P. 7: . . . the instances which I shall point out to prove the depravity of Spiritualism, will be those who have been engaged in it from the commencement, and who started with high moral and social positions. I, therefore, cannot be accused of bringing examples which it has failed to reform, and which may be found in any class [i.e., group] of society, but those it has actually degraded--such as once truly enjoyed honorable positions. . . . If, in this way, the fact is substantiated that Spiritualism is subversive of public morals and virtue, just in proportion to the extent of an adherence to its doctrines, then its [P.8] evil tendency is clearly sustained, and the well intentioned wherever should set their face against it.
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Admitting Spiritual intercourse to be true, which I claim, the inquiry naturally arises, what is the class of Spirits which is most nearly allied to earth, and thus the most effectually controls our mediums? In other words, what is the character which those Spirits have claimed for themselves, which everywhere make the most powerful physical manifestations? In this life they were known as pirates, thieves, robbers, murderers and wantons. Such as whose spiritual condition is yet so gross and material, that they are still able to come in direct rapport with the external world and act upon physical substances. The Spiritualists themselves claim that the most of the physical manifestations are made by this class of Spirits, and are important only as they demonstrate the phenonmena. Now I am willing to grant that the physical and mental control of mediums is one grade higher than this. In other words, that they are influenced by Spirits of a more intellectual cast, but if we can judge from the results which follows [sic], of the most depraved morals. These Spirits will inculcate such doctrines as will secure the confidence and meet the approbation of those to whom they are given. They nearly always come in the name of some near and dearly beloved kindred, or as especially appointed guardian angels. For a while, their love for us and interest in our welfare, is all that we could desire, and their promises are most faithfully kept, until our confidence is secured. And then, step by step, as we are able to receive it, they inculcate their sophistry and pervert the morals until they complete the ruin of their deluded victims. The time required to accomplish this is long or short, according to the inherent goodness, or discretion which they are obliged to overcome, but being confident of final success. Thus Spiritualists are not ruined in a day, often times requiring years; but Spirits, to make secure their work, appeal to the strongest passions of their victims; with many their [P. 9] lust, others their affections, and still others their ambition--all of which they often greatly intensify. . . . Mrs. Hatch is universally acknowledged to stand as high in integrity and uprightness of purpose, as any medium in America; and, therefore, would be likely to draw about her as elevated a class of Spirits; nevertheless, when her controlling spirit has thrown off the mask of deception, and while she was entranced so as to be externally wholly unconscious, she has been made to threaten the entire destruction of her own conjugal happiness, and to effect her ruin; and that they would never leave nor forsake her until they had made her the scorn and contempt of society--that they had only permitted her short and brilliant career in order to make more perfect and awful her destruction. No epithets or language was too malicious for them (Spirits) to use; no remonstrance or admonition would appear to have the least influence upon them; she would be strangled until her face would turn purple, the lungs collapsed to a degree which would appear impossible, and live; the brain so tortured that hours of the wildest delirium would follow, and when they had accomplished their present object, they would utter a ha! ha! ha! as it appeared to me, would cause even the inhabitants of hell itself to shudder.
Mrs. Hatch, uninfluenced by Spirits, or unobsessed, comes the nearest my highest ideal of woman of any one I ever met on earth; gentle, kind, loving and intellectual to a remarkable degree. But since those infernal influences have seen fit to change her course, I have stood appalled before her terrific wrath. The most unrelenting and merciless cruelty has captivated her soul, and moral consciousness is wholly lost in her vengeance. The agonies of the rack for her husband would be the most delicious music to her ears. All this mighty and wonderful change occured in a single day. I know the extremity, but the truthfulness of this statement. Do not understand me as censuring her, for my love for, and confidence in her are limited only by the extent of my ability; but her gentle, susceptible, ardent and yielding nature infested by demons within, and surrounded [P. 10] by those of a corresponding condition without, her own individuality is swallowed up in the vertex of evil. Upon this sad moral condition nearly all the Spiritualists fatten with delight, and those most active in perpetuating it [i.e., the three arbiters who decided for her in the separation case], resort to the vilest means to accomplish their object. But the facts pertaining to this will be given in another place.
This is not a solitary case, but a representative of nearly every mental medium in the country.
