ul.STORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
              CHAPTER  XVII.

THE  SUPERNATURAL AMONGST THE AMERICAN  INDIANS.


  ' Gehst du in die naturgemasse Urzeit zuriick, in der noch
  nicht die sogenannte Cultur das innere Leben bedeckt, in die
  Geschichte des alten Testameutes, oder auch jetztnoch dahin,
  wo die Wiege dos Menschengeschlechtes war, wie zum Oriente,
  so  siehst du auoh dort noch Ueberrcste, die von gleichem in-
  nerem Leben  bei  gauzen Volkstammen zeugeu, das wir bier
  nur als  Krankheit an Einzelnen zu  beobachten glauben.'—
  Dr. Justinus Kerner.
   LET us now take a glimpse of Supernaturalism amongst
     the aborigines of the New World ; for it is and has been
for ages prevalant there.  All the traditions of the American
Indians describe their ancestors as coming from the  north-
west.  They came from Asia by traversing  its north-eastern
regions, and descending on America somewhere near Behring's
Straits.  They brought with thera eastern characteristics both
bodily and mental.   Many persons have  been so struck by
their resemblance to the Jews, not only in their features, but
in their customs and traditions, that they  have assumed them
to be the lost Ten Tribes. William Penn was  so much struck
by this likeness that he says  they continually reminded him
of faces in Monmouth Street.   Elias  Boudinot wrote a large
work to prove the hypothesis of the lost Ten Tribes being
found  in America.    He showed that the  North American
Indians had traditions of the  creation of  a  first human pair;
of God  walking  with them in their  state of innocence;  of
their fall;  of the flood ;  of the law being given  from Heaven
amid thunder and lightning.   That they  had in some tribes
« 
         ORIGIN OF THE AMERICAN ABORIGINES.       421

an ark which they bore about with them ; had their feasts of
new moons, and other customs ;  and had so true an  idea of
the spirituality of God that, whilst other heathen nations had
idols, they  would suffer no image of Him to be made.
  All these are curious  coincidences at least; but  as people
have imagined the Ten Tribes to be found in so many places,
in India especially; as Mr. George Moore and as Dr. Thorne
are now endeavoring with much learning to prove that we,
the Saxon  tribes, are also the lost Ten Tribes, and therefore
our great destiny; I will leave this point,  and merely assert
what appears unquestionable, that the American aborigines
are an  Eastern people,  who  brought with  them  the most
ancient Eastern traditions.  So strong is their hereditary
tendency that they still  lay their heaven in the West.  They
say spirits follow the sun. They brought all  the ancient spirit-
uality with them, and retain much of it to  this day ; though
dimmed and debased, yet strong and extraordinary.  They
have  their prophets, or medicine-men; their  dreams and
seances ; their firm persuasion of the visitations  of good and
bad spirits.
   If this  portraiture of the American natives, North and
South,  seems too highly pitched, to those  who  have known
the diminished tribes only since their debasement by contact
with the vices and sensuality of the white  invaders, we  have
only to turn to the accounts of those who saw them  in  their
fresh glory, when the Spaniards first arrived — to Columbus,
Herrera, Oviedo, Gomara—aye, even to Cortez and his com-
panions ;  to the words  of Peter Martyr:   ' Dryades formo-
sissimas, aut nativas fontium nymphas, de quibus fabulatur
antiquitas, se videsse arbitrati sunt.'  ' Their forms,' continues
the same  authority, ' were light and graceful, though dusky
with the warm hues of  the  sun ; their hair hanging in long
raven tresses on their shoulders, unlike the  frizzly wool of the
Africans, was  tastefully braided.   Some were  painted, and
armed  with a light bow, or a fishing spear ; but their counte-
nances were full of gentleness and kindness.'
   I.—36 
422          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
   Such was  the opinion of the North American Indian by
West the painter, who saw  an image of him in the Apollo
Belvidere.   Such is that of Captain, since Sir George Head,
of the natives of Brazil and Chili,  In his 'Rough Notes'
he says, 'They  are  as fine  a  set of  men  as  ever existed,
under  the circumstances in which  they are placed.   As to*
their  strength,  which we  have been  taught is deficient, I
have seen them  in the mines using  tools which our  miners
declared they had not strength to work with, and  carrying
burthens which no men in England could support.'
   Such are the  races that Europeans have exterminated as
much as possible, as  inferior.   Of their moral qualities, all
the discoveries bear testimony  to their being far more hon-
orable,  hospitable, and kind than their so-called  Christian
oppressors.   Columbus himself exclaims, ' This country ex-
cels  all others  as far  as  the day  surpasses  the night in
splendor.   As for the people,  they love their  neighbors as
themselves ; their conversation is the sweetest imaginable ;
their faces always smiling, and so gentle and affectionate are
they  that I swear to your Highness  there is not a  better
people in the world.'
   Once, as I had the pleasure of gazing on the South Amer-
ican  coast, warm  with its tropical  hues, and  the  feathery
palm hailing us  from the hills, I could not but  think in deep
sadness of that  great  mystery  of Providence by which this
simple race was  hidden for ages from  the rest  of the  world,
and then suddenly exposed to  the hordes of Europe, rabid
with thirst of gold.

             Much of a Southern Sea  they spake,
             And of that glorious city won,
             Near the setting  of the sun;
             Throned  in a silver lake;
             Of seven kings in chains of gold,
             And deeds of death by tongue untold :
             Deeds such as breathed in  secret there,
             Hast shaken the  confessor's chair.
                                                 Rogers. 
               ANCIENT AMERICAN PROPHECIES.          l"-!3

     As I wandered amongst their hills and plantations, gor-
   geous with the most resplendent flowers, over which  sported
   the  magnificent blue* butterflies, large as a  man's  hand,
   amongst which the pale-green chameleon threaded its  way;  as
   I traversed their palm-groves and orange-groves, their fields
   luscious with the ripe pine-apple ; their thickets of  melting
   bananas, above which towered the lofty cocoanut and bread-
   fruit trees, the  mango and the custard-apple, and  saw the
   swart children of Africa  torn  from  their country to supply
   the labor  of a half-extinct race, I could not help  remem-
   bering the words of Jeremiah, ' Woe is me, my mother, that
   thou hast born me a man of  strife, a man of contention  to
   the whole earth.'
     Yet the terrible catastrophe of the invading and desolating
   race had been for ages revealed to the  Mexicans by  spiritual
   agency.  It had hung, like a huge sorrow,  over thera  for
   generations.   Throughout the  American natives,  indeed,
   ancient prophecies prevailed, that a new race was to corae in
   and seize upon the reins  of power ;  and before it the Ameri-
   can tribes were to quail  and  give place.  In the islands, in
   Mexico and Peru — far and wide — this mysterious  tradition
   prevailed.   Everywhere  these terrible  people were  expected
   to come  from  towards the rising of the sun ;  they were to
   be  completely  clad, and to lay waste every country before
   thera, — circumstances so entirely verified in the Spaniards
   that the spirit of the Americans died within  them  at  the
   rumor of their approach, as  that of the nations of Canaan
   at the  approach of the Israelites coming with the irresistible
   power and the awful miracles of God.  For ages these pro-
   phecies had hung  on the public mind, and  had been sung
    with loud lamentations  in the public  festivals.   Cassiva, a
    great  Cacique, declared, after much fasting and watching,
*  that one of the Zemi had revealed this terrible event to him.
    These Zemi  were  spirits whom  they believed  to be  the
    messengers of  God, and of whom, contrary  to the  practice
   of  the North  American  Indians, they made  little  images. 
424         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
Montezuma, though naturally haughty  and warlike, on the
fulfilment of this ancient prophecy, lost all power of mind,
and exhibited nothing but utter vacillation and  weakness,
whilst Cortez, in defiance of his order, was advancing on his
capital.  When he and his companions appeared at the gates
of Mexico, the young exclaimed, ' They are gods ! ' But the
old shook their heads, saying, ' They are  those who were  to
come and  reign over us.'
   Clavigero relates the following facts of Paranzin, the sister
of Montezuma.   She, to all appearance, died and was buried,
but broke from her tomb, and returned to the world.   She
said :  ' In my death-state I found myself placed in the centre
of a great plain, which  extended farther than  I  could see.
In the middle I saw a road, which, at some distance, sepa-
rated  into several foot-paths.  On one  side a torrent flowed
with a terrible noise.   I was about to  swim across, when I
perceived a beautiful youth  clothed in a snow-white shining
garment, who took me  by the hand and said :  " Hold ! the
time is not yet come.  God loves you, although you know it
not."   He then led me  along the river  bank, where I saw a
number of human skulls and bones, and heard lamentations.
On the river I saw some great ships, filled with men of a for-
eign colony and in foreign dresses.   They  were  handsome,
and had beards, helmets, and banners.    " It is God's will,"
said the youth,  " that  you should live and be witness of the
great changes to come over this kingdom.   The lamentations
arise  from  your  ancestors,  who  are expiating their  sins.
Those in the ships will, by their arms, become the masters  of
this kingdom;  and with them will come the knowledge  of
the only true God.  At the  end of the  war, when that faith
which cleanses from all sin shall have become known, you are
to receive it first, and by your example to incite others to the
same."                                                   *
   'After this speech the youth vanished, and I found myself
alive.   I pushed aside the stone  of  the sepulchre, in which
I had been placed, and was once more  amongst men.'   The 
        SPIRITUALISM AMONGST  THE OJIBBEWAYS.     425

princess, it is said, lived many years in retirement.  She was
the first who was baptized at Tlatlalolko, in  1524.
  When the  Spaniards wanted slaves to work  the mines  in
Hispaniola, they availed themselves  of the faith  in a paradise
to which they went after death, to inveigle away the natives
of  the  Lucaya  Isles.   They told them that they had dis-
covered the paradise of their friends and ancestors, and were
come to carry them thither in their  ships.   What a tale is
that of the wrongs of this unhappy  race at the  hands of pre-
tended Christians !   But let us turn from the dark history to
the pleasant  task of noticing how, through all, they have
clung to the spiritual gifts and  nature of their forefathers;
and after an experience enough to have blackened  all the
heavens and shut out  the vision  of them, they still, though
amongst much darkness and superstition, retain their kinship
with the invisible.
   Kohl, the German  traveller, has  given us a complete pic-
ture of the spirit-life of the Ojibbeway Indians  in his 'Kitchi
Gami;  Wanderings round Lake Superior.'   He describes
their manner of life, and enters into all their sentiments with
an honest sympathy  which credits  much, and  without com-
ment, tolerates more.  He  describes their charms and medi-
cine-bags, without ridiculing them,  and so as to  leave  us
doubtful whether they have the  powers which  their  owners
attribute to them.  To their medicine-bags, which contain a
variety of things, appearing to us very trumpery, they them-
selves  ascribe much spiritual power.  They have written signs
and charms made on  birch-bark, which  they believe,  having
been duly prepared by the medicine man, to have a wonder-
ful efficacy in enabling them to secure game, and would think
their rifle and ammunition of little value without thera. They
have all the  faith of the ancient  Hebrews in dreams, and
seek disclosures from them  on  important occasions,  but
through severe fasting and prayer.   Their  youths, at a cer-
tain age, seek, by fasting and watching, the dream  of  their
life — that is, to discover in a dream  the future course and
        36* 
426          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

character  of  their existence, and they firmly believe in the
realization of it.   From the character of this  dream, they
generally assume a new  name.  There  are several relations
of these life-dreams by Kohl, but they  are too long for quo-
tation.  I  select  the mode  by which they are  obtained, as
illustrative of the general custom.
  'Agabe-gijik,' or the cloud, said ' Kitchi Manitou, the good
spirit, sent us our Mides from the East, and his prophets laid
it down as a law that we should lead our children into the
forest as soon as they approach man's estate, and show them
how they must fast, and direct their thoughts to higher things ;
and in return it is promised  to us that a dream shall there be
sent them as a revelation of their fate — a  confirmation of
their vocation—a consecration and devotion  to Deity, and an
external remembrance and good omen  for their path of life.
  ' I remember that my grandfather, when I was a half-grown
lad, frequently said  to ray father in the course of the  winter,
" Next spring it will be time for us to lead  the lad into the
forest, and leave him to fast."  But nothing came of it that
spring; but when the  next  spring  arrived,  my grandfather
took me on one side and said to me,  " It is now high time
that I should lead thee to the forest, and that thou shouldst
fast, that  thy mind  may be  confirmed ; something "be done
for thy health; and that thou mayst learn thy future and thy
calling."
  ' My grandfather then took me by the hand, and  led  me
deep  into  the forest.   Here he selected a  lofty tree, a red
pine,  and  prepared  a bed for me in the branches, on which  I
should lie down  to fast.  We cut  down the  bushes, and
twined them  through the pine branches.  Then I plucked
moss  with which I covered the trellis work,  threw a mat my
mother had made for the occasion over it, and myself on the
top of it.  I was also  permitted to fasten  a few branches
together over my head, as  a sort  of protection from wind
and rain.
  ' Then  my grandfather said to me that I must on no  ac- 
THE  RED MAN'S  LIFE-DREAM.           427
count take nourishment, neither eat nor drink, pluck no ber-
ries, nor even swallow the rain-water that might fall.   Nor
must  I rise from my bed, but lie  quite still day and night,
keep by myself strictly, and await patiently the things that
would then happen.
  '  I promised my grandfather this, but, unfortunately, I did
not keep my promise.  For three days I bore the lying and
hunger, and thirst, but when I descended from the tree into
the grass on the fourth day, I saw the acid and refreshing
leaves of a little  herb  growing near the tree.  I could not
resist it, but plucked the leaves and ate thera.  And when I
had eaten them,  my cravings  grew so great that  I walked
about the forest and sought all  edible sprigs, plants, mosses,
and herbs I could find, and ate  my fill.  Then I crept home
and confessed all to my father and grandfather.'
  ' Wert thou not severely punished ?' I interposed.
  ' Not farther than that  they reproved  me, and  told  me I
had done wrong,  at which I felt ashamed ; and  as  I had
broken my fast, it was  all over with  my dream, and I must
try again next spring; I  might  now have been a man, but
must remain for another year a useless fellow, which was a
disgrace at my age.'
   At this point of the conversation the Cloud explained that
they placed the bed of the dreamers in a tree, because of
the Matchi-Manitou, or evil spirit, which they imagine has
most influence on the ground, and show it in toads, snakes,
and  other venomous reptiles.   He said  that the boys were
warned that  as soon as a nightmare, or bad dream,  oppressed
them, to return home, and then try again and again till the
right dream came.   The next attempt that the Cloud made
 was by going alone in  the forest and making his bed on a
 small island in a lake.  He described the place to his friends,
 that they might find him when  necessary.  He had a friend
 also  going through the same process in the same locality, but
 two or three miles off.  It could  not have been a very warm
 lodging, for the ice on  the lake was so strong that  he walked 
42S         HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

across it, and made his bed on a red pine tree at the usual
elevation of about twenty feet from the ground.   He then
continues : —' The three or four first days were as terrible to
me as at the first time, and I  could  not sleep at nights for
hunger and thirst.   But I overcame it,  and on the fifth day
I felt no more annoyance.  I fell into a  dreamy and half-
paralyzed state, and went to sleep.   But only my body slept,
my soul was free and awake.
   ' In the first nights nothing appeared to me; all was quiet;
but on the ninth I heard rustling and waving in the branches.
It was like a heavy bear or elk  breaking thrdugh the thick-
ened forest.   I  was greatly  afraid.   I thought, too, there
were many of them, and I made preparations for flight.  But
the man who approached me, whoever he may have been,
read my thoughts and saw my fear at a  distance ;  so he came
towards me more  and more gently, and rested  quite noise-
lessly on the  branches over my head.   Then he began  to
speak to me, and  asked  me,  " Art  thou afraid,  my  son ? "
" No," I replied, "I no longer fear."  " Why art thou here
in this tree ?"   " To fast." " Why dost thou fast ? "  '* To
gain strength, and know  my life."  "That is good, for it
agrees excellently with what is now being done for thee else-
where, and with the message I bring thee.   This very night
a  consultation has been  held about thee  and thy welfare;
and  I  have come  to  tell  thee that the decision was most
favorable.   I am ordered  to invite  thee to see and  hear this
for thyself.   Follow me."  '
   ' Did the spirit say  this  aloud ? '
   The Cloud replied,  " No, it was no common conversation.
Nor do I believe that I spoke aloud.  We looked into each
other's hearts, and guessed and gazed on our mutual thoughts
and sensations.  When he ordered me to follow him, I rose
from my bed easily and of my own accord, like a spirit rising
from the grave, and  followed  hira through  the air.   The
spirit floated on before  me to the east, and though we were
moving through the air, I stepped as firmly as if I were  on 
          SPIRITUAWSM AMONGST  THE INDIANS.       429

the ground ;  and it seemed to me as if we were ascending a
lofty mountain, and higher and higher eastward.'
  In the regions to which  he was conducted, he was intro-
duced to four white-haired old men, sitting under a splendid
canopy, who  approved of him, and gave him powers, in con-
sequence of his high  spiritual tendencies, to be a successful
hunter,  and live to a great and honorable age;  all of which
have been fulfilled.   When he returned to his body he had
been ten days without food, and his exhaustion was such that
he could not move ;  but his grandfather came just in time to
save him.  He was carried home, and restored with nourish-
ing food. .
   In this account there are several circumstances worthy of
note.   In  it, as in all the  modes of procuring pure dreams,
the body is reduced till the mind becomes liberated from its
domination, and clairvoyant.   In the spiritual state into which
he entered in his trance, he describes seeing the whole com-
pass of the sky at a glance;  and he  tells us that he and the
spirits  amongst whom he went had no want  of  words ; they
read each  other's thoughts and sensations.   Now, this poor
Indian had neither read Swedenborg, nor the writings of the
 spiritualists  ; yet in all these points he agrees perfectly with
them.   The  liberation of the spirit from the despotism of the
 flesh by abstinence and watching, the vast horizon of a spirit-
 eye, and the thought-reading of spirits, are all facts asserted
 by Swedenborg, the spiritualists, and these poor Indians alike,
 and without any intercommunication—a reciprocating proof
 that they are facts.   But now for another curious extract.

