Mr. Home in Rome.

— Several newspapers reproduced the following article:

“The incident of the week — they write from Rome, to the Times — is the order given to Mr. Home, the celebrated medium, to leave the pontifical city within three days.

“Summoned to appear before the Roman police, Mr. Home underwent a formal interrogation. He was asked how long he intended to spend in Rome; whether he gave himself over to the practices of Spiritism after his conversion to Catholicism, etc., etc. Here are a few words exchanged on the occasion, just as Mr. Home himself recorded them in his private notes, and which he transmits, it seems, with much ease.

“— After your conversion to Catholicism, did you exercise the power of a medium? — Neither after nor before did I exercise such power, for, as it does not depend on my will, I cannot say that I exercise it. — Do you consider that power a gift of Nature? — I consider it a gift of God. — What religion do the Spirits teach? — That depends. — What do you do to make them come? — I answered that I did nothing. But at that very instant, repeated and distinct raps were heard on the table at which my investigator was writing. — But you also make the tables move? he asked. At that very instant the table began to move.’ “Little moved by these prodigies, the chief of police invited the magician to leave Rome within three days. Sheltering himself, as was his right, under the protection of international laws, Mr. Home reported the fact to the consul of England, who obtained from Mr. Matteucci the assurance that the celebrated medium would not be disturbed and could continue his stay in Rome, provided that he abstained, during that time, from any communication with the spiritual world. An admirable thing! Mr. Home acceded to this condition and signed the pledge that was demanded of him. How could he commit himself not to use a power whose exercise is independent of his will? That is what we shall not seek to penetrate.”

— We do not know to what extent the narrative is exact, in all its details. But a letter, written lately by Mr. Home to a lady of our acquaintance, seems to confirm the principal fact. As for the raps heard on the occasion, we judge that one may, without fear, include them among the jests to which the newspapers, little concerned with going deeply into the things of the other world, have accustomed us.

In fact Mr. Home is in Rome at this moment; and, for him, the motive is too honorable for us not to state it, since the newspapers saw fit to take advantage of the occasion to ridicule him.

Mr. Home is not rich and does not fear to say that he must seek in work the resources to meet the expenses under his responsibility. He thought to find them in the natural talent he has for sculpture, and it was to perfect himself in this art that he went to Rome. With the remarkable mediumistic faculty he possesses, he could be rich, very rich even, had he wished to exploit it. The mediocrity of his position is the best answer to the epithet of clever charlatan, which they hurled in his face. But he knows that this faculty was given to him with a providential end, for the interests of a holy cause, and he would deem himself to be committing a sacrilege if he converted it into a profession. He has too lofty a sense of the duties it imposes upon him to understand that the Spirits manifest themselves by the will of God in order to lead men back to faith in the future life, and not to exhibit themselves in a spectacle of curiosities, in competition with conjurers, or to serve the cupidity of those who might pretend to exploit it. Besides, he also knows that the Spirits are not at the orders nor at the caprices of anyone and, still less, of whoever might wish to exhibit their acts and gestures at so much per session. There is not a single medium in the world who can guarantee the production of a Spiritist phenomenon at a given moment, whence one is forced to conclude that the contrary pretension gives proof of an absolute ignorance of the most elementary principles of the science; this being so, every supposition is permitted, because if the Spirits do not respond to the call, or do not do things very admirable to satisfy the curious and sustain the reputation of the medium, it then becomes necessary to find a means of giving them to the spectators in exchange for their money, if one does not wish to return it. We shall never repeat it too much: the best guarantee of sincerity is absolute disinterestedness. A medium is always strong when he can answer those who might suspect his good faith: “How much did you pay to come here?”

Once again: serious mediumship cannot be and never will be a profession. Not only because it would be morally discredited, but because it rests upon a faculty essentially mobile, fleeting and variable, which none of those who possess it today is certain of possessing tomorrow. Only charlatans are always sure of themselves. Another thing is a talent acquired by study and by work which, for that very reason, is a property, of which it is naturally permitted to take advantage. In no way is mediumship in this case. To exploit it is to dispose of a thing of which one is really not the owner; it is to divert it from its providential aim; more still: it is not of oneself that one disposes, it is of the Spirits, of the souls of the dead, whose concurrence is put up for a price. This thought instinctively repels. That is why in all serious centers, where they occupy themselves with Spiritism holily, religiously, as in Lyon, Bordeaux and so many other places, exploiting mediums would be completely held in disregard. Let him, then, who has nothing to live on, seek elsewhere the resources and, if necessary, consecrate to mediumship only the time that he can materially devote to it. The Spirits will take into account his devotion and his sacrifices, whereas, sooner or later, they punish those who hope to make of it a springboard, whether by the withdrawal of the faculty, by the withdrawal of the good Spirits, by compromising mystifications, or by means still more disagreeable, as experience proves.

Mr. Home knows very well that he would lose the assistance of his protecting Spirits if he abused his faculty. His first punishment would be the loss of the esteem and the consideration of honorable families, where he is received as a friend and where he would not be summoned except in the same manner as the persons who go to give performances at home. At the time of his first stay in Paris, we know that certain circles made him very advantageous offers to give sessions and that he always refused. All those who know him and understand the true interests of Spiritism will applaud the resolution he takes today. On our own personal account we are grateful to him for the good example he gives.

