Peculiar: A Tale of the Great TransitionSargent, Epes
History
Peculiar: A Tale of the Great Transition
Sargent, Epes
African Americans -- Fiction; United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
Similar occurrences are related by Cotton Mather to have taken place
in Boston in 1693. Six witnesses, whose affidavits he gives, namely,
Samuel Aves, Robert Earle, John Wilkins, Dan Williams, Thomas
Thornton, and William Hudson, testify to having repeatedly seen
Margaret Rule lifted from her bed up near to the ceiling by an
invisible force. It is a cheap way of getting rid of such testimony to
say that the witnesses were false or incompetent. The present writer
could name at least six witnesses of his own acquaintance now living,
gentlemen of character, intelligence, sound senses and sound judgment,
who will testify to having seen similar occurrences. The other
phenomena, related as witnessed by Peek, are such as hundreds of
intelligent men and women in the United States will confirm by their
testimony. Indeed, the number of believers in these phenomena may be
now fairly reckoned at more than three million.
Footnote 6:
There are thousands of intelligent persons in the United States who
will testify to the fact of spirit touch. The writer has on several
occasions _felt_, though he has not _seen_, a live hand, guided by
intelligence, that he was fully convinced belonged to no mortal person
present. The conditions were such as to debar trick or deception.
There are several trustworthy witnesses, whom the writer could name,
who have both _seen_ and _felt_ the phenomenon, and tested it as
thoroughly as Peek is represented to have done.
Footnote 7:
The phenomenon of _stigmata_ appearing on the flesh of impressible
mediums is one of the most common of the manifestations of modern
Spiritualism. Sometimes written words and sometimes outline
representations of objects appear, under circumstances that make
deception impossible. The writer has often witnessed them. St.
Francis, and many other saints of the Catholic Church, were the
subjects of similar phenomena. The late Earl of Shrewsbury, a Catholic
nobleman, has published a long account of their occurrence during the
present century. The Catholic Church has been always true to the
doctrine of the miraculous.
Footnote 8:
Author of “The Uprising of a Great People,” “America before Europe,”
&c.; also of two large volumes on Modern Spiritualism.
Footnote 9:
See Alexander Humboldt’s Letters to Varnhagen.
Footnote 10:
See Edouard Laboulaye, “De la Personnalité Divine.”
Footnote 11:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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