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. . . there are entranced mediums who, before public audiences, will discourse most elegantly and beautifully upon the laws of love, harmony, and kindness; whom, while before the public, you would almost think were angels from heaven; but when followed from the desk to the domestic relation, show by their lives the awful reality of the opposite extreme. Damnation in all its horrors is freely dealt out around the family altar; the vilest epithets and severest insults are heaped upon their companions, and in the hour of physical anguish not one consoling word is given--even a cup of water would be withheld to increase the sufferings. This condition of things continues year after year.
The question naturally arises in every mind if evil spirits can communicate. Cannot good ones also? I answer, that it will be found to be a law of spiritual life, that the lower the spirit in the scale of development, or the more intense their evil, the greater their power to convert to their use the vital and magnetic forces of the circle, or those more material elements which belongs [sic] to the earth life; and by making use of these forces they are enabled to subjugate the will of such as become mediums and hold them in mental and physical vassilage.
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P. 11: Entrancement is unnatural and, therefore, disorderly. God never designed, as an orderly condition, that one mind should be held in subjugation to another, whether in or out of the body. . . . when John W. Edmonds [one of the three arbiters] leans back in his rocking chair, closes his eyes and says: "I s-e-e b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l a-n-d e-l-e-v-a-t-e-d s-p-i-r-i-t-s," and then adds: "I wish they would stop that damn noise in the street. I can't see beautiful spirits when they are making such a devilish racket," it becomes simply ridiculous; and we are forced to the conclusion that his apparent vision is the psychological result of his own egotism rather than any reality.
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P. 12: It is a startling reality, visible to all who will open their eyes to see, that nearly all mediums, especially those for mental manifestations, become wholly disqualified for the continuance of any practical relations of life; and there is among them a perpetual tendency to form extra-marital relations. As companions, they are ardent and affectionate, but a single day may, and often does, suffice to change their whole moral nature, and transform their love into the most bitter of hatreds. In other words, they are what the magnetism of their surroundings, or their controlling demons see fit to make them; and, therefore, as unreliable as is the influence brought to bear upon them.
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[Pp. 13 & ff detail specific cases of moral decline due to Spiritualism]
P. 13: Hon. John W. Edmonds, of New York, is sufficiently advanced in years to have his inherent character well established. He has occupied high and responsible positions [a reference to his career a justice of the New York Supreme Court], which he has most honorably filled. Thus far he was justly entitled to public confidence and respect. As near as I am able to learn, he has been a medium since 1852; and how far he has lost all reliability and moral consciousness, I leave for the reader to decide upon the evidence which will be presented in the next chapter.
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P. 20: [Spiritualists] . . . boastingly speak of their freedom from, what they call, social conventionalisms and the superstitions of Christianity. They plant themselves upon the instincts of their nature, and use their reason only to devise means for their gratification. In this way they invert the order of nature, and passion receives the approbation of conscience through a perverted intellect. In this state of mind, the wrongs which the world so deeply deplore, become, to them, a religion; and as such all-powerful over them.
They earnestly contend that no external authority, and no code of human laws, can justly bind their affections, or interfere with their liberty to follow the impulse of their personal affinities. They claim that they have a God-given right to rectify any mistake they may have made, and do so as often as such mistakes occur; and, [P. 21] therefore, in their affections, which they claim is the most important faculty of the human mind, they should be left to their own will, and seek such conjugal relation as, at the time, may best please them. There are multitudes who do not openly advocate, but who fully sanction this doctrine. In short this is the paramount doctrine of Spiritualism. They claim to be mongamous, because they have but one wife or husband at a time, though they may have a new one every day. . . . This much I most firmly believe, from a critical and extensive observation, that the Spiritualists, as a social body, are rapidly tending to a promiscuous relation of the sexes. The ultra free-lovers who have formed themselves into associations are aware of this fact, and they look upon the general introduction of Spiritualism as a John in the wilderness of conservativism, preparing the way for the reign of the kingdom of Lust. . . .And when we see John W. Edmonds visiting and holding private circles with Kate Hastings, the most notorious wanton in New York, it clearly shows how little is virtue respected, and great a leveler, not upwards but downwards, is Spiritualism.
I do not wish to be understood that there are no pure and good men and women who believe in spiritual intercourse. There are many whose inherent integrity even Spiritualism has not been able to destroy.
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