Did not the face of the medium wear an expression of
earthly disappointment at this slender recognition? Could it be that
there was needed the hot-house heat of a carnal "success" to favor this
exquisite flowering of the spirit? Can we suppose that this whole matter
was no other than some Yankee patent to avoid the awful solitude in
which each human soul must enter into relations with the unseen?
Slowly and in dreamy heaviness the discourse began. The inspirational
claims seemed to lie in the manifest improbability of a man of Clifton's
cultivation being so dull and diffuse in a natural condition. Yet, as
the message wore on, it cannot be denied that a strange influence was at
work. The words followed each other with greater fluency and in richer
abundance. The meaning, to be sure, was still vague enough; and whenever
some commonplace truth or plausibility protruded from the general
washiness, it was seized upon and beaten and stretched to the last
degree of tenuity. Phrases upon phrases of gorgeous dreaminess. A
soothing delight,--yet such delight as only the bodily senses demanded.
A joyful deliverance from the bondage of intellectual life. Hints that
our human consciousness of sin was a vain delusion from which the
"developed" man was happily delivered.
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