The Missing Link in Modern SpiritualismUnderhill, A. Leah (Ann Leah)
Religion
The Missing Link in Modern Spiritualism
Underhill, A. Leah (Ann Leah)
Fox family; Spiritualism
He afterwards wrote me a beautiful letter, from the extreme South,
telling me that he had been a materialist, with no belief in the
immortality of the soul; but that now all life was changed for him; that
he now knew that his wife and children still lived and loved and were
near to him, and that he would soon be with them again. And he gave me
such grateful blessings as were a compensation for the hardships and
suffering I had sometimes to encounter in the course of my career of
mediumship. The friend who had done him the unwelcome service of thus
entrapping him within my doors is still living, and owns a large orange
plantation in Florida; and I have no objection to refer to him any
reader whose prejudices may require any confirmation of the strict
accuracy of this narrative of one of the pleasantest reminiscences of my
life.
A SPIRIT KNOWS BETTER THAN THE POSTMASTER.
One morning we received a message, by rapping, to this effect:
"Your Uncle John is on his way, and will be here to-morrow morning."
He was then on a visit to my sister at Consecon, Canada West. We dearly
loved Uncle John, and were delighted at this announcement; and as we had
never been deceived by anything thus volunteered by our Spirit friends,
we made all preparations for his arrival, and told several friends
that he was coming. Morning came, but no Uncle John. We went to the
boat-landing from across the lake ("Hanford's landing," then about a
couple of miles from Rochester, though the city has now pretty well
grown down to it); but no one knew anything about him. We then went to
Amy Post, and told her how we had been deceived and disappointed by the
Spirits. Mrs. Post was seriously affected by the false prophecy, or
announcement, and could not be reconciled to the situation without some
further explanation from those who had deceived us. All we got from them
was this: "Go to the post-office and you will find a letter which will
explain." On doing so we were told that there was none in our box. We
(Mrs. Post, Miss Coles, Sister Kate, and myself), after a little talk
over it, asked the Spirits why they persisted in such falsehoods, with
more questions which I cannot distinctly remember. We received the reply
(by rappings): "Go back and say you have just been told there _was_ a
letter there. Tell them to look among the promiscuous letters, and it
will be found." (Spirits can emphasize by the strength of their raps as
well as we can by italics.) Of course we did accordingly, and the clerk
returned with a large letter, asking if my name was Leah A. Fish; which,
of course, it was, with a variation in the order of Christian names, and
probably I had asked for the name of A. L. Fish, perhaps omitting the
full name of "Leah."
The clerk had made a plain mistake. The Spirit had been right.
The letter explained everything. Uncle had started from Consecon, but
had been overtaken at Coburg by a subpoena to attend an important trial,
in which he was the principal witness.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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