19th Century Poet Philosophers Explore Spirituality, James Martin Peebles, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Walt Whitman, A Meeting of the Minds by Linda Pendleton, Copyright 2006 by Linda Pendleton

The 19th century was an age of artistic renewal, rich in philosophy, poetry, and literature. We were given the works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Yeats, Longfellow, Henry David Thoreau A. Bronson Alcott, Whittier, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Tolstoy, William Blake, Coleridge, Tennyson, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Hawthorne, Victor Hugo, Herman Melville, Shelley, Charles Dickens, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, Abraham Lincoln, Samuel Clemens, James Martin Peebles, and numerous others, who have all enriched us with their sensitive understanding of the wonders of life.

It was at mid-19th century when Spiritualism came into the forefront and flourished in America and worldwide. Varied beliefs and practices grew from the conviction that the living and the dead could communicate. Although much of the literature of ancient days spoke to the idea that there is an afterlife, a continuing life-cycle, during this period the belief became more pronounced and was very much a part of the writings and social activities of many in literary circles.

James Martin Peebles (1822-1922) had a deep appreciation for great literature and poetry from an early age. At the age of sixteen, he entered Oxford Academy in Oxford, New York, a private school established in 1794, and there he continued his studies of Latin, Greek, and the Classical Literature of the ancient periods. Following a brief stint as a teacher at Oxford Academy, James Martin Peebles was ordained a Universalist minister at the age of twenty. Within a few short years, Spiritualism swept throughout not only America but throughout Europe and Australia, and Reverend Peebles found his place within the new light of Spiritualism, as did many other well-known intellectuals, philosophers, poets, and authors. Dr. Peebles spent the remainder of his life as a leading international Spiritualist preacher and lecturer, a prolific author, poet, and medical doctor. His literary endeavors and world travels allowed him an opportunity to meet many people within prestigious literary, political, and religious/spiritualists circles. He authored many books throughout his long lifetime on Spiritualism and his world travels, and within his books not only did he present his own poetry but the poetry of others, especially poetry with a spiritual theme of eternal life and communication with those on the other side.

In James Martin Peebles’ book, Seers of the Ages, first published in 1868, he penned in his chapter, Poetic Testimony:

“Exalted minds dwell in the element of the spiritual. The spiritual is the real. Poets are the soul’s prophets. Unlike metaphysicians, they give us the product of their spiritual life and intuitive insight, and appeal to the consciousness and deep sympathies of humanity for the verification. Poets are divinity-appointed interpreters, employing the shadows of the outer world to reveal the substance of the world within. From the Vedic hymns of the Hindoos their glory gleams all along the pages of thought and culture. Brain, sunned from heaven, pen afire with truth, their lines ever tender, glow with the fadeless radiance of immortal love. Divest God of the attribute of love–disrobe literature of its ideal–strip poetry of its Spiritualism, and the residuum is shells–nothing but shells. The nature-poet of Galilee, Jesus, walked under Syrian skies a Spiritualist, guarded by a legion of angels.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

James Martin Peebles credits Emerson for giving him the first impulse to the study of oriental literature. He wrote in 1909, "A generation ago, [fall of 1865] while reading Emerson’s Essays and hearing some of his public lectures, I decided to know him personally, and so, calling at his Concord residence, I received a most cordial and graceful welcome into his library, choice and massive. This was a red-letter day.”

Years earlier, in 1868, Dr. Peebles wrote: “The inimitable Emerson, determined to preserve his wholeness, and recognizing no one being as absolutely necessary to his happiness, says of those early selfish loves: ‘I know how delicious is this cup of love–I existing for you, you existing for me; but it is a child clinging to his toy, an attempt to eternize the fireside and nuptial chamber; to keep the picture alphabet through which our first lessons were prettily conveyed.’ And Dr. Peebles continues quoting Emerson, ‘This early dream of love, though beautiful, is only one scene in our life-play. In the processions of the soul from within outward, it enlarges its circles, like light proceeding from an orb. It passes from loving one to loving all; and so, this one beautiful soul opens the divine door through which he enters to the society of all true and pure souls. Thus in our first years are we put in training for a love which knows neither sex, person, nor partiality; but which seeks virtue and wisdom everywhere, to the end of increasing virtue and wisdom.’”

