Supramundane Facts in the Life of the Rev. Jesse Babcock
Ferguson, A..11., LL.D., including Twenty Years' Observation of Preternatural
Phenomena. Edited by J. L. Nichols, M.D. (F. Pitman.)—Dr. Fergu-
son is the transcendental gentleman who exhibited the Brothers Daven- port in this country ; and this book, professing to record his preternatural experiences, is one of the very dullest books which ever dealt in astounding marvels. The Rev. Jesse Babcock Ferguson, A.M., LL.D., has certainly had a very strange experience in life, and we do not know which is the stranger, thalwonderful character of his experiences or the awful amount of bosh which has filtered through them. We do not deny that it is possible that spiritualism may be intended simply to teach us
what to avoid in the next life, bat 'that is the only clear end which it
seems to us at all calculated to answer. For example, there is a chapter at the end of this book:full of spiritual communications from the other world. This is the kind of thing :—"In the abstractGodis nothing. Intui- tively He is everything, in and over all.—Now, what is development? It is being in God through all the instrumentalities of His power. A manifestation of His power is now made manifest in a figurative expression which I will give. There arises before me a column of immense height, of imposing grandeur. It pours forth from its summit living light. Sparkling founts are open. Every conceivable hue tidges the pearly drops as they fall from the summit so elevated. To earth these drop- pings are but the attributes of heaven," and so on and so on, till the drops are more effective for the purpose of driving out every vestige of reason than those drops which the Spanish Inquisition invented to drive some criminal raving mad. The Rev. Jesse Babcock Ferguson, A.M., LL.D., has preserved " what he is pleased to call " his reason " so as by fire." The Davenports an d their closet, guitars, and ropes must have been very refreshing after this tal king medium, and we have no doubt saved this good man's sanity.
Previous page
