A providential apparition.

One reads in the Oxford Chronicle [1837-1929], of the 1st of June, 1861:

“In 1828 a ship that made voyages from Liverpool to New Brunswick had as substitute officer Mr. Robert Bruce. Being near the banks of Newfoundland, the captain and his mate were calculating a day's run of their course, the first in his cabin and the other in the adjoining chamber. The two rooms were arranged in such a way that they could see and speak to each other. Bruce, absorbed in his work, did not notice that the captain had gone up to the deck; without looking, he said to him: ‘I find such-and-such a longitude; what is yours?’ Obtaining no answer, he repeats the question, but in vain. Then he advances toward the door of the cabin and sees a man seated in the captain's place and writing on a slate. The individual turns around, looks fixedly at Bruce, and the latter, terrified, rushes to the deck. — Captain, he said as soon as he reached him, who is it that at this moment is at your writing-desk in the cabin? — Why, no one, I presume. — I assure you that there is a stranger. — A stranger! You are dreaming, Mr. Bruce; who would dare get into my office without my orders? Perhaps you saw the boatswain or the steward. — Sir, it is a man seated in your armchair and writing on your slate. He looked me in the face and I saw him distinctly, as clearly as I ever saw anyone in this world. — He! who? — God alone knows, sir! I saw that stranger whom, in my life, I had never seen anywhere. — You have gone mad, Mr. Bruce. A stranger! and here it is six weeks that we have been at sea. — I know; nevertheless I saw him. — Very well! Go see who it is. — Captain, you know that I am not a coward; I do not believe in apparitions; nevertheless, I confess that I would not wish to see him alone and face to face. I should like for us both to go. The captain went down first, but found no one. — You see well, he said, that you were dreaming. — I do not know how this is, but I swear that just now he was there and was writing on your slate. — In that case, there must be something written on it. He took the slate and read these words: Steer to the northwest. Having had Bruce write the same words, as well as all the men of the crew who knew how to write, the captain ascertained that the handwriting on the slate did not resemble that of any of them. They searched every corner of the ship and discovered no stranger. Having consulted as to whether he ought to follow the mysterious advice, the captain resolved to change direction and sailed to the northwest, after having posted as lookout a man of confidence. Around three o'clock a block of ice was sighted, then a dismasted ship upon which there were several men. Drawing nearer, it was learned that the ship was wrecked, the provisions exhausted, the crew and the passengers starving. They sent boats to gather them up. But at the moment when they arrived on board, Mr. Bruce, to his great stupefaction, recognized among the shipwrecked the man he had seen in the captain's cabin. As soon as the confusion was calmed and the ship resumed its course, Mr. Bruce said to the captain: It seems that it was not a Spirit that I saw today; he is alive; the man who was writing on your slate is one of the passengers we have just rescued. There he is. I would swear it before justice. “Addressing himself to the said man, the captain invited him to come down to his cabin and asked him to write on the slate, on the side opposite to that where the mysterious writing was: Steer to the northwest. Puzzled by this request, the passenger nevertheless complied with it. Taking the slate, the captain turned it over, without letting anything show on his countenance, and, showing the passenger the words written before, said to him: — Is this indeed your handwriting? — Without a doubt, since I have just written before you. — And this here? he added, showing the other side. — It is also my handwriting; but I do not know how this came about, for I wrote only on one side. — My substitute, here present, believes he saw you today, at noon, seated at this table and writing these words. — That is impossible, because it is only a few moments ago that I was brought onto this ship. “The captain of the wrecked ship, questioned about this man and about what extraordinary thing might have happened with him that morning, answered: — I know him only as one of my passengers; but a little before noon he fell into a deep sleep, from which he emerged only after an hour. During the sleep he expressed the confidence that we would soon be rescued, saying that he saw himself aboard a ship, whose type and rigging he described, in everything conformable to what we had in sight some moments later. The passenger added that he did not remember having dreamed, nor having written anything whatever, but only that he had retained, upon waking, a presentiment he could not explain, that a ship would come to their aid. A strange thing, he said, is that everything on this ship seems familiar to me and yet I am certain I have never seen it. On this point Mr. Bruce told him the circumstances of the apparition he had had, and they concluded that the fact was providential.”

This story is perfectly authentic. Mr. Robert Dale Owen, former minister of the United States in Naples, who likewise relates it in his work, surrounded himself with all the documents that could verify its truthfulness. We ask whether it possesses any of the characteristics of hallucination! That hope, which never abandons the unfortunate, followed the passenger in his sleep and made him dream that they were coming to rescue them, one understands. The coincidence of the dream with the rescue could still be an effect of chance; but how to explain the description of the ship? As for Mr. Bruce, he is certain that he was not dreaming. If the apparition were an illusion, how to explain that resemblance to the passenger? If it were still chance, the writing on the slate is a material fact. Where did the advice come from, given by that means, to sail in the direction of the shipwrecked, contrary to the course followed by the ship? Let the defenders of hallucination have the kindness to say how, with their exclusive system, they will be able to give the reason for all these circumstances. In the provoked Spiritist phenomena they have the recourse of saying that there is trickery; but here it is hardly probable that the passenger was playing a comedy. It is in this that spontaneous phenomena, when supported by irrefutable testimonies, are of great importance, since no connivance can be suspected. For Spiritists, this fact has nothing extraordinary about it, because they understand it.

To the eyes of the ignorant it will appear supernatural, marvelous. For one who knows the theory of the perispirit, of the emancipation of the soul in the living, it does not depart from the laws of Nature. A critic amused himself greatly with the story of the man of the snuffbox, related in the Review of March 1859, saying that it was an effect of the imagination of the sick woman. What is there more impossible about it than about this one? The two facts are explained exactly by the same law that governs the relations between the Spirit and matter. Moreover, we ask all the Spiritists who have studied the theory of the phenomena whether, in reading the fact we have just related, their attention was not immediately directed to the manner in which it must have occurred; whether they did not find the explanation; whether, with such an explanation, they did not conclude in favor of the possibility, and whether, in consequence of that possibility, they did not become more interested than if they had had to accept it merely through the eyes of faith, without adding the assent of the intelligence? Those who reproach us for having given this theory [see Theory of physical manifestations;] forget that it is the result of long and patient studies which, like us, they could have made, working as much as we have done and do every day; that, in giving the means of understanding the phenomena, we gave them a basis, a reason for being, which silenced more than one critic and contributed, in great part, to the propagation of Spiritism, considering that one accepts with more good will that which one understands than that which one does not understand.