    'The Indians have, for a lengthened  period,  been  great
 spiritualists, ghost-seers,  table-rappers,  and  perhaps, too,
 magnetizers, which  we educated Europeans have  only re-
 cently  become, or returned  to.  The lodge which their jos-
 sakids or prophets,  or, as the  Canadians term them, jong-
 leurs, erect for their incantations, is composed of stout posts,
 connected with basket-work, and  covered with  birch-bark. 
430         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
It is tall and narrow, and  resembles a chimney;  it is firmly
built, and two men, even if exerting  their utmost strength,
would be unable to move, shake, or bend it;  it is so narrow
that a man who crawls  in  has scarcely room to move about
in it.'
   ' Thirty years  ago,' a gentleman  told  me who had lived
among the Indians, and was even related to them through his
wife, ' I was present at the incantation and performance of
a jossakid in one of these  lodges.  I saw the man creep into
the hut, which was about ten feet high, after swallowing a
mysterious potion made of a root.   He  immediately began
singing and beating the drum in his basket-work chimney.
The entire case began gradually trembling and shaking, and
oscillating slowly amid great noise.   The more the necro-
mancer sang and  drummed, the more violent the  oscillations
of the lojig case became.  It bent backwards and forwards,
up and down, like the mast of a vessel caught in a storm and
tossed on  the waves.   I  could  not  understand how these
movements could  be produced by a man inside, as we could
not have caused them from the exterior.
   ' The drum ceased,  and  the  jossakid  yelled  that  " the
spirits were coming over him."  We  then heard through the
noise, and cracking, and oscillations of the  hut, two voices
speaking inside — one  above, the other below.   The lower
one asked questions, which the upper one answered.  Both
voices seemed entirely different, and  I believed I could ex-
plain this by very clever ventriloquism.   Some-spiritualists
amongst us, however, explained it through modern spiritual-
ism, and asserted that the Indian jossakids  had speaking
media, in addition to those known to us, which rapped, wrote,
and drew.   .  .
   ' Thirty years later, the  Indian had  become a Christian,
and was on his death-bed.  " Uncle," I  said to  him, recall-
ing that circumstance ;  " Uncle, dost thou remember  prophe-
sying to us in thy lodge  thirty years ago, and astonishing
us, not  only by thy discourse, but by the movements of thy 
THE  INDIAN JOSSAKID.
431
prophet-lodge ?  .   .   .   Now thou art old, and hast  be-
come  a Christian ;  thou  art  sick, and canst not live much
longer; tell me, then,  how and through what  means thou
didst deceive us ? "  «
  'My sick Indian  replied, "I  have become a  Christian, I
am  old, I am sick, I cannot live much longer, and  I can do
no other than speak the  truth.   Believe  me, I  did not  de-
ceive you ;  I did not move the lodge ; it was shaken by the
power of the spirits. Nor did  I speak with a double tongue ;
I only repeated to you what the  spirits said to me.  I heard
their voices.  The top of the lodge was full of thera,  and
before me  the sky and wide  lands lay expanded; I could
see a  great distance round me; and I believed I could re-
cognize the most distant objects."  The old jossakid said  this
with such an expression of simple truth and firm conviction,
that it seemed to me, at  least, that  he did  not  believe him-
self a deceiver, but had full faith in the efficacy of his  magic
arts, and the reality of his visions.'
   Here is another remarkable  case  of  clairvoyance.  An
Indian, named Peter Jones, was descended from a  family
which had  lived on Lake Superior long before the white  men
came.   ' I  asked him,' says Kohl, ' who first brought infor-
mation regarding the whites.'  ' No one,' he said, ' had brought
the news, and no one had described these strangers to the
Ojibbeways; but when the white men — the French — came
up the Lower St. Lawrence,  one of his forefathers, who was
a great jossakid, immediately had a dream, in which he saw
something  highly astonishing — namely, the arrival of white
men.
   'The  seer busied  himself for days,  and  very  earnestly,
with his dream.  He  fasted,  took vapor  baths,  shut himself
up apart from the rest in his prophet-lodge, and did penance.
in such an unusual manner that it caused a great excitement
in  the tribe, and  people asked each other what  would be
the end of it all ?  Whether it meant a universal war  with
 the Sioux, or a great famine,  a very productive hunting- 
432         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
season, or something else equally grand ?   At length, when
the old prophet had examined into everything carefully, and
had the whole story arranged, he summoned the other jossa-
kids and Mides, and  the  Ogimas (chieftains) of the tribe,
and revealed to them that something most extraordinary had
happened.
   'That men  of a perfectly strange race  had come across
the great  water  to  their  island — America.  Their  com-
plexions were as  white as snow, and  their faces were  sur-
rounded by a long bushy beard.   He also described to them
exactly the wondrously large canoes in which they had passed
the big sea, and the sails and  the masts  of  the ships, and
their iron corslets, long knives,  guns, and cannon, whose fire
and tremendous explosion had filled him with terror even in
his dreams  and convulsions.  His clairvoyance extended even
to the smallest details, and he described  exactly  how the
boucan — smoke — ascended from their long tubes into the
air, just as  it did from the Indian pipes.
   ' This story of the old jossakid, who spent a good half-day
in telling it, was listened to by the others in dumb amaze-
ment ;  and they agreed on  immediately preparing an expe-
dition of several canoes, and sending a  deputation along the
lakes and the great  rivers to the eastward, which could ex-
amine  these matters on the spot, and make a report on them
to the tribe.  This resolution was carried out.   The deputies
voyaged for weeks and months, through the lands of many
friendly tribes, who  knew nothing, as yet,  of  the arrival of
the white men, probably because they had not  such clair-
voyant prophets and dreamers among them as the gifted man
on the Anse.
   ' When the deputies  from the Anse at length came to the
lower regions of the river, they found, one evening, a clearing
in the forest where the  trees, even the largest, had  been cut
down  quite smoothly.   They camped here and inspected the
marvels more  closely.   They examined the stumps  of  the
trees,  which seemed to have been cut  through by the teeth 
THE  JOSSAKID S VISION OF WHITE  MEN.     433
of a colossal beaver.  They had never seen such a thing be-
fore, and their jossakid explained to them that this must have
been a camping place of the white men, and that the  trees
bad probably been felled by the long knives that  he saw in
his dream.   This circumstance — the trees being cut through
with such ease and in such numbers — filled the  poor savages
with terror, and tremendous respect for the white men, and
gave them  the  first tangible impression of their superiority.
With their stone-headed axes they could not  achieve such
feats.
   ' They found also long, rolled-up shavings, which not one
of them was  able  to  account for, and  they thrust them, as
something  most extraordinary, into their ears and  hair.
They also  examined very carefully the  pieces  of gay calico
and woollen  rags the French had left behind them at their
camping ground, and fastened them round their heads, as if
they  were  magical productions.  Thus bedizened, they at
length  came up with the French, •among whom  they found
everything — the  great  ships, the long  knives, the  bushy
beards and pale faces, just as their prophet had seen them in
his dreams and described them.   They were very kindly re-
ceived, and dismissed with rich presents of colored cloth and
pieces  of  calico.'
    This was a splendid  piece of spiritual  revelation.  There
 are other  indications of ancient traditions in Kohl's account,
 bearing singularly on the scriptural history.  They have not
 cities of refuge like the Hebrews, but they  have various places
 of refuge.   Kohl  heard of such an  asylum on Leech Lake.
 That murderers could flee to those places of refuge, and were
 there sacred from pursuit.  He heard that the  murderer of a
 Governor of the Hudson's Bay Company, from the Red River,
 was living in security in such a place.  It is clear, too, that
 they have traditions of the Saviour :  'Paradise, they say, was
 made by Menaboju.  He aided the Great Spirit  in the creation
 of the world, and at first neither of them thought of a Para-
 dise.   Meu, such was their decree, were to be  happy on the
    I. —37 
434          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
earth, and find satisfaction in this life;  but, as the evil spirit
interfered and produced wickedness, illness, death, and mis-
fortunes of  every description amongst them, the  poor souls
wandered about deserted and  hopeless.  When the  Great
Spirit saw this, he grieved for  them, and  ordered Menaboju
to prepare a Paradise for them in the West, where they might
assemble. Menaboju made it very beautiful, and he was him-
self appointed to  meet them there' (p.  216).   It  may be
imagined that the Christian missionaries introduced these
ideas amongst them ; but the singularity is that the mission-
aries themselves found  thera on their first arrival amongst
them.
   It is equally singular that they have received, from the most
ancient times, several of the spells of witchcraft.  ' When they
wish a neighbor grief, death, or anything unlucky, they make
a small image of wood,  which represents their enemy or vic-
tim ; take a  needle and pierce holes in the  head of the figure,
or in the region of the heart,  or wherever they desire their
foe to suffer.  If he is to die  of it, they bury the image with
certain  magic spells, and place four red pegs on the grave.
At times they will burn  the image in effigy.  If he really die,
they boast of it, as a proof of their supernatural power.'
   They treat diseases the  same that they wish  to destroy.
They make  a human figure, a phantom  of clothes  stuffed
with straw,  to represent the disease or  evil spirit that occa-
sions it, carry this  to their medicine-lodge, and shoot arrows
at it  in the presence of the sick man, till it is reduced to
atoms.   Such practices, Kohl  says, abound amongst the
Pillagers and other remote Ojibbeways on  the Upper Mis-
sissippi, as well as on Lake Superior.
   Thus have these primitive children of the forest spiritual-
ism amongst them, descended  from  the most remote ages,
and which has still retained some of its purer elements, but
in other respects has degenerated into the impure.  In some
instances it  ascends into religion, in others  it descends into
downright sorcery.  But the  modern  spiritualist will not 
OJIBBEWAY TRADITIONS.
435
fail to perceive how genuine are its manifestations and its
characteristics.  The reading of each man's thoughts by the
spirits, the vast horizon presented by clairvoyance, and the
necessity of giving the spirit freedom from the flesh by ab-
stinence and prayer, are diagnoses of the power recognizable
by all the initiated as genuine and permanent truths.
  Longfellow, in  his  poem of  ' Hiawatha,' founds  his ma-
chinery confessedly on  the  statements of  Schoolcraft in his
'Algic Researches,' and his ' History, Condition,  and Pros-
pects of the Indian Tribes  of North America.'  These  com-
pletely agree with the accounts of Kohl.  We have the  same
spiritual  phenomena, the same visions, dreams, ancient  le-
gends and prophesyings ;  ' Hiawatha,' in  fact, is but another
name  for  Menaboju,  the  divine person,  who, like  Christ,
takes the human form to work  benefits  to the Indians.  He
has his fasting in the forest in  his youth,  and the same mes-
sages from  heaven to  inform him  of his future career.  On
the fourth day of his fasting, the heavenly messenger appears
 and says:
             From  the Master of  Life descending,
             I, the friend of  man, Mondamin,
             Come  to warn you and instruct you
             How by struggle and by labor,
             You shall gain what  you have prayed for.
 As in Kohl, so in ' Hiawatha,' we have abundance of magic
 and its effects.  Hiawatha too —
             In his wisdom taught the  people
             All the  mysteries of painting,
             All the art of picture-writing
             On the smooth bark  of the birch tree,
             On the white skin of the reindeer,
             On the grave-posts of the  village.
  Thus  like  many of the most  eminent men of Europe, they
  believe that the arts  and sciences are  the  result in many
  cases of revelation.   Hiawatha, like Christ,  is assaulted  by
  devils.   During  a great  famine  we have  ghosts appearing
  by the evening  fire-light; and before they  leave  they give 
436          HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
Hiawatha a  piece  of  good advice, exactly such as spirits
have repeatedly given to spiritualists amongst ourselves:

           Cries of grief and lamentation
           Reach us in the Blessed Islands;
           Cries of anguish from the living,
           Calling back their friends departed,
           Sadden us with useless sorrow.
           Therefore have we come to try  you —
           No  one knows us, no one heeds us;
           We  are but  a  burden to you,
           And we see that the departed
           Have no place amongst the living.
               Think of this, 0 Hiawatha!
           Speak of it  to all the people,
           That henceforward and forever
           They no more with  lamentations
           Sadden the  souls of the departed
           In the  Islands of the Blessed.

   These extracts  are  sufficient from a book so well known
as ' Hiawatha.'  The poem is full of spiritual matter which
the poet has  only adopted from the matter-of-fact historian.
They are  a  striking  testimony to  the existence  of that
spiritual life amongst the aborigines of the  vast  Western
world, which every age, and every nation, and every class of
men have  claimed  except  modern Protestants.   We may
close this chapter with an extract from the Journal  of David
Brainerd, the  well-known missionary amongst the Indians
of Pennsylvania  and  New Jersey,  something  more than  a
hundred years ago, a man of  a most pious and truthful
character.
   ' In August, 1745,1 baptized,' says Brainerd, ' a  conjuror,
and one who  had been a murderer.'   He  came to hear
Brainerd in the fork of the Delaware, and as he was himself
a great Pauwau or conjuror, when he heard of Christ healing
the sick and  doing many miracles, he told the Indians that
Christ was,'undoubtedly, a great Pauwau, and did his healing
and miracles by  magic, and  this had  a  most  mischievous
effect on the Indians, who could not suppose Christ more
divine than their own medicine men, as they called them. But
the man found a certain fascination in Brainerd's preaching, 
BRAINERD AND THE PAUWAU.
437
and could not keep away.   He at length became convinced
of the truth of Christianity, and he was soon convinced, too,
that it was something more than magic ; for he said that, as
soon as the word of God entered his heart, all his magic power
departed.   It was in vain that he tried his former supernatu-
ral  potence;  it  was  gone; he could do nothing.   He was
still very  miserable  on account of his former crimes, and
though he believed, he believed, too, that  he never could be
forgiven;  but at length he came to feel himself pardoned,
and was full of joy and wonder.  In the following spring an
old Indian was listening to Brainerd's preaching, and menaced
him aloud that he would bewitch him and all his congrega-
tion ;  but this converted Pauwau told the conjuror to his face
that he might do his worst, for  that he had been a greater
conjuror than himself, but the word of God had  driven the
magic power out of  him, and  that  no  magic had any power
over the Christians.'
37 * 
438          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
            CHAPTER   XVIII.

THE SUPERNATURAL AMONGST THE EARLY FATHERS.


Nee erit alia lex Romse, aut Athenis, alia nunc, alia posthac;
sed inter omnes gentcs, et omni  tempore, una lex, et sempi-
terna, et immutabilis continuabit.
                                Cicero, De Republica iii.

Those who were before us, thought it good to speak, and let
not us who come after obstruct  the beginning of wisdom.—
Book of Enoch, p. 37.
   AS we pursue our way through systems, philosophies, re-
      ligions, and even nations are overturned—the miracu-
lous  still survives and attends us.  Babylon and Assyria have
fallen before Persia, Persia before Greece, Greece is in its de-
cline, and even Rome shows no dubious symptoms of it;  the
God-raised and God-prostrated Judea has been by God de-
serted and destroyed.  Jerusalem has fallen as Christ and the
prophets predicted, and its inhabitants, through a baptism of
unexampled horrors, have been dispersed into all lands.  Nay,
the Church of Christ itself, whose promise is to pervade and
bless all the nations of the earth, is already rent  by  fierce
feuds, and that about mysteries which the human intellect will
never in this world, and possibly, in no other, fathom—namely,
the nature of and  mode of the Divine  existence.   Trinita-
rians and Arians, Gnostics and Sabellians, Pelagians and
Montanists, Homousians and Homoousians, Substantialists
and Consubstantialists, are hurling anathemas at one another
with  a  malignant fury that has more of the  aspect of the
fiend than of the tolerant and mild spirit of Christ in it.
 
            MIRACLES  IN THE  EARLY  CHURCH.         439

  Under such circumstances, we might suppose that the Sa-
viour had withdrawn those glorious gifts of supernatural mani-
festations which he had conferred on His church ere He took
visible leave of it.  But  He  had promised  to  be with it
alway to the end of the world.  Though great corruptions
of many kinds had stolen into it confessedly before the fourth
century, He  still was manifest  by many signs  within its fold,
giving  it, even in  its speedy  degeneracy,  a  distinguishing
royalty in the eyes of the pagan world.  Some of its leaders
in  the  fifth  century,  as  the Chrysostoms  and Augustines,
complained of the decline of miracles, at leasffrom the early
splendor of their manifestation, though, in other parts of their
writings, they attest  their still remaining  presence.  They
even took up the fallacious maxim, the language of declining
faith, that they were no  longer necessary, the truth of Chris-
 tianity having been once fully  proved — a doctrine which  the
 Protestant divines in after ages were  only too ready to echo
 in defence of their rationalistic cre«d.  Yet, though  such was
 the condition of the  Christian Church  at so early  a period,
 and though the decline of living faith and the spread  of world-
 liness might have accounted for a total  cessation of miracle,
 miracle still abounded.   It did not retain, indeed, the  sub-
 lime and uniform greatness which it displayed in Christ  and
 his immediate apostles;  for  the Christ-like and  apostolic
 spirit was,  in a great measure, gone.  Its concreteness, its
 homoousian nature, had been  invaded, broken up, and debili-
 tated by the spirit of the world and of worldly ambitions; but
 it still existe'd, in a degree infinitely  superior to what might
 have been  expected.  Though the church had degenerated,
 there were great and good men in it, on whom the mantle of
 both prophecy and theurgy had fallen.   The fathers of the
 first  ages, as the Rev. John  Henry  Newman  in a very fair
 and candid ' Essay on the Miracles recorded in  the Ecclesi-
 astical History of the Early Ages,' has  shown, admitted the
 reality of  the miracles performed by  the pagans.  Living
  amongst pagans  they saw them, and were compelled to ac- 
440         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
knowledge  them ; but  they  ascribed thera to the devil, as
they did  those which took place  amongst those  Christians
whom they deemed heretics, and as the Catholics do now by
the manifestations among the spiritualists.
  All the fathers of  the first six  centuries declare, more or
less, the  existence  of miracles in the church.   Even  Chry-
sostom dwells emphatically on that great one, the  divine ap-
parition  by fire  and  earthquake at the  rebuilding  of the
Temple of  Jerusalem by the orders of Julian the Apostate,
in the  middle  of the fourth century, in Chrysostom's own
time.  Justin 'Martyr, who was born near the end  of the first
century,  and died later than the middle  of the second —
namely, in  161—in  contending with the  unbelieving Jews,
says, that the Incarnation  took  place 'for  the sake of unbe-
lievers, and for the overthrow of evil spirits;' and he adds,
' You may know this now from what passes before your eyes;
for many demoniacs all over the world,  and in  your own
metropolis, whom none othjer exorcists, conjurors, or sorcerers
have cured, these have  many of our Christians cured, adjur-
ing by the  name of  Christ, and still do cure.'  And again,
' With us,  even  hitherto, are prophetic gifts, for  which you
Jews ought to  gather, that what formerly belonged to your
race is transferred to us.'  In another place he says, 'With
us may be seen  both males and females, with gifts from the
Spirit of God.'
   Irenaeus, who  lived at the end of the second  century, and
suffered martyrdom in 202, speaks most plainly, as quoted by
Eusebius (v. 214, of  English translation) : — " Far are they
— the  churches — from raising the dead  in the manner the
Lord and His Apostles did, by prayer; yet even among the
brethren frequently,  in a  case  of necessity, when a  whole
church has united in  much fasting and prayer, the spirit has
returned to the exanimated body, and the man has been
granted to the prayer of the saints.'   Again, p. 215,'Some
most certainly and truly cast out demons,  so  that frequently
those persons themselves  that  were  cleansed from  wicked 
STATEMENTS OF IREN^IUS.            441
spirits, believed and were received into the church.  Others
have the knowledge  of things to come, as also visions and
prophetic communications.   Others heal the sick by the im-
position of hands, and restore them to health.   And, more-
over, as we said above, even the dead have been raised, and
continued with us many years.  And why should we say more 1
It is impossible to tell the number of the gifts which the church
throughout the world received from God, and the deeds per-
formed in the name of Jesus Christ, who was crucified uuder
Pontius Pilate, and this too every day  for the benefit of the
heathen, without receiving any or exacting any money.  For
as she freely received, she also freely ministers.'  In another
place Irenaeus says,  ' We hear of many of the brethren in the
church who have prophetic gifts, and who speak in all tongues
through  the  Spirit, and who also bring to  light the secret
things of men for their benefit, and who expound the myste-
ries of God.'
   These are the passages which Bishop Douglas, with whom
we shall have hereafter to deal, has endeavored to make ap-
pear as only relating to the apostolic times.  The attempt is
preposterous;  no language can more  forcibly apply to the
times of Irenaeus himself, towards the end of the second cen-
tury.  He tells us  that they were the gifts of God to the
church,  not to the Apostles alone; and Eusebius  adds the
reason why these gifts had declined  in the church in his time
— namely, not that the heritage of miracle  had ceased, but
that the churches were 'unworthy' of them (p. 215).  Yet
in his own times, the commencement of the fourth century, he
says in  his ' Theophaneia' (p. 300  of  translation), ' Who  is
he who knows not how delightful it is to us that through the
name of our Saviour, coupled with  prayers that are pure,  we
cast out every kind  of demon ?  And thus  the word of our
 Saviour, and the doctrine which is from Him, have made us
 all to be greatly superior to the power which is  invisible, and
impervious to enquiry,' &c.  And again at p. 340 of the same 
442          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.

work,  'Who is not instantly amazed at the things which
usually come to pass in times such as these ?'
  Irenaeus also admits that Mark, the founder of the sect of
Marcosites, conferred the  gift of prophecy  by command  in
the name of Christ, and that there were several prophetesses
in that body of undoubted power.
  In the second century — namely, about 171 — appeared in
Phrygia, Montanus, who was treated as a heretic, and  espe-
cially because  he  declared that the gospel had not received
its full development; that it was  to  receive this under the
Paraclete  or Comforter, and  he asserted  that the Paraclete
often spoke through him.  He was often thrown into a state
of extacy, or inspiration, during which he said that what he
spoke was, in fact, spoken by the Paraclete.  On this account
he was denounced by the orthodox as giving out himself to
be the Paraclete, and a terrible outcry was raised against him
and his followers.   Various  charges  of heresy were made
against him, one of  the chief of which was that his preachers
received money for their services—a heresy to which no church
of the present day, except that of the Society of Friends, can
have much to say, for they have all fallen into it.  However
Montanus and  his followers may have committed or spoken
extravagances, they appear to have had the true spirit of in-
spiration amongst them, a circumstance which astonished their
opponents.   Montanus also taught strict morals and  unusual
asceticism.  Wherever a society of Montanists sprang up, there
appeared in it a number of energumens, or mediums.  These
went into extacy or clairvoyant trance even in their religious
assemblies,  and whatever they said under such circumstances
was carefully noted down.   Amongst these  were  two ladies
of rank and fortune, Maximilla and Priscilla, who were  held
in the highest estimation as spiritual seeresses and prophet-
esses ;  so that the Popes Zepherinus and Victor granted them
letters of peace — that is, papal protection.
   Tertullian, the most celebrated father of that age  for elo-
quence, in his work ' De Anima,' says, ' We had a right, after 
MONTANIST SEERESS.                443
what was said by St. John, to expect prophesyings; and we
not only acknowledge these spiritual gifts, but we are per-
mitted to enjoy the gifts of a prophetess.   There  is a sister
amongst us who possesses  the faculty of revelation.  She
commonly,  during our religious service on the Sabbath, falls
into a crisis or trance.   She has  then intercourse with the
angels, sees sometimes the Lord Himself, sees and hears divine
mysteries, and discovers the hearts of some persons ;  and. ad-
ministers medicine to  such as desire it; and when  the Scrip-
tures are read, or psalms are being sung, or prayers are being
offered up,  subjects from thence are ministered to her visions.
We were speaking of the soul once when our sister was in
the spirit—I do  not recollect exactly what.  After the service
she allowed the rest of the people to  go away, as she always
did on such occasions, and then communicated to us what she
had seen in her extacy, which was  then more closely enquired
into and tested.   She informed us  that she had seen a soul in
a bodily shape — ostensa est mihi anima corporaliter ; that it
appeared to be  a spirit — spiritus videbatur ;  but not empty
or formless — inanis — and wanting a living constitution — et
vacuas qualitatis ; but that its form  appeared so substantial
that you might touch  or hold it — teneri.   It was tender,
shining, of the color  of the air, but in everything resembling
the human form — tenera, lucida, et aeris coloris.'
   Thus the early church had its clairvoyants just as we have,
who saw into  spiritual regions and beheld spiritual beings as
ours do.   This  new thing is, therefore, like so many others,
proved to  be  old; and the cavillers of to-day have only been
proclaiming their amazing ignorance of history, by treating
as mere new-fangled  fancies facts familiar more than  a thous-
and years  ago.   In this, as in numerous other cases, the law
exists  in nature; yet men calling themselves  philosophers,
when they  come across them, treat  them as something new,
as  the  monks thought  Greek,  on its  reintroduction, a new
and barbarous  language sent by the devil.   All  the great
writers on  magic  have  assured  their readers that nearly 
444          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
everything which at first astonished them, will, if they only
patiently search, be  found  quite natural.   Such is the  doc-
trine  of Cardan, of  Pomponazzi, of Benedict Pererius (lib.
i. c. 1), of Carapanella (lib. iv. c. 1) ; and Paracelsus  says
that faith and research would find all the wonders  of natural
magic1 in natural existing laws and promises of God ; so that
he declared no conjurations necessary.   In his Philosophia
Occulta, in  the book of Azoth, he  contends that we are  to
seek command over nature by the same means as  the Apos-
tles, by faith and prayer ;  and that  in good magic  (where we
may now read spiritualism), all abjurations and godless cere-
monies are forbiddeu.
  It is a very striking circumstance that the spiritual body,
substantial to the touch of the spirits, seen by the Montanist
clairvoyant, accords  perfectly with the  doctrines of both
ancient and modern times.  It is  the vehicle of Plato and
Aristotle;  the spiritual body of  St. Paul; the  nerve-spirit
of the Seeress of Prevorst; the  spiritual  man of Sweden-
borg ; the spiritual corporeity  of Isaac  Taylor ;  the inner
being of Davis; and is precisely the experience of all modern
clairvoyants.
  Tertullian gives us a bold proof of his confidence in the
spiritual power of Christians.   If a man, he says,  calls him-
self a Christian and cannot expel a  demon, let him be put to
death on the spot.   ' Let some one  be brought forward  here
at the foot of your' judgment-seat,  who, it is agreed, is  pos-
sessed of a demon.  When commanded by any Christian  to
speak, that spirit shall as truly declare itself a demon as else-
where falsely a god.  In like manner let some one be brought
forward of those who are believed to be acted upon by a god,
who by drawing  their breath  over the  altar conceive the
Deity by its savor, who are relieved by vomiting  wind, and
prelude  their prayers  by  sobs,— that very virgin Coelestis
herself, who promiseth rains, that very JEsculapius that dis-
covered  medicines,  that   supplied  life  to  Socordius  and
Thanatius Esclepiadotus, doomed to die another day; unless 
               ST. CYPRIAN  ON EXORCISM.            445

these confess themselves to be demons, not daring to lie unto
a Christian, then shed upon the spot the blood of that most
impudent Christian.'  (Apol. 23.)
  He adds that all this is done by the name of Christ; that
the demons are subjected in fear by God in Christ and Christ
in God, and cry out, and are burned by the very touch of a
Christian, and come full before his face.  He says, however,
that the demons try to ape  this power themselves ; that when
prophets are speaking,  they snatch at times fragments  of
foreknowledge, and so steal, as it were, the oracles  of God.
But of themselves they can  never predict good.   He says
farther that exorcists appeal to the power  of  angels and de-
mons, who prophesy through goats and tables. . What the
prophesying through goats may mean is not clear, but mod-
ern tables illustrate the other practice.   This has been seized
on  as  an evidence that  modern  communications  through
tables  is  evil; but these  objectors forget that anciently,
according to Tertullian, both angels and  demons  were  in-
voked, and that he gives as a test that the communications
of demons are never good.
   St. Cyprian, who was a pupil  of Tertullian, and suffered
martyrdom  in A. D.  258,  bears  the same testimony.   He
declares that the word of the Christian exorcist burned evil
spirits.    'There is  no  measure,'  he says, 'or  rule  in the
dispensation of the  gifts of heaven, as in  those  of  the gifts
of earth.   The spirit is  poured forth liberally, without limits
or  barriers.   It flows  without  stop, it  overflows  without
stint'  By this, he  says, they cleansed unwise  and impure
souls, restored men to spiritual and bodily health, and drove
forth  demons who  had violently  made  lodgment  in men,
smiting them by the spirit and scorching them  with its fire.
He invited Demetrius,  proconsul of Africa,  to witness such
an exorcism of demons.   ' You may see them by our voice,
and through the operation of the unseen  majesty, lashed
 with stripes, and  scorched with fire, stretched out under the
increase of their  multiplying penalty,  shrieking, groaning,
   I.—38 
446          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