Dr. Peebles writes: “Say not that Emerson’s nature is cold and icy, reflecting only the crystalline side of life. To those sufficiently exalted rightly to translate him, he is warm, fresh, and golden. His soul feeds ours. Abiding in such love, we drink at his living fount of ideas, thrive upon his inspirational truths, bathe in his dreamy mysticisms, and feel the influx of eternal youth.”

“Souls require no introduction. The recognition is intuitional. Meeting a noble soul that knows our soul, we indulge the pleasing truth to us, that we knew the loved one in a pre-existent state, and delicious were those delicate experiences in the sweet realms of blessedness. Too etherial were the workings of that inner consciousness, then, to be now projected into the external memory of earth’s sordid masses, cloyed with the cares of this material life.”

In The Pathway of the Human Spirit, Dr. Peebles discusses personality, stating: “Personality in its common and outward acceptation is usually associated with appearance and outward character; but with such writers, as Emerson, James Freeman Clarke, Frohschammer, Elisha Mulford, Lotze, etc., personality has a far deeper meaning. The Latins used Persona to signify personating, counterfeiting, or wearing a mask. But personality in the sense in which Emerson employs it signifies true being, both concrete and spiritual. It alone is original being. It is not limited. Personality is that universal element that pervades every human soul, and which is at once its continent and ground of being.”

He quotes these words from Emerson: “‘The personal within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related . . . The personal is not an organ, not a function, not a faculty; it is the background of our being–an immensity not possessed and that cannot be possessed.’”

In 1906, Dr. Peebles also wrote of his 1865 afternoon with Emerson, in his book, The Pathway of the Human Spirit: “Emerson remarked to me very deliberately, and speaking of [Emanuel] Swedenborg and hero worship, ‘I feel no need of personal spirit communications; for, to me, the universe is one grand spiritual manifestation.’ And then added, ‘These modern marvels interest my wife, as she accepts the reported fact that Swedenborg, for many years conversed with angels and spirits.’”

“Upon leaving [I] had the further pleasure of bearing a note from him to Walt Whitman, then in the city of Washington.”

Walt Whitman

“And as to your Life I reckon you are the leavings of many deaths,
(No doubt I have died myself ten thousand times before).”–Walt Whitman

James Martin Peebles was first exposed to Walt Whitman in 1861, while in California, prior to his meeting with Emerson. In the Introduction to The Pathway of the Human Spirit, Dr. Peebles writes of his discovery of Whitman’s poetry, their friendship, and quotes Whitman’s poetry extensively:

"Previously I had felt the tender touch of Whitman’s spirit when Eliza W. Farnham, a noted writer, author of The Ideal Attained, and at this time Matron of the Woman’s Department in a California Institution for the insane.”

“At the close of a series of lectures delivered in the City Hall, Stockton, in 1861, upon both the intuitive and phenomenal proofs of a future existence with the corollary, a converse between the worlds visible and invisible, I was introduced to Mrs. Farnham, already a believer in angel ministries, and who invited me to call upon her. So doing, she read to me on several evenings extracts from Whitman’s Leaves of Grass. They were then new to me. She was a splendid reader, and her annotations upon some of the passages were comparable to richest aromas from a truly spiritual genius. Listening to her readings and clear, uplifting comments upon them, I was thrilled to my being’s core. Understanding, she could interpret him. She knew how to elucidate his dark lines of mystery called poems–poems unique, beautiful, inspiring, yet devoid of rhyme or rhythmic measure. Who could read his lines–The Song of The Open Road, without being led, charmed along the border realm of ecstacy?”

“Here follow sentences and passages selected almost at random from his scattered leaves:

‘The song is to the singer and comes back most to him;
The teaching is to the teacher, and comes back most to him.’

“This poet of nature, like nearly all inspired poets, believed in the human spirit’s pre-existence. Yet, like a philosopher, A. Bronson Alcott, he did not seek to force this great truth upon those whom he esteemed unprepared to receive it, nevertheless it runs like golden threads through his prose and verse.”

‘ I see, Hermes unsuspected, dying, well-beloved, saying
To the people ‘do not weep for me.’
This is not my true country. I have lived banished
from my true country–I now go back there.
I go to that celestial sphere, where every one goes in
his turn.’

‘Let me glide noiselessly forth:
With the key of softness unlock the door–
With a whisper, set ope the door, O Soul!’

