The Divine Drama of History and Civilisation. By the Rev. James Smith, M.A.[108] London, 1854, 8vo.
I have several books on that great paradox of our day, _Spiritualism_, but I shall exclude all but three. The bibliography of this subject is now very large. The question is one both of evidence and speculation;--Are the facts {56} true? Are they caused by spirits? These I shall not enter upon: I shall merely recommend this work as that of a spiritualist who does not enter on the subject, which he takes for granted, but applies his derived views to the history of mankind with learning and thought. Mr. Smith was a man of a very peculiar turn of thinking. He was, when alive, the editor, or _an_ editor, of the _Family Herald_: I say when alive, to speak according to knowledge; for, if his own views be true, he may have a hand in it still. The answers to correspondents, in his time, were piquant and original above any I ever saw. I think a very readable book might be made out of them, resembling "Guesses at Truth:" the turn given to an inquiry about morals, religion, or socials, is often of the highest degree of _unexpectedness_; the poor querist would find himself right in a most unpalatable way.
Answers to correspondents, in newspapers, are very often the fag ends of literature. I shall never forget the following. A person was invited to name a rule without exception, if he could: he answered "A man _must_ be present when he is shaved." A lady--what right have ladies to decide questions about shaving?--said this was not properly a rule; and the oracle was consulted. The editor agreed with the lady; he said that "a man _must_ be present when he is shaved" is not a _rule_, but a _fact_.
[Among my anonymous communicants is one who states that I have done injustice to the Rev. James Smith in "referring to him as a spiritualist," and placing his "Divine Drama" among paradoxes: "it is no paradox, nor do _spiritualistic_ views mar or weaken the execution of the design." Quite true: for the design is to produce and enforce "spiritualistic views"; and leather does not mar nor weaken a shoemaker's plan. I knew Mr. Smith well, and have often talked to him on the subject: but more testimony from me is unnecessary; his book will speak for itself. {57} His peculiar style will justify a little more quotation than is just necessary to prove the point. Looking at the "battle of opinion" now in progress, we see that Mr. Smith was a prescient:
(P. 588.) "From the general review of parties in England, it is evident that no country in the world is better prepared for the great Battle of Opinion. Where else can the battle be fought but where the armies are arrayed? And here they all are, Greek, Roman, Anglican, Scotch, Lutheran, Calvinist, Established and Territorial, with Baronial Bishops, and Nonestablished of every grade--churches with living prophets and apostles, and churches with dead prophets and apostles, and apostolical churches without apostles, and philosophies without either prophets or apostles, and only wanting one more, 'the Christian Church,' like Aaron's rod, to swallow up and digest them all, and then bud and flourish. As if to prepare our minds for this desirable and inevitable consummation, different parties have been favored with a revival of that very spirit of revelation by which the Church itself was originally founded. There is a complete series of spiritual revelations in England and the United States, besides mesmeric phenomena that bear a resemblance to revelation, and thus gradually open the mind of the philosophical and infidel classes, as well as the professed believers of that old revelation which they never witnessed in living action, to a better understanding of that Law of Nature (for it is a Law of Nature) in which all revelation originates and by which its spiritual communications are regulated."
Mr. Smith proceeds to say that there are _only_ thirty-five incorporated churches in England, all formed from the New Testament except five, to each of which five he concedes a revelation of its own. The five are the Quakers, the Swedenborgians, the Southcottians, the Irvingites, and the Mormonites. Of Joanna Southcott he speaks as follows: {58}
(P. 592.) "Joanna Southcott[109] is not very gallantly treated by the gentlemen of the Press, who, we believe, without knowing anything about her, merely pick up their idea of her character from the rabble. We once entertained the same rabble idea of her; but having read her works--for we really have read them--we now regard her with great respect. However, there is a great abundance of chaff and straw to her grain; but the grain is good, and as we do not eat either the chaff or straw if we can avoid it, nor even the raw grain, but thrash it and winnow it, and grind it and bake it, we find it, after undergoing this process, not only very palatable, but a special dainty of its kind. But the husk is an insurmountable obstacle to those learned and educated gentlemen who judge of books entirely by the style and the grammar, or those who eat grain as it grows, like the cattle. Such men would reject all prological revelation; for there never was and probably never will be a revelation by voice and vision communicated in classical manner. It would be an invasion of the rights and prerogatives of Humanity, and as contrary to the Divine and Established order of mundane government, as a field of quartern loaves or hot French rolls."
Mr. Smith's book is spiritualism from beginning to end; and my anonymous gainsayer, honest of course, is either ignorant of the work he thinks he has read, or has a most remarkable development of the organ of imperception.]
