Memoirs of an editor : fifty years of American journalism / Edward P. Mitchell.

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MEMOIRS OF AN EDITOR

admitted that this general principle might be modified
by the revolutions of the moon upon the axis indicated by
the great Polyphemus. Asked if it was possible to work
out regeneration by means of logarithms, he stated that
it was so regarded by the best minds in the spirit world.
Asked, further, whether he considered Stella or Vanessa
the most representative teacher of his doctrines as to
organic and social evolution, Mr. Spencer replied with
impartiality: "Sometimes I think Stella, sometimes
Vanessa."
Another medium, whose specialty was medical advice,
the consulting authority being the venerated Doctor
Benjamin Rush, professor of theory and practice in the
Philadelphia Medical College until his death in 1813, informed me that the trouble with my eyes was in the optic
nerve. "What is the optic nerve?" Doctor Rush was
asked. "Well, you see," he explained through his spokeswoman, "the optic nerve starts at the bottom of the eyeball, comes down here [pointing to the region of the
sternum], and joins the mucous membrane."
There is no mystery of spiritualism more baffling than
the naive acceptance by respectable intellects of any
commonplace outgiving labelled from beyond. I am not
referring to such balderdash as the foregoing, nor again
to the faiths which bereavement has led that way. The
belief that is a precious consolation calls for discriminating
sympathy, whether accompanied or not by concurrence.
But what shall be said of cases like that of Luther R.
Marsh, a once rather distinguished public official, who
believed that he had conversed through a medium with
the patriarchs and major and minor prophets from Adam
to Malachi, and who published about forty years ago the

record of all these interviews, not only as a triumphant
vindication of the truth of spiritualism but also as a welcome confirmation of Bible truth?
Mr. Marsh's "Conversations with the Chief Charao