Theodore Parker, or Balaam's ass. This diakka is flesh, fish, or fowl, as you may desire."Some idea of how the spirits sometimes torment the mediums, as hinted at above, may be gained from the following instance. In "Astounding Facts from the Spirit World," pp. 253, 254, Dr. Gridley describes the case of a medium sixty years of age, living near him in Southampton, Mass. The sufferings inflicted upon him "in two months at the hands of evil spirits would fill a volume of five hundred pages." Of these sufferings, the following are specimens: -- "They forbade his eating, to the very point of starvation.
He was a perfect skeleton; they compelled him to walk day and night, with intermissions, to be sure, as their avowed object was to torment him as much and as long as possible. They swore by everything sacred and profane, that they would knock his brains out, always accompanying their threats with blows on the forehead or temples, like that of a mallet in the hands of a powerful man, with this difference, however; the latter would have made him unconscious, while in full consciousness he now endured the indescribable agony of those heavy and oft-repeated blows; they declared they would skin him alive; that he must go to New York and be dissected by inches, all of which he fully believed. They declared that they would bore holes into his brain, when he instantly felt the action suited to the word, as though a dozen augers were being turned at once into his very skull; this done, they would fill his brain with bugs and worms to eat it out, when their gnawing would instantly commence. . . Page 115 These spirits would pinch and pound him, twitch him up and throw him down, yell and blaspheme, and use the most obscene language that mortals can conceive; they would declare that they were Christ in one breath, and devils in the next; they would tie him head to foot for a long time together in a most excruciating posture; declare they would wring his neck off because he doubted or refused obedience." Who can doubt that such spirits are the angels of the evil one himself?
Dr. Gridley in the same work, p. 19, gives the experience of another medium, for the truthfulness of which he offers the fullest proof: -- "We have seen the medium evidently possessed by Irishmen and Dutchmen of the lowest grade--heard him repeat Joshua's drunken prayers [Joshua was a strong but brutish man he had known in life], exactly like the original, --imitate his drunkenness in word and deed --try to repeat, or rather act over his most brutal deeds (from which for decency's sake, he was instantly restrained by extraordinary exertion and severe rebuke)-- snap and grate his teeth most furiously, strike and swear, while his eyes flashed like the fires of an orthodox perdition. We have heard him hiss, and seen him writhe his body like the serpent when crawling, and dart out his tongue, and play it exactly like that reptile. These exhibitions were intermingled with the most wrangling and horrible convulsions." These descriptions, it would seem, ought to be enough to strike terror to any heart at the thought of being a medium. But there is yet another phase of the subject that should not be passed by. These fallen spirits who are engineering the work of Spiritualism, to maintain their "assumed characters," and "play their parts" like the aforesaid diakka, represent that disembodied spirits "just over the threshold," still retain the characteristics they bore in life, such Page 116 as a disposition to sensuality and licentiousness, love of rum, tobacco, and other vices, and that they can, by causing the medium to plunge excessively into these things, thereby still gratify their own propensities to indulge in them. The following sketch by Hudson Tuttle, a very popular author among Spiritiualists, is somewhat lengthy, but the idea could not better be presented than by giving it entire. In "Life in Two Spheres," pp. 35-37, he says:-- "Reader, have you ever entered the respectable saloon? Have you ever watched the stupid stare of the inebriate when the eye grew less and less lustrous, slowly closing, the muscles relaxing, and the victim of appetite sinking over on the floor in beastly drunkenness? Oh, how dense the fumes of mingled tobacco and alcohol! Oh, what misery confined in those walls! If you have witnessed such scenes, then we need describe no further.
If you have not, then you had not better hear the tale of woe. Imagine to yourselves a barroom with all its sots, and their number multiplied indefinitely, while conscience-seared and bloated fiends stand behind the bar, from whence they deal out death and damnation, and the picture is complete. One has just arrived from earth. He is yet uninitiated in the mysteries and miseries of those which, like hungry lions, await him. He died while intoxicated -- was frozen while lying in the gutter, and consequently is attracted toward this society. He possessed a good intellect, but it was shattered beyond repair by his debauches.
"'Ye ar' a fresh one, aint ye?' coarsely queried a sot, just then particularly communicative.
"'Why, yes, I have just died, as they call it, and 'taint so bad a change after all; only I suppose there '11 be dry times here for the want of something stimulant.'
"'Not so dry; lots of that all the time, and jolly times too.'
"'Drink! Can you drink, then?'
"'Yes, we just can, and feel as nice as you please. But all can't, not unless they find one on earth just like them. Page 117 You go to earth, and mix with your chums; and when you find one whose thoughts you can read, he's your man. Form a connection with him, and when he gets to feeling good, you'll feel so too--There, do you understand me? I always tell all fresh ones the glorious news, for how they would suffer if it was n't for this blessed thing.'
"'I'll try, no mistake.'
"'Here's a covey,' spoke an ulcerous-looking being; he's of our stripe.