entreating, confessing from whence they came, even in the
hearing of their own worshippers, and either  leaping out
suddenly or gradually vanishing, as faith in the sufferer aids,
or grace in the healer conspires' (Life by  Cyprian's Deacon
Pontius, 17).  Well may he  exclaim, ' What a dominion is
this — what a power of mind !'
   This fiery torture of demons on  expulsion, is attested also
by Theophilus,' Origen, Athanasius,  Lactantius,  Minucius
Felix, and others.    Minucius says, ' They are expelled out
of the bodies of men by the  torture of our words and the
fire of our speech.'  Lactantius says,  'They cry out,  after
much howling, they are scourged  and bound.'  St. Hilary
says, that '.They groan at the bones of the martyrs, and are
burned without fire.'  This spiritual burning by the divine
word is very curiously corroborated by J.  F. Emmett, b. a.,
in the ' Spirit Dialogues' of  Cahagnet, translated  from the
French.   A spirit  being strictly questioned as  to  who and
what he  was, complained  that the persevering  scrutator
burned him.   Here, again, is another of  those  numerous
corroborations in the present day, of the familiar knowledge
of the ancients which the astounding ignorance of history
of literary and learned men of this age has converted into
novel fancies.
   St. Cyprian relates that he had  a vision, whilst quite
awake, of a young man of more  than mortal stature, who
showed him himself led before the proconsul, and condemned
to be beheaded  as a martyr to Christianity: so that when
it came to pass, he knew exactly when and how  it would
take place.
   Origen, who was contemporary with Cyprian, says, 'There
are no  longer any prophets,  nor any miracles amongst the
Jews, of which there are large vestiges amongst the Chris-
tians ;' namely, in the middle  of the third  century,  Gregory,
Origen's pupil, and Bishop of New Csesarea in Pontus, was
so famous for his miracles that he was styled Thauraaturgus
or Wonder-Worker.  St. Gregory of  Nyssa wrote  his life 
ATHANASIUS ON MIRACLES.            447
120 years after his time, yet he founds his statements on the
writings of his contemporaries, and on the statements of the
church which he founded, the members  of which preserved
all his institutions, and would not allow any others to super-
sede them, such was their profound veneration for his memory.
St.  Basil, whose  see was in that neighborhood,  speaks of
the great admiration still entertained for him, and  that no
usage, no word, no mystic rite of any sort was allowed to be
added to what he had left.  A miracle is recorded of him as
astonishing as that of raising the dead.    On one of his jour-
neys two Jews attempted to deceive him — the one lay down
as if dead, and the other pretended to lament hira, and im-
plored Gregory for money for a  shroud.  St. Gregory threw
his cloak over him, and walked on; his companion then told
him he had imitated  death well,  and bade him arise, but he
did not move, and to  his horror he found  him really dead.
Origen arguing against Celsus (iii. 24), says, ' By the use of
the name alone of God and Jesus, we  too  have seen many
set free from severe complaints;  from loss of mind, from  mad-
ness, and numberless other such  evils, which  neither man nor
devils had cured.'
   For the testimony of Athanasius to  the miracles of his
time, we have only to turn to his life of  St. Anthony, whom
he knew personally, and where all kinds of miracles are given.
St. Ambrose,  who lived  to the  end of the fourth century, is
stated to have fallen asleep as he knelt at the altar on a cer-
tain Sunday at  Milan, and continued so for two  or  three
hours, the people waiting all that time in wonder.   On  being
at  length awoke, he related that St.  Martin of Tours was
dead, and he  had been attending his funeral, and performed
the service which he had nearly  finished  when they woke him
Up — the day and hour being noted, it was found that St.
 Martin had died at that time.  On the discovery of the  bones
 of St. Gervasius  and  St. Protasius, Ambrose  speaks of the
 circumstance  of his having discovered them, and of a blind
 man receiving his sight on touching them,  with a multitude 
448          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.

of other miracles.  In his fourth epistle he says, ' You know,
ye yourselves saw that many were cleansed from evil spirits,
very many on touching with their hands the garments of the
saints, were delivered from the  infirmities which  oppressed
them.  The miracles of the old time are come again, when
by the advent of the Lord Jesus, a fuller grace was shed on
earth.'
  St. Augustine, who lived to near the middle of  the fifth
century (430), bears ample testimony to the continuance of
the miraculous  power in the church then.   In particular he
relates the case  of Innocentia, a religious woman, who in her
sleep was ordered to go to the font where she had been bap-
tized, and there to mark with a cross her breast affected by a
cancer, pronounced by the physicians incurable, and that it
was  immediately healed.   He relates twenty miracles, includ-
ing the restoration of a child to life, within two years, at the
shrine of St. Stephen.
  St. Jerome, also living in the fifth century, relates numer-
ous miracles, such as the restoration of the sight of a woman
who had  been blind for ten years, the instant cure of the bites
of serpents, of paralytic  persons, of the  casting out of devils,
&c.   Sulpicius, in his dialogues and life of St. Martin, in the
fifth century, relates a number of miracles which he professes
to have seen himself.
  We might thus proceed  through all the Fathers of the first
five centuries ; the statements are precisely the same.   Their
assertion of apparitions is universal.   Origen  says  that the
angels, though   thought by many to  be aou^atoi,  yet  could
make their  bodies visible to man.   Augustine, De Cura pro
Mortuis,  imagined that the devils appeared in the likeness of
the dead ;  but  he also asserts the  apparition of the martyr
Felix at Nota.    St. Jerome contends  earnestly against Vi-
gilantius  for the souls of the saints being everywhere  doing
the work of the Saviour.   ' What dost thou mean ? ' he asks.
' Wilt thou prescribe laws to God ?  Are the Apostles to re-
main bound in  chains till the day of judgment ?   Is  it not 
VARIOUS FATHERS ON  SPIRITS.          449
written of them that they shall follow the Lamb everywhere 1
Is the Lamb then everywhere ? then they are everywhere too,
and where they will.'
  We have numerous instances of apparitions in the Fathers,
and the early historians too.   Sozomen in his Church History
(liv. vi. c. 28) gives us a scene very like that of St. Duns-
tan as occurring to the smith Apelles, a great  theurgist, and
who struck the tempting demon, in the  shape  of a beautiful
woman, in the face with a hot iron,  and  put it  to flight  amid
terrible shrieks.   He gives us another apparition in the next
book.  St. Ambrose, in his fortieth sermon, tells us that Ag-
nes the martyr was seen  one night  at her grave surrounded
by a choir of singing maidens.  Eusebius relates that Pota-
miaena, who suffered martyrdom under Severus, promised to
appear to Basilides, an officer who  had  showed her kindness
at the time,  and that she  did, thereby convincing  him  of
Christianity, for which he too soon suffered  martyrdom.   St.
Gregory  gives us many narratives  of  the apparitions  of
saints and martyrs  as well as of demons.   Origen contends
that  the  souls of the wicked  were often  turned into the
shapes of beasts, according  to  their natures,  and appeared
after their death as such.  He contends that these souls, after
their death, are bound to the earth by their base and earthly
desires, and have often appeared to and disturbed men.  (See
Ad. Cels. vii., and in other places of his writings.)   Both he
and Irenaeus declare the gates of Paradise,  somewhere in the
middle state, set open to the righteous  since Christ's resur-
rection, but  the evil  and gross cannot  enter  it.  They fre-
quently appear to men, and also living  persons can  appear
in places where  they  are  not bodily (Adv.  Haeres, books
second and fifth of Irenaeus).  This is a most extraordinary
phenomenon, but confirmed by many instances  in those  days.
(See  also  Tertullian, De Anima c. vii. De  Resurr.  Carnis
xvii.)  Clemens says (Opp. t.  1020) just  the same of the
proceeding of the good spirits to Paradise, and the drawing
of the earthly towards the earth.   Their being changed into
       38* 
450          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.
the shapes of beasts or thrust into the bodies of other men :
but Valentinus  believed all the bad  to  be annihilated  (see
Walch's History of Heresies, b. i. s. 367).   In the later ages,
the belief in the apparitions of devils was encouraged by the
Roman Church, as it gave the priests great power and profit
as exorcists, and  led to that  prevalence of diablerie, which
caused the Protestant  Church to renounce the whole idea of
apparitions, swinging its pendulum of reaction as far in this
direction  as it  did  in  the case  of miracles ;  pulling up the
wheat with the  tares, the natural fact with  the abundant  har-
vest of lies.
   And here  it may be as  well to show that some of the
sternest and  most  logical  writers are perfectly satisfied of
the historical  authenticity  of the  miracles recorded by the
Fathers.   Amongst these  are Grotius the great jurist,  and
John Locke the great moral philosopher.  Grotius avows
his belief  in the continuance of a miraculous agency down to
this day (see his comments on Mark xvi.  17).  He illustrates
that text from  St. Jerome,  Irenaeus,  Origen,  Tertullian,
Minucius  Felix, and Lactantius,  as  regards the  power of
exorcism, and refers to the acts of Victor of Cilicia in the
Martyrology of Ado, and the history of Sabinus, Bishop of
Canusium, in Greg. Turon., for instances of miraculous  pro-
tection against poison. As  to missions, he asserts that the
presence  of miraculous agency is ever a test whether the
doctrine preached is Christ's.   'Si quis etiara nunc  gentibus
Christi ignaris  (illis enim proprie miracula inserviunt, 1 Cor.
xiv. 22),  ita ut ipse  annunciari voluit, annunciat, promis-
sionis  vim duraturam arbitror.  Sunt enim dptiafiityta toil
diov Swpa.   Sed nos cujus  rei  culpa est in  nostra ignavia aut
diffidentia, id solemus in Deum rejicere.'   Elsewhere he  pro-
fesses his  belief in  the miracles wrought upon the confessors
under  Hunneric, who spoke after their tongues were cut  out;
and in the ordeals of hot iron in the  middle ages (T)e Verit.
i. 17): and  in the  miracles  wrought at  the tombs of the 
CUDWORTH ON MIRACLES.            451
martyrs (Ibid. iii.  7.   See also de Anti-christ.  ii.  502, as
quoted by Mr. Newman).
  Locke, in his third Letter on Toleration, fully admits the
many miracles performed by the Fathers.  He refers  to the
numerous  miracles recorded of Ammon by St. Athanasius
in  his  Life of St.  Anthony.   That Ammon was borne  by
angels over the River Lycus, and that St. Anthony saw the
soul  of Ammon leave the body,  and then carried up to
heaven by angels.   The  miraculous deeds of St. Athanasius ;
which are also confirmed by Chrysostom.  He says, St. Jerome
in his lives of  Hilarion and Paul, as well as in his De Vero
Perfecto, affirms numerous miracles as of unquestionable au-
thenticity, and he refers also to the numerous miracles in  Ros-
weydus's Lives of the Fathers, to those  recorded  by Ruffin,
St. Augustine, Chrysostom,  Basil, Hilary, Theodoret,  and
others.  In short,  he  says, you must destroy the authority
and common lronesty of all the Fathers, or admit the miracles.
  Precisely the same are  the  opinions  of  Dr. Ralph Cud-
worth  on  this subject.  In his ' Intellectual System of the
Universe,'  which Dr.  Henry More designates an effort of
gigantic mind, and which Mr. Wise, in  the Introduction to
the Abridgment of the work, says  is ' the vastest magazine
of reasoning and learning that ever singly appeared against
atheism,' he, unlike Middleton, Farmer,  Douglas, and that
school, asserts the reality of miracles even  as performed  by
evil  spirits.   He  quotes  the words  of our Saviour, who
warned his disciples  that false prophets  and false  Christs
should come  with signs  and  wonders, and ripata fyvSovt
should not be mere  juggling tricks,  but ' the  working of
Satan  with all power.'  And those of John in  the  Apoca-
lypse,  where  he  says  the beast shall do  great wonders, and
deceive those who dwell  on the earth by means of 'those
miracles  that he hath power to do.'  So also of the unclean
spirits who were to  go forth  to the kings of the earth.
These, Cudworth says, are plainly not feigned and counter-
feit miracles, but true and real ones which God Himself per- 
452         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

mits them to do ;  for He positively states that He has given
them the power to do them.
  These testimonies, and those which might be quoted from
Milton, Bacon, Sir Thomas  Browne, and  many other great
men of Cudworth's  time, or  prior to it, show how much
more faith in miracles existed in both churchmen and laity
before  the principles  of Hobbes, Toland, and Tindal  had
culminated in  the  infidelity of Hume and the ribald school
of Voltaire.   Nothing can  be more palpable than that this
infidelity has insensibly infected, not merely professed skep-
tics, but the whole body of the Church, whether Established
or Dissenting,  and that this virus is now breathed from all
pulpits, as well as almost all  books, under the guise of en-
lightenment, abandonment of superstition, and pure reason.
It is,  in  fact, not Christianity  that is  preached — strong,
healthy, in uncrippled leviathan power, but  Humism, Vol-
tairism, Volneyism, and  Straussism, which, like  the  deadly
lianas of the tropics, have coiled round  the trunk of Chris-
tian faith, and  left it  only a rotten,  sapless stem, smothered
in the  ropes and  tangles of a demon creed.   It  is not the
faith and core of Christianity that we have now, but the sickly
parisitism of  school  theosophy. There  is  hardly  a man
amongst the religious teachers of to-day who had not rather
stand  at the  mouth of a well-charged Armstrong  gun than
risk the faintest whisper of superstition,—that is, the honest
assertion of the plain Bible truth.
  Cudworth scouts with disdain the fear that miracles by
evil  powers can ever establish any evil creed ; for whatever
is evil  or immoral, is in itself a standing proof against itself,
though it came with all power of miracles; and the history
of  the world  has shown  that God  only permits  suoh  evil
powers to a certain extent, and  accompanies  them by marks
of their origin as unmistakable as the rattle  of a rattlesnake
or the  hood of a cobra-capella.   ' The  conclusion,' says the
royal-hearted  Cudworth, 'that though all miracles promis-
cuously do not immediately prove the existence of a God, nor 
    THE EARLTEST CHURCH  HISTORIANS ON MIRACLE.   453

confirm a prophet, nor whatever doctrine, yet they do all of
them  evince that there is a  rank of invisible, understanding
beings, superior to men, which the atheist cannot deny.   And
we read of some such miracles  also, as could not be wrought
but by a power  perfectly supernatural, or by God Almighty
himself.  But  to deny and disbelieve all miracles, is either to
deny all certainty of sense (which would,  indeed, be to make
sensation itself miraculous),  or else monstrously and unrea-
sonably to derogate from human testimonies  and history.
The Jews never could so stiffly and  pertinaciously have ad-
hered to the ceremonial law of Moses, had they not all along
believed it to have been unquestionably affirmed by miracles;
and that the Gentiles should  have  at first entertained the
faith of Christ without miracles, would itself have  been the
greatest of miracles' (ii. 125,  6).
   On the same ground, Cudworth asserts that there was real
prophetic matter in  the books of the Sibyls, as to a  new
kingdom to be set up.  That  this made  Cicero so averse to
these books, lest they should refer to a monarchy in Rome ;
and Virgil,  on the  other hand, to have  turned the matter
that wav.   Though  nominal  and merely professing  Chris-
tians no doubt introduced spurious matter into these books,
yet what can be made apparent to have been in them before
the time of Christ may be regarded  as genuine.
   So much for the Christian Fathers; but it is not in the
Fathers only that the miracles of the first six centuries of
Christendom are maintained.   We  turn  to the whole series
of  the historians of  the church through those ages, and the
affirmation  is the same.  As in  all the  pagan world of all
times, so in all the Christian Church, there is but one voice
in  the  matter.   We have a series  of five historians of the
church,  reaching from the  apostolic times to the end of the
sixth  century, Eusebius, Socrates  Schoklsticus,  Sozomen,
Theodoret,  and Evagrius.  Eusebius quotes Hegisippus and
Papias, who  went   before  him;  Socrates, Sozomen,   and
Theodoret all treat  of nearly  the same period of time,  from 
454          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

about 300 A. D. to 445;  Evagrius advances from 431 to 594
a. D. ; yet all maintain the same great doctrine of the copious
existence  and free exercise  of the miraculous power in the
church during those six centuries.   To state, even in brief
terms, the whole of these miracles, would fill a large volume ;
it is sufficient for my purpose merely  to touch  slightly upon
them.  Those who would learn these relations in detail can
refer to those histories, which are translated  and perfectly
accessible.
  Eusebius, the  earliest  of them, gives many facts not mira-
culous, but which are strong proofs of the truth of the Chris-
tian  history.  He affirms the truth  of the statement that
Agbarus,  Prince  of Edessa, wrote to our Saviour, begging
him to come and heal him of his otherwise incurable  suffer-
ings, and  offering Him the half of his little State.   But our
Saviour sent him word  this His work in Judea did not per-
mit him to go to Edessa, but that after his resurrection He
would send a disciple to heal him.  That, accordingly,  Thad-
deus, after the death of Christ,  was sent by the Spirit, and
not only cured Agbarus, but converted the whole population
of the place.  The  whole of this account, Eusebius says, he
copied from the public records in the archives of Edessa, and
he adds that the whole population  of that city was, in his
time, Christians.  It is impossible for historic evidence to be
stronger.
  He tells us that Pilate wrote to Tiberius an account of the
trial and  crucifixion of Christ, and of his reputed resurrec-
tion.  That Tiberius, according  to  Roman custom, wished
to include Christ amongst the gods  of Rome, but that the
senate refused, as he supposes,  from divine ordinance, be-
cause Christ was not to  associate with heathen gods, but was
to expel them from  the  world. That Tiberius, however, was
so much impressed by the statement,  that he refused to per-
secute the Christians; and  that, as .for Pilate, he became so
miserable  as to commit suicide.  The Greek historians con-
firm this, and it was  said that Pilate was banished to Swit- 
                EVIDENCES OF EUSEBIUS.             455

zerland, where he killed himself at the mount, thence named
Mount Pilatus.
  Eusebius says, and in this is supported by Clemens in his
sixth book of Institutions, and by Papias, Bishop of Hierap-
olis, that St. Mark wrote his Gospel in Rome at the desire
of the Christians there.   That St. Peter, with whom he was,
dictated  this Gospel under  inspiration, and, with an admira-
ble  candor, made full mention of all his  own faults.  Peter,
in his first Epistle, mentions St. Mark being at  Rome with
him, and stamps Rome as the Babylon of the Gospel in the
thirteenth verse.  Eusebius adds,  that St. Mark was the first
to preach the gospel in Egypt; and that Philo, speaking of
the Egyptian Christians, says that they were the first to
demonstrate  the  hidden sense of the Scriptures; so that
here we have another proof of what has been thought a new
doctrine  in  Swedenborg, but one of the  old familiar  ones.
'The above  law,' says  Phtfo, 'appears to these persons —
the Therapeutae — like an  animal, of which the literal ex-
pressions are the body, but  the invisible  sense,  that lies
enveloped in the expressions, the soul.'
  Eusebius tells us that Paul and Peter were put to death by
Nero; Paul being beheaded  and Peter crucified,  and their
tombs, he says, remained in  the cemetery in his time.  He
adds  that Caius, in the time of Zepherinus, Bishop  of Rome,
when disputing with Proclus, said,' I can show the tombs and
trophies of the Apostles, if you  will go to the Vatican, or
the Ostian road.   There you will find the trophies of those
who laid the foundation of this church, and who suffered mar-
tyrdom  about the same time.'   The same, he says, is con-
firmed by Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth (105).
   Eusebius farther states that Domitian, who persecuted the
 Christians, learning, according to Hegisippus, that the grand-
children of Judas, the brother of Christ, were of the race of
 David, had them seized, intending to put them  to death, but
 so  despised their meanness of condition that he let them  go.
 He adds that Trajan  also enquired after all the race of David, 
456         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
being apprehensive of them.   That the Apostle John wrote
his Gospel  after the other three, because they had omitted
much relating to Christ's birth and early life.   That Simon
Magus went to  Rome and gave himself out as  Christ, as did
Menander after him, both having great powers of divination.
But, perhaps, the most interesting statements of this kind by
Eusebius arc the following :
  In  his time (the  fourth century), he saw at Caesarea, of
which he was bishop, a statue of Christ, and a woman kneel-
ing and touching the hem of his garment.   The Saviour was
clad in a mantle — birtxotSa — and  stretching  out  his hand.
The woman was of that  city, whence the commemoration.
Before her feet was sculptured a plant famed for  curing all
diseases.  He  adds  that there were also portraits  of Christ,
and Peter,  and  Paul, which had descended to  his time.  Of
the facts, being the bishop, and a resident in the place, no
stronger authority could exist.  ''"Equally interesting and im-
portant is his information regarding Philip the apostle, and
his daughters.
  Philip lived,  it appears, to be an old man.   In the Acts it
is said he had four daughters, who prophesied.   Two of these
lived at Hierapolis, remained  to old  age, and were buried
there, as their father was ; another  daughter,  probably mar-
ried, died at Ephesus, where John  the Evangelist, who also
lived to a great age, was also buried.  Simeon, the son of
Cleophas, also  lived to be a hundred and twenty, thus reach-
ing into the second century,  and being  put to death under
Trajan.  By these very old individuals, Apostles,  or  of the
apostolic time,  the evidences of the Gospel history were car-
ried down to a period which would  enable old  people nearly,
if not all out of the  third century, to say they had  seen them.
In fact, Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis, and the first historian
of  the church, was a hearer of  St. John,  according  to
Irenaeus, who says himself that he drew his accounts from the
companions of  the  Apostles (150).   He  says he received
much information from the daughters of Philip.  He relates 
            FARTHER EVIDENCES OF EUSEBIUS.         457

that Barnabas  the  apostle,  on one  occasion, had  drunk a
deadly poison, but that it did him no harm ;  and Papias also
says that, in his  own time,  one was raised  from the dead.
Quadratus, also, who  lived in the reign of Hadrian, and ad-
dressed an appeal to  that monarch  on behalf of the Chris-
tians (that is, in the second century), says, ' The deeds of our
Saviour were always before you, for they were true miracles.
Those that were healed, those that were raised from the dead,
were seen, not  only when healed, and when raised, but were
also present.   They remained  living a  long time, not only
whilst  our Lord was on earth, but likewise when he left the
earth :  so that  some  of them have lived to  our own time'
(155).
  These statements of Eusebius and the  other earliest histo-
rians of the church, though  not wholly miraculous, are most
important, as giving force to the miraculous relations which
accompany them.  Amongst these Eusebius gives the appa-
rition of Potamiaena,  just noticed.   He relates miraculous
circumstances regarding the martyrdom of Polycarp.  This
veteran saint, at the age of eighty-six, whilst praying in bed,
saw his pillow  as all on fire,  and as being wholly consumed.
This he felt to be  an intimation of his  martyrdom by fire.
As  he was brought into  the  city, a spirit-voice spoke to him
aloud, so that it was heard by the brethren attending him —
'Be strong, Polycarp, and  contend  manfully.'  When the
executioner  set fire to the pile, the flames curved out round
him like  an oven, and would not touch  him : and he stood
within  like a figure of gold  and silver, and a fragrant scent
Bpread around from the pile, as of most aromatic drugs.  As
the  fire would  not touch him, the executioner  thrust  him
through with his sword.
  Natalius,  in the third century, he tells us, having accepted
the  bishopric of an heretical church  at a salary, was lashed
through the night by angels to such a  degree  that he re-
nounced  the office the next  morning.   Narcissus, the thir-
teenth  Bishop  of Jerusalem, only about fifty or sixty years
  I.—39 
458         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
before  Eusebius's own time, during the watch of the Pass-
over, being informed by the deacons keeping the vigils that
the oil failed, ordered them to  fill the lamps with water,  and
having prayed, they were lit and not only burned brilliantly,
but that some of the water thus  converted into oil was kept
to his time.  Narcissus, having  been falsely charged with a
great crime by three men, one of them prayed that if the
charge were not true, he might perish by fire; the second,
that his body might be wasted by a foul  disease ; and the
third that he should be struck  blind : and  every one had his
prayer fulfilled.
  Amongst a great number of other  miracles, during  the
terrible persecutions of the Christians in Egypt by Domitian
and Maximian, the wild beasts, though they would turn  on
the keepers, frequently would not touch the martyrs, so that
they were obliged to despatch them  with the sword; and
this  in the  third and fourth  century.  Many miracles oc-
curred during the persecutions in Palestine, in  the time of
Maximinius, contemporary with Constantine.  The fate of
this tyrant was a miracle.  He was  consumed  by fierce and
agonizing internal fires.   He was thrown on the ground and
consumed as to a very skeleton ;  his heart beating violently;
his marrow burning in his bones ;  and his  eyes falling out.
And thus he died, confessing the judgment for his  cruelties
to the  Christians.
  One of  the most completely attested miracles to be found
in Eusebius, is that of the rain, given in  answer to prayer.
He says,  Marcus Aurelius, when about to engage in  battle
with the Germans and Sarmatians,  was with his whole army
suffering the utmost distress  from thirst, in consequence of a
long drought.   The  Christians belonging  to  the Militine
legion  kneeled down and prayed for relief.   This was a  sin-
gular sight to the enemy, but the effect was more singular
still, for a- thunder-storm, driving in the face of the enemy,
confounded them, and the rain copiously refreshing the Ro-
mans, they put the foe to rout  (211). 
              THE BANNER OF CONSTANTINE.          459