‘I know that the hand of God is the promise of my own;
I know that the spirit of God is the brother of my own;
And that all the men ever born are also my brothers,
and the women my sisters and lovers,
And that a kelson of the creation is love.’

‘Strong and content I travel the open road,
Healthy, free, the world before me,
The long brown path before me, leading wherever I choose.
Henceforth I ask not good-fortune–I myself am good-fortune;
Henceforth I whimper no more, postpone no more, need nothing;
Strong and content I travel the open road.’

‘A song of the good green grass,
A song no more of the city streets;
A song of farms–a song of the toil of fields,
A song with the smell of sun-dried hay, where the
nimble pitchers handle the pitchfork;
A song tasting of new wheat, and of fresh-husked maize.’

“Journeying along the byways of mortal life, people generally find what they seek for. If they seek inviting groves and roses along the way, they find them, and if they hunt for thorns, they find them. Whitman sought and sung of the good. While ‘on the road’ he looked up to suns, to stars, and not downward into pits and mudholes of filth.”

‘None has understood you, but I understand you,
None has done justice to you; you have not done
justice to yourself,
None but has found you imperfect, I only find no
imperfection in you.’

“Down to the most inmost core, the divine Ego, the God incarnate under all the cells, monads and bodily rubbish, there is nothing but purity and perfection. Such is my deep conviction.”

‘Weep not, child,
With these kisses let me remove your tears.
The ravening clouds shall not long possess the sky,
they devour the stars only in apparition,
Jupiter shall emerge, be patient, watch again another
night, the Pleiades shall emerge,
They are immortal, all those stars, both silvery and
golden shall shine out again,
The great stars and the little ones shall shine out
again, they endure
The vast immortal suns and the long-enduring pensive
moons shall again shine.
None are lost. Souls that sink, re-born shall rise
again.’

“How tender these words to his mother!”

‘Behold a woman!
She looks out from her quaker cap, her face is clearer
and more beautiful than the sky.
She sits in an armchair under the shaded porch of the
farmhouse,
The sun just shines on her old white head.
Her ample gown is of cream-hued linen,
Her grandson raised the flax, and her grand-daughter
spun it with the distaff and the wheel,
The melodious character of the earth,
The finish beyond which philosophy cannot go and
does not wish to go,
The justified mother of men.’

“But why do I quote so freely from Walt Whitman? Because I personally knew him–because I admired his personality–because I appreciated in a measure, at least, the spiritual wealth of his soul. It is by no means claimed that his verse is polished and rounded like Virgil’s, or Milton’s, Tennyson’s or Longfellow’s. He is not a copyist. Putting fashion under his feet, he bowed to no shrine of either pattern or patent. He was original. He was rugged as nature itself. His landscapes knew the touch of no foreign artists. His aim was not to display pictures but to create an atmosphere of inspiration, equality and brotherhood.”

“Men’s estimates of him necessarily differ. Each naturally speaks or writes from his own mental and moral standpoint. Mr. Earnest Marklew, editing a Spiritualist journal in Preston, England, called ‘The Medium,’ pronounces Walt Whitman ‘an inconsequential piece of piebald humbug!’ Such an outburst of unwisdom is its own comment. In contrast, the Rev. Dr. Savage, one of the most learned and brilliant Unitarian orators in the Unitarian church of New York, says in his sermon, A Plea For a Restful Life: ‘And so, Walt Whitman, a man so misunderstood by the illiterate of his time, is going to rank as one of the greatest creative forces in American literature. He would spend a large part of his time in what some would call idleness. Yet meanwhile, he was observing, gathering thoughts into his soul that when expressed would make the world richer, and vastly better.’ The critic of ‘the twelve great poets,’ speaks of Whitman as one of them–‘a star in the firmament of poesy, whose fame grows with advancing years.’”

“Years have passed since first meeting him,” Dr. Peebles continues, “but occasionally I had read some of his added ‘leaves’–literally prose-poems, which flowed from his soul as rippling waters from hill-side fountains. The fervor of his hand-clasp had not faded from my memory. Friendships based upon principle are as abiding as the constellations of the heavens.”

“Later, supplying the Unitarian pulpit a few times in Camden, N.J., during the absence of their pastor, and learning that Whitman, an invalid, was in the city stopping with a friend, I made haste to call upon him. Entering his library-room where he was reclining in a large arm-chair, he extended the pale hand. His salutation was–‘We have met before; souls do not forget.’ Whether in those words he referred to our meeting in Washington, or to a meeting in some pre-existent state of consciousness I do not know, but do know that he believed in the continuity of life–life past, present and future as the one life in the circle of being.”