If we insist again on the question of the disinterestedness of mediums, it is because we have reasons to believe that fictitious and abusive mediumship is one of the means employed by the enemies of Spiritism with a view to discrediting it and presenting it as a work of charlatanism. It is necessary, then, that all those who are keenly interested in the cause of the doctrine consider themselves warned, in order to unmask the fraudulent maneuvers, if there are any, and to show that true Spiritism has nothing in common with the parodies that might be made of it, and that it repudiates all that departs from the moralizing principle, which is its essence.

— The article referred to above offers several other subjects for observation. The author deems it proper to qualify Mr. Home as a magician; there is nothing more ingenuous in this. But, a little further on he says: “the celebrated medium,” an expression employed in regard to individuals who have acquired a sad celebrity. Where, then, are Mr. Home’s infractions and crimes? It is a gratuitous insult, not only to him, but to all the respectable and highly placed persons who receive him and, thus, seem to sponsor a man of ill repute.

The last sentence of the article is more curious, because it contains one of those flagrant contradictions about which, moreover, our adversaries trouble themselves little. The author is surprised that Mr. Home consented to the pledge imposed upon him and asks how he could promise not to make use of a power independent of his will. If he wished to know it, we would refer him to the study of Spiritist phenomena, of their causes and of their mode of production, and he would come to know how Mr. Home could assume a pledge which, moreover, does not concern the manifestations he obtains in intimacy, even under the bolts of the Inquisition. But it seems that the author does not care so much, since he adds: “That is what we shall not seek to penetrate.” By these words, he insidiously gives to understand that such phenomena are nothing but humbug.

Nevertheless, the measure taken by the pontifical government proves that it is afraid of the ostensible manifestations. Now, one cannot fear a play of sleights of hand. Would this same government interdict the supposed conjurers, who imitate these manifestations so closely? No, certainly, because in Rome they permit many other less evangelical things. Why, then, interdict them to Mr. Home? Why wish to expel him from the country, if he is nothing but a prestidigitator? They will say it is in the interest of religion; so be it. But, then, that religion is very fragile, since it can be compromised with such ease. In Rome, as elsewhere, the jugglers perform, with greater or lesser skill, the trick of the enchanted bottle, in which the water is transformed into all kinds of wine, and that of the magic hat, in which loaves and other objects are multiplied. Meanwhile, they do not fear that this discredits the miracles of Jesus Christ, for it is known that they are nothing but imitations. If they fear Mr. Home, it is because there is on his part something serious and not clever tricks. Such is the consequence that every man who reflects a little will draw. It does not enter the head of any sensible person that a government, that a sovereign court, composed of men who, in all justice, do not pass for fools, should be terrified by a myth. This reflection — we shall certainly not be the only ones to make it — and the newspapers that hastened to publicize the incident, with a view to ridiculing it, will quite naturally provoke it, so that the result will be, like that of everything already done to kill Spiritism, that of popularizing the idea. Thus a fact, apparently insignificant, will inevitably have consequences graver than they had thought. We do not doubt that it was stirred up to hasten the eclosion of Spiritism in Italy, where it already counts numerous representatives, even in the clergy. Nor do we doubt that the Roman curia will become, sooner or later, and without wishing it, one of the principal instruments of propagation of the doctrine in that country, because it is in destiny that its own adversaries must serve to spread everywhere that which they themselves will do in order to destroy it. Blind, then, is he who does not see in this the finger of Providence. Without contradiction, it will be one of the most considerable facts in the history of Spiritism, one of those that best attest its power and its origin. [Review of March 1864.]

MR. HOME IN ROME.

(Conclusion.)

The order that had been given to Mr. Home by the pontifical authorities, to leave Rome within three days, had been revoked, as we saw in our last number. But fear is not repressed and they changed their minds; the permit of residence was definitively withdrawn, obliging Mr. Home, under the accusation of sorcery, to depart immediately. It is well to say that the raps and the lifting of the table during the interrogation, which we had related in dubitative form, since we were not sure, are exact. This must have been one more reason to think that Mr. Home brought the devil with him to Rome, where he had never penetrated, it appears. There he is, then, well and duly convicted, by the Roman government, of being a sorcerer; not a sorcerer to laugh at, but a true sorcerer, for, otherwise, they would not have taken the matter seriously. We had before our eyes the long interrogation to which they subjected him, and the reading, by the form of the questions, led us involuntarily to the times of Joan of Arc; only the common denouement of the era for these kinds of accusation was lacking. The jesting newspapers marvel that in the nineteenth century people still believe in sorcerers. It is that there are people who have slept the sleep of Epimenides for four centuries. Besides, how would the people not believe, when their existence is attested by the authority that ought to know it best, since it has had so many people burned? One must be skeptical like a journalist not to surrender to so evident a proof. What is more surprising is that they make the sorcerers revive in the Spiritists, of all people they who come to prove, with the documents in their hands, that there are neither sorcerers nor the marvelous, but only natural laws.