I failed for a long time yet to get any new light on the essential nature of the agent with which I was operating, and remained still undecided in my own mind whether it was a spiritual person, superhuman and invisible, or a simple elemental force of nature, placed at the command of every man who knows how to use his own powers. The answers I obtained to my questions were vague, contradictory, and unsatisfactory. I had no doubt that I was doing what in the eyes of ignorance and superstition was called dealing with the devil, and practising what had been denounced, and in former times punished, by the civil law as sorcery or witchcraft. So much was clear and undeniable. But had not all the world misunderstood the real nature of what it had condemned as witchcraft, sorcery, maleficia, and magic? Had they not assumed unnecessarily a preternatural agency, and an evil agent, where there was really only a natural, a good, and a benevolent agent?
The bearing of this question on the Christian religion was very obvious, and I well understood the significance of what Voltaire said, one day, to a theologian, “Sathan! c’est le Christianisme tout entier; PAS DE SATHAN, PAS DE SAUVEUR,” and I felt that there was truth in what Bayle, the ablest and acutest of all modern authors opposed to Christianity, had said: “Prove to unbelievers the existence of evil spirits, and you will by that alone force them to concede all your dogmas.” In any point of view, Christianity was pledged to assert the existence of Satan and his intervention in human affairs, for according to it, Christ was revealed from heaven and came into the world that he might destroy the devil and his works. If there was no devil, the mission of Christ had no motive, no object, and Christianity is a fable.
Moreover, all Christians, whether Catholics asserting the infallibility and authority of the Church, or Protestants asserting simply the infallibility and authority of the Bible, were bound to assert the existence of evil spirits, and the reality of demonic obsession and possession, of witchcraft, sorcery, and magic, in the common and opprobrious sense of the terms. As to Catholics, there could be no question. The Church plainly and unequivocally recognizes the existence of Satan, as may be gathered from the prayers and ceremonies of Baptism, as well as from the significance of the Sacrament itself; and not only his existence, but his power over the natural man, and even material objects. Thus when the priest, in administering the Sacrament, breathes gently three times in the face of the child, he exclaims, “Exi ab eo, immunde spiritus, et da locum Spiritui Sancto Paraclito:” Go out of him, impure spirit, and give place to the Holy Ghost, the Paraclete; and also after the prayer Deus patrum nostrorum: “Exorcizo te, immunde spiritus, in nomine Patris et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, ut exeas, et recedas ab hoc famulo Dei. Ipse enim tibi imperat, maledicte damnate qui pedibus super mare ambulavit, et Petro mergenti dextram porrexit. Ergo, maledicte diabole, recognosce sententiam tuam, et da honorem Deo vivo et vero, da honorem Jesu Christo Filio ejus, et Spiritui Sancto; et recede ab hoc famulo Dei, quia istum sibi Deus et Dominus noster Jesus Christus ad suam sanctam gratiam, et benedictionem, fontemque, Baptismatis vocari dignatus est.” The candidate, before receiving baptism, is asked, “Dost thou renounce Satan?” and answers, “I renounce him.” “And all his works?” “I renounce them.” “And all his pomps?” “I renounce them.” So, in blessing the salt which is used in administering the Sacrament, the priest says, “Exorcizo te, creatura salis, in nomine Dei Patris omnipotentis, et in charitate Domini nostri Jesu Christi, et in virtute Spiritus Sancti, exorcizo te per Deum vivum, per Deum verum, per Deum sanctum,” &c. The whole proceeds on the supposition that Satan is to be expelled, dislodged, and the Holy Ghost to be placed, so to speak, in possession, or the grace of Jesus Christ is to be infused, so that the Holy Ghost shall henceforth dwell in the heart of the baptized, instead of Satan, who previously held dominion over it. The Church has also her exorcists, and her forms of exorcising of evil spirits.