“Recognizing his infirmity, gladly did I defer to his lead in the conversation. Though ill, his voice was strong, his eye clear, his intellect commanding and his personality morally imperial. His room was a veritable swamp of pamphlets, manuscripts and books. Half apologizing, he remarked, ‘This is my workshop, the tools lying around loosely; chaos, you know, precedes cosmos, and scattering timbers, work on the building.’”

“His hair was nearly as white as the winter snows of our extreme northlands, reminding me that I had hear him spoken of as ‘the good, gray poet.’”

“Referring to the reading of his Leaves with such emotion and grace by Mrs. Farnham, he remarked—‘Woman—a woman’s voice. She understood me. We are all coming to know each other better. Individuality, races, nations, are gradually melting into one great brotherhood.’”

“Following these calm inspirational words he pointed me to his leaf in his book of leaves, referring, no doubt to the Nazarene, so often called by the Evangelists the ‘son of man’—‘the man of sorrows:’

‘My spirit to yours, brother;
Do not mind because many sounding your name do
not understand you,
I do not sound your name, but I understand you,
I specify you with joy, O my comrade, to salute you,
and to salute those who are with you, before and
since, and those to come also,
That we all labor together transmitting the same
charge and succession,
We few equals indifferent of land, indifferent
of times,
We, enclosers of all continents, all castles, allowers
of all theologies,
Compassionaters, perceivers, rapport of men,
We walk silent among disputes and assertions, but
reject not the disputers nor anything that is
asserted,
We hear the brawling, and din, we are reached at by
divisions, jealousies, recriminations on every
side,
They close peremptorily upon us to surround us, my
comrade,
Yes we walk unheld, free, the whole earth over,
journeying up and down till we make our ineffable
mark upon time and the divers eras.
Till we saturate time and eras, that the men and
women of races, ages to come, may prove
brethren and lovers as we are.’”

“Whitman was literally a giant of soul impulse. There was not a shadow of sham about him. He was innocent of fashion and affectation. ‘I am,’ he said, ‘but an idea–a spirit–a new language for Civilization. What am I but you, and what are you again but this same I, the two halves of a circle in an infinite circle.’”

“Whitman was a child of nature. He loved alike the loneliness of the forest, the surging throngs along Broadway–the shoutings of children by the roadside and the singing of crickets in the gray of evening time. He was equally at home studying a sunset, riding upon the top of an omnibus, among the convicts of a prison, or sitting in a Quaker church. He was an all-around man, shunning the shallows of fashion and daring the roughness of life. His peerless presence was like a dynamo–radiating vigor and health, peace and good will.”

“He wrote of life as he saw it ‘on the road.’ Fame was to him a bubble to be shunned. Thousands admired both his personality and his verse. Some mocked. He heard the taunt–the jeer–the heartless scoff; but not heeding he continued ‘on the road.’ Now better appreciated, he is receiving unstinted praise from this and foreign lands. Wrapt in admiration of him, I fancy that I can almost hear him from his sublime abode now repeating his inspired words:

‘All seems beautiful to me,
I can repeat over to men and women, You have done
such good to me I would do the same to you,
I will recruit for myself and you as I go,
I will scatter myself among men and women as I go,
I will toss a new gladness and roughness among them,
Whoever denies me it shall not trouble me,
Whoever accepts me, he or she shall be blessed, and
shall bless me.’”

“Whitman was eminently social. Horace Traubel, in his recent work, gives us most interesting descriptions of his letters and talks with the great men of his time. John Hay, our late world-famed Secretary of State, was very fond of him, as their correspondence proves. Longfellow called upon Whitman with Childs. Afterwards, our ‘good, gray poet’ said, ‘Longfellow’s manners were stately, conventional–all right but all careful.’”

“He was asked, ‘Was his conversation striking? Was he at all like Emerson?’”