  Eusebius quotes this account from an Apology for Chris-
tianity, addressed  to  this very emperor  by Claudius Apol-
linaris, about a. d. 176.   The event had occurred to the em-
peror but a year or two before, and, were it  not real, would
at once have been contradicted.   Apollinaris  says  that on
this  account, the emperor named the legion the ' Thunder-
ing Legion.'   It has been  objected  by Moyle,  Scaliger, and
others, that this is a  mistake.   That there was a ' thundering
legion' in Trajan's time, and even in that of Augustus. This
might be so,  and yet the name having fallen into desuetude,
Aurelius may have renewed it in this  same legion on this
occasion. However that may be, both Christians and pagans
admitted the miracle, the pagans in the regiment wishing to
attribute it to their  gods.   Tertullian also, referring to it,
attributes to this the favor shown to the Christians by Aure-
lius by decreeing a  penalty against any one accusing them
to the  authorities.   Whether, indeed, the emperor's  decree
 was for  this cause, it is certain that the memory of this event
 was  preserved by  sculpture on the celebrated  Antonine
 column  at Rome, and by a medal of Antonine.  The inter-
 cession  is there ascribed  to  Jupiter Pluvius,  and Mercury,
 according to the views of  the pagans as we  have them  in
 Dion Cassius, Julius Capitolinus, and  Themistius : but the
 Christians claimed the miracle evidently on the best grounds,
 having directly prayed for it.
   The last of the miracles recorded by Eusebius which I shall
 notice  are those of  the cross appearing to Constantine, and
 the discovery of the  sepulchre and cross  of  Christ by Helen,
 the emperor's mother.   In the first case, Eusebius says that
 he himself heard Constantine declare, and confess it with  an
 oath, that when he was going to attack the tyrant Maxentius,
 and was full of doubt, as he was resting  in the middle of the
 day, and his soldiers about him, he and all the soldiers saw a
 luminous cross in the heavens, attended by a troop of angels,
 who said,' 0  Constantine 1 by this go forth to victory !'  He
 asked the soldiers if they saw and heard this, and as they re- 
460         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
plied they did, he knew that it was real.   At night Christ
appeared to him in a dream, having the same cross, which he
ordered hira to have wrought upon his banners with the words,
'Ev rovrw  vlxa — by this conquer.   On this he  ordered the
army to mark on ttieir shields the first letter of the name of
Christ, x, and thus rushing on the enemy, defeated him near
the Milvian Bridge,  before  the  gates of Rome, Maxentius
himself being drowned in the river.  On entering the city in
triumph, he had the banners of the army modelled according
to the  form he  saw  in  the vision, with  the same words  in-
scribed upon them.   This standard was thenceforward called
the Labarum, or Standard of the Cross.
  In support of this account we find Constantine not only
new-modelling his banner, but about three  years afterwards
erecting a triumphal  arch in Rome in honor  of the victory,
and inscribing on it that the victory was  won instinctu dign-
itatis.  We  have Nazarius, a pagan  orator, in an oration in
A. D. 321, though, as  a pagan, he omits to name the  cross,
acknowledging that heavenly warriors appeared in the air in
armor,  flashing a celestial effulgence, who, gliding down from
heaven, declared that they meant to fight for Constantine.
We have Lactantius, before a. d. 314,  asserting  in his De
Mortibus Persecutorum, that Constantine had the letter 2 in-
scribed on the  shields of the soldiers, in consequence of a
dream, and conquered Maxentius in consequence.  Socrates,
Philostorgius, Gelasius, Nicephorus, and  Sozomen all declare
the truth of the appearance of the cross  in the sky ;  the last,
however, on the  authority of Eusebius.
  With respect to the discovery of the  sepulchre and  cross
of Christ, Eusebius is  somewhat meagre, and his account is
not given in his history, but in his Life of Constantine.   We
are informed that his  mother, the Empress Helena, made a
pilgrimage to Jerusalem in a. d. 326,  when nearly eighty
years of  age, in order to discover these sacred memorials.
Relying on the fact that the Jews buried the instruments of
death with the corpses of the  malefactors, they calculated 
DISCOVERY OF THE  CROSS.             461
   with much confidence  on finding the  crosses on which Jesus
   and the thieves  had been suspended.  They ascertained the
   exact  spot by the aid of Jews  as well as Christians, whose
   ancestors had continued to live in Jerusalem.  They found
   that Hadrian had endeavored to disguise the place by build-
   ing over it a temple of Venus.   By the orders of Constantine,
   this was demolished, and the earth which had been  thrown
   over the ancient sepulchre removed, and the cave of the se-
   pulchre  found.   Eusebius himself  says nothing of the  dis-
   covery of the cross, but instead gives a letter of Constantine's
   to Macarius, Bishop of Jerusalem, in which he speaks of the
   discovery of ' the token of  the  Saviour's most holy passion,'
   being discovered  buried under  the earth, and of its identifi-
   cation by ' miracle.'
      This  account was confirmed, but not much more  particu-
*  larized by St. Cyril, one  of the clergy of the Church of the
   Holy  Sepulchre, which Constantine built over it.  He then
   in a. d.  361, or twenty-five years after, speaks of the Holy
   Sepulchre,  and the church over it, as well as of the Holy
   Cross, in a letter to the Emperor Constantine.  St. Ambrose
   and Chrysostom speak of the three  crosses as having been
   found by Helena.   The historians Theodoret, Socrates, and
   Sozomen all relate the circumstance that the inscription writ-
   ten by Pilate was found loosened from the true cross, and
   that the cross of Christ was identified by  miracle ; —namely,
   by a  certain woman (Sozomen says a lady of rank in Jeru-
   salem),  who had for  years been  afflicted with an incurable
   disease, and who, Socrates says, was in a dying state, being
   borne to the crosses.   Having been enabled to touch two of
   them, she remained still unrelieved, but on touching the third
   was instantly healed, and restored to her full strength.  Sozo-
   men adds that it was said also that a dead person was restored
   by the same application.   Paulinus, and  Sulpicius on his au-
   thority, add the latter circumstance.  Rufinus agrees mainly
   with  the other  historians :  Socrates, Sozomen, and Theodoret
   say that Helena  sent the nails of the cross to her son, who
          39* 
462         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
had one or more welded to his helmet, to defend his head from
hostile weapons, and the rest made into a bridle-bit to fulfil
the prophecy of Zechariah, xiv., ' That which shall be upon
the bit of the horse, shall be  holy to the Lord.'  Paulinus
adds that, like the  widow's  cruse of oil, the true  cross had
the property of  giving off fragments for relics, without di-
minishing in bulk.
   Of the many volumes of fierce controversy regarding these
two last miracles;  the  denial of their truth in toto by Pro-
testant writers ;  the assertion that even the true place of the
sepulchre and crucifixion was  not hit upon by Helena,  &c,
it  is unnecessary for me here to speak.  My business is alone
with historical evidence of the time when these occurred and
immediately  afterwards;  with the  circumstance  that  the
highest authorities of the church of those ages attested  the
facts, and  that the early church  accepted  them as true.
These specimens may serve for the first six centuries.  I can
only glance cursorily at a few more of the numerous mass of
miracles which extend  through the histories of these ages.
Sozomen, one of the  historians of  the  church during this
period,  tells us that his grandfather and all  his family had
been converted to Christianity at Gaza, through seeing Hil-
arion expel a devil by the  mere name of Christ, which had
resisted all the efforts of Jews and pagans.   Theodoret says,
that James, Bishop of Antioch, in the fourth century, had
power to raise the  dead, and  perform  many other miracles.
The death of Arius is related by all these historians,  as by a
sudden  and signal  judgment  at the moment that the Em-
peror Constantine  was  going to force him on the orthodox
church.   Sozomen and Socrates both relate of Spiridion,
Bishop of Triraithon in Cyprus, that, when a country farmer,
he had robbers in  his  sheep-fold by night, whom he found
bound fast there in  the morning, and that this had been done
by protecting spirits.   They relate,  also,  a  circumstance
bearing  a marked  resemblance to  the spiritual manifesta-
tions of to-day.   An  individual confided a deposit to the 
MIRACLE AT THE TOMB OF EVAGRIUS.
463
care of his daughter, named Irene.   She buried the money
for greater security, and soon after died.  The owner called
on  Spiridion for the money, who, knowing nothing of it,
searched all the  house for it in vain.   The man tore his hair,
wept, and  was  in great  distress.  Spiridion bade him be
calm, proceeded to his  daughter's grave, called on her to
inform him where the deposit was concealed, received the
information, and restored it to the owner.   The reader will
recollect the similar case in the chapter on  Greek spiritual-
ism, where Periander,  the tyrant of Corinth, obtained the
same information  of  a deposit from his deceased wife, by
going to the oracle of the dead ;  and later in the history of
the church, we have a similar statement  regarding Synesius,
Bishop of Cyrene, which is still  more  remarkable as, since
the case of Belshazzar, in Daniel, it is, perhaps, the oldest
instance of direct spirit-writing  on record.   Evagrius,  a
philosopher, was, after much labor, converted to Christianity
by the  bishop,  and brought  him a bag of three hundred
pounds in gold for the  poor,  saying Synesius should  give
him a bill under his hand  that  Christ should repay him  in
another world.   Synesius gave the bill, and the third day
after the funeral of Evagrius he appeared to Synesius in the
night and  bade  hira go  to his sepulchre, and take his bill, as
Christ had satisfied his claim.   On  relating this to the sons
of Evagrius, they remarked that it was  very curious, as their
father had insisted on  their burying the bill with him, and
they had done  so.  They then all proceeded to the  grave
together, opened  it, and found the bill in the  hand of the
dead man, thus  subscribed in the undoubted hand of the de-
ceased philosopher: —'I, Evagrius  the philosopher, to thee,
most holy Sir Bishop  Synesius, greeting.   I  have received
the debt which, in this paper, is written with thy hand, and
 am satisfied ; and I have no action against  thee for the gold
 which I gave to thee,  and by thee, to Christ our God and
 Saviour.'
    Socrates and Sozomen both confirm the account of Ammi- 
464
HISTORY OF  TDK SUPERNATURAL.
anus Marcellinus, of the philosophers endeavoring to discover
the successor of the Emperor Valens by a table and alphabet,
and of their success.
   Sozomen says that Eutychian, a monk of Bithynia,  in
favor with Constantine, having desired the jailers  to  take
off the fetters of  a prisoner who was grievously tortured by
them, and being  refused, went to the  prison attended by
Auscanon, a venerable presbyter  of  the church ;  the doors
of the prison  opened at their approach, and the chains fell
from the  prisoner's limbs.  They then went to the emperor,
and procured  his release, as he  was found innocent.  All
these historians assert that the Asiatic Iberians, a nation  to
the north of Armenia,  were converted to Christianity by
means of a captive Christian woman, who cured the child of
the king, when all other means failed, by laying her hand on
it  in the name of Christ.  They add, that the king afterwards
building a Christian church, oue of the columns could not be
raised by any human power, but the same captive remaining
in the temple in prayer all  night,  the next  morning the
column was found standing erect, but suspended in the air at
some distance  above its base.  Whilst the king and the work-
men were gazing in amazement at the phenomena, the column
slowly descended to the base and became fixed. The suspen-
sion and  descent of tables  now-a-days is nothing to  this,
and without the tables no one could credit the suspension  of
the column in a. d. 331.  St. Martin  of Tours is declared by
Sozomen  to have restored a dead man to life, besides per-
forming many other miracles.  Socrates and Theodoret relate
that Julian the Apostate, desirous of receiving an oracular
message  from the temple of the Daphnean Apollo at An-
tioch, the reply was  that the oracle  could not speak whilst
the body of Babylas the martyr,  and those of other Chris-
tians, remained  buried  near the  temple,  and Julian was
obliged to allow the  Christians of Antioch  to  remove  these
remains to  the city in  public procession.   They add,  that
Julian, the uncle of the emperor, having committed indecent 
         HOSTILITY OF  JULIAN TO  CHRISTIANITY.     465

profanations in the church at Antioch, was, with his assist-
ants, struck with a loathsome disease, and that he died eaten
by worms.  His wife, a Christian, implored him to repent of
his impious conduct, and he endeavored to undo his  deed
when too late.
   All these historians relate the attempt of Julian to rebuild
the temple of Jerusalem, in much the same manner as Ammi-
anus Marcellinus  the  pagan, as already given  by me in the
chapter of spiritualism of the New Testament.   Julian him-
self alludes to  it  in a letter quoted by Bishop Warburton,
who treats it  as  one of the most perfeclty proved facts of
history.  The same three historians relate that Julian having
put to death a young Christian of Antioch, named Theodore,
fire fell from  heaven and destroyed  the  temple of Apollo
there which J«lian was constructing.   That  Julian having,
at Caesarea Philippi, thrown down the statue of  Christ heal-
ing the woman with an issue of blood, mentioned by Eusebius,
and erected his own in its place, it was immediately smitten
by thunder, and prostrated  on the ground, face downwards.
That the pagans dragged  the  statue of Christ round the
city, and mutilated it, but the Christians collected the  frag-
ments  and preserved them in the  church, where Sozomen
says they were in his time.   Sozomen says that when Julian
was killed in Persia, his death was seen in Asia by one of his
own officers on his way to join him, but at twenty days' dis-
tance  of  travel;  and by Didymus  the blind Christian at
Alexandria in Egypt.   Theodoret says his  death  was also
seen by his namesake Julian,  a monk, in  his monastery at
 many  days' distance.   These historians relate that nothing
was more common amongst the ascetics in the desert of the
Thebais, than curing diseases by the laying on of hands and
anointing  with oil.  Sozomen says that John  the apostle
raised a man  from the dead  at Hierapolis, and  that  the
daughters of  Philip  living  there did the same.   In  these
histories are many instances of remarkable prophecies, and
of visible  interposition  of  armed angels in  defence of  the 
466         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
Christians,  as  in the case of Gainas  the Goth, attempting
to take Constantinople against Arcadius, in support of the
Emperor Theodosius.
  The last miracle in the histories of the Christian church of
the first six centuries which I shall refer to, is  that of the
sixty-six  Christian professors  at Carthage, whose  tongues
Hunneric the Vandal cut out in the year 484.   He also cut
off their right  hands, besides  putting  numbers  of others to
most barbarous deaths.   It is  stated,  and that by numerous
eye-witnesses and contemporaries  of the highest character,
that these confessors, though their tongues were cut out to the
very roots,  continued to speak during their lives  as perfectly
as before.  Victor, Bishop of Vite, who published his account
only  two years after the event, says that he saw one of these
men  at Constantinople, named Reparatus, wh« had become a
sub-deacon there, and in great favor with the Emperor Zeno,
and  that his speech was  perfect.  ^Eneas of Gaza  says  he
saw  a number of these men at Constantinople, found their
articulation admirable,  and examined their mouths to satisfy
himself that they had no trace of a tongue.  Procopius, the
well-known  historian, gives the  same evidence  of some  of
them  living in his  own time,  and adds that two of them,
on becoming dissolute, immediately lost the use of this  mi-
raculous speech.
  The Emperor Justinian, in an edict, states that he had seen
some of these wonderful men ; and Marcellinus, the emperor's
chancellor,  adds his personal knowledge  also.  Besides these
who  had seen more or less of these men, the writers near the
time received the account as unquestionable, as Victor, Bishop
of Tormo, Pope Gregory I., &c.  One  of the most remarkble
cases amongst these was  that of a youth who was dumb up
to the moment that his tongue was extracted, and who spoke
immediately and ever afterwards.
  The Rev. J. H. Newman, in  summing up  this irresistible
evidence in his ' Essay on Miracles,' is indignant at Middleton
and Douglas, when they could not deny  the completeness of 
        THE TRUE VALUE OF HISTORIC EVIDENCE.     467

the evidence, endeavoring to prove  it no miracle, asserting
that there have been other cases of people speaking without
tongues.   Mr. Newman need not be astonished.   These men
were, in reality, disbelievers in all miracle whatever, but dare
not avow this as regarded the miracles of Scripture.   Being
resolved  on denying  all  miracles out of the Bible, had  they
heard  of  martyrs  miraculously  speaking when  their heads
were cut  off,  if they could  not deny the  excision  of the
heads,  they would have coolly asserted that nothing  was
more  common  than for  people to speak when their heads
were off.
   The spirit of Mr. Newman in his essay is much to be ad-
mired for its fairness. He makes no attempt to attach weight
to doubtful evidence ; he makes  none to deny the notorious
fact of the corruption of the church  in the fourth and fifth
centuries, and of the  reckless manufacture of miracles in the
ages of the Roman Church preceding the Reformation.   He
says candidly, ' There have been at all times true miracles and
false ones; some  of  the miracles were true  miracles;  some
were certainly not true; under these circumstances the decision
in particular cases is  left to each individual, according to his
opportunities of judging' (Introduction, p.  xiii.).
   In  fact, when we have gone over history, its  miracles in
all ages and countries must be judged by the same evidence
as the rest of  the  narratives  of these  historians.  From all
history, which, as Lord  Byron  wells says —
            Lies like truth, and yet most truly lies,

we must  make  a liberal deduction  of falsehood; but  when
that is done,  there must be left a  substantial residuum of
truth,  of  which miracle  claims its legitimate dividend.  To
say that all the miracles of the  early Christian church were
sheer  fiction,  would  be  to stamp that church, instead of
being, with all its faults, undoubtedly the best church which
the world  had  seen, the most infamous, not  only of all 
468
HISTORY  OF TnE  SUPERNATURAL.
churches,  Jewish,  pagan, or  others,  the  early Christian
church  must claim  its share of  miracle as  its hereditary
human right, if it claimed no more.  We must admit proper
historic evidence  on all subjects, miraculous or ordinary, or
in the words of Cicero and John Locke, we  destroy history
altogether. 
THE  ALEXANDRIAN SCHOOL OF PHILOSOPHY.    469
CHAPTER  XIX.
SI PERNATURALISM OF THE NEO-PLATONISTS.
Divination is not a human work, but is divine and supernatu-
ral, and is supernaturally sent from heaven.
                     Iamblichus, De Mysteriis Egijptorum.

