Case CXXVIII

Colonel Gardiner had passed the evening amongst his gay companions. He had made an appointment precisely at midnight with a married woman. The company separated at eleven, and he, not wishing to go to his appointment before the hour, went up to his room to amuse himself with a book. By chance, he took up a religious book, which his grandmother, or his aunt, had slipped into his portmanteau, entitled The Christian Soldier, or Heaven taken by Assault. Judging, by its title, that he would be entertained by the use of professional phrases, applied in a spiritual sense, he resolved to read it carefully. Notwithstanding this determination, he could not fix his attention on it. Whilst he held the hook in his hand, God vouchsafed him a vision, which bore the happiest and most important results. He perceived an extraordinary light fall on his book, which he at first attributed to the lamp, but, raising his eyes, he saw, to his great astonishment, our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross, encircled with a glory. At the same time a voice uttered these words: "O, sinner! see to what a condition thy crimes have reduced me!" This apparition produced such a profound effect upon the colonel that he renounced his style of life, and became a very religious character.*

* De Apparitionibus Mortuoram, vivis et pacto factis, Lips. 1709. - Baro-nii Annates. Baronius had this history from the grandson of Mercatus, prothonotary of the Church, a man of the greatest probity and learning.

† There is, however, an important distinction to be made relative to mysticism. Taken in general, it is not a disease of the mind; it rests upon actual facts, and supplies a real want. Mysticism is grand and beautiful; but it must be regulated. Without this check, we are liable to fall into exaggeration and errors of sentiment.

To this example, which has been cited as a favorable interposition of the Divinity, another has been opposed, which happened in the seventeenth century to one of the most powerful enemies of Christianity, and which resulted in an encouragement to publish a work containing his very dangerous opinions.

Case CXXIX

"My book, De veritate prout distinguitur a revelatione verisimile possibili et a falso," relates Lord Herbert, "which I had commenced in England, was nearly finished; all the hours which I could steal from visits and negotiations were devoted to its completion; this at length being achieved, I hastened to show it to Tilenus and to Hugo Grotius, an illustrious savant, who, having escaped from Holland, had taken refuge in France. They praised it much, and exhorted me to publish it.

"I felt the approval of two such learned men as a great encouragement, but, on the other hand, the opposition which I foresaw it would encounter made me hesitate. One fine day, about noon, my windows being open, I took my book, knelt down, and pronounced aloud these words: -

" 'O, eternal God, Creator of the light which illuminates me, thou who enlightenest souls when thou wouldst, tell me by a celestial sign if I should publish or suppress my work - ' I had hardly uttered these words, than a loud, but agreeable sound, proceeded from heaven, which impressed me with such great joy, that I felt convinced that my request was granted.

"Howsoever strange this may appear, I protest, before God, not only that I heard the sound, but saw, in the clearest sky on which I ever gazed, the spot whence it came. In consequence of this sign, I published my book, and spread it throughout all Christian lands, amongst all the learned capable of reading and appreciating it."

* Hibbert, Sketches of the Philosophy of Apparitions, 2d edition, Edinburgh, 1825, p. 324.

Dr. Leland, in his Essay an Deistical Writers, does not question the truth of the recital of the noble lord.* One cannot but be struck, on reading this case, with the inconsistency of the human mind. Here is a man preparing to launch forth a work against revelation, who supplicates the Deity for a special revelation. In good logic, it appears to us impossible to establish the slightest resemblance between this case and that of Colonel Gardiner.

When men are influenced by superstition and terror, no ideas are too strange to appear to them realities. One of the most singular follies of this character is that known as vampirism, traces of which are found in the stryges of the Talmud. This kind of epidemic reigned in the beginning of the eighteenth century, in several parts of Hungary, Moravia, Silesia, and Lorraine. The peasantry who were attacked by it believed that the souls of their enemies could appear to them after death, under different forms. Some dreamed that these malicious spectres took them by the throat, and, having strangled them, sucked their blood. Others believed that they actually saw these cruel monsters.

Mystic ideas in an expansive form, by exalting the imagination, produced those numerous instances of ecstasies of which we have already spoken, and whose characteristics were of a nature quite celestial. To this influence, must be assigned the apparitions and auditions of the imaginary chorus of Paracelsus, of the convulsionists and Shakers, the ecstatics of the Cevennes, the possessed of Loudun, the convulsionists of Cornouailles, and of the Shetland Isles, etc.

In noting the ideas which contribute still more to the production of hallucinations, we have invited attention to some of the beliefs of the Middle Ages; but in order to appreciate the influence of this era of strange deceptions, numerous errors, beautiful dreams, magnificent fancies, and immortal fictions, it appears indispensable to cast a glance on the grotesque, terrible, or benevolent beings, with which it was formerly peopled. †

* Autobiography of Lord Herbert, of Cherbury, v. Hibbert, p. 227. † Ferdinand Denis, Le monde enchante, cosmographie ou histoire naturelle et fantastique du moyen age, Paris, 1843. Bekker, Le monde enchante, 4 vols. 18mo. Amsterdam, 1C94. *Letronne, Revue des Deux Mondes. Daunon, Hist. Litt. de la France.