The Bible is no less clear and explicit on the subject than the Church. It teaches that Satan, in the form of a serpent, seduced Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit; it relates the doings of the Egyptian magicians; it forbids necromancy and evocation of the dead, and commands the Jews not to suffer a witch to live; declares that all the gods of the Gentiles are devils; tells us that the devil is the prince of this world, that he goeth about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour; bids us resist the devil and he will flee from us. St. Paul speaks of the prince and the powers of the air that besiege us, and against whom we must put on the whole armor of God, and do valiant battle. Moreover it speaks of demoniacs, or persons possessed with devils; and among the marvellous works ascribed to Jesus Christ, is that of expelling demons, or casting out devils. All Christians, then, must admit that there is a devil, and that there are evil spirits, who may, and who do, interfere with men, harass them, and sometimes take literal possession of them. A recent French author, a sincere Christian believer, has felt this. “The question,” he says, “at the Christian point of view, is by no means indifferent, but is, as it were, the mother question, the question of questions. It is no less than to determine whether the Bible and the Church have or have not been really mistaken in one of their fundamental principles. For a man filled with Christian desires, and cherishing at the same time a respect for evidence, the question is most grave. It touches the whole of faith, neither more nor less; and as it will not do to admit in the sacred Scriptures, whose language is assumed to be inspired, what is called manners of speaking, or complaisances for the age, or remains of ignorance, we must be permitted to say, that if it were proved that the Bible in the time of Pharaoh mistook simple and miserable jugglers for real magicians, poor charlatans for enchanters, a few knavish and lying priests for the false gods of the Gentiles, simple mummeries for real evocations, delirious cataleptics for spirits of Python, &c.; if it were proved that Jesus Christ, in granting to his disciples the gift, and prescribing to them the rules, of expelling demons, mistook a fact of pure physiology; if it were proved that the Church, in instituting exorcism, and prescribing for it precise and learned formulas, and, moreover, practising it for eighteen centuries, has been deceived during all that period,—we should feel that it is all over with Christianity; we should regard it as condemned, and hasten to renounce an authority so little judicious, and so little to be depended upon.” Christians may, undoubtedly, dispute as to this or that particular case, and say that the evidence of demonic intervention, in this or that particular instance, is not conclusive; but they cannot, without renouncing their faith, and becoming Sadducees, deny that such intervention is possible, or assert that it is improbable. They must concede its possibility, its probability, and its susceptibility of proof; and therefore when the evidence in any particular instance is sufficient to establish the reality of any other class of facts, they are bound, as reasonable beings, to admit it. To them there is, and can be no à priori difficulty, for they already believe in the reality of demonic agents adequate to produce the mysterious phenomena that they are called upon to accept. Hence, in those ages and countries in which nobody doubted Christianity, all men of science, physicians, magistrates, as well as the clergy and the people, readily admitted the demonic character of the phenomena like those produced in our day by mesmerism.
But, if the belief in the reality of demonic intervention is integral in Christianity, the most obvious way of getting rid of Christianity and its restraints would be to deny that reality, and to explain the phenomena commonly held as evidence of such intervention, on physiological and other natural principles. This has been the aim of science, especially medical science, during the last two hundred years. This aim was adopted by the so-called wits and philosophers of the last century, and during this it has begun to be adopted by jurisprudence, and even to be acquiesced in by a large portion of professed Christian ministers. Literary men, like Sir Walter Scott; founders of new sects, like the late Hosea Ballou, of Boston; neologist theologians everywhere; and that “fourth estate,”—journalism, have all combined to reason, explain, or laugh away, every thing pertaining to demonology, and to make the world believe that there is no devil, that evil spirits are only the creatures of a disordered brain, that apparitions or ghosts are only hallucinations, possession a peculiar kind of madness or insanity, and magic mere charlatanry or sleight-of-hand. All this, for an anti-Christian purpose, was admirable, since even the conservative portion of the clergy seemed to acquiesce in it.
Nevertheless, this could suffice only to a certain extent. It might serve to emancipate the intelligent classes, but could not emancipate the people. The latter half of the eighteenth century—a century of anti-Christian light, philosophy, physical science, and materialism—was more distinguished for the mysterious phenomena, usually called demoniacal, than any other period since the Christianizing of the Roman Empire, with the single exception of the sixteenth century. Weishaupt, Mesmer, Saint-Martin, and Cagliostro, did far more to produce the revolutions and convulsions of European society at the close of that century, than was done by Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert, Diderot, Mirabeau, and their associates. These men had no doubt a bad influence, but it was limited and feeble. It was not they who stirred up all classes, produced that revolutionary madness, that wild ungovernable fury of the people which we everywhere witnessed, and nowhere more than in Paris, the politest and most humane city in the world. The masses were possessed, they were whirled aloft, were driven hither and thither, and onward in the terrible work of demolition, by a mysterious power they did not comprehend, and by a force they were unable, having once yielded to it, to resist.
