At the bidding of one of these wizards, the maiden,
with her lover's kiss still burning on her lips, would turn from him
with icy indifference; the newly made widow would dig up her buried
heart out of her young husband's grave before the sods had taken root
upon it; a mother with her babe's milk in her bosom would thrust away
her child. Human character was but soft wax in his hands; and guilt,
or virtue, only the forms into which he should see fit to mould it.
The religious sentiment was a flame which he could blow up with his
breath, or a spark that he could utterly extinguish. It is
unutterable, the horror and disgust with which I listened, and saw
that, if these things were to be believed, the individual soul was
virtually annihilated, and all that is sweet and pure in our present
life debased, and that the idea of man's eternal responsibility was
made ridiculous, and immortality rendered at once impossible, and not
worth acceptance. But I would have perished on the spot sooner than
believe it.
The epoch of rapping spirits, and all the wonders that have followed
in their train,--such as tables upset by invisible agencies, bells
self-tolled at funerals, and ghostly music performed on jew's-harps,--
had not yet arrived. Alas, my countrymen, methinks we have fallen
on an evil age! If these phenomena have not humbug at the bottom, so
much the worse for us. What can they indicate, in a spiritual way,
except that the soul of man is descending to a lower point than it
has ever before reached while incarnate? We are pursuing a downward
course in the eternal march, and thus bring ourselves into the same
range with beings whom death, in requital of their gross and evil
lives, has degraded below humanity! To hold intercourse with spirits
of this order, we must stoop and grovel in some element more vile
than earthly dust.
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