         'Tis ApoUonius sage, my trusty guide
                And good instructor.      Kbats's Lamia.
   COINCIDENT  with Christianity arose the Alexandrian
     school of philosophy, the last school of the philosophy
of Greece.  It was based on the psychological systems of
Pythagoras and Plato, but not on them alone.  It embraced
the original sources whence those philosophers had drawn
their most potent and  spiritual ideas, the profound and pri-
meval  teachings of the sages of  Egypt  and India, which it
merged into and amalgamated with the  new life of  Christi-
anity.   'At Alexandria,'  says Ennemoser, 'the  point  of
union  between the East and the West of the  spiritual and
temporal  life and traffic of the time, soon after the Christian
era, originated that remarkable  school which  at  once com-
bined  all the tendencies of  the  Greek philosophy with the
doctrines of the Orientals, of the Jewish  Cabala with the
reflections and speculations of the Occidentalists.  The Neo-
Platonists sought to present the elements of theosophy and
philosophy according  to the primeval doctrines of the Ori-
ental  prophets in  combination with the poetical Platonism
and the Aristotelian philosophy in the form of Grecian dia-
lectics.   The Oriental doctrine of emanation,  the Pythago-
   I.—40 
470          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.

rean number of harmony,  Plato's ideas of the creation and
the separation from the world of sense, constitute the proper
fabric of the so-called Neo-Platonic school.'
  In this philosophy the soul of man was represented as in
Egypt and India, and by Plato and Pythagoras in their creed
drawn thence, as descending from the  Divinity to earth on a
course of trial and purification.  This purification was thought
to be greatly promoted by conquest over the senses, and this
conquest to  be accomplished at once  by  prayer and temper-
ance and purity of body.   By these means men became en-
dowed with  power, not only from on high but from  surround-
ing nature, which entered  into union with it by certain secret
influences, which  were resident  in nature, but tending  up-
wards into  a higher  nature.  They  are, in fact,  fully cog-
nizant of what are now  called the mesmeric  and  magnetic
principles which open the gates of clairvoyance, and through
the same admit the disembodied spiritual natures to approach
ours sensibly.  This school thus  taught all the sublime theo-
ries  of Brahrainism and  Buddhism ;   of the  ascension  by
means of spiritual  abstraction and extacy into  the unity with
the divine whilst still in  the body;  and at this point they
came in contact with  the  clearer light and flame of Christi-
anity, and were elevated  by it into a nobler spiritual  sphere
than  unassisted paganism had hitherto reached.
   Porphyrins, one of the greatest teachers of  this  faith, says
ApoUonius  of Tyana, who may be termed its prime practical
demonstrator, was four times  united  to the Deity  by inward
life ;  and by pursuing the plan laid  down in the  Banquet of
Plato, the Deity was  manifested to him, though  He has nei-
ther  form  nor ideas, but is established  above intellect and
everything  intelligible ; and he  adds, that he himself, when
sixty years  of age, was thus also united to  the Deity.
   It might have been supposed that men with such ideas would
have been  the first to receive Christianity, seeing its mira-
cles,  and hearing  its kindred  doctrines  in  their original
power.  But like learned men now-a-days who cannot accept 
             VIEWS OF THE NE0-PLAT0NIST8.          471

spiritualism, they were already educated into another intel-
lectual mould, and could not get out of it.   They saw Chris-
tianity from the temple-door of their own philosophy, and
found it so homousian that they thought it  ought to enter
in, not they go out to it.  The pride of Greek philosophy
could not stoop to Hebrew revelation, but rather sought to
draw strength from  it, than become absorbed  by it.   It  is
on this account that  the Neo-Platonists have been regarded
as rivals and  antagonists of Christianity, and as embodying
the last effort of paganism to maintain itself against the new
and more powerful faith.   But this is a total mistake on the
part of Bishop Lloyd, Kiister, Mosheim, Brucker, and others,
who have  represented the  Neo-Platonists as having set up
ApoUonius Tyanaeus as a sort of rival of Christ.   Meiners,
in his ' History of the Origin, Progress, and  Decline of the
Sciences in Greece and Rome,' has fully exposed the absur-
dity of this idea.  He says that these writers have not  only
forgotten all chronology, but they have imputed the foulest
charges  on Pythagoras, Porphyry,  and Iamblichus.   That
the miracles  which  they say Porphyry and  Iamblichus in-
vented and attributed to Pythagoras, are related by the  very
oldest biographers of Pythagoras.  That ApoUonius of Tyana
was born  about the time of  Christ, and  began  his public
teachings quite as early, and that Philostratus even wrote his
Life of ApoUonius before Ammianus Sacchas, the first of the
Neo-Platonists, began to  teach.  That to  attribute the in-
vention of the miracles of Pythagoras to Philostratus,  Por-
phyry, and Iamblichus,  is a display of such  ignorance  as  he
could not understand how the  most  moderate scholarship
could have fallen into it.   That so far from  the Neo-Plato-
nists showing any  antagonism  to Christianity, they confess
the  highest  respect for  Moses  and  Jesus  Christ:  never
thought of impeaching their miracles ; that neither Porphyry
nor Iamblichus have ever been convicted of a single fiction ;
and finally, that, in  their writings, there is not a single trace 
472         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
of a comparison and assimilation of the miracles of Pythago-
ras with those of  our  Saviour.
  This is quite true, and as the forerunner of this celebrated
school of spiritualists, let us take a concise view of ApoUo-
nius of Tyana:
  This great  Theurgist,  so much celebrated by the  Neo-
Platonists,  was born  at Tyana, in Asia Minor,  about the
Raine time as Jesus Christ.   He was  a man of fortune, and
devoted himself to the philosophy of Pythagoras.   He ab-
stained from animal food, went  barefoot, and wore  only the
skins of animals — a rather inconsistent thing to eat no meat,
but to encourage those who did by buying the skins of the
slain beasts.   He imposed a  five years' silence on  himself.
He also entered for a  time a temple of JEsculapius at JSgas.
He divided his patrimony with his brother, and  the brother
having spent his half,  he divided the remaining half with him.
He travelled  to  Babylon,  to  Susa,  and even  to India, to
acquire the spiritual  philosophy of those  regions.   He was
of a remarkably handsome and  impressive person.   He be-
came not only profoundly  informed  in Eastern  philosophy,
but  developed, by his dietary  and  ascetic habits,  and  by
earnest prayer, into a great medium.  He  travelled, not only
to the  places already mentioned, but to nearly all the great
oracles, to that  of Amphiarus, to Delphi,  and Dodona; he
visited Egypt, ^Ethiopia,  Crete,  Sicily, and  Rome, every-
where  conversing, not only with the philosophers,  but with
the  people  of  all ranks, learning  their  real experiences.
Wherever  he went,  he  incited  to  purity, to prayer, and
morality;  he cured the most dangerous diseases,  and pre-
dicted future events.  A terrible pestilence raging  at Ephe-
sus, he was sent for;  and there, it is asserted, discovering a
demon incarnated in a human  body, he ordered him  to be
stoned, and the plague was at an end.
   At Corinth he became much attached to a young man
named Menippus, who, contrary to the philosopher's advice,
married  a rich and  beautiful  woman.   On the wedding-day 
APOLLONIUS OF TYANA.
473
ApoUonius walked,  unbidden,  into  the house, and com-
manded the demon which animated the body of this woman
to come out of her.   After a vain resistance  she came out,
confessing that she was an empuse, or sort  of vampire, who
meant  to  have sucked  up the  life  of Menippus.  On this
story Keats has framed his beautiful poem 'Lamia.'
   On another occasion ApoUonius is said to  have met  a
bridegroom in great  agony of grief  following the bier of his
bride.   He ordered  the procession to stop, and recalled the
young  woman to life.  Probably these accounts have been a
great deal  embellished, but there is no reason to doubt, from
the immense reputation  of ApoUonius, that his  theurgic
power  was enormous.  He cured all kinds  of diseases  by
precisely mesmeric means.  He was  a great magnetist as
well as spiritualist, having studied all the scientific and psy-
chologic arts of the time in the  schools and temples of every
renowned country.  Like the Emir Bechir of  our time, he
sent his magnetic remedies to any distance, and they expelled
disease.   He made a constant distinction betwixt magic and
sorcery.   Magic  he held  in the  original sense, as a power
conferred by science and the Divinity  to promote health and
virtue; sorcery as the  abuse of it, practised by the aid of
devils  for  base purposes.   His own words  in his letters pre-
served by the Emperor Hadrian,  are worthy of all attention
at this day : — 'A sorcerer I am  not, but a better man, sus-
tained by God in all my actions.   Sacrifices I have no need
of; for God is always  present  to me, and  fulfils my  wishes,
so that I  leave all these cheats  and evil-doers far behind me.'
After denouncing sorcerers, whose  sordid souls, he says, are
only bent  on collecting riches, he adds, ' I  believe, from firm
conviction, that young people should not even speak with
such persons.'
   The philosophy of ApoUonius was purely Platonic and
 Pythagorean.  Plato,  in  the  Timaeus,  says that  between
 God and man are the daimones,  or spirits, ' who are always
 near us, though commonly invisible to us, and know all our
        40* 
474          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

thoughts.  They are intermediate between gods  and  men,
and their function is to interpret and to convey to the gods
what  comes from  men, and to  men what comes  from the
gods.'  How exactly accordant  with the Christian doctrine
of angels and ministering spirits !  Both Plato and Pythag-
oras recommended  pure diet  and  habits  to  procure pure
spiritual lucidity.  ' My mode  of life,' says ApoUonius,  ' is
very different to that  of other  people.   I take  very little
food,  and this,  like  a secret  remedy, maintains  my  senses
fresh  and unimpaired,  as it keeps  everything that is dark
from  them, so that I can see the present and future, as it
were, in  a clear mirror.   The sage need  not wait for the
vapors of the earth and the corruption of the air, to foresee
plagues and fevers ; he must know them later than God, but
earlier than the people.   The  gods see the future, men the
present, sages that which is coming.   This mode of life pro-
duces such an acuteness of the senses, or some other power,
that the greatest and  most remarkable things may be per-
formed.   I am,  therefore, perfectly convinced that God re-
veals  His intentions to  holy and  wise men'  (vii. 2, 9).
   In  the  latter part of his life ApoUonius was accused  by
Domitian of  conspiring with  Nerva  to put an end to him;
but the philosopher proved his innocence, and in bold  words
set the tyrant at defiance.  He then retired to Greece,  where
he lectured  on  his  doctrines to  the most  distinguished
audiences.   In the midst of  such  a lecture at Ephesus, he
suddenly  stopped, gazing earnestly as at some  wonderful
scene, and then exclaimed, ' Strike the tyrant I strike  him !'
In the midst of the astonishment of his hearers, he then said,
' Domitian is no  more ! the world is delivered of its bitterest
oppressor !'   The next post from  Rome brought  the  news
of the emperor being killed exactly on the day and the hour
at which ApoUonius  saw the event at Ephesus.
   Nerva,  who succeeded Domitian, maintained the greatest
friendship for ApoUonius.  After his death, which took place
when  nearly a hundred  years old, the people of Tyana built 
AMMONIUS SACCHAS.
475
a temple to his honor.  Hadrian collected his letters and the
original documents regarding him, and preserved them as of
the highest value.  These the Empress Julia, the mother of
Severus, delivered to Philostratus to write the life of the
philosopher  from ; which  he did.  Bishop Douglas, in his
book  against miracles, endeavors to  destroy the credit  of
the biography by Philostratus, on the ground that a life of
ApoUonius,  written soon  after his  death, did not contain
many of the marvels done by him ;  and  that these first ap-
peared in the life by Philostratus years afterwards.  But  he
takes care not to tell you that Philostratus wrote his life from
the private and authentic data preserved by Hadrian, which
explains the whole mystery, and adds that very authenticity to
the later life which he sought insidiously to annihilate. How
many books do we see now-a-days published, which are based
on no authentic documents, and have  to retire when the work
thus  legitimately produced  appears !  ApoUonius nowhere
represents himself as  a Messiah, but simply a  prophet and
theurgist inspired by God.
  Though ApoUonius was the herald of the  new school, he
was not its founder, only its great foundation stone.   Am-
monius Sacchas is regarded as the organizer of the school or
sect about 220 A. D., and its most distinguished disciples were
Plotinus, Porphyry,  Proclus,  and Iamblichus.  Ammonius
drew the origin of  his spiritual philosophy avowedly  from
the East.   He said that the philosophy  which  originated
there was brought by Hermes to Egypt, and which, darkened
and disturbed by the disputations of the Greeks, was restored
to its purity by Plato.   He knew truly whence his system
came, for the identity  of God and the  universe taught  by
him is that of the Indian Vedas and Puranas ; and the prac-
tices  which  he  enjoined —namely, mortifying the body  by
outward abstinence and  inward contemplation to attain to
union with the Supreme Being, are  those of the Yoga, de-
scribed in  several of the Puranas.   From this source, one
would think, too, must have been engrafted on Christianity 
 476         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

 the  monachism  and asceticism  of  the  devotees  of the
 Thebaic desert, the Yogees of the church.   In  fact, Am-
 monius,  who  was born of  Christian parents, says that the
 religion of both peoples was at bottom synonymous with this,
 and only required  to  be  freed from its errors,  which Jesus
 Christ especially, an  excellent man and friend  of God, had
 done.   That he  had the art to purify the soul,  so  that it
 could  perceive  spirits,  and  by their  help  could  perform
 miracles.
   Plotinus, one of the earliest  disciples of Ammonius, has
 all the character  of an Indian Yogi, a Buddhist devotee, or
 a Christian ascetic.   He lived in the deepest abstraction,
 fasted often, and fell into  extacy or clairvoyance, in which
 condition he seemed to see through all around him, perceived
 the moral condition of every man, and penetrated  the most
 concealed mysteries.   An humble widow, who lived with her
 children in  his house, on one occasion had a  valuable neck-
 lace stolen.   She  caused  all  the  inmates  to  pass in review
 before Plotinus, who looked sharply at them, and  then pointed
 to one with the words, ' This is the thief;' and the man, after
 some denial, confessed.  Porphyrius, his disciple and biogra-
 pher, also relates that Plotinus once came suddenly to him
 and said, ' Thy intuition, Porphyrius, has not  its foundation
 in the spirit, but  proceeds  from  bodily ailment;' and he,
 therefore, advised  hira to travel to Rome,  where, indeed, he
 was cured.
   These may seem rather instances of natural sagacity than
 of spiritual clairvoyance ; but the same clear vision is repre-
 sented by Porphyry as so habitual, that it amounted to more
than sagacity, to infallible intuition.   It was,  moreover, ac-
companied by great theurgic power.   One Olympius, who
held the first rank in philosophy, challenged him to a trial of
magical arts.  Plotinus let  loose  upon him all  his spiritual
potency,  and said to his disciples, ' Now  Olympius shrinks
together like a purse ;' which Olympius found,  and that so
painfully, that he abstained  from his hostility,  and acknowl- 
              THE DOCTRINES  OF PLOTINUS.           477

edged  Plotinus to  be possessed  of the highest spiritual
power.
  The teachings of Plotinus, as detailed by Porphyry, are
precisely those of the Indian Brahmins and Buddhists.  They
are the unity attainable with God  by  spiritual  abstraction
and bodily subjection.   That God is not merely without but
within us, not in a place, but in the spirit.  God is present to
all, but men fly from Him, arid go forth out of Him, or rather
out of themselves.  Disembodied things  are not separated by
space, but by the difference of qualities; if this difference
ceases they are immediately near each other.   In the perfect
union with God, which, as thus  stated, can only be by being
like Him in quality and disposition, the soul looks into her-
self and into God, glorified and filled with divine light, with-
out any earthly weight, which only again shows its power by
darkening.   Out of the eternal light-fountain of God flow
increasing images, powers, shapes  or spirits  like the idolen
of Heraclitus ;  that we may regard the universe as filled Avith
spirits, and animated by them.   To this community of  spirits
which surrounds us in manifold forms, man can only  arrive
by withdrawing himself from the outward sensual attractions.
Thence  such community is obtained in extacy, which  gener-
ally is the work of spirits.  Plotinus possessed this commu-
nity,  and from it drew all his power;  by this he healed the
most dangerous diseases,  and obtained an amazing reputa-
tion by foretelling future events, and performing superhuman
acts.   He declared, like Socrates, that he had an attendant
demon,  and held familiar conversations with him.   When
Emilius invited him to attend the services of the church, he
replied, ' The spirits must come to  me, not I to the spirits.'
   The doctrines  of Porphyrius are, of course, those of his
master.   We find these not only in his Life  of Plotinus, but
in  his work, De Abstinentia, and  in a letter to Anebo, an
Egyptian  priest, given  by  Iamblichus in  his  Mysteries.
Porphyry thought that not even the presence of spirits was
absolutely necessary for vaticinating.   When once the  soul 
478          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
is  brought into  harmony with nature, he contends that all
nature is open to the  soul as in a mirror, for nature is  one,
and man in harmony a part  of that whole.  This he  thinks
a natural attribute of man, but only revealed under certain
circumstances.
   Iamblichus, who amongst the number of the Neo-Platonists
perhaps approached nearest to Christianity, and was so famous
for his learning and his powers of healing by spirit-influence
that  Cunapiur styled him ^avfidaw, — worthy of admiration,
and Proclus $elov,  or divine,  was  not of Porphyrius's opinion,
that  we received our intimations simply from harmony  with
nature, but rather from that harmony with God which Ploti-
nus inculcated, and with the  spirit-train descending from him
in  uninterrupted succession.'   The idea of God is imprinted
on our souls as well as of spirits which are perceived, not by
reason, nor the processes of  reason, but by a  pure and simple
conception, which is eternal and contemporary with the soul.
The^e spirits are mediators between God and man, and  suc-
ceed each other in regular  ranks; so that  those nearest to
God are etherial, the demons of air  next, and the souls more
earthy last.
   He teaches that these  spirits confirm our dreams of the
future;  that  their prescience extends over  everything, and
fills everything capable of it, as  the  sunshine  does.  They
give us also intimations in our waking hours.  They who do
not deserve these intimations, or disregard them, do not be-
lieve in them, precisely because they have them not.   In or-
dinary dreams we sleep, but in extraordinary, or divine dreams,
we are  in something more  than a waking state.  The soul
which unites itself to the pure spiritual natures, receives power
of a  wider perception of things from them ; powers of healing
and  restoring;  of discovering arts  and new truths.   But
there are different degrees of this inspiration ;  sometimes the
soul possesses the  highest, sometimes the intermediate, some-
times only the lowest degree.
   Thus  Iamblichus was perfectly familiar with  clairvoyance 
IAMBLICHUS.                   479
in all its stages.   In his work on the Mysteries, he gives an
exact description of the cataleptic condition of a person in
the mesmeric trance.  ' Many through divine  inspiration are
not burned with fire when it is applied to them.   Many also,
though burned, do  not  apprehend that they are so, because
they do  not  then live an animal life.   Some, though trans-
fixed with spits,  do not  perceive it; others who  are struck
on the shoulders with axes, and others who have their arms
cut off with knives, are by no  means  conscious  of what is
done to them.'   In fact, the author of the clever American
work  called ' The  Apocatastasis,  or  Progress Backwards,'
says  truly that the ancients had all the following kinds of
manifestations, as  we have them, physical, psychological or
mixed:

   Lights, both fixed  and moving.
   Halo encircling  the medium.
   Spech-a, luminous, or otherwise visible; self-visible  spirits.
   Sounds, cries, voices in the air, trumpets, speaking spectres, musical
   Intonations, musical instruments played.
   Inert bodies moved, and  suspended in the air.
   Mediums suspended, and moving in the air.
   Trance, — magnetic sleep — magnetic insensibility.
   Spirit-speaking,  spirit-writing.
   Speaking unknown languages.
   Answering mental questions.
   Clairvoyance, both in relation to time and space,
   Magnetization by the eye,"the hand, by music and by water.
   Spirits answering questions through Mediums and without Mediums.

   Iamblichus  explains  what is said by Porphyry, that  some
 immediately fall into a trance on hearing music; and he shows
 that he  was acquainted with instances of persons  hearing
 most divine  spirit-music,  as persons approaching death so
 often hear it, and as we have some remarkable living exam-
 ples of persons in full  health, who  hear magnificent spirit-
 music and where, in one case, much of this  has  been copied
 down.   Iamblichus says that the soul having originally pro-
 ceeded out of  the divine  harmony, when,  in  the body, she
 catches  tones of this harmony, she is so affected that  she is 
480          HISTORY OF TnE SUPERNATURAL.
carried away by it, and drinks in as much of it as she can
contain.
  He contends that the power of divining is confined to no
spot, and in fully harmonized souls depends  not on external
means, such as the water  at  Colophon, the  subterranean
vapors of Delphi, or the  stream of water at Branchis, but
throws itself into the soul  unfettered  by sense, thoroughly
pervading it, being everywhere and always  present (c. 12).
He denies that sickness, or enfeebled health,  or passions can
be the source of divination; they are but the fissures through
which spiritual light escapes. We cannot give a more fitting
idea of the  purity of the  philosophy of Iamblichus than by
transcribing his remarks  on prayer, which are worthy of a
Christian:
  ' Prayer  constitutes a  portion of the sacred service, and
confers a universal advantage on religion, by  creating an un-
erring connection between the priests and God.  This in itself
is praiseworthy and becoming, but it farther conducts us to a
perfect knowledge of heavenly things.  Thus, prayer procures
us this knowledge of divine things, the union of an indestruct-
ible bond between  the priests  and God: and thirdly — and
which is the most  important — that inexpressible devotion
which places its whole strength in God  above, and thus im-
parts to our souls a blessed repose.   No act prospers in the
service of God where prayer is omitted.   The daily repeated
prayer nourishes the understanding, and prepares our hearts
for  sacred things; opens  to man the divine, and accustoms
him by degrees to the glory of the divine light.  It enables
us to bear our  sufferings and our human weaknesses ; attracts
our sentiments  gradually upwards, and unites them with the
divine ;  produces a firm conviction  and an inextinguishable
friendship ; warms the holy love in our souls, and  enkindles
all that is divine.   It purges away all waywardness of mind ;
it generates hope and true faith  in the light.   In a word, it
helps  those  to an intimate  conversation with the gods, who
exercise it diligently and  often.   From  this  shines forth the 
          REMARKS OF IAMBLICHUS ON  PRAYER.       481

reconciling, accomplishing, and satisfying strength of prayer.
How effectual it is !  How it  maintains the union with the
gods !   How prayer and sacrifice mutually invigorate each
other, impart the sacred power of religion,  and make it per-
fect !   It  becomes  us not, therefore, to contemn prayer, or
only to employ a little of it, and to throw away the rest.  No,
wholly must we use it, and above all things must they practise
it who desire to  unite themselves sincerely with God' (sect.
v. c. 26).
  It is clear that this remarkable school of  full-length spirit-
ualists came so near to Christianity that it is wonderful that
they did not come altogether into it. But perhaps the Chris-
tians  and the spirit of the age  were as  much  to blame for
this as themselves.   ' Upon the early introduction and diffusion
of the Christian doctrines,' says Colquhoun in his '  History
of Magic, &c.,' ' everything that related to  the philosophy as
well as to the religion of the pagan world, was rejected by the
new converts with violent abhorrence, as heathenish impiety,
and was, moreover, presumed to be diametrically opposed to
the purer tenets embraced in the new faith.  Those phenomena
especially which were alleged  to have been manifested in the
ancient temples  of heathenism, and  geuerally regarded as the
offspring of supernatural agency, were now deemed peculiarly
obnoxious, and consequently they were zealously anathema-
tized and proscribed by the  orthodox Christians, as  the  im-
pure  and infamous works of the devil.  These phenomena,
indeed, were universally acknowledged to be, not only authen-
tic, but miraculous; but these very miracles, produced beyond
the pale of the Christian church, were accounted satanic or
demoniacal' (p. 209).
   But these principles came on many sides so near to Chris-
tianity, that they at length unconsciously produced a powerful
influence on the professors of that religion, and the views of
the Neo-Platonists eventually passed over, through Dionysius
Areopagita, to the Mystics of the middle ages.  That wall
of separation over which the Fathers of the church looked
   I. —41 
482
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
upon the heathen oracles, and the heathens on the Christian
miracles, as sorcery, was now  broken down.  Sorcery was no
longer  held  to be  illegal miracle, and 'miracles legitimate
sorcery.  The natures of sorcery and  pure  spiritual  action
were properly  separated  and  put into  their true places.
' Sorcier,' says M. Bodin Angevin in his old French (1593),
' est celuy qui par moyens diaboliques sciements s'afforce de
paruenit a quelque chose.'  Sorcery is, in  fact, the abuse of
the law of spiritual action for base purposes, and by diabolical
agency.  It is the infernal shadow haunting the divine light.
This once recognized by the Christians, the doctrines  of the
Neo-Platonists blended with their own.  The Mystics adopted
it, and by Mystics, I do not mean empty dreamers, but mys-
tics in  the sense  of Dr.  Ennemoser, who says,  ' Mysticism  is
common property.  All men are mystics :  but true mysticism
consists in the direct relation  of the human mind to God :  in
the idea of the absolute, in which, however, objective revela-
tion contains  no more  than  corresponds with  the subjective
powers of man.  True mysticism must include the idea of
truth and goodness, of beauty and virtue,  as beams of spirit-
ual perfection  and religious self-consciousness; and as a
universally  illuminating centre, must penetrate  the  whole
spiritual organism.'
   In  this sense,  mysticism and Neo-Platonism have found
votaries and defenders through all succeeding ages. Amongst
the most distinguished  later  ones we may enumerate Tauler,
and the rest of the  'Friends  of  God.'  Fenelon,  Madame
Guyon, Gall, Cudworth, Glanville; and especially Dr. Henry
More.   Such, too, are the Theosophists of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries,  who united  the search after the se-
crets of nature with those after the secrets of the soul.   Of
these  were  Theophrastus, Paracelsus, Adam  von Boden,
Oswald Croll,  and  later,  and under fresh  modifications,
Valentine,   Weigel, Robert Fludd,  Jacob Bohme, Peter
Poiret, &c. 
TRUE MYSTICISM.                 483
  Mysticism, which is but  another name for a clear and full
spiritual consciousness, traces itself up to Neo-Platonism and
Christian  asceticism ; these trace themselves to Egypt  and
India, and Egypt  and  India trace their psychologic  philos-
ophy to the primal illumination of mankind. Well, therefore,
did Iamblichus affirm  that admissibility to spirit-power ' is
eternal and contemporary with the soul.' 
484          HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
                 CHAPTER  XX.