You feel this in reading the history of those terrible events. It seems to you that Satan was unbound, and hell let loose. The historians of that old French Revolution, such as Mignet, Thiers, Lamartine, Carlyle, all feel that there was something fatal in it, and have been led, at least all except the last, to defend it on the ground of fatalism. The Royalist and Catholic historians, who oppose it, seem never to seize its spirit. They declaim, denounce, find fault here, find fault there, now with this action and now with that, but they never explain any thing, solve any problem which comes up, and they leave the whole a mystery, or an enigma.
The same phenomena, only on a reduced scale, were observable in the revolutions of 1848. Everywhere there seemed to be an invisible power at work. Good, honest Father Bresciani, would explain all this by the Secret Societies. It is in vain. They did much, those secret societies; but how explain the existence of those societies themselves, their horrible principles, and the fidelity of their members in submitting to what they must know is a thousand times more oppressive than the institutions they are opposing? Tell me not that all these revolutionists were incarnate devils; that they cooly, and deliberately, from ordinary human motives and influences, planned and carried out their revolutionary enterprise. There were in their ranks men of the highest intelligence, the purest virtue, and the humanest feelings; men, all of whose antecedents, whose tendencies, whose studies, professions, interests, and, I may say, convictions, placed them in the ranks of the conservatives, were carried away by an invisible force, and shouted out, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, and hurled the brand of the incendiary at temple, palace, and castle, which sheltered them, as if it was not they who did it, but a spirit that possessed them. Men caught the infection, they knew not how, they knew not when, they knew not where. The revolutionary spirit seemed to float in the air, as it undoubtedly did.
Without Weishaupt, Mesmer, Saint-Martin, Cagliostro, you can never explain the revolution of 1789, and without me and my accomplices you can just as little explain those of 1848. There was at work in the former a power that the wits ridiculed, that science denied, philosophy disproved, and the clergy hardly dared assert. There was there the mighty power, whatever it be, which it is said once dared dispute the empire of heaven with the Omnipotent, and which all ages have called Satan, whether it is to be called evil with the Christian, or good with the philanthropist, a person with the believer, or a primitive and elemental force with the mesmerist. France, Europe was mesmerized. So was it again in 1848, though with less terrible external convulsions.
It is impossible to bring the great body of the people of any age to agree with our Voltarian philosophers—to be genuine Sadducees. In the first place, the writings of the philosophers and academicians do not reach the mass; and, in the second place, there are constantly occurring phenomena which, in their apprehension, give the lie to Sadduceism. At the very time when the philosophers of pagan Rome were losing all faith in their national religion, doubting almost the existence of the Divinity and the immortality of the soul, and laughing at augurs and soothsayers, the people were more superstitious than ever. It was then that magicians from Asia and Africa flocked to the Eternal City, and that Isiac, Bacchic, and other Eastern superstitions, with all their impurities and wild fanaticism, in comparison with which the national religion was pure, reasonable, and moral, were introduced, and spread as an epidemic; and the laws of the earlier emperors show how hard and how ineffectually authority labored to suppress them.
The enemies of Christianity may accept the mysterious phenomena, commonly regarded as diabolical, and explain them and the miracles of the Bible and the alleged miracles of the Church on natural principles, and if they cannot explain them on any known natural principles, they may make them the basis of an induction of a new natural principle; or, in other words, invent a natural principle to explain them, as Baron Reichenbach has done—a principle, element, substance, or force, which he calls od. They may do this, or they may recognize their real spiritual and superhuman origin, but ascribe them to good, not to evil spirits, or what is the same thing, maintain that what the world has hitherto worshipped as good is evil, and what it has been taught to avoid as evil is good. That is, that Satan is God, and God is Satan.
Swedenborg, in founding his New Jerusalem, or New Church, and Joe Smith, in founding the Church of the Latter Day Saints, as Mahomet in the seventh century, virtually adopted the latter course. Swedenborg became, in the later years of his life, a somnambulist, and could throw himself into the state which some mesmerists call sleep-waking, in which he was a clairvoyant, and had the power of second sight. He fancied himself a prophet, and capable of teaching angels as well as men. But he held the power he found himself able to exercise, to be good as well as supernatural.
