The Athens post. [volume] (Athens, Tenn.) 1848-1917, 1857-10-09
VOL. X.--NO. 472.
MRS. STOVE on sPIRlTuALlsM.

4
In the Independent of last week, Harriet
Beecher Stowe thus expresses her sentiments
upon warmly y-controverted subject:
"Nothng about the doom of death is so
dreadful as this dead, infexiSlc sileHet.-
Could there be, after the passage of the
river, one backward signal, one last word, the
heart would be appeased. There is always
something left unsaid, even when death has
come deliberately and given full warning
How much more when it has fallen like the
lightning, and the beloved has been wrenehed
from life without parting look or word!--
There are those who woad have us think
that in our day there are means which have
the power 10 restore us TO the communion of
our lost ones. How many heart, wrung
and tortured with the anguish Of this fearful
silence, has throbbed with strange, vague
hopes at the suggestion! When We hear,
sometimes Of persons of the strongest and
ceares. minds becoming creduloas votaries
of certain spritualstic circles, let us not
wonder. II We inquire, we shall almost al
ways find that the belief has followed some
stroke of death-it is only an indication of
the desperation of that heart-hunger which
in part appeases. Ah were Il true! were it
indeed so that the wall between the spiritual
and material is growing thin, and a new dis
pensation terminating, in which communion
with the departed blest shall be among the
privileges and possibilities of our mortal
state All, were it so that when we 60 forth
weeping in the gray dawn, bearing spices and
odors which we long to pour forth for tho
beloved dead, we should indeed find the stone
rolled away, and an angel sitting on i'll
"But for us, the stone must be rolled away
by an unquestionable angel, whose counte-
nance is as the lightning, who executes no
doubtful juggle by pale moonlight or STAR
light, but rolls back the stone in fair, open
morning, and sits on it. Then we could
bless God for his mighty gift, and with love,
ard awe, and reverence, take up that blessed
fellowship with another life, and weave it
reverently and trustingly into the web of our
daily course. But no such angel have we
seen--no such sublime, unquestionable, glo-
rious manifestation. And when we look at
what is offered to us--ah, who that had q
friend in heaven could wish them to return
in such wise as this? The very instinct of
sacred sorrow seems to forbid that our beau-
tful, our glorifed ones, should stoop lower
than even to the medium of their cast-off bo.
dies to juggle, and rap, and squeak, and per-
form mountebank tricks with tables and
chairs, to recite over in weary sameness
harmless truisms which we were wise enough
to say for ourselves, to trfe, and banter, and
jest, or to lead us through endless moonshiny
mazes; sadly and soberly we say, that il this
be communion with the dead, we had rather
be without it. We want something a little
in advance of our present life, and not below
it, We have read, with some attention, wea.
ny pages of spiritual communication profess
ing TO come from Bacon, Swedenborg, and
others, and long accounts from divers spirits
of things seen in the spirit-land, and we can
conceive Of no moro appalling prospect than
to have them true. If the future life is so
weary, stale, fiat and Improbable, as we
might infer from those readings, one would
have reason to deplore an Immortality from
which no suicide could give an outlet. To bo
condemned to such eternal pressing would bo
worse than annihiaton."