A defence of modern spiritualismWallace, Alfred Russel
Religion
A defence of modern spiritualism
Wallace, Alfred Russel
Spiritualism
We have yet to add a notice of what will be perhaps, to many persons,
the most startling and convincing of all the Judge’s experiences. His
own daughter became a medium for speaking foreign languages of which she
was totally ignorant. He says: “She knows no language but her own, and a
little smattering of boarding-school French; yet she has spoken in nine
or ten different tongues, often for an hour at a time, with the ease and
fluency of a native. It is not unfrequent that foreigners converse with
their spirit-friends through her in their own language.” One of these
cases must be given:
“One evening, when some twelve or fifteen persons were in my parlor,
Mr. E. D. Green, an artist of this city, was shown in, accompanied by
a gentleman whom he introduced as Mr. Evangelides, of Greece. Ere long
a spirit spoke to him through Laura, in English, and said so many
things to him that he identified him as a friend who had died at his
house a few years before, but of whom none of us had ever heard.
Occasionally, through Laura, the spirit would speak a word or a
sentence in Greek, until Mr. E. inquired if he could be understood if
he spoke Greek? The residue of the conversation for more than an hour
was, on his part, entirely in Greek, and on hers sometimes in Greek
and sometimes in English. At times Laura would not understand what was
the idea conveyed either by her or him. At other times she would
understand him, though he spoke in Greek, and herself while uttering
Greek words.”
Several other cases are mentioned, and it is stated that this lady has
spoken Spanish, French, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Latin, Hungarian and
Indian; and other languages which were unknown to any person present.
This is by no means an isolated case, but it is given as being on most
unexceptionable authority. A man must know whether his own daughter has
learnt, so as to speak fluently, eight languages besides her own, or
not. Those who carry on the conversation must know whether the language
is spoken or not; and in several cases—as the Latin, Spanish, and
Indian—the Judge himself understood the language. And the phenomenon is
connected with Spiritualism by the speaking being in the name of, and
purporting to come from, some deceased person, and the subject matter
being characteristic of that person. Such a case as this, which has been
published sixteen years, ought to have been noticed and explained by
those who profess to enlighten the public on the subject of
Spiritualism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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