Pastoral of the Lord Bishop of Algiers on Spiritism.

— The Akbar, newspaper of Algiers, of February 10, 1863, prints the following article:

“The lord bishop of Algiers has just published, for the Lent of 1863, a pastoral instruction that deals with Spiritism, a subject very much of the day, on which the African clergy had until now kept silence. Here are the passages that concern it:

“It is the demon who dictates to illustrious philosophers these unsound doctrines: of two equal principles, good and evil, governing with the same authority, but in opposite directions: the Spirit and matter; materialism, which refers everything to the body and recognizes nothing beyond the tomb; skepticism, which doubts everything; fatalism, which excuses everything, by denying human liberty and responsibility; metempsychosis, magic, and the evocation of the Spirits, sad and shameful systems that perverted intelligences seek to resuscitate in our days… (Page 21).

“What a lamentable history could be made of the diabolical undertakings, dating from the cenacle, departing from the synagogues and from the jugglery of Simon the Magus, to arrive, by means of persecutions, schisms, heresies, and incredulities of every sort, at the Spiritism of our days, so stupidly copied from a paganism anterior to Moses and by him justly defamed as an abomination before God.” (Page 24).

“Those who like to hear both parties, in every contentious question, have full facility to do so, since theoretical and practical Spiritism is amply explained in The Spirits’ Book and in The Mediums’ Book, two works that are found in all the bookshops of Algiers. If they even wish to carry their studies further, we can add to this small bibliography the Spiritist Review, by Allan Kardec. As it seems to us, it is the best means of ascertaining whether Spiritism is, in effect, the work of the demon, or whether, on the contrary, it is a revelation under a new form, as its adherents claim.”

Ariel.

— Mr. Home came to Paris, where he stayed only a few days. From various places we are asked for information about the extraordinary phenomena he is said to have produced before august personages, of which some newspapers spoke vaguely. Considering that these things took place in intimacy, it is not for us to reveal what has no official character and, still less, to compromise certain names. We shall say only that the detractors exploited the fact, like so many others, to try to cast ridicule upon Spiritism, by means of absurd accounts, without respect for persons or for things. We shall add that Mr. Home’s stay in Paris, as well as the quality of the houses where he was received, is a formal denial of the infamous calumnies, according to which he had been expelled from Paris, just as, formerly, during an absence of his, they spread the rumor that he was imprisoned in Mazas, for grave matters [see Calumnies against Mr. Home], when he was quietly in Naples, for reasons of health. Calumny! Always calumny! It is high time the Spirits came to purge it from the Earth. We refer our readers to the meticulous articles we published about Mr. Home and his manifestations, in the numbers of February, March, and April of 1858 of the Spiritist Review.

— An article published in the Monde Illustré about the supposed American mediums, Mr. and Mrs. Girroodd, also gave rise to several requests for information. We have nothing to add to what we have already said in this regard, in the Spiritist Review of 1862, number of February, except that we have personally seen, and that one sees with Robert Houdin, things no less inexplicable, when one does not know the trick. No Spiritist or magnetizer, knowing the normal conditions under which the phenomena are produced, can take these things seriously or waste time discussing them seriously.

Certain incompetent adversaries wanted to exploit these skills against the Spiritist phenomena, saying that, since they could be imitated, it is because they did not exist and that all the mediums, beginning with Mr. Home, are clever conjurers. They do not perceive that they give arms to incredulity against themselves, since they could apply the argument against the majority of the miracles. Without highlighting what is illogical in this conclusion and without again discussing the phenomena, we shall say only that the difference between the conjurers and the mediums lies in the gain of the former and the disinterestedness of the latter, from imitation to reality, from the artificial flower to the natural flower. Neither can we prevent a sleight-of-hand artist from calling himself a medium or a physical specialist. There is no reason to defend exploitations of this kind; we leave that task to criticism. [1] Lettre circulaire et ordonnance de Mgr Pavy, évèque d’Alger, sur la superstition dile spiritisme, In-8º, 8 p. Alger, impr. et libr. Bastide ; Constantine, libr. Alessi et Arnolet ; Paris, libr. Challamel alné. — This title of the section of Miscellanies does not exist in the original; it was placed here from simple necessity required by the indexing; it refers to the 1st item of the news published here. — (Note of the Compiler.)