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. These goblins, if they exist at all, are but

the shadows of past mortality, outcasts, mere refuse stuff, adjudged

unworthy of the eternal world, and, on the most favorable supposition,

dwindling gradually into nothingness. The less we have to say to them

the better, lest we share their fate!

The audience now began to be impatient; they signified their desire for

the entertainment to commence by thump of sticks and stamp of

boot-heels. Nor was it a great while longer before, in response to

their call, there appeared a bearded personage in Oriental robes,

looking like one of the enchanters of the Arabian Nights. He came upon

the platform from a side door, saluted the spectators, not with a

salaam, but a bow, took his station at the desk, and first blowing his

nose with a white handkerchief, prepared to speak. The environment of

the homely village hall, and the absence of many ingenious contrivances

of stage effect with which the exhibition had heretofore been set off,

seemed to bring the artifice of this character more openly upon the

surface. No sooner did I behold the bearded enchanter, than, laying my

hand again on Hollingsworth's shoulder, I whispered in his ear, "Do you

know him?"




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024