The savage with the long name was a Christian catechumen, and yet he
stood to it that he had seen a sorcerer disappear before his very
eyes, like the second-sighted Highlander in Kirk's Secret
Commonwealth (1691). 'His neibours often perceaved this man to
disappear at a certane place, and about one hour after to become
visible.' It would be more satisfactory if the Father had seen
these things himself, like Mrs. Newton Crosland, who informs the
world that, when with Robert Chambers and other persons of sanity,
she felt a whole house violently shaken, trembling, and thrilling in
the presence of a medium--not a professional, but a young lady
amateur. Here, of course, we greatly desire the evidence of Robert
Chambers. Spirits came to Swedenborg with a wind, but it was only
strong enough to flutter papers; 'the cause of which,' as he remarks
with naivete, 'I do not yet understand'. If Swedenborg had gone
into a Medicine Lodge, no doubt, in that 'close place,' the
phenomena would have been very much more remarkable. In 1853 Pere
Arnaud visited the Nasquapees, and describes a seance. 'The
conjurers shut themselves up in a little lodge, and remain for a few
minutes in a pensive attitude, cross-legged. Soon the lodge begins
to move like a table turning, and replies by bounds and jumps to the
questions which are put to the conjurer.' {48} The experiment might
be tried with a modern medium.
Father Lejeune, in 1637, gives a case which reminds us of Home.
According to Home, and to Mrs. S. C. Hall, and other witnesses, when
'in power' he could not only handle live coals without being burned,
but he actually placed a large glowing coal, about the size of a
cricket-ball, on the pate of Mr. S. C. Hall, where it shone redly
through Mr. Hall's white locks, but did him no manner of harm. Now
Father Pijart was present, tesmoin oculaire, when a Huron medicine-
man heated a stone red hot, put it in his mouth, and ran round the
cabin with it, without receiving any harm. Father Brebeuf,
afterwards a most heroic martyr, sent the stone to Father Lejeune;
it bore the marks of the medicine-man's teeth, though Father Pijart,
examining the man, found that lips and tongue had no trace of burn
or blister. He reasonably concluded that these things could not be
done 'sans l'operation de quelque Demon'. That an excited patient
should not feel fire is, perhaps, admissible, but that it should not
scorch either Mr. Hall, or Home, or the Huron, is a large demand on
our credulity. Still, the evidence in this case (that of Mr.
Crookes and Lord Crawford) is much better than usual.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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