The same was the case with Joe Smith, an idle, shiftless lad, utterly incapable of conceiving, far less of executing the project of founding a new church. He was ignorant, illiterate, and weak, and of bad reputation. I knew his family, and even him also, in my boyhood, before he became a prophet. He was one of those persons in whose hand the divining-rod will operate, and he and others of his family spent much time in searching with the rod for watercourses, minerals, and hidden treasures. Every mesmerizer would at once have recognized him as an impressible subject. He also could throw himself, by artificial means, that of a peculiar kind of stone, which he called his Urim and Thummim, into the sleep-waking state, in which only would he or could he prophesy. In that state he seemed another man. Ordinarily his look was dull, and heavy, almost stupid; his eye had an inexpressive glare, and he was rough, and rather profane. But the moment he consulted his Urim and Thummim, and the spirit was upon him, his face brightened up, his eye shone and sparkled as living fire, and he seemed instinct with a life and energy not his own. He was in those times, as one of his apostles assured me, “awful to behold.”
Much nonsense has been vented by the press about the origin of his Bible, or the Book of Mormon. The most ridiculous as well as the most current version of the affair is, that the book was originally written as a novel, by one Spalding, a Presbyterian minister in Pennsylvania, and that Joe got hold of the manuscript and published it as a new Bible. This version is refuted by a simple perusal of the book itself, which is too much and too little to have had such an origin. In his normal state, Joe Smith could never have written the more striking passages of the Book of Mormon; and any man capable of doing it, could never have written any thing so weak, silly, utterly unmeaning as the rest. No man ever dreamed of writing it as a novel, and whoever had produced it in his normal state, would have made it either better in its feebler parts, or worse in its stronger passages.
The origin of the book was explained to me by one of Joe’s own elders, on the authority of the person who, as Joe’s amanuensis, wrote it. From beginning to end, it was dictated by Joe himself, not translated from plates, as was generally alleged, but apparently from a peculiar stone, which he subsequently called his Urim and Thummim, and used in his divination. He placed the stone in his hat, which stood upon a table, and then taking a seat, he concealed his face in his hat above it, and commenced dictating in a sleep-waking state, under the influence of the mysterious power that used or assisted him. I lived near the place where the book was produced. I had subsequently ample means of investigating the whole case, and I availed myself of them to the fullest extent. For a considerable time the Mormon prophets and elders were in the habit of visiting my house. They hoped to make me a convert, and they spoke to me with the utmost frankness and unreserve.
Numerous miracles, or what seemed to be miracles—such miracles as evil spirits have power to perform—and certain marvellous cures were alleged to be wrought by the prayers and laying on of the hands of the Mormon elders. Some of these were wrought on persons closely related and well known to me personally; and I have heard others confirmed by persons of known intelligence and veracity, whose testimony was as conclusive for me as would have been my own personal observation. That there was a superhuman power employed in founding the Mormon church, cannot easily be doubted by any scientific and philosophic mind that has investigated the subject; and just as little can a sober man doubt that the power employed was not Divine, and that Mormonism is literally the Synagogue of Satan.
It matters little to the enemies of Christianity, whether the public deny altogether the marvellous phenomena heretofore regarded as diabolical, whether they accept and explain them by means of a primitive force or primordial law of nature, or simply ascribe them to Satanic invasion, provided it be held that Satan is a philanthropist, the friend and benefactor of the race, not the enemy; for in any case, Christianity is denied or undermined. But the purely sceptical theory answers only for the few, who, it is to be remarked, never see any of these marvellous phenomena, and who, if they did see them, might be led to embrace Christianity; but it will never suffice for the many, and can never subserve the views of reformers who would operate upon the masses.
It however makes no practical difference which of the other two hypotheses is adopted. For myself, I in some sense adopted both, though, as I have said, I inclined to the naturalistic theory. But even then I had begun to contemplate an ulterior object, which might make it more convenient to adopt the latter hypothesis, for it might become necessary to overthrow Christianity by the introduction, apparently by supernatural means, of another religion—a religion in harmony with the wants of the flesh. It is impossible to overthrow a positive religion by a pure negation, or to get rid of Christianity without substituting something positive in its place; for it is to be remarked, that sceptical ages are the most credulous, and that as Christian faith recedes, superstition advances. Hence we see in Scandinavia unmistakable evidences of a revival of the worship of Odin; and only a short time since, the government had to adopt measures to repress it in the north of Norway. In many parts of Germany we see a decided tendency to revive the superstition which Christianity supplanted. When men have no longer religion, they take refuge in superstition; and when they cease to worship God, they begin to worship the devil. The most interesting people to the Englishman Layard that he found in the East, were the devil-worshippers.
