SPIRITISM IN VICTORIA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 48, 23 December 1871, Page 17

SPIRITISM IN VICTORIA.

We take the following from the letter of the Melbourne correspondent of the “ Otago Daily Times —There does not at first sight appear much connection between the loss of the mail steamer and the subject of spiritualism, but circumstances have connected the two matters here in a peculiar way. This form of superstition, the latest, and as it seems to me, the grossest of all, rules the minds, or that which they are pleased to call minds, of a great number of people here, and when the steamer was found to be delayed the spirits were resorted to for an explanation of the cause of hindrance, and also to supply some items of news, about which there was a good deal of curiosity. In regard to the health of the Queen, in particular, people were a good deal exercised, and some very precise answers were obtained on that point. The spirits agreed tolerably well that the Queen died on the 15th of October ; and one medium was favored with some very definite revelations concerning Her Majesty’s last hours. In the midst of all this, an announcement was made by a Ballarat paper that a medium —the same one that had received the “ straight tip ” of Pearl for the Melbourne Cup from a spirit—had been informed, from a similar source, that “ the mail steamer would never arrive—she had foundered at sea. All the mails were lost, but the passengers were saved.” Well, this is scarcely au accurate statement of what actually happened. A vessel that is wrecked on a lock at the mouth of a harbor can hardly be said to founder at sea ; and as the Ceylon and Indian mails were saved, it could not be asserted that all the mails were lost. But still the prophecy was a very close hit, and al though where so many guesses were made, it is not to be wondered at that one should come pretty near the mark—'that one being, on external grounds, probable enough in itself, still the effect of this coincidence has been to bring a great many weak minds over to the new cieed. It is a symptom of the state of things here in an intellectual respect that Spiritualism is growing, and is increasing the number of its adherents in all classes of society. Whether this is to be regarded as a proof of our intellectual progress, may be made a ques-

tion ; but there is the fact; The new doctrine has the whole weight of our existing social conditions against it. It is denounced by religion, it is scouted by science, and laughed at by philosophy. As a reversion to forsaken, and as was thought exploded, beliefs, it is opposed to all the mental tendencies of the age. To a materialist, who regards the existence of spirits, and a life after death as chimeras, the doctrine is a superstition. On the other hand, to a believer in a spirit life the being of spirits which are substantial enough to move bulky articles of furniture, which are always at the beck and call of those ignorant, commonplace people who are designated mediums, and which have so wofuliy degenerated from the intellectual condition of their earthly life, is also a superstition and a grossly material one. Spiritualism has made itself enemies also by its theological tenets, by its denial of many of the principles of Christianity, and has thus thrown the influence of the religions class in the opposite scale, instead of enlisting it in support of what might have been made a congenial theory. Thus it would seem that everything was against it. And yet the fact is that it is spreading rapidly, and is recruiting followers numerously from the ranks of its enemies. Some of our professional men in Melbourne, especially amongst the notoriously sceptical profession of medicine,' are spiritualists “of the deepest dye.” One physician of good standing, and well-known reputation, now never sees a difficult case without retiring, beforegiving any prescription, to his study, and summoning up the spirits of some great departed lights of medicine to assist him in consultation. At several houses in the medical portion of Collins street, circles are formed, and seances held every evening. One lay reader of the Church of England, who was officiating as a minister, and who twelve months ago was as bigoted in his opposition to this belief as he is now in his advocacy of it, has publicly declared himself a spiritist, and having been expelled from the Church of England, has come forward as an evangelist of the new faith. The other evening he held a large meeting at St George’s Hall, and was there listened to with interest, while he related how he was accustomed to call up the spirits of Oliver Cromwell and Sir Robert Peel, and confer with them on passing events. The bare thought of it adds a new terror to death—when one attempts to conceive theshaaesof these two great men, one a man of the noblest type of humanity, becoming familiars of this wretched obscure lay reader. The meeting was presided over by a well known litterateur of Melbourne, who is said to be an ardent proselyte of the new religion. Other converts have been made amongst men of the literary class, men about town, men of the world. Cold-blooded, cynical, sceptical men, who believe nothing else aud yet believe this! Men with no strong feelings to warp their judgments, with no warm imaginations to bias their intellects, with nothing in their natures to afford a roothold for an earnest faith in anything whatever, and who yet have adopted spiritualism as a worthy and sufficient outcome of the long development of mankind, and as the future religion of humanity. Those wondrous communications from another world, with all their depth of mental vacuity, their forcible feeble diction, their high sounding unmeaning phrases, their endless flow of platitude, their scorn of logic and common sense, these utterances in which the greatest men are made to babble like children, and in which the wisdom of the prudent is brought to shame; these revelations which reveal nothing, which have never added an idea to the thought of men, or a noble impulse to the work of the world. All this, which to the unregenerated is mere foolishness, is, to these men I speak of, a divine source of life and joy, and devotion and spiritual religion. There is something in this more than natural, if philosophy could find it out..