The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's DreamStowe, Harriet Beecher
History
The Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism: With Dr. Doddridge's Dream
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Spiritualism; Upham, Charles Wentworth, 1802-1875. Salem witchcraft; Witchcraft -- Massachusetts -- Salem
Yet such is the hunger, the longing, the wild craving of the human soul
for the region of future immortality, its home-sickness for its future
home, its perishing anguish of desire for the beloved ones who have
been torn away from it, and to whom in every nerve it still throbs and
bleeds, that professed words and messages from that state, however
unworthy, are met with a trembling agony of eagerness, a willingness to
be deceived, most sorrowful to witness.
But any one who judges of the force of this temptation merely by what is
published in the _Banner of Light_, and other papers of that class, has
little estimate of what there is to be considered in the way of existing
phenomena under this head.
The cold scientists who, without pity and without sympathy, have
supposed that they have had under their dissecting knives the very
phenomena which have deluded their fellows, mistake. They have not seen
them, and in the cold, unsympathizing mood of science, they never can
see them. The experiences that have most weight with multitudes who
believe more than they dare to utter, are secrets deep as the grave,
sacred as the innermost fibers of their souls--they can not bring their
voices to utter them except in some hour of uttermost confidence and to
some friend of tried sympathy. They know what they have seen and what
they have heard. They know the examinations they have made they know the
inexplicable results, and, like Mary of old, they keep all these sayings
and ponder them in their hearts. They have no sympathy with the vulgar,
noisy, outward phenomena of tippings and rappings and signs and
wonders. They have no sympathy with the vulgar and profane attacks on
the Bible, which form part of the utterances of modern seers; but they
can not forget, and they can not explain things which in sacred solitude
or under circumstances of careful observation have come under their
own notice. They have no wish to make converts--they shrink from
conversation, they wait for light; but when they hear all these things
scoffed at, they think within themselves--Who knows?
We have said that the strong, unregulated, and often false
spiritualistic current of to-day is a result of the gradual departure
of Christendom from the true supernaturalism of primitive ages. We have
shown how Christ and his Apostles always regarded the invisible actors
on the stage of human existence as more powerful than the visible ones;
that they referred to their influence over the human spirit and over the
forces of nature, things which modern rationalism refers only to natural
laws. We can not illustrate the departure of modern society from
primitive faith better than in a single instance--a striking one.
The Apostles' Creed is the best formula of Christian faith--it is common
to the Greek, the Roman, the Reformed Churches, and published by our
Pilgrim Fathers in the New England Primer in connection with the
Assembly's Catechism. It contains the following profession:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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