THE SUPERNATURALISM OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH.
From ungrounded belief, gross superstition,, by which true re-
ligion is not a little infected and adulterated, hath proceeded;
but from the contrary, right down Atheism.—Mkric Casau-
bon, Of Credulity and Incredulity in Things Natural, Civil, and
Divine,  1668.
Those who hate the very name of a miracle, in reality sup-
pose the greatest of all miracles; the tying up the hands of
the Almighty from disposing events according to His will.
          Bishop Burnet's History of his Own Times,  Book ii.
   THE  Church of Rome has, in all times, held so firmly arid
     openly the doctrine of the heritage of the miraculous in
it from  Christ, that  it seems scarcely necessary to do more,
so far as it is concerned,  than to state  the fact.  In truth, the
Roman Church has so run riot in this belief that it is to it
that we owe the  total revulsion of Protestantism from this
doctrine.   The thorough corruption of the church  previous
to the Protestant era, and  the  terrible as well as degrading
deeds which it perpetrated  in  that corruption, I  believe no
truly pious Catholic of to-day will be  found to deny.  It has
been the  fate  of every  church, Christian or pagan, which
has been made political, or which has been placed in posses-
sion of absolute power, to become tyrannous and demoralized.
As no church ever for a long  period enjoyed such absolute
dominion, spiritual and temporal — dominion over the purses,
the property, and the  opinions of mankind — as the Roman
Catholic Church; so none  ever rose to such a pitch of sheer
secularization, of immorality, of the teaching and practice of 
CATHOLIC FAITH IN  MIRACLE.
485
delusions, as this church.   The frightful tale of its persecu-
tions, its wholesale  martyrdoms, its trampling  on every op-
posing thought and principle in the heart of man, its turning
the sacred uses of religion into  a trade for money, and its
suppression of the  use  of the Bible to the laity, are all mat-
ters of unquestionable  and notorious history.   The enlight-
ened  professors of this faith  do not attempt  to deny these
things, but, like enlightened Protestants, they attribute them
to the natural abuses of the truth attendant on  worldly power
and its inevitable corruptions.  The  great principles of the
Roman  Catholic religion are, for the most  part, true and
gospel principles, which have been  abused by priestcraft for
selfish purposes.  The doctrines of miracles and of an interme-
diate state, which Protestantism has  abandoned, are founded
ineradicably on both  the Old and New Testaments ;  but have
 been so  abused by the  Catholic Church in past ages, when it
 had the Christian world  wholly to itself, that  Protestantism
 has, in its indignation, renounced them, and renounced them
 to its cost.  The abuse of the doctrines of purgatory and of
 miracle, and demoniacal possession, in the later ages of Cath-
 olicism, were, in truth, so enormous that, operating on the
 ignorance which the exclusion of the Bible and the discour-
 agement of learning  produced, and which the church thought
 favorable to absolute  power, the Christian world was  in the
 fifteenth and sixteenth centuries overrun with  absurd legends
 of diabolism and lying miracles.   Rival orders of monks and
 friars manufactured  miracles, and cast out pretended devils to
 obtain  popularity and preference over  each  other,  till  the
 whole of the public mind was debauched by these acts, and the
 ignorant people saw devils and ghosts, and miraculous events
 everywhere.  It was high time that a reform  took place, but
 the  Protestants, in their impetuous  zeal, were  not content
  with reform ; they demanded a revolution, in which some great
  and imperishable principles were, for a time, swept away amid
  the rubbish of superstition and priestcraft.   The  truth lay
  midway betwixt Credulity and Incredulity; but the Reformers 
486          HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
were in no mood to take any middle way;  to destroy one ex-
treme,  they rushed to another.  In the reigns  of the Tudors
and the Stuarts even, they abused the same political power as
the Catholics had done, and burnt, destroyed, imprisoned, and
banished those who differed from them  in religious belief.
We shall have more to say on these  heads when we come to
Protestantism.   For the present, it  is only necessary to re-
mark that, though the  Roman Catholics received a severe
chastisement for their abuse of the great  principles of Chris-
tianity during their  enjoyment of a power grown  licentious,
they have never for a moment abandoned their faith in the
eternal truths of sensible spiritual communion with humanity;
in other words, in ' the  communion of saints ;' in the  exist-
tence of an intermediate state, the scheol of the Old and the
hades  of the  New Testament; nor in the power of the church
and of its worthy servants  to work miracles.  They behold
with a certain satisfaction the consequences to Protestantism
from the  abandonment  of these truths, consequences which
they have always foretold — namely, a sterile deadness of
faith, an incapacity for the higher spiritual receptivity of evi-
dence, a wide-spread and  ever-spreading infidelity,  disguised
as rationalism ; a  materialism fast enveloping  the world, and
in its rear the inevitable soul-frost of atheism.
   Punished by the great onslaught and  giant breach of Pro-
testantism, the Roman Catholics, nevertheless, hold their faith
in these truths, though  somewhat quietly, before the world.
Deeply sensible that their lavish feigning  of diabolic agency
was a  crime which  brought its severe  penalty, their priests
are now affected  by a demonophobia, which is  equally mis-
chievous.   Whatever does  not arise in the bosom of  this
church, however holy in its  nature and salutary in its effects,
is calmly  assigned to diabolism.   When  spiritualism  again
lifts its head to  crush the  bloated hydra of materialism, its
only competent antagonist,  they join the  Protestant skeptic
in denouncing it.   But  in the bosom of their church, miracle
still holds its onward, though silent, career, and this they ac- 
MIRACULOUS ACCOUNTS.
487
knowledge, though they do not proclaim it.   The miraculous
powers of healing and other features of a living spiritualism
are continually appearing amongst thera, to some instances
of which I shall, anon, advert.   We will now pass cursorily
over the face of the spiritualistic history of Romanism.
   In the chapter  on the Early Church I brought down my
notice  of its spiritualism to the seventh century.   The Ro-
man Church may be said to have acquired the title of Roman
in a. d. 323, when Constantine made it  the religion of the
empire.  When Boniface III.,  in  a.  d. 606,  assumed the
title of Universal Bishop, its  character  of Roman Catholic
Church may be said to have become complete.  It is to this
point that I have carried down my notice of its spiritualism,
and from this point I might go on quoting whole volumes of
the miraculous from its annals.   But neither does the proof
of the matter require this, nor will my space permit it.   The
reader may turn  to Mosheim, Dollinger, Milner, and other
historians of the church, to Ranke's ' History of the Popes,'
and, above all, to Alban Butler's two massive volumes of the
'Lives  of the  Saints,' to Newman's  'Lives of the  British
Saints,'  and Gorres' ' Christliche  Mystik.'  Every page of
these latter works  teems with  the  miraculous.   The narra-
tives are of a character to startle a faith not  perfectly Ro-
man.  That there is much that is true in them  the noble and
sacred characters of many of the actors and assertors forbids
us to deny;  that there is much that  is exaggerated, if not
 absolutely false, the very nature of all history  compels us to
 believe.   But we are bound to take the  whole  as we take all
 other history, as true with  exceptions  and embellishments,
 and as having in it a substantial mass  of reality.   As I have
 touched  on many  facts included  in  Alban  Butler's first
 volume,  we will  open  the second, and there we  find the
 following, amid a host of similar statements :
    St. Dominic, when the Lord Napoleon was killed by a fall
 from his horse, and was carried into  a  neighboring church,
 by his  prayers  restored him  to life.  He  also restored a 
488          HISTORY OF  THE SUPERNATURAL.

deceased child.   St.  Francis of Assissium,  had  the  five
wounds of Christ in his hands, feet, and sides.   These stig-
mata are said to have  been impressed  on a  great many
saints, male  and female,  down  to the present  time.   St.
Tarachus,  when  upbraided with his folly in not  avoiding
death  by sacrificing to idols, said, ' This folly is expedient
for us who hope in Jesus Christ.  Earthly wisdom leads to
eternal death.'  He wrought miracles.   St. Winifred  had
his life prolonged  at the prayers of his friends four years.
 Six blind men recovered their sight by praying  at  the tomb
 of Edward the Confessor, besides other miracles being thus
 performed.   His body was quite fresh  nearly  forty years
 after  his death.   St. Malachy restored  a lady to  life.   St.
 Hubert and many others cast out evil  spirits.   Wonderful
 miracles of  healing  are  recorded of St. Winifreda at her
 well, in North Wales.   St. Charles Boromeo was  fired at
 whilst  performing  mass,  but the bullet  only struck on his
 rocket and fell to the ground.  He cured the Duke of Savoy
 only by showing himself to  him when given over by the phy-
 sicians.  St.  Martin  of  Tours restored,  at different timesi
 three  or four dead persons to  life;  caused a tree that was
 falling on him  to  fall another way, by making  the sign of
 the cross,  &c.  St. Gregory Thaumaturgus stopped a ter-
 rible flood that was sweeping away houses, people, and cattle,
 by striking down his staff, which  also struck root and became
 a large tree, known to all the country round, for a vast many
 years,  as the Staff-tree; and when  it  fell  through age,  a
 monument was  built on  the spot, which some  of  the early
 historians  already quoted, say they saw.   He also turned a
 lake into dry land by his  prayers.  Numerous miracles were
performed  at the tomb  of St. Elizabeth ; the blind recover-
ing their sight, the  dead recovering life,  &c.
   St.  Columban, in truth a  saint of  the  old British church,
foretold to Clotaire that the whole French  monarchy would
come into his hands in  less than three years, which was so.
He  also blew upon  an image of the god Woden,  and  thus 
STATEMENTS  OF OLD BRITISH WRITERS.      489
shivered  it to splinters.   St. Francis Xavier  raised several
people from the dead.  When a ship in which  he was, struck
on the sands, he  took the line and plummet,  and dropping
them  into the sea, cried to God, and the ship was in deep
water, and they pursued  their voyage.   When thieves came
to steal  the  sheep of St. Spiridion they were fixed  to  the
spot till the morning, aud only  liberated by his prayers.  St.
Dominic  not only restored a child to life, as already  stated,
but foretold  his  own death, saying, 'Now you see  me in
health, but before the glorious Assumption of the Virgin I
shall  depart  to the Lord,' which took  place.   Many saints
foretold  their own deaths.   St. Hyacinth, born  in Silesia,
and called the Apostle of the North, is  said to have crossed
the Vistula in a  flood  when  the  boat dared not venture,
making the sign  of the cross, and walking over in the sight
of four hundred  people, being expected to preach at Wet-
grade.   St. Bernard is said to  have restored to life a  certain
lord,  Josbert de  la Fert6, and  to  have cured a canon at
Toulouse instantly by prayer.
   I might continue these statements into the history of the
English  saints, but my space  forbids;  the reader can  find
abundance of them by turning to Newman's History, to  our
old Chroniclers, and most famous old British writers, as Roger
of Wendover, William of Malmesbury, the Venerable Bede,
the Lives of St.  Cuthbert, &c.    The late Dr. Arnold, in his
lectures  on Modern History, thinks, as a general rule, that the
student  should disbelieve  these  accounts;  but still,  he  ob-
 serves, there are some  miracles against which there is no
 strong a priori improbability,  but  rather the  contrary, as in
 the  cases of the first missionaries  into barbarous  countries,
 where their labors are said to have been greatly promoted by
 the manifestations of divine power, and that if he think the
 evidence sufficient he may yield his assent.  In doing this, he
 adds, he will have the countenance of a great man, Edmund
 Burke, who, in his fragment of English History, has conceded 
490          HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
the same point.  Dr. Arnold might have added, and a great
many other great men too.
  There is a particular species of miracle which all Roman
Catholic writers affirm  to have been very common  in the
church  in all  ages — namely :

