Published in 1872 | 66 pages | PDF reader required
INTRODUCTION
Having been many times solicited to publish some of the poems which have been given to me, I made the experiment by sending out those little waifs, "The Midnight Prayer" and "The Festival Night," and such has been the demand, especially for the former, that I am encouraged to reprint it, in connection with other poetic produc-tions, some of which were first given impromptu at the close of my lectures. Suffice it to say there was a time in which these impromptu poems were frequent, and of so marked a character as bearing upon subjects suggested by the audience after my taking the stand and passing into the inspirational or entranced condition, that they have proven good tests in the minds of many of my hearers. Though not knowing, or having the faintest idea of what subject might be presented, a sort of previous mental illumination would take possession of me, in which detached, broken clauses and stanzas would sweep across my mind, with no consecutive connection, but, on the other hand, fragmentary and fractional; and, to my surprise, I found that when more perfectly under control in my public labor, these parts of stanzas, at first seemingly disjointed and unsatisfactory, were so arranged and filled out as to produce a perfect poem. Being urged to reproduce these effusions, I began the experiment alone in my room by calling upon the same intelligences, invoking the presence of these controlling teachers; and though there may not always be a complete duplicate, I feel that there has been little difference in language, and that the original sentiment or moral has been strictly preserved.
I am satisfied that with proper cultivation of mediumistic gifts, great benefit may be secured thereby. Important questions, bearing upon the welfare of both the medium and the community, may be answered by our translated counsellors, in a manner to avert all uncertainty, and I hail the day in the good time coming" when mediumship will stand among "the lively oracles," and be protected as it deserves. Now, of all things included in the grand school of Human Progress, mediumship, the principle by which the translated reveal themselves, is the least cultivated, the most abused, and the most difficult to preserve in its purity, of any power which has at last come to be recognized in this nineteenth century. Once admitted to the magnetic realm, in which the finest susceptibilities are made to assert themselves, it is impossible for the subject to conform as before to established usages.
A new life is awakened. A true medium is always behind the scenes. He becomes a non-conformist, simply because a magnetic quickening is to him what young spring is to old, snow-crowned and frosted winter. He is let loose; he must grow. He is taken out of old, conservative, ice-bound regions, and put directly under a magnetic sky. Suns and showers become plenteous. His old nature is thawing out. He has been run in a mould; and now he melts beneath the sunbeams of a new life, and commences running outside of moulds! Propriety-loving conservatism says it is disastrous, fatal! But his new sun, his new sky, his new stars, and all that is NEW, as reflecting the spontaniety of Nature, who never wore a chain, have stamped a new name and a new life upon his being, and he reflects precisely the truth in himself and all things coincident to him! He can no longer lie, and that is why he is so strange! Whatever his nature is, he acts it. Whatever the nature of others, he reflects it. Nor is it really optional with him what fraction of the universe, either physical or mental, he shall reflect. He is simply a mirror, and the truthfulness and value thereof depend upon circumstances. And there is often such a refractive, as well as reflective quality in the mirror, that even good observers and honest investigators, from ignorance of the law, lose the revelation.
When the possession of mediumship is regarded as the link connecting two worlds, and is as well preserved as the cable which connects two continents-when one half the care and pecuniary outlay is expended thereon which every grand enterprise demands before it reaches perfection, we shall see less failure, and come into possession of one of the greatest of all levers in raising the human race to a true manhood. No matter what it may cost us in the way of experiment, no matter how much of dross may wrap the atoms of fine gold in curtained embrace, the gold is still there, and capable of being separated from all the worthless surroundings, and its value is an established truth which can not be denied.
What we need most of all now is, that having the truths of inspiration established, we study how to secure the highest perfection and prevent the counterfeit circulation from supplanting all confidence in the genuine. I know that every earnest and true medium has been compelled to carry a load never lifted by any other soul, and simply because it was his burden. It was his or her honest trial of strength and duty which no other soul could carry. It was "his day of judgment," in which individual merit must be tested, and for itselfalone. A few, at least, "chosen" from the "many called" have, with blistered feet and uplifted eyes, walked the fiery furnace of ordeal with no vanity of thought, but with the hope of perfection burned into the deepest grooves of the soul! Oh, who will write their tears, their supplication, their touching entreaty, their humiliation and sorrow for weakness and mistake, as breathed in the ears of angels and recorded on the pages of truth! How harsh and unrelenting the world of mortal judgment, as it passes criticism upon the failures of mediums! But compared with the triumphs of ocean steam-navigation to-day, what a stupendous blunder and failure was that little experiment of Robert Fulton's, when at a comparatively snail-like pace he mapped the distance in his tiny steamer! And compared with the network of lightning-wires which now encircle all civilised realms nearly, how meaningless and silly the school-boy kite of a Franklin with its simple glow-worm light, its fire-fly sparks of revelation! And still farther, compared with the length and breadth, the power and importance of this Western Republic in a sanitary and commercial point of view, as now related to the great centers of trade and government in the old world, how small the promises of a Columbus-how rash and profit-less the enterprise he engaged in! But while "man proposes" "God (or eternal truth) dis-poses," and "from the acorn grows the towering oak, but not more surely than from the humblest and the meanest of all discoveries bursts forth the grandest and the most sublime of all revelations! Surely it is not a small thing which our dear departed, and the spirits of "the just made perfect" have done, in arousing our latent reason, and awakening our spiritual nature; and though the same sunshine which warms into life our choicest plants, gives life to the gross weeds of our soul-garden also, let us be vigilant, and bravely work on till we find them eradicated. The harvest shall in time reward our labours.
Without regard to distinction of creed or party, but with the spirit of fraternal love and confidence in the better instincts of the soul, I dedicate this little work to my co-labourers in the field of human reform, and cheerfully grant to all dissenters from our faith the right to criticise and decide, each for himself, and not for another, the claims herein presented.
Sincerely,
M. J. WILCOXSON.
