The Spiritualist newspaper > No.141, May 7th 1875

THE SPIHITUALIST.
225
May 7, 1875.
whom Harris openly reproved for gross immorality. Leaving
these charges, then, I will proceed to the examination of mis-
understood passages in Harris’s writings. In the Spiritual
Magazine for 1868, Nos. 1, 2, and 3, we find three articles on
Harris’s writings, which there receive a considerable amount of
abuse, and Harris himself is called (p. 74) a “ poetical and
religious maniac, with brief lucid intervals.” These are supple¬
mented by a paper of a similar nature in the January number
for 1869. Any one who wishes to see all that can be said
against Harris will find it in these volumes; but if they turn
out to be all based on error, all readers who are not poetical
and religious, or even Spiritualistic maniacs, can arrive at but
one conclusion. The first charge is at p. 5 of the Spiritual
Magazine for 1868, where the writer says—“ Harris’s poems,
the Lyric of the Golden Age and Lyric of the Morning
Land, were, according to his own statements, dictated by
the spirits of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Pollok, &c. Now every
one of these spirits, according to Mr. Harris’s present
belief, and, indeed, a belief which he held when he visited
and lectured in London in 1861, are devils and impudent
deceivers.” The critic proceeds to say that, in spite of
this belief, Harris allowed the sale to go on at the doors
of his own lecture-room just the same. In answer to this
I reply (1) that the Lyric of the Morning Land was not
dictated by the spirits of Byron, &c., and these poets are not
even mentioned in it; this statement, therefore, only shows
the ignorance of the reviewer; (2) that Harris never said that
these poems were dictated by devils, nor has he ever with¬
drawn or repudiated them; on the contrary, he says in his
greatest work, the Arcana of Christianity, that this work was
received from the lyrical Heaven; (3) in 1870 he stated
his intention to reprint these works when the time came,
and correct the various typographical errors. The only part
which he repudiates is the preface to these works, which
was written by a Spiritualist, and prefixed to the work by the
publishers to whom the work was sold during Harris’s absence
from New York. (The letter itself is given in No. 89 of The
Spiritualist, where also I have entered more fully into this
question.) The next charge in this Magazine is that the
poems given by Harris in the Song of Satan are blasphemous.
Indeed he says : ” In no work that has come under our ob¬
servation is the practice of every sensuality and every blas¬
phemy inculcated with more Satanic recklessness than is this
volume.” But what does this mean ? If it means that
Harris inculcates blasphemy and sensuality, then the assertion
is the foulest libel that was ever penned against him; but if
it only means that the evil spirits taught these doctrines,
what then ? Did the reviewer expect them to talk like clergy¬
men on the subject ? The work is a valuable one, for it shows
the devils as they are at home; and if it contains their evil
utterances, it also contains their own confessions of the fearful
sufferings into which their evils lead them. On this subject I
will quote from p. 9 of'this work, where Harris says : “ This
spirit who sings the glories of progression, and pours contempt
upon the Word, is also the same who, as his true interior
character more and more developes itself, stands out in naked,
bold malignity. His sufferings, by his own confession, are
fearful to endure, and terrible to narrate, while he takes an
insane delight in painting to uninstructed minds {query—the
mediums of the present day ?] the exalted joys and the divine
felicities Jof the spiritual existence which he possesses.” I
would advise every medium to read this work with care, that
he may know the true state of evil spirits, and ask himself
what test he has for discriminating between good spirits and
devils clothed as angels of light.
Following on the review, we find at p. 15 of the Magazine
another proof of the ignorance of the critic. He tells us,
“ As Swedenborg chiefly took in hand Genesis, Harris has
undertaken the Revelations.” I should have thought that
any one who presumed to write about Harris or Swedenborg
would have known that the latter wrote on Exodus also, and
that both have written on Genesis and the Apocalypse. This
error again shows the reviewer’s unfitness for the task he has
taken upon himself.
A third extraordinary blunder now comes before us. The
reviewer says of internal breathing—“ We hold it to be a
universal and inalienable function of every living soul, not
the capriciously bestowed boon which Harris represents. We
are persuaded that no living spirit could continue to live with¬
out spiritual breath, any more than an animated physical
body can exist without breathing physical air, &e.” To this
the answer is obvious. Harris speaks of a certain spiritual
breathing, which only a certain number at present possess ;
hence, whatever spiritual breathing all may possess, that of
which Harris writes is something different and additional.