                  Rising in the Air.
  ' We  have, in history,' says Calmet,' several instances of
persons full of religion and piety, who, in the fervor of their
orisons, have been taken up  into the air, and remained there
for some time. We have known a good monk who rises some-
times from the ground, and remains  suspended without wishing
it, without seeking to do so, especially on seeing some devo-
tional image,  or on hearing  some devout prayer, such as
"Gloria in excelsis Deo."   I know a nun to whom it has
happened, in spite of herself, to see herself thus raised up in*
the air  to a certain  distance from  the earth ;  it was neither
from^choice, nor from  any wish to distinguish herself, since
she was truly confounded at it.' He mentions the same thing
as occurring to St. Philip of Neri, St. Catherine Colembina,
and to Loyola, who ' was raised up from the  ground  to the
height of two feet, while his body shone like  light.'  More
remarkable still, perhaps, was  the case of Christina, a virgin
at Tron, who is said to have been carried into the church for
burial, when her body ascended from the coffin,  and being
recovered from her trance, she related her visions, and ever
afterwards was so light that she could outstrip the swiftest
dogs  in running, and raise herself  on the branches of trees
or the tops  of buildings.  A  nun  is also mentioned who, in
her extacies, rose from the ground  with so much impetuosity,
that five or six  of the  sisters could hardly  hold her down.
One of the  oldest instances of persons  thus raised from the
ground by invisible power is that of St. Dunstan, Archbishop
of Canterbury, who died in 988, and who, a little time before
his death, as he was going up stairs to his apartment, accom-
panied  by several  persons,  was observed to  rise  from the 
RISING IN THE AIR.               491
ground ;  and as all present were astonished at the circum-
stance, he took occasion to speak of his approaching death.
In 1036,  Richard, Abbot of St. Vanne de Verdun, ' appeared
elevated  from  the  ground while  he was saying mass in the
presence  of the Duke Galizan and his sons, and a great number
of lords  and ladies.   St. Robert de Palentin rose  also from
the ground, sometimes to the height of a foot-and-a-half, to
the great astonishment of his disciples and assistants.'   We
see similar elevations in  the  life of St. Bernard  Ptolomei,
teacher of the congregation of Notre Dame of Mount Olivet;
of St. Philip Benitas,  of the order of Servites; of St. Caje-
tanus, founder of the Theatines ;  of St. Albert of Sicily, con-
fessor, who, during his  prayers,  rose three  cubits from the
ground;  and St. Francis of Assissium, and lastly of St. Dom-
inic, founder of the order of preaching brothers.   To these
we may add Savonarola, who was seen, when absorbed in devo-
tion, previous to his tragical death at the stake, to remain sus-
pended at a considerable height from the floor of his dungeon.
' The historical evidence of this fact,' says Elihu Rich, in the
Encyclopaedia Metropolitana,' is  admitted by his recent biog-
rapher, and we feel no little satisfaction in citing it, because
the same priesthood that use these phenomena as an argument
for the veneration of their saints, were the very men  who
committed Savonarola to the flames as a heretic.   The most
instructive part of these phenomena in recent times, indeed,
te the light they cast  on ecclesiastical history, and the proofs
they afford that one and the same sanctuary of nature is open
to all.'
   'The  author of "Isis Revelata" has clearly wrested,' says
Rich, ' these powers  from  the hands of the materialists and
the skeptics, and used them to prove that  the spiritual na-
ture in man is a real force.'  The  same truth is religiously
and philosophically  enforced  by Dr. George Moore  in his
'Poem of the Soul and the Body.'
   The same is related of St. Edmund, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, by Trivet.  Butler says that Dom Camlet,  ' an author 
492          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
still  living, and a  severe and learned critic,' gives cases of
his own personal  knowledge of holy men so raised during
their devotions.  St. Theresa relates  the  same of herself in
her own autobiography.   Living Catholics assert such cases
as frequently  occurring now.  We know one lady of high
literary eminence who is of this church, and who says she is
frequently lifted from the ground as she kneels  at  prayer.
Nor is the case confined  to  Catholics.   I have seen a lady
repeatedly lifted from her feet, and that against her will, and
another to my knowledge was  compelled to absent  herself
from a Protestant church on account of this happening more
than once to her during the service.   The celebrated Anna
 Maria Fleischer during the  Thirty Years' War in Germany,
 who was noted for many wonderful manifestations, as testified
 by Superintendent Moller of Freiburg, where she lived, was
 frequently during  convulsive paroxysms,  ' raised in bed, with
 her whole body, head and feet,  to the height of nine ells and
 a half, so that it appeared as if she would have flown through
 the windows.'  The Earl of Shrewsbury, in his work on  the
 ' Estatica,'  relates similar phenomena.  This was the case
 also with the Seeress of Prevorst.
   In ancient times St. Philip was borne  aloft and carried a
great distance.  It is related of Iamblichus that, during his
devotions, he was so raised ten  feet above the earth, and his
body and clothes  at such times assumed the color of gold.
Numerous such cases in the present age are recorded  by the
spiritualists of America, and there are some dozens of persons
of undoubted veracity now in England who have witnessed
the floating of Mr. Hume in the air  ; and in one case from
one room to  the  next.   Thus  the oldest  and the  present
times unite to confirm the assertions of the Catholics  on this
point.
   But,  perhaps,   there  are  no persons  who  claimed   the
miraculous gifts of the gospel  in the Catholic church, and
for whom they are  claimed by all the historians of the church,
more remarkable than a certain  number of its female  saints, 
ST. CATHERINE  OF SIENNA.
493
especially Saints Catherine of Sienna, Lidwina of Schiedam,
Hildegarde, Theresa, and that greatest  of all  uncanouized
saints, Joan of Arc.
  'The  life  of St. Catherine of Sienna,'says the historian,
' was but short, thirty-three years ; but her deeds were great
and numerous.  With a very weak and fragile body, she was
sometimes sunk in religious meditation in her cell; at others,
bearing her words of fire through cities and countries, when
the people  who  flocked around her were  taught and in-
structed.  She entered hospitals to visit  those struck by the
plague,  and to purify their souls ; accompanied  criminals to
the place of execution, and excited repentance  in  their ob-
stinate hearts.  She stepped even into the fierce tumults of
battle, like an angel  of  the Lord, and  restrained the  com-
batants  by her own voice ; she visited the Pope at Avignon,
and  reconciled the church.  She changed  the  unbelief of
skeptics into  astonishment;  and where her body was not
able to go, there  her mind  operated by her fiery eloquence
in hundreds of letters to the  Pope, to princes, to peoples.
She  is  said to have  shown a  purity and inspiration in her
poems,  which  might  have ranked her with  Dante and Pe-
trarch.   Here is Divine inspiration,— holy and miraculous
power!'
   The  London  'Athenaeum,' as I have  already  noticed,  a
journal accustomed to pooh-pooh spiritual topics, remarks on
the history  of St. Catherine, March 26, 1859, that such per-
sons ' have united themselves to a strength not their own, and
transcending all human  obstacles.  ...   A  strength not
amenable to  any of "the laws of right reason," but appeal-
ing to the deepest religious instinct, which is  the strongest
feelin"-  of human  nature, and underlies all the differences of
clime and race, and  makes of one  blood all the nations of
 the earth.  Catherine had this religious enthusiasm; she had
 that faith which could work miracles and move mountains.'
   Passing  over  St. Brigitta, a descendant of the Gothic
 kings, whose  deeds and  writings were so remarkable, that the
   I. —42 
494          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
Council of Basle  in the fourteenth  century had them circu-
lated by authority, let us see what Thomas a Kempis says of
St. Lidwina.   She was afflicted with various bodily ailments
of a most grievous kind, and with blindness of one eye ; yet
' she performed such miracles, radiant with her own holiness,
that from the rising to the setting of the sun the name of the
 Lord  was praised in those two maidens, Lidwina and the
 Maid  of Orleans.'
   Such also was  St. Hildegarde, a woman of wonderful vision,
 which she was commanded by an inward voice to communi-
 cate,  and equally wonderful powers of healing.   For the
 greater part of her life, which was  in the twelfth century, she
 was confined to her bed, and suffered incredible pains, yet
 she became the  oracle of princes and bishops by her  spiritual
 insight, amounting to actual prophecy.   She  had even pre-
 dicted the exact time of  her own death, though she lived to
 be old.   She possessed the same faculty as Zschokke in re-
 cent  times,  of  reading  the innermost thoughts — nay,  the
 very life, past and future, of those  she was in company with,
 which, however,  she revealed  only to her confessor.   The list
 of her cures is extensive, and comprehends a variety of dis-
 eases, some  of which she cured at a distance  by sending to
 the patients holy water.   She had the faculty also of appear-
 ing to persons at a distance, a phenomenon which, in modern
 times, perhaps has astonished psychologists more than any
 other. In her clairvoyant state, she said that her spirit-vision
 knew  no bounds; it extended itself over various nations, how-
 ever distant.   ' These things, however,' she said, ' I do not
 perceive with my outer eyes, nor hear with my  external ears,
 nor through the  thoughts  of  my heart, nor by  means of any
 comparison of my five senses; but in my soul alone, with open
 eyes, without falling into extacy ; for I see them in my waking
 state, by day and by  night'  I and  many others  are  famil-
iarly acquainted with  two ladies who have always enjoyed this
psychologic condition, and daily give the  truest indisputable
proofs of it. 
JOAN  OF ARC.
495
  St. Theresa has left  us  the  record  of her  own life, and
amongst the extraordinary circumstances occurring to her,
she describes her being frequently lifted from the earth in her
devotions.   She says that, when she strove  to resist  these
elevations, there seemed to  her such a mighty force under her
feet, that she did not know to what to  compare it.   That at
first it produced  great fear in  her, though the miracle was
done with the greatest sweetness ; for the idea of so'heavy a
body being quite  lifted from the earth had something awful
in it.  These  liftings occurred sometimes in public at mass,
and the Bishop of Ypres and  others testify to their witness
of them.  As these public demonstrations were painful  to
her  sense of humility, she prayed for their discontinuance,
and for the last fifteen years of her life she was free from them.
   But of  all the great  spirit-mediums  which  have appeared
in the Roman Catholic history, there is  none which sur-
passes, or perhaps can  equal, the peasant maiden of  Dom-
remy,  the heroic and maligned  Joan of Arc.   No history  of
events is better known  or better authenticated than of those
wrought by the agency of  Joan ; no hero or heroine has been
so infamously treated  by  historians and by  public  opinion.
 She was burnt for  a witch by the  English, whom  she had
defeated, and nearly  every succeeding  historian  has en-
 deavored to explain the marvels which she wrought  by the
 mere  machinery of  enthusiasm.  Southey and Schiller have
 treated her better—they  have written poems in her honor ;
 but as it is allowed  to  poets to honor people on principles
 which they  repudiate  in  ordinary life, such  honor amounts
 to  little.   In Cassell's 'History of England,' the text of
 which was written  by me, I  boldly took the only feasible
 and honest ground, and  treated her  case according  to  the
 established  laws  of evidence.   If a person  comes forward
 and offers before a whole nation to perform some stupendous
 act, and does it, that person is surely  entitled to belief.  The
 greater the  achievement  compared with the  visible  means,
 the greater ought  to  be  the  credence reposed in  the per- 
496
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
former.   Now, in examining  the  case of Joan, we find her
professing to be directed by heavenly messengers, visibly and
repeatedly appearing  to her  for that purpose, to save her
country from the invaders, when all other means had failed ;
when all the powers of the crown  and  government, all the
wisdom  of  the  diplomatists, the prayers  of bishops  and
priests, the  skill of the generals, and the bravery  of the sol-
diers, had been exerted in vain.   A simple country girl then
 announced her mission to  the king, and accomplished  that
 mission, wondrous as it was.  She did  everything that she
 undertook  to do, and  neither did nor attempted anything
 more.   There was no trace of wildness, insanity, or fanati-
 cism about her;  she accomplished her task by the simplest
 means ; by marching at the  head of the army, and inspiring
 it with a courage which flowed from the same divine source
 as her own faith.   She drove the English  from Orleans, and
 crowned the king at Rheims.  That was  her  promised  mis-
 sion ; it was done, and  she  desired to return to  her shep-
 herding at  Domremy.  But  the human wisdom of the court,
 which had  not  been  able  to save itself without the Divine
 wisdom operating through  Joan,  aud  which had saved it,
 now thought to  make farther political  capital  out of so
 valuable an instrument.   Joan  protested that her mission
 was ended; that  she was  now no more than  any other per-
 son.   They refused to listen; ordered her to do this and
 that, and she replied that it  was  impossible, for she had dis-
 charged that for which she was sent, and  'no longer heard
 her voices.' They forced  her upon what  she earnestly de-
 clared to be unauthorized,  unempowered  courses, and she
 failed, was  taken and burnt.
   Now it is, in my opinion, impossible to find any fact in all
 history more clearly and more naturally flowing from its own
 avowed source.   There is not in  the sacred history any case
in which the proofs of verity and divine ordinance are more
clear, palpable, and incontrovertible.   There is no Scripture
mission which is more plainly the work of God, more demon-
strative of its genuineness, by its perfect accomplishment in 
JOAN  OF ARC.
497
all its parts.   What she failed to do is equally convincing
with what she did, because it was equally asserted by her
beforehand, as the certain result.  There was no means found
of forcing what was not foretold.
  The  orthodox race of historians and philosophers  who
would believe the announcement of an  eclipse  or a comet,
as the  result of  scientific  calculation,  but who would not
believe the announcement of the salvation of a nation even
after the fact, as  the plain  grounds offered by the effector,
think it sufficient to  account for Joan's success, by the argu-
ment that her supernatural claims were  enough to move the
enthusiasm of a superstitious  soldiery, and strike terror into
the  equally superstitious English.  But this is  simply  beg-
ging the question, and refusing to grant to Joan's prophetic
assertions their legitimate consequences, and fails  altogether
to account for Joan's failure  when urged  beyond the limits
of her own engagement.  She still marched before the army
in its career, the same heaven-sent and hitherto victorious
heroine, but  the  victory-inspiring power was gone.   How 1
Why ?  Joan knew  why, and  said why, and the simple ques-
tion is,  Shall we  believe historians who  dared not assert that
she  was heaven-sent, if they secretly believed it, in preference
to  a noble,  simple-hearted woman, who,  in  every  act  and
stage of her life, displayed the most unswerving character
for  truth,  for piety, and clear-headedness; who did all the
wonders she  promised, and  pretended not  to do more ?  It
must be conceded that no  case can be  more complete in all
its parts, and what  is not the least remarkable in it is, that
 though Joan knew and declared just when she was  to  stop,
 she still foretold that what she had done would end in the
 expulsion  of the English  from her country.   Though the
 English captured and burned  her for a witch (for the  story
 of her escape is not worth notice), this did not prevent the
 fulfilment  of her prophecy.  From the hour that Joan ad-
 vanced her  banner  against the invaders, they sank, and con-
 tinued to sink.
        42* 
498
HISTORY  OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
  According to human reasoning, when they had  destroyed
the witch, the witchery was  at  an  end — the spirit of their
soldiers ought to  have revived ;  but it  never  did ; for the
words of Joan were true words, and the fiat of the Lord had
gone  forth against the foe.
   Why did not the church canonize this its most illustrious
daughter ?   Was it  because Joan had  not thrown herself
into  a  convent, and  made  herself a saint  on  the orthodox
pattern ?   Did the people  of  that day  believe that witches
could work the salvation of nations ?  Were not the divine
credentials written on her fair  maidenly brow, spoken  in her
pure maidenly words, and destined to blaze forever through
the ages, palpable to infallible eyes ?  Now, more than four
centuries after the event, canonization  is talked  of.   Alas 1
my masters! it is too late!   God  canonized her 431  years
ago; history, in spite of itself and its thousand  leaden pre-
judices, has crowned her, as the empress of heroines;  poetry,
not the miserable tinsel in the Pucelle of Voltaire, has woven
her laurel wreath, and the heart  of man, slow to surmount
the torpor-touches of education, is beginning to acknowledge
her as God's great missionary,  as womanhood's  eternal glory.
The  noble-hearted and  gifted princess of France,  Maria
Christiana  Caroline, the daughter of Louis Philippe, and
afterwards Duchess of Wiirtemberg, was the first to pay a
woman's  homage to the immortal  shepherdess,  and  sculp-
tured that  form  of her which  was inaugurated at Orleans,
Sept. 13, 1851, and which has  become familiar to  all eyes in
copies and casts  over all Europe.   In the Champs Elysees,
in  Paris, there is a  statue to  her with this inscription: —
'  Statue destine" au Village de  Domreray (Vosges).  Quand
je voyais mes saintes j'aurais voulu les suivre en Paradis.' —
Parolles de Jeanne d'Arc.
      Oui! je l'entends cette voix qui  me crie,
      0! Jeanne tiens le glaive, et combats pour ta foi;
     Va! sauve ta patrie.
     Va! va! fille de champs; le  ciel marche avec toil
       Robert Victor, President de Vunion des Poets.  1855. E. Paul. 
SAVONAROLA.                  499
  We ought here to notice one of the purest spiritualists of
the Catholic Church, Madame  Guyon, but I propose to
speak more expressly of her and of her noble spiritualistic
friend and patron Fenelon.
  One of the most remarkable men who have been at once
the glory and disgrace  of the  Roman Church, was Jerome
Savonarola.  This  great man was born at Ferrara in 1452,
and became a  Dominican friar at Bologna.  He  opposed
boldly the  despotism of  Lorenzo de Medici and  of  Alex-
ander VI.,  and became one of the most influential  of the
harbingers of the Reformation.
        Luther like Phosphor led  the conquering day,
        His meek forerunners waned and passed away.
                                    James Montgomery.
   Yet Savonarola  was by no means one  of the very meek
 ones.  He had ranch of Luther's own dauntless spirit in him,
 and Luther greatly admired his character.  Savonarola was,
 like Luther, a  great medium, and, like  him, had  continual
 combats with the devil.   He predicted the delivery of Italy
 by Charles VIII. of France,  and that it should take place in
 1498.   He warned the people of Brescia that their walls
 would be bathed in blood; and this took place when the Duke
 of Nemours took  it,  and delivered  it  over to a frightful
 massacre.   He called on the  people to repent of their cor-
 ruptions, and foretold still fresh calamities in case of their
 continued  luxury and wickedness.  Becoming a resident in
 the convent of St. Mark at Florence,  his spiritual combats
 grew fearfully.  The  devils uttered terrific threatenings to
 frighten hira, but he expelled them  by making processions
 with the brethren  through the monastery, singing hymns in
 chorus,  and sprinkling holy water.  Sometimes whilst thus
 engaged,  the  devils would  suddenly arrest his  steps,  and
 make the  air so thick before him that he could not advance.
   When Charles VIII. of  France did  approach  Florence,
 Savonarola was deputed by the citizens to address him, and
 this he did with all the authority of an apostle, calling on 
500         HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
him  to  spare the inhabitants, to restrain the licentiousness
of his soldiers, and to respect the sanctity and chastity of
the convents.   He assured him  that, if he did this, his wars
would be everywhere victorious.   When the king did  not
restrain the disorders of his soldiers, he announced that God
 would punish him severely, and the  death of the Dauphin
 soon after fulfilled  the  prediction.   Charles VIII. turned
 away from  Florence, and directed his march on Pisa.   In
 all his actions Savonarola displayed the same lofty integrity.
  He refused Lorenzo de Medici the last sacrament till he re-
  nounced his absolute  power.  His continued opposition  to
  the vices of the pope and the priests  proved more dangerous
  to him than the assaults of the  devils.  He was arrested on
  the convenient charge of sorcery — a confession  of his mira-
  culous endowments — and was burned alive in the year 1498,
  on this false charge, with his two disciples Dominic Bon-
  vichini and Silvester Maruffi.  (Sismondi, ' Hist, des Republ.
  Italiennes.')                %
     Another martyrdom,  equally disgraceful to  the Roman
  Church, was that  of  Urban  Grandier, a  parish priest of
  Loudun in the diocese of Poitiers, in  1634, on the same
  charge of sorcery.  Grandier was a very different man  to
  Savonarola.   He made no pretences to spiritual, supernatural
  power.  He was a  handsome and accomplished young fellow
  of good family, and a very eloquent  preacher.   At the same
  time that he was a  rising, popular man, he was  loose in his
  morals, and  a corrupter of women.   This would probably
  have brought him  into  no trouble;  but the jealousy of the
  other clergy, and his uncompromising hauteur towards those
  who offended him, caused Mignon, another priest of the town,
  and Trinquant, the  Procureur du Roi, the uncle of Mignon,
 to get up a plot against him, which ended in his destruction.
 The enmity of Trinquant arose from Grandier being said to
 have seduced  his daughter.  They introduced another priest,
 Barr£, the cure of Saint Jacques at Chinon, into their plot,
 who became a most zealous coadjutor.  In Loudun was a 
THE  DEVILS OF LOUDUN.              501
convent of Ursuline nuns, which was extremely  poor; and
these priests induced them to feign themselves  possessed by
devils,  and to accuse Grandier of having caused  the posses-
sion  by sorcery.  They were led to hope that this would bring
thera into notoriety, that their case  would excite the com-
passion of the  wealthy, and bring them  certain affluence.
Some  of  these  nuns were  of  noble families; the mother
superior  was Jeane Belsiel, called  in the convent Sister
des Agnes, the daughter of the late  Baron Cose of Xain-
tonge.   They fell into the  scheme, and were tutored to act
the  possessed  to perfection.   The Bishop of  Poitiers was
brought over to the conspiracy against  Grandier; he was
accused before  him of causing the possession  of these nuns
by presenting them demonized roses.  Grandier, on the ac-
cusations of these nuns, or professedly of the devils speaking
in them,  was  suspended and thrown into prison.   The
Archbishop of  Bordeaux, however, on being appealed to by
Grandier,  made  an investigation of the case,  and  absolved
him  of all the charges.   He strongly advised him,  however,
to give up his benefices at Loudun and remove to some other
part of the country out of the sphere of his implacable ene-
mies.   Grandier, who  never gave  way a  moment to  auy
opponents, refused, and  fell  their  victim.   They found  one
of the ladies of the queen-mother named Hammon, who  had
a pique  against the all-powerful Cardinal Richelieu,  the
Minister of Louis XIV., and, in fact, the real ruler of the
country.    Madame  Hammon  had  circulated a satire on
Richelieu;  Grandier had once  been this lady's curate,  and
had  also had  some feud with Richelieu when he was merely
prior  of Coussay, and through M.  Loubardment, who  had
been sent down to Loudun  to superintend the affair of the
nuns, and on other business,  Mignon  and Barr6 conveyed to
Richelieu  the  suggestion that Grandier was the author of
the  satire.  From that moment his utter  destruction  was
resolved on.  The infernal malice of Richelieu, that devil
incarnate, let loose on Grandier all  the power of  the king- 
502
HISTORY  OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
dom in the hands of the most desperate tools.   Grandier had
a mock-trial, was condemned contrary to any direct evidence,
or rather on the professed evidence of devils, and after being
racked  most horribly, he was squeezed betwixt two planks,
and wedges were driven betwixt the planks  and his legs till
the bones were crushed, and the marrow spurted from his
feet!   In this mangled  condition he was burnt alive, still
 protesting his innocence of all sorcery or concern with the
 nuns.   From the midst  of his burning pile  Grandier sum-
 moned Father Lactance, one of his most active persecutors,
 to meet  him at God's judgment-seat within  a month, and,
 though perfectly well then, he died at the end of the month.
 Such were the things which could be done  in France at that
 day by the Catholic priests and by the demon Richelieu.
    But the death of Grandier was the least  part of the scan-
 dals which were exhibited at Loudun on  this  occasion.  The
 priests had from time to time public exorcisms of the devils,
 whom, however, they were in no  hurry  to expel from  the
 nuns, as  the  affair%became noised  not  only all over France,
 but all over Europe, and brought  vast numbers of visitors,
 English  amongst others.  These scenes were carried on from
 1629  to  1638, or nine years, and a year longer by the priests
 at the neighboring town of  Chinon.  They became the sub-
 ject of various volumes, some contending for the genuineness
 of the possessions, others treating  them as impostures.  Of
 the latter kind  is a volume called  ' The Cheats and Illusions
 of Romish Priests and Exorcists discovered  in the History
 of the Devils of Loudun,' translated into English in  1703.
 Almost all persons, however, who have read both sides have
 come to the conclusion that the manifestations were in many
instances more  than  assumed.  The magnetists explain the
whole to their satisfaction by the  theory that the nuns be-
came thoroughly magnetized or mesmerized  under the opera-
tions of the exorcists ; the spiritualists, on  their part (and I
think with good cause)  believe that the  devils, at first in-
voked  for a delusive and infamous purpose,  were only too 
PHENOMENA AMONGST THE URSULINES.       503
happy to appear in earnest.   It is difficult on any other
ground to  imagine that women, some  of them of rank, all
previously  of  honorable characters, could  at  once  pretend
that they were possessed by devils and  act like devils.  The
prioress declared herself possessed by seven devils, stripped
herself sometimes utterly naked before the  priests and spec-
tators, and used language of the most horribly blasphemous
kind.  The contortions which  she  and some of the other
nuns went through were  apparently beyond the force of na-
ture; and  the demoniac fury  and ferocity of their counte-
nances, assuming  now  the visage of  one  demon,  now of
another, seem  to have had  something more than magnetism
in them.
   The Catholics asserted that the  prioress of  the Ursulines
was frequently lifted into the air during the exorcisms; the
Protestants denied this.   The Catholics also  asserted that
the names  of St. Joseph and the Virgin came out upon her
hands, and remained there  ; the Protestants ascribed this to
artificial means, but without any proof; and, on the other
hand,  a  Mr. Thomas Killigrew, an  Englishman  present, re-
corded as follows : — 'I saw her hand white as my hand, and
in  an  instant change color all along the vein, and become
red, and, all on a sudden, a word  distinctly appeared, and
the  word was  Joseph.'
   This is very curious ;  this  sudden appearance of red let-
ters coming out on the hand, arm, or  other part of the per-
son of a medium,  being common in America,  and having
recently been witnessed here.   Here, too, it has been charged
 with being artificial; and, in  truth, nothing is easier to pro-
 duce  artificially, when  it  can be done unseen.  -Numbers,
 however, have seen words  corae out suddenly on a medium's
 arm the  arm having been bared  and exposed before any
 particular word has been  called for, in which case it is not
 so easy to imasine a delusion.  These names continued on
 the hands of  the prioress  for years, but towards the end of
 her life faded away.  In estimating the evidence in this case, 
504          history of the supernatural.
it should be borne in mind, that if the Catholics, on the one
hand, had the object of winning wealth and prestige, on the
other,  the  Protestants, besides  their habitual tendency to
discredit anything  supernatural, had been robbed  by these
Ursulines  and their priests of  a  fine»old mansion and its
gardens, which they had compelled them  by royal authority
to evacuate, and had taken possession of  as their convent.
   The end of all, however, was  that  the convent became
 very rich,  and raised its buildings and domains to a princely
 pitch.   The case is only one of many in which the  priests in
 those and earlier times practised infamous impostures;  and in
 which the devils very probably stepped  gladly in, and ren-
 dered their exorcisms real.
   Disorderly spiritualism  including witchcraft, a flagrant
 species of it abounded in past times in  the Catholic as well
 as  in the  Reformed  Churches.   The miracles of  the Jan-
 senists, at the tomb of the Abbe Paris, also in Louis XIV.'s
 time, which I shall have occasion to notice more particularly,
 were  followed by  much disorderly spiritualism amongst the
 Convulsionists.  The Flagellants, who astonished all Europe
 in 1260, and, in spite of magisterial authority and papal ex-
 communications, continued for a hundred years — thousands
 wandering about in almost every country of Europe,  whip-
 ping  and  tearing  themselves — present another remarkable
 case of disorderly inspiration.  Such were the strange dis-
 orders that broke  out  amongst the children  of the Orphan
 House  at  Amsterdam  in  1566, according to P. C. Hooft,
 called the  Tacitus of Holland.   These children  climbed up
 the  walls and over roofs like  cats;  made the most horrible
 grimaces, and spoke foreign languages, relating things  doing
 at the same moment in other places, even in the courts of
justice.  Similar to these  were the disorders amongst the
children, boys and girls, in the Orphan House at  Horn, in
Holland, as related by Franz Kneiper.  Sometimes they be-
came cataleptic,  were as stiff  as trunks of trees, and might 
         MIRACULOUS POWER AT VARIOUS PERIODS.    505

be carried about in the same manner.  Let us, however, turn
to more agreeable phenomena.
  The Roman Catholic Church can enumerate a great num-
ber of persons endowed with healing powers.   Amongst the
most remarkable of such therapeutists may be mentioned the
following : — St. Patrick,  the Irish apostle  (claimed, how-
ever,  by the ancient British Church) healed  the  blind by
laying on of his hands.  St. Bernard is said to have restored
eleven blind people to sight,  and eighteen lame persons to
the use of their limbs, in one day at Constance.  At Cologne
to have healed twelve lame, to have caused three dumb per-
sons to speak, ten who were deaf to hear ;  and when he him-
self was ill,  St. Laurence and St. Benedict are  said to have
appeared to him, and to have cured hira by touching the part
affected.  Even his dishes and plates are said to have cured
sickness after his death !  Sts. Margaret, Catherine, Elizabeth,
Hildegarde,  and  especially  the holy  martyrs  Cosmas and
Damianus, belong to this class.  Among  others they freed
the Emperor  Justinian from  an  incurable sickness.  St.
Odilia embraced   a  leper, who was  shunned  by  all  men,
warmed him, and  restored him to health.
  The saints of the ancient British Church, St. Columbo, St.
Columbanus, Aidan,  Scotus Erigena, Claude Clement, and
others, possessed the  like divine power. They did everything
through faith in Christ, and, therefore, were  able to perform
such miracles.   ' Those, however,' says Ennemoser, ' who are
wanting in the power of the spirit and in faith, cannot per-
form these.acts like  the saints on whom they cast doubt be-
cause  they cannot imitate them.'  The ancient Scandinavians
claimed the power.   King Olaf cured Egill on the spot by
merely laying his hands upon him and chanting proverbs over
him (Edda, 216).  To return, however, to the Catholic Church,
the pious Edward the Confessor cured diseases by the touch ;
and hence the practice handed  down till recent times of the
Kings of England touching for the king's evil.  In France
the same practice was inherited from Philip I., and continued
  L— 43 
506          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
till the Revolution.  Amongst the German princes this power
was  ascribed to those of the house of Hapsburg, and they
are said to  have cured stammering by a kiss.   The Salma-
dores and Ensalmadores of Spain were celebrated for healing
almost  all kinds of diseases by prayer and by the breath.
Michael Medina and the child  of Salamanca performed nu-
merous such cures;  and the innkeeper Richter, at Royen in
 Silicia, cured in the year 1817-18, many thousands of sick
 persons in the open field, by laying on of hands.  Under the
 popes, laying on of hands was called Chirothesy.  Diepen-
 broek wrote two treatises on it;  and, according to Lampe,
 four-and-thirty Chirothetists were declared to be holy.
   But of all the  marvellous cures in the Church of  Rome,
 none is perhaps so fully and irrefutably authenticated  as that
 of Mademoiselle Perrier, the niece of the celebrated Pascal,
 at Port Royal, in 1656.   This miraculous cure has been re-
 lated by many authorities; amongst the rest by Pascal him-
 self, the uncle of the young lady; by M. Nicole in a note to
 Pascal's 'Lettres Provinciales' (iv. 321-6); by the Abbess
 of Maubisson  in her Life (part ii. 497); by Besogne, ' His-
 toire de l'Abbaye de Port Royal' (i. 364-9); in the Memoirs
 of Nicholas Fontaine (torn, ii., article, Pascal, Perrier, &c.);
 and recently by Mrs. Schimmelpennick.
   Amongst the pupils  at Port Royal, was the daughter of
 M.  Perrier, councillor of the Court of Aids at Clermont  in
 Auvergne.   She was the niece also of the celebrated Pascal.
 She  was then between ten and eleven years old.   From the
 age of three years and a  half her left eye  was consumed by a
 lachrymal fistula; the malignant and purulent humor of which
 had decayed the bone of the nose and that of the  palate, and
fell into the mouth.  The humor was so foetid and  offensive,
that  they were  obliged to separate her  from the rest of the
boarders.   It was, in fact, an exactly similar case to that of
Madame Carteri, who was cured at the tomb of the Abbe Paris
in 1731. It was resolved  to try the effect of the actual cautery,
and  her father  had  corae  to Port Royal for the  purpose, a 
pascal's niece.
507
few days before.  In the meantime Mademoiselle Perrier had
been induced to have her eye touched with a holy thorn, pro-
fessed to be a genuine one  from the crown of our Saviour;
and, to the astonishment of all present, was wholly healed, and
the decayed bones perfectly restored.  The surgeon who was
come to perform the operation, and the  physician too, both
intimately acquainted with the apparently hopeless case, were
amazed beyond measure.   The father was transported with
delight.   Six physicians affirmed the miracle — one of them,
M. Bonvard, physician to the king.  Five  surgeons of emi-
nence did the same.  The miracle was obliged to be admitted
by the Court, by Cardinals de Retz and  Mazarine, who had
themselves ordered the destruction of Port Royal for the
heresy of Jansenism; and the Grand Vicar of Cardinal  Maza-
rine, who had  received orders to make the visitation  of the
monastery, was compelled  to authenticate it too.
   The father and mother of the young lady instituted for-
ever,  at the cathedral of Clermont, a mass in music, to be
celebrated there every year on  March 24, the anniversary of
the occurrence of  the  miracle.  The Archbishop of Paris
and the  doctors of the Sorbonne made a  severe investigation
into the whole of the circumstances; and were compelled to
 admit, by their sentence of October 22, 1656, that 'this cure
 was supernatural, and a miracle of the omnipotence of God.'
 The Pope Benedict XIII. authenticated it by quoting it in
 his printed  Homilies as  one of many proofs that miracles
 have not ceased.  The picture of the cure is still to be seen
 in the church of Port Royal,  in Paris.   Mademoiselle Per-
 rier lived twenty-five years after this event, without  any re-
 turn of the malady ; and the poet Racine drew up a narrative
 of the circumstance, which was not only attested by Pascal,
 but by Arnauld, Felix, and others.
    Nothing can exceed the completeness of the authentication
 of this miracle.   Such men as Pascal, Nicole, Arnauld, and
 the like, were not men to give their names to any fraudulent
 or untrue statements ;  much less were the Jesuits, who were 
508
HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
the deadly enemies  of the Jansenists, and were now taking
measures for their destruction, likely to admit such a signal
miracle amongst them, if  they could, by any means, have
avoided it.   Such  was  their malice,  that  even this plain
proof that the hand of God was with the Jansenists, did not
prevent them from carrying out their vengeance and destroy-
ing Port Royal.
   The Cardinal de Noailles,  who had been instigated by the
Jesuits' to sign the order  for the demolition of Port Royal
des Champs, so called to distinguish it from Port Royal de
 Paris, was seriously warned by  his proctor,  M. Thomasin,
 that it was a scheme of the Jesuits to blacken his character;
 and rather  than  sign the decree M. Thomasin resigned this
 office. The decree was signed by the cardinal; and on Octo-
 ber 29, 1709, was carried into  execution.   Thus  fell  that
 famous monastery and those schools of Port Royal, whence
 the printing press had sent  forth so many famous works of
 learning and piety all over Christendom ; and which had been
 the abode and scene of the labors of a most illustrious con-
 stellation of men—Pascal, Arnauld, Nicole, Quesnel, Racine
 the dramatist,  Racine the historian, Rollin the historian,
 and many others.   The nuns were carried  off by force, and
 scattered into separate and distant convents.  The following
 year the church was destroyed,  and the bodies of the dead
 torn from their graves and carted away amid circumstances
 of horror unexampled in history.   The whole of these fear-
 ful details are given by Mrs.  Schimmelpennick in her history
 of the destruction of Port Royal.   Nor did the judgments
 of God on these impious atrocities appear less marked  than
the miracle of Mademoiselle Perrier itself.   The  chief per-
petrators came to miserable ends.   Terrible tempests raged
during the work of destruction, so that it was, for some time,
obliged to be stopped.   At Port Royal and Versailles espe-
cially,  they raged so furiously that  all the fruit trees were
destroyed.   Madame de  Chateau Regard,  who seized the
spoils  at  Port Royal, was struck with sudden death.   The 
DIVINE JUDGMENTS.               509
judgments of God  fell concentratedly on the head of the
crowned Jesuit tool, the impious Louis XIV., the destroyer
of the Huguenots and the Cevennois, the man who preferred
for his grandson and successor a tutor who was an avowed
atheist.   When this tutor was recommended to him, he ob-
jected that he was a Jansenist; but being informed  that,  so
far from being a Jansenist, he did  not believe in a God,  he
replied,  ' Oh, that is  another affair;  I have not the least
objection !'   This monster king soon received his  reward.
The grand dauphin, the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy, the
Duke of Brittany, the three  successive heirs of the  crown,
were struck by death, awful  and inexplicable; and France
was left with  an aged and decrepid  old  man at her head,
surrounded by triumphant enemies.   The victories of Hoch-
stet, Ramilies, and Malplaquet, rapidly succeeded each other.
Tournay, Lisle, Mons, and Douay opened their gates to the
enemy.   The man who had signed the  revocation of the Edict
of Nantes, who had desolated the Protestant Cevennes, who
had banished F6nelon and destroyed Port Royal,  was left
amid a thousand terrors and humiliations, and such over-
whelming poverty that he was obliged  to tear the gold  or-
naments from his throne, died miserably, and left to his heirs
the retribution of the French Revolution and all its horrors.
 Cardinal Noailles, who signed the decree for the destruction
 of Port Royal, lived bitterly to  repent of the deed, and to
 acknowledge the justice of M. Thomasin's warning.
   But what, some  one will say, of the  holy thorn  by means
 of which Mademoiselle Perrier was cured ?  The answer is
 that she was  not necessarily cured  by  the so-called holy
 thorn, but by the power of God and of her faith in it.  It is
 by no means likely that the thorn was a real thorn from  the
 cross of Christ, but to the child who  sincerely believed it so,
 it was  all the same, and thus a  real  instrument  of divine
 grace   Mr. Colquhoun, who regards  this miracle  from a
 magnetic point of view, says, we should be inclined to treat
 the thorn as  entirely apocryphal; but, he asks, 'How  are
        43* 
510          HISTORY OF TnE SUPERNATURAL.