But all this is premature. World-Reform, as I had sketched it to myself, had for its object unbounded liberty, and was to be accomplished, on the one hand, by the overthrow of all existing governments, and the complete disruption of all political and civil society; and on the other, by the total demolition of the Christian Church, and extirpation of the Christian religion. Of course it would not do to avow all this, for if I did, I should defeat my own purposes. Faith still lurked in many a heart; and the persuasion was very general, that some kind of government, some kind of political, civil, and even moral restraint was very generally entertained, even by those whom I must make my accomplices, and use as my tools. It was necessary to keep one’s own counsel, or to confide it to the smallest number possible. To the world it would do to avow only the design of divorcing religion from politics, and of democratizing the church and society. This might be avowed without shocking the public at large. For this the public mind was in a measure prepared. A pious priest could be persuaded to advocate ecclesiastical democracy, as we have seen in the work of the excellent Rosmini, in the Five Wounds of the Church.
A popularizing tendency among Catholics had been much encouraged by that powerful priest, the Abbé de La Mennais, and his enthusiastic associates. It is true, he had fallen under censure, and had been excommunicated, eo nomine, by Rome; but the party he formed, though disavowing him, still retained somewhat of his spirit, and followed his tendency. There was a growing party in France, even among the clergy, who wished to divorce the church from the state, and induce her to abandon the courts, and cement an intimate alliance with the people, and lend her powerful influence to the democratic movements of the day. They had much that was plausible in their favor. The royal and nobiliaire governments of Europe had always labored to convert the dignitaries of the church into courtiers, and to make her their tool for enslaving and fleecing the people. The greatest injury religion had ever received, it had received from courtier bishops, and the tyranny of the state over the church, equally fatal to her and to the people. The real interests of the church would therefore seem to demand of her to make common cause with the people against kings and aristocrats, and in favor of democratic institutions. This conviction was becoming very general among the more earnest and influential Catholic laymen. A corresponding conviction was also becoming general among the great mass of the Protestant populations. It was possible, then, to labor to democratize society without alarming religious convictions; nay, it was possible to enlist them to a great extent in the same work. Nobody, it is well known, helped us on more effectually in Europe than many of the most distinguished among the Catholic clergy and laity. I need only mention Ventura and Gioberti in Italy, Montalembert, Lacordaire, Cormenin, Maret, and Archbishop Affre, in France.
But, after all, great movements are never carried on by simple human means alone, and never get beyond brilliant theories unless inspired and sustained by a superhuman power, either from heaven or from hell. Christianity had taught us the weakness of human nature, and I found that weakness confirmed by experience. Between the power to conceive and to execute there is a distance. Men might form the most brilliant ideals, bring out the soundest, most attractive and perfect theories of reform, but it would avail nothing unless endued with a power not their own, to realize them in practice. Here was the defect in the plan of Signor Urbini and Young Italy. It was skilfully devised, it had all of human wisdom on its side, but it was ideal, and had no power or energy to realize itself. No man lifteth himself by his own waistbands. Without the Whereon to stand, Archimedes, with all his mechanical contrivances, cannot move the world. It is necessary to have a support outside of man; a source of power which is not human, and as the world would say, either Divine or Satanic, to be able to accomplish any thing.
But had I not this very power in the agent I had been experimenting with? What else was this mesmeric agent, whether a primitive, an elemental force of nature, or indeed a superhuman spirit endowed with intelligence and will? Mr. Winslow was, in the main, right. Mesmeric clubs or circles must be formed on all points on which it is necessary to operate, and batteries be erected everywhere, so that anywhere, and at any moment, a mesmeric current may be sent instantaneously through the masses, infusing into them a superhuman resolution and energy, and making them stand up and march as one man. This, then, was the first thing to be done. I would erect my mesmeric batteries in every country in Europe, all connected by an invisible, but unbroken magnetic chain.
This plan, as far as I thought it prudent, I forthwith communicated to Priscilla, without whose coöperation I could not carry it into effect. She approved it, and was ready to coöperate in any way I wished. The poor lady, I may remark, had no longer any will of her own. She had craved liberty, and had induced me to aid her in establishing it, and was now only my slave, bound to me in chains, which, struggle as she might, she could not, of herself alone, break or unfasten.