The difference between the two I have mentioned in my first
paper, in No. 81 of The Spiritualist; and all this might have
been found out even by the reviewer, had he read the chapters
from the Ar. Chr. published in The Herald of Light, vol. v.
Suffice it to say that people in general do not present the
phenomena of inner breathing recorded in my first paper,
which alone is a proof that the critic is wrong, and does not
understand the subject on which he is writing.
The February number of the Spiritual Magazine ior 1868
contains a review of The Great Republic, containing a great many
sneering remarks about Harris, which are too silly and pal¬
pably erroneous to be seriously refuted. In the March 'number,
however, we find a third attack on Harris. We here find
again the utterly erroneous statement that the Lyric of the
Morning Land was dictated by Byron and others, to which I
have already referred. Then follow some extracts from the
preface to the Lyric of the Golden Age, which the reviewer
says was “written by the friends already alluded to, and
under the immediate inspection and sanction of Mr. Harris
himself.” I will again say that this preface was not
“written under the immediate inspection and sanction”
of Harris, but was printed with the work during Harris’s
absence. Harris repudiates the preface altogether, and re¬
quested Mr. John Thomson, the publisher of his works
in Great Britain, not to bind jit up with his reprint of the
work, as it was calculated to misrepresent his teaching. Next
we come to a beautiful spiritual vision which Harris had of
the death of his first wife, which occurred about 1856. The
reviewer actually asks us to believe that Harris now believes
that even this vision was from hell. It is utterly untrue.
Harris never said anything of the sort. He acknowledges
that he was deceived by demons once, but he has never said
he was so in this case, or indeed tsince he received inner
breathing in 1852-3.
The last series of charges to which I need refer are to be
found in the Spiritual Magazine for January, 1869, in a paper
written by a clergyman of the Church of England. I need
not refute them at length: some of them I have answered
before in this paper; others need no answer. I will only
quote three assertions to prove how recklessly assertions are
made without the slightest proof, and how little real know¬
ledge of Harris’s works his would-be critics possess. 1. The
writer says of Harris’s Great Republic, “ It takes a false and
exaggerated account of human evil. No human being is or
can be so thoroughly and abominably wicked as the Jews are
described to be.” To this I answer that the Jews are not
mentioned at all in the above work. 2. The writer says,
“ There is a great deal of revolting sensualism in the book.
Subjects of delicacy are treated in a manner at once un¬
seemly and shocking.” This is untrue. There is not a single
passage in the Great Republic that the critic himself would
hesitate to read aloud to the most prudish old maid amongst
his acquaintances, not even if they should include the celebrated
lady who fainted because the preacher spoke of the “ naked
truth.” When Harris does speak in his other works on
“ subjects of delicacy,” he does it in a way that can be un¬
derstood by those who need such advice. I am sure that a
great deal of the immorality which prevails among the young
is due to the fact that their parents are ashamed to explain
to their offspring the laws of life, allowing them to grow up
in ignorance, till they leam these subjects, not as sacred puri¬
ties, but mixed up with all kinds of loathsome perversions.
To the pure all things are pure. 3. The critic accuses Harris
of having taught “ the stoppage of the earth in its rotation,
when it is to be struck with a devouring comet, whirled out
of its orbit, purified by fire, and afterwards brought back
again into its position to serve as the hallowed habitation of
redeemed men.” All this is a mere fiction, evolved by the
writer out of his own inner consciousness : Harris never said
anything of the sort.
With this letter I bring this series of papers in The Spirit¬
ualist to an end. Since I have begun them I have had further
proofs of the truth of Harris’s statements of a most remarkable
kind. Internal respiration is a great fact. It is coming to
the world, and in time will so demonstrate its presence that
there will be no need of argument; for it will be its own
proof. In the meantime I have considered it my duty to write
these brief notes on the subject, feeling that they might be of
help to some. My belief has already been realised, and I now
leave them to produce such fruit as the Divine Master, the
Lord Jesus, shall, in His infinite wisdom, decree.
E. W. Bebbipge, M,B. (Lond.)
4, Highbury New Park, N.