INVERTED WITCHCRAFT.
WE are unable to believe in a millennium, and can find no promise in Scripture from which a hope. might be deduced of a possible second revelation, but sometimes we cannot wonder that this latter idea should haunt many pious minds. There is so intense a desire among the good for a little more light, and around them are so many of the conditions amidst which nineteen hundred years ago the light once came. Now, as then, the civilised world enjoys a peace which does not spring from any repudiation of violence,' but is maintained by the tramp of legions. Now, as then, luxury has received developments previously unknown, intelligence is brighter than it has been for ages, and there spreads among the thoughtful a vague premonition that something is about to occur—it will happen, men usually say, within the region of science—which will give to the thought of mankind a new impetus and a new direction. Now, as then, there is a strange malaise, a restless discontent with all existing spiritual life, leading with many to a denial that truth can ever be dis- covered, with many more to an unparalleled development of credulity. Now, as then, any assurance is believed if only it is mysterious, and there is endless talk of miracles and spirits and esoteric doctrines, and truths which can be attained if only one knows the way, and will go through the necessary ordeals. We call it the age of doubt, but there is not a capital in Europe, especially if it is ultra-sceptical, where mem ausiNomen of the world who suppose themselves free from all superstitions are not consulting wizards, trusting in diviners, believing that to some sort of priests of Isis knowledge has been communicated denied to the remainder of man- kind. We can name half-a-dozen new creeds, from philan- thropy down to esoteric Buddhism, each of which has its- worshipping devotees. There are thousands of people among us, hundreds of thousands in America, who believe, and admit they believe, in a kind of "white magic" by which they declare the sick can be healed without medicine or surgery, and for aught they can tell, even the dead may be raised. This, moreover, is no delusion of the vulgar. Every day we hear of some man of the world, or some woman of more than usual intelligence, who has been converted to this strange faith, and who thenceforward becomes, for the time at least, its fervent missionary, preaching a doctrine which, so far as we can understand it at all—and we never remember a doctrine so clouded by a misuse of technical words—is a medley of Hindooism, Christianity, and what our fathers used to call "white magic." Like the Hindoos, its votaries believe that the only reality is spirit; that all things material are phenomenal; and that, consequently, the spirit can control, or disperse, or do away with external phenomena like disease, perhaps abolish death, certainly arrest it. Some of them even affirm—vide Lord Dunmore in the Daily Mail of Wednesday —that there is some mystical relation between sin and sick- ness, as if when a man is run over by an omnibus his broken bones indicated in him some sort of guilt,—an idea which must greatly delight the author of " Erewhon." Like Christians, they believe in the efficacy of prayer; and like the old professors of "white magic," they think that the prayer of some is more efficacious than that of others ; that the aid of such persons can be evoked or even purchased; that they are, in fact, "white magicians." Faith, too, enters into the recipe in a new form, for it is not faith in God, but in some intermediary with God, who need not always be the same ; and there is, of course, some reference, generally vague, to the great modern instrument of magic, —will-power. That is a confused account, the reader may say, but it is not one whit more confused than the best accounts we are able to extract from devotees, and not half so confused, we venture to affirm, as the belief that thousands among them think they entertain. For it is a special note of the new superstitions of our day that vague- ness attracts their devotees, that definiteness affronts and repels them, and that they wish to dwell in a borderland between reason and something which they say transcends reason, as it is certainly independent of sense. They wish to be at once religious and scientific, and to unconvinced minds, at all events, do not succeed in being either.
The use of the new creed, which does not, so far as we know, concern itself with the ancient problems of the Whence and Whither, is mainly as an instrument of healing, and the modus operandi appears to be this. The patient must first of all have faith, which he can produce in himself or herself by intense desire for it, and must then apply to some one who possesses in a special degree the will-power or whatever the agency is which is to be employed. He or she, being rightly invoked, exerts the power he or she possesses, and in a short time the patient is better, then convalescent, and then well. In the case of children and animals, even the application is un- necessary, babies and dogs having apparently inherent capaci- ties for being cured. At least, Lady Abinger affirms in the Onlooker that she has known animals thus healed. Thousands of cures, it is affirmed, have been performed in this way, just as they have been performed at Lourdes; and we should never think of disputing that some of the cures are real. No one knows the limits of the control exercised by the mind over the limbs, nor does any one dispute that purely mental shocks, extreme fright, for example, or extreme joy, have in repeated instances restored the health natural to the body. What we do not understand is why an intermediary should be required, or on what grounds those intermediaries, who, of course, rapidly become professionals, speak of themselves as Christian Scientists. Of science there is none, for they cannot explain their modus operandi, and where is the Christianity ? They do not leave the cure to God, as the Peculiar People do ; . they do not rely on faith, as some Christians in all ages have ipeu tempted to do; and they do not claim any power
specially delegated to them by the Creator. They simply_ assert that if the patient believes sufficiently, not in God but in them and their assurances, they will do wonderful things, which is precisely the position of the old "white magicians," the wizards and witches who blessed instead of cursing you. "Christian Science" is, in fact, inverted witchcraft, and, as it seems to us, has just as much or as little to show in demon- stration of its claims as witchcraft ever bad. Look at the evidence, they say, as if the whole world had not once rung with evidence that witches had power, which nevertheless they did not possess.
It is but a craze, and will pass, but before it passes we wish to note how symptomatic it is of two feelings of the present,— the intense wish for a new creed, and the intense intolerance of bodily suffering. Because there is something, though not much, in hypnotism as a medical fact, and because it is possible that upon particular subjects external will has an effluent force, as we seem to see in a few cases of incipient mania, men jump at the deduction that the old creeds are false or imperfect, that there must be new readings of the relation of God to man, and disseminate their " views " as the dogmas of a new faith. They are only views at best, as the evidence which supports them is merely affirmation, the force of which depends not upon proof, but on the sincerity, often unquestionable, of those who affirm. Because Mr. Hampden is a gentleman, and good, and is certain the earth is flat, therefore it is flat,—that is the syllogism which to some minds seems the most convincing of all. And there must be besides some new horror of sickness creeping into the world, stimulating the energies, no doubt, of sanitary inspectors, but also debilitating the old patience and fortitude which lie at the very root of human strength. We believe this to be a marked feature of our day, and can, we think, dimly perceive its cause. As in modern civilisation other dangers are vanish- ing, and men—and more especially women—lead protected, not
• to say podded, lives, their minds fasten on the one danger, sickness, which still threatens all, they exaggerate its horrors, and at last come to the idea which we seem to see running through the whole structure of Christian Scientism, that sickness must in some way be sin, or at all events a product of sin. That is palpably unsound, for even if all liability to take typhoid proceeds from defects produced in the body by sin, the liability to accident must be independent of that cause. It cannot be because of sin that a bullet hits you in the lung. To eke out the evidence, those who think thus always have to affirm heredity in an extreme form, such a form that we should like to ask those among them who are Christian whether they think that a man inherits his soul. If they do, and will think, they will find that some strange consequences follow, and that they are perilously near the confines of a lofty but destructive form of determinism. Lord Dunmore says, with an air of perfect conviction, God cannot will sickness; but if that is true, who wills the floods which, in countries less happy than our own, so often produce epidemic malaria? Is it Fate, or the Devil, or an endless sequence of self-developed causes? Be it which it may, the " Science " which accepts either explanation surely misdescribes itself when it uses the word" Christian."
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