we to get rid of the facts and the evidence ?'  Exactly so 1
The case is only one of thousands.  I for one do not believe
in the thorn nor in astrology, but I am compelled to believe
many astrological predictions; for instance, that of Dryden
regarding his son Charles, which, after Dryden had been in
his grave, verified itself in all particulars.  Why should true
 oracles have proceeded from pagan temples ?  Yet we have
 seen that they did;  and Plutarch, who lived in those times,
 says that nothing was more certain than their  general truth.
 Schelling, the  great German  philosopher  and  theologian,
 was so struck with this that he asks, ' How, if in the Grecian
 mythology,  the  ruins of a superior  intelligence,  and even a
 perfect system, were to be  found, which  would  reach  far
 beyond the  horizon  which the most ancient written records
 present to us V  A very clever fellow, when Perkins's metallic
 tractors were  in vogue for mesmeric manifestations,  made
 some tractors of wood, and colored them like the  metal ones,
 and on their proving equally efficacious made a great jubi-
 lation on his imagined  discovery that all was illusion and
 fancy.  Poor man !  he did not know that the  power was not
 in the tractors, metallic or wooden, but in  the  manipulator
 himself.   The solution  of all these mysteries  must be found
 in the condescension of God to honest and heartfelt seekers
 of aid, however erroneous in their mode of seeking, but with
 a genuine and  prevailing faith.   Christ, when visibly upon
 earth, used to ask of those seeking cures, 'Believest thou ?'
 And  when  the suppliant  replied in  the  affirmative, the
 miracle took place.   Christ is still  upon earth,  and shows
 himself often ready to  answer  the  same  question in the
 same way.
   The cases  of the  Estatica in the Roman Catholic Church
 are amongst the most remarkable  and interesting  of the
 marvellous facts of this church.  The late Earl  of  Shrews-
 bury published a volume containing his personal visits to dif-
 ferent Estatica, and a mass of facts impossible to be set aside.
 Many of these  ladies had not only the palpable  marks on 
their  bodies  of  the  five wounds  of Christ,  but the most
unquestionable witnesses affirmed that these  were produced
by no natural means ; and though they bled occasionally, the
medical men declared they could be produced by no natural
means,  for they exhibited no  soreness whatever.   Besides
this, many of these  persons  were possessed of the most
extraordinary power of clairvoyance.  Several of the ancient
Fathers had these stigmata, as they were called.  Dr. Enne-
moser has collected most of the cases of this kind known in
history in his 'History of Magnetism.'   Amongst these he
refers to the bleeding wounds and stigmata of St. Francis de
Assisi, and of Sts. Catherine of Sienna, Hildegarde, Brigitta
of  Sweden,  Pasithea of  Croyis, &c.   The  recent ones to
which he devotes especial investigation are those of Cathe-
rine Emmerich  of Diilmen, Maria von Mori, and Dominica
Lazari.  Catherine  Emmerich, a nun  in  the convent  of
Diilmen, had the mark of the crown of thorns in 1802;  and
in  1815 her  attendant  physician published the particulars
of  her case.   She was highly  clairvoyant, and at once knew
the difference betwixt noxious and harmless  plants, though
she had never seen or heard of them before.  She  had  also
higher  revelations as to  persons and events, which always
came  true.   Maria  von  Mori had the stigmata,  but her
higher conditions were not  so  pure and distinct as  those of
Catherine Emmerich.  When  Ennemoser wrote, she was in
a convent at Kaltern.   Dominica  Lazari  was also living;
and her marks  were very prominent, and bled every Thurs-
day and Friday.  From  1834 to 1844, Ennemoser says, it
was well ascertained that she had taken  neither  food nor
drink;  and he refers to the works of Gorres  and his Life of
 Suso, for numerous other cases of  year-long  fasting, such as
 those of Nicholas de la Flue, Lidwina  of  Schiedam, Cathe-
 rine of Sienna,  Angela de Fuligno, and many others.  Enne-
 moser also cites numerous other cases of Estatica, with some
 remarkable  ones related by  Clement Brentano,  in which
 they foretold deaths,  marriages,  and   military movements 
512         HISTORY OF THE  SUPERNATURAL.
from visions.  Rolewink also relates the case  of a girl at
Ham in 1414, 'quae veracissima stigmata dominicae passionis
habuit  in manibus, pedibus, ac latere.'
  But  perhaps the most extraordinary instances of the pro-
phetic  powers of Catholic women, though not possessing the
stigmata, is that recorded by the Abbe Proyaid, in his ' Louis
XVI.  detrone avant  d'etre  Roi,' and fully confirmed by Car-
dinal Maury in 1804, on enquiry by M. Bouys, in which a
simple peasant girl of Valentano, in the diocese  of  Monte-
fiascone, predicted the death of Pope Ganganelli,  the  in-
veterate persecutor of the  Jesuits.   Ganganelli hearing of
it, had the girl arrested and thrown into prison.   She mani-
fested  no concern  at this, saying  calmly,  ' Braschi will liber-
ate me.'   The cure" of Valentano, the confessor of the girl,
was arrested at the same time ; but he showed equal indif-
ference, saying to the officer who arrested  him,  ' What you
have just done has been three times announced  to me by my
parishioner:' and he handed him some papers in  which, not
only the prophecy as to the death of the  Pope and its exact
time, but his own arrest, imprisonment, and liberation were
stated. The day fixed by the peasant girl for the Pope's
death  was  September 22, 1774;  but his Holiness declared
himself quite well, and seemed resolved not to  die.   Not-
withstanding which,  Bernardine  Renzi, the peasant girl, a
prisoner in the convent of  Montefiascone, on that day went
to the  superior, and said to her, '  You may order  your com-
munity to  offer up prayers  for  the Holy Father.   He  is
dead !'  This was before 10 o'clock in the morning of  Sep-
tember 22, and the news was brought by the first courier in
the afternoon that the Pope died  at 8 o'clock that morning.
What  was  more extraordinary was, that Cardinal Braschi,
although no one,  on his entering the conclave, ever dreamed
of electing him pope, was so elected.   Still more extraordi-
nary was the fact, that Braschi, having been rallied  on be-
coming pope  through  the  prophecies of a peasant  girl,
determined to  defeat her prediction of being liberated  by 
                             1
                              OF SORCERY.           513

him.  He therefore appointed such persons to try her as had
most reason to condemn her; but these  persons could not
deny the truth  of  the prophecies, and they acquitted both
her and her confessor on the ground that they were innocent
of any evil design, and were only dupes  of the powers of
darkness.   They were  liberated,  and  the  prophecies thus
wholly fulfilled ; for even popes had been accused of being
influenced by the powers of darkness — in fact, being actual
sorcerers—but still remained popes.  Naudi in his  Apology
for great men  accused of magic,  includes several popes.
Amongst them were Gerbert, Sylvester II.   He is  said, like
Friar Bacon, to have made a brazen oracular head.  Car-
dinal  Benno accuses him of being  attended by demons ; that
by their aid he was made pope ; and that  they promised that
he  should  live till he performed high mass in  Jerusalem.
This was fulfilled in sound only; for he died shortly after per-
forming mass in the church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem,
which is one of the seven districts  of the city of Rome.  He
died 1003.
   In  the same category Benno places Benedict IX., John
XX., and Gregorys VI. and VII.   The latter was the noto-
rious  Hildebrand,  who,  Benno says, had a magical book, in
which some of his servants  were beginning to read,  when
suddenly a  number of devils appeared before them, demanding
why they had called them ; and that they only prevented them
destroying the house in anger at being  called for nothing,
by setting them to throw down a wall, after which they quietly
withdrew.  He says Gregory could shake lightning out of
his sleeve.   Is  this the origin  of the celebrated thunder of
the Vatican 1
   But we  have here been led away by the Estatica and  the
prophetesses from the therapeutics  of  the Catholic Church.
One  of  the  most remarkable of Catholic therapeutists of
modern times was  the celebrated priest Gassner in the Tyrol,
of whom I have given  an  account in the chapter on Spirit-
ualism in Germany.  Prince Hohenlohe,  some forty years
 
514          HISTORY OF THE SUPERNATURAL.
ago, was said to do marvellous cures by prayer and laying on
of hands.  A very recent case was that of the Cure D'Ars,
near Lyons.  A  very interesting life of the cure has been
published, by which it appears that, like Luther, Savonarola,
and  a  number  of other  holy men, he had terrible  conflicts
with Satan ;  and that his cures were so marvellous  that om-
nibuses were  established  to run  regularly from Lyons to his
house.
   The Cure D'Ars died  early in 1859.   He had for above
thirty years astonished all France by the continued  series of
miracles  occurring through him in his parish of Ars, not far
from Lyons.   His life, in two volumes, by the  Abbe Alfred
Monnin, has  already run into three  editions.   It represents
the  cure as a man of no extraordinary talents, and  of but
small learning, but as a man of the most sublime and self-
denying  piety,  utterly regardless of self-enjoyment or  self-
aggrandizement— spending  his  whole  life in indefatigable
exertions for the  temporal  and eternal  benefit of his flock.
He was  the first to  establish at Ars what he called Provi-
dences—that is, homes for orphans and young women in des-
titution, maintained by direct faith in Providence.   They suc-
ceeded wonderfully, and  have since  spread all  over France.
The establishment of Mr. Miiller, near Bristol, partly of this
kind, is not more marvellous in its maintenance  by faith than
was  that of the Cure D'Ars.   The cure was hotly opposed
and  calumniated for a long time, even by his fellow-clergy-
men.  The miraculous events continually taking place at Ars
were represented as impudent impostures, and he was assailed
as a hypocrite, a cheat, a fanatic ; in short, he went through
the  usual ordeal on all  such  occasions.  Yet  the  bitterest
enemies were compelled to confess themselves mistaken after
proper examination ; and the facts related in his history were
familiar to hundreds of thousands, and made fully known in the
face of all France.  For thirty years 20,000 persons annually,
of all ranks,  and  from every country in Europe, flocked  to
Ars.   His church was densely crowded day and night; and 
the  CURE d'ars.                515
the cure, it is asserted, allowed himself only four hours' sleep
each night, his endurance being the greatest miracle.  These
are not facts of the past, but of the present age, capable of
being tested.
   A French paper of October 5, 1859, said :
   ' The death of the Cure D'Ars, at Lyons, has  caused the
whole  devout population of the rest of the empire to hurry
in crowds to his tomb.   The Abbe Lacordaire, who has re-
mained with him  for  several  months, was with  him  at his
dying hour; and promises the most wonderful revelations con-
cerning the passage  from life to  death  of the saint, whose
canonization already occupies the authorities of the church.
The miracles already wrought at the tomb of the Cure D'Ars
exceed, if  one  may  believe the tale, both  in quality and
quantity those once enacted at the grave of the Diacre Paris.
The blind are  made to see, the lame to walk, and every hu-
man ill is set at naught by a prayer at the stone which covers
the remains of the Cure D'Ars.  The Empress, who publicly
declared the birth of the Prince Imperial to be owing to this
holy man's  intercession, is said to have been in close  corres-
pondence with him during the whole of the Italian war.  To
show the enthusiasm inspired by the event of his death, the
 omnibus service from Lyons to the village where he lived, and
 which was  started to drive  straight to his door, has been
 doubled since his  death, and drives nowhere but to the ceme-
 tery where  his corpse  reposes.  A nine  days' vigil is estab-
 lished for the different confreres throughout France, in order
 to facilitate the transmission  of miracles for the convenience
 of those who cannot make  the journey to Lyons.'
    Lastly, I believe there is  still  living  in  Rome the Sceur
 Collette, a Carthusian nun,  whose miracles, says a French pa-
 per, ' have  rendered her name so  renowned throughout the
 Roman States.'  This nun, it appears by the same authority,
 quoted at the time into the 'Court Journal,' was said by the
 pope to calm the  excited brain of the Emperor of the French
 after the Italian campaign, which, after the battle of Solfe- 
516         history of the supernatural.
rino, allowed him no  sleep, but brought continually before
him the scenes of terrible  carnage witnessed in that conflict.
Her visit was said to  have produced the desired effect, and
the same journal added this information  regarding this great
Catholic medium:
   ' Soeur Collette, although French by birth, has been for
 years in the entire confidence of his Holiness.  She first went
 to Rome, impelled by a revelation  concerning the birthright
 of Louis Dix-sept.   Soon  after her arrival in  the holy city,
 Baron de Richemont was sent for by the Pope, and remained
 for some time the honored guest of his  Holiness.  It was
 during the period of the Pope's exile at Mola di Gaeta, and
 the astonishment of  the strangers gathered at that place may
 be conceived, when, seeing all the royal and noble personages
 crowding  round in  reverence to the Head of the Church —
  among whom  the Royal Family of Naples, the Archbishops
  of Austria, and  the Princes  of  Bavaria, were not the least
  conspicuous — the Pope was observed to abandon all upon
  the approach of an humble-looking individual, who was known
  to be living poorly  and upon small means, at one  of the low-
  liest inns of the place;  and taking the obscure individual's
  arm, walk apart with her, holding secret converse with  her,
  pass and repass  before the great  personages without farther
  notice.  Ever since that time, Sceur Collette has reigned tri-
  umphant in  the Pope's  private councils, and no affair of im-
  portance is commenced without consulting her.   Her arrival
  is therefore considered to have the greatest signification.'
    This may suffice  for the volumes of miracles which might
  be taken from the annals of the Church of Rome.  To what-
  ever amount of these we accord verity (and without doubt a
  considerable number are real), one  thing is beyond all con-
  troversy, that the Church  of Rome stands boldly and persis-
  tently for the authenticity of miracles, both Christian  and
  demoniac. 
                   Guardian  Angels.
  The faith of Catholicism in guardian angels is so full and
beautiful, compared with the dim and mythical belief of Pro-
testantism  in them, that it may form a brief pendant to this
chapter.   Protestants  do  not deny ' ministering spirits,' be-
cause in doing that they would deny the ' letter ' of the Gos-
pel ; but they treat them under the name of guardian angels
just as they treat Hercules, or the Lares and  Lemures; they
introduce them  into poetry, but  not  into actual life.  It is
their education ; and they cannot help themselves, any more
than the toes of the Chinese lady educated  into a crumple,
can stretch themselves out into  the  freedom of a feminine
European  foot.
   The second of October in the Catholic Church is the Feast
of  Angel  Guardians.   Alban Butler says,  'Amongst the
adorable dispensations of the divine  mercy in favor of men,
it is not the least,  that He has been pleased to establish a
communion of spiritual commerce between us  on earth and
His holy angels, whose companions we hope one day to be in
the kingdom of His glory.'  He adds that the name of angels
 given them is indicative of their office, that of being mes-
 sengers to us, and  executors of God's will towards us in our
 favor and  defence.   Here, again, we have another proof  of
 the truth,  by the statements of different parties agreeing ; for
 all spirits  announcing themselves to spiritualists as guardian
 spirits, give names, not of persons who have lived on earth
 (though they probably have done so), but names indicating
 their  qualities and office.
    The Fathers abound in their expressions  of joy on their
 angel guardians.   St. Augustine has some  beautiful obser-
 vations  on them.   'They  watch  over and  guard us  with
 great care and diligence  in all  places, and  at all hours as-
 sisting, providing  for our necessities with solicitude :  they
 intervene  betwixt  us  and Thee, 0 Lord, conveying to Thee
 our sighs  and groans, and bringing down to us the dearest
 blessings  of Thy grace.   They walk with us  in all our ways;
    I.—44 
518         niSTORY OF THE  supernatural.
they go in and  out  with  us, attentively observing how we
converse with piety in the midst of a perverse  generation ;
with what ardor we seek Thy kingdom  and its justice, and
with what fear and awe we serve Thee.   They assist us in
our labors;  they protect us in our rest; they encourage us
in battle ;  they  crown  us  in  victories; they rejoice  in  us
when we rejoice in Thee;  and they compassionately attend
us when we suffer or  are  afflicted for Thee.   Great is  their
care of us, and great  is  the effect of  their charity for  us.
They love  him whom Thou  lovest; they guard hira  whom
Thou beholdest with tenderness;  they forsake those  from
whom Thou withdrawest Thyself;  and  they hate them that
work iniquity, because they are*hateful to Thee.'
   St. Bernard says, ' We owe to  our guardian angels  great
reverence, devotion, and confidence.  Penetrated with  awe,'
he says, ' walk always with circumspection, remembering the
presence of angels, to whom  you are given in charge, in  all
your ways.   In every apartment,  in every closet, in every
corner,  pay respect to your angel.   Dare you do before him
what you dare not commit if I saw you ?'   In another  place
he says, ' Consider with how great respect, awe, and  mod-
esty we ought to behave in the sight of the angels, lest we
offend their eyes, and  render ourselves unworthy  of their
company.   Woe to  us if they who could  chase  away our
enemy,  be offended by our  negligence, and deprive  us  of
their visits.'  St. Basil  gives the same reasons for  purity of
conduct.
   We unfortunate modern Protestants,  ' suckled in a pagan
creed forlorn,' must  feel very much, in reading such senti-
ments as  these, like Hood  when  he wrote that exquisite
stanza:
                       In faith 'tis little joy,
            To know I 'm farther off  from heaveD,
             Than when I was a boy.
   The office of  the guardiau  angel is finely painted in  Exo-
dus  xxiii. 20, where God  tells the children of Israel,  ' Be- 
EFFECT of spiritual belief.           519
hold, I  will send my angel, who shall  go before thee, and
keep thee in thy journey, and  bring  thee  into the place that
I have  prepared.   Respectfully  observe  him, and hear his
voice, and  do not think him  one to be coutemned ; for he
will  not forgive when  thou hast sinned,  and my name is in
him.  But if thou wilt hear his voice, and do all  that I shall
speak, I will be  an enemy to thy enemies,  and will  afflict
thera that  afflict thee ; and my angel shall go before thee,
and  shall bring thee into the place which  I have  prepared.'
  This  applies  as  much to the journey of  life, as  to  the
journey of Israel through the  wilderness.   Our  guardian
angel, if we  obey him, will not  only attend  and defend us
here, but will bring us into the place that  is prepared for us.
There is nothing so much as the revelations  of spiritualism
which show us practically  how completely the spirits about
us see and  hear everything that we do.  When a medium is
present, they attest  their presence by knocking on  the table
at which we sit; often  move it about; sometimes lift it up;
and  at  others  make everything  vibrate upon it.  As you
converse, they continually  knock assent to or dissent from
what is  said ; and when something particularly pleases them,
they testify it by the vividness and  loudness of  their  raps.
Every one  who  enters into spiritualism very soon  becomes
aware how perpetually he is under the observation  of invis-
ible  eyes and ears;  and I  have heard different persons say
that they never realized this  in any degree  before.   That
the assertion that we had angels and spirits about us, was a
sort  of  indifferent or poetical idea in the  mind, but was not
a living truth.  Spiritualism at once makes it palpable, and
awfully  real, and people begin to say, ' I  can  no  longer say
and  do  things as I could before.   My whole  being is open
to these spiritual realities.  A fair  outside  will no  longer
do ;  I feel  that I must be genuine and pure all through and
through.'
              END  OF  THE FIRST  VOLUME. 
*—'"  V ^     ^^ 
 
 
APR 18 1946 
NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE










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