“He answered, ‘Not at all. Emerson was as different as day from night. He had the best manners of man I ever met; by this I mean manners in the right sense: manners, words, thoughts, always right, yet never at any time suggesting preparation or design. Emerson always seemed to know what he wanted. If I was asked to put him into two words, I should give sincerity first and then definiteness; yes, sincerity and definiteness. Emerson never lost these qualities. In his last days, when it was said his mind had failed, he remained of this aspect; in fact, it seemed to me to be emphasized. Emerson only lost the outward, the superficial–the rest of him remained untouched. I thought [A. Bronson] Alcott had really lost something. He came to see me in Brooklyn once, just before Emerson. While Emerson was with me I asked him about this breakdown of memory or what-not in Alcott, but Emerson would not have it my way. He was gentle, but firm.’”

“‘The world does not know what our relations, Emerson’s and mine, were. They think of our friendship always as a literary friendship: it was a bit that, but it was mostly something else–it was certainly more than that–for I loved Emerson for his personality and I always felt that he loved me for something I brought him from the rush of the big cities and the mass of men. We used to walk together, dine together–argue, even, in a sort of way, though neither one of us was much of an arguer. We were not much for repartee, or sallies, or what people ordinarily call humor, but we got along together beautifully–the atmosphere was always sweet, I don’t mind saying it, both on Emerson’s side and mine: we had no friction–there was no kind of fight in us for each other–we were like two Quakers together. Dear Emerson! I doubt if the literary classes which have taken to coddling him, have any right to their god. He belonged to us–yes, to us–rather than to them.’ “Then after a pause: ‘I suppose to all as well as to us–perhaps to no clique whatever–aye, to the wide-wide world’”

Walt Whitman often attended Spiritualist meetings and conferences, and at one of these meetings in 1857, he revealed that he took medium trance lessons, as reported in The Spiritual Age, August 1, 1857:

At the weekly meeting of New York Conference on July 21, 1857, homeopathic physician and spiritualist, Dr. John Franklin Gray, set the question for discussion. As reported in the minutes, it was “What is the difference between bing a medium, so-called, and those who are not mediums? What is Mediumship, or wherein do Mediums differ from the rest of us?” One of these to discuss this was Walt Whitman, who spoke at this session as well as the session of August 4. Whitman had published the first edition of Leaves of Grass in 1855, and a second edition in 1856. In 1857, he had assumed the post of Editor of the Brooklyn Daily Times. In 1856-57, he had become very interested in the phenomenon of trance mediumship, especially manifested in the ability of young trance lecturer Cora L. V. Scott Hatch [Richmond] to extemporize from a speaker’s platform on any subject.

In response to Dr. Gray’s question at the session of the New York Conference, Whitman took the floor and revealed that he had been trying to develop himself as a medium for the past year, but without success.

Mr. Whitman said he was unable to get a clear idea of what mediumship really was. He was unable to get a direct answer to the Doctor’s question, what constitutes a medium as contradistinctive to what is not? He had observed that mediums were of every variety physically, intellectually and morally. One was delicate, frail and of a nervous constitution, another was robust, healthy and vigorous. One was ignorant and imbecile, while another was intelligent and learned. He wished to come at the knowledge of what particular constitution, temperament, quality or condition is requisite to constitute a medium. It is all important that we should possess this knowledge if possible. Mrs. Hatch explained to him once, but not satisfactorily. She said there was a medium-spirit on the other side of the line, as it were, associated with the physical medium. That is was through this spiritual medium that spirits, and circles, and societies of spirits first communicated, and it again communicated with and through the physical medium with whom it was en rapport. She declared that there was as much necessity for a medium there as here. He should like to know the truth about the matter and be a medium himself if possible. He tried for twelve months and failed. He hoped it would be explained.
–“ New York Conference. Session of July 21,” The Spiritual Age (New York), August 1, 1857.

Victor Hugo

James Martin Peebles’ written words on Victor Hugo, from his 1868 book, Seers of the Ages:

“The exiled, yet loved! Hugo’s life has been a strange one–so gentle, so rich and radiant. All nature seems to have poured into him her tributary streams of imagery, sympathy, beauty and poetry. Thus organized, it is impossible for him to other than a Spiritualist”
.
Dr. Peebles writes in his book, Immortality, published in 1880: “Victor Hugo is a brave, outspoken spiritualist; and this accounts for his thrilling sentences and Heaven-inspired ideas relating to law and liberty, to death and the immortal life.”

And in What is Spiritualism? Who are the Spiritualist?, Dr. Peebles states, “Victor Hugo, that eminent literary celebrity, with intellect so clear and radiant and moral nature so highly developed, could not well avoid being a Spiritualist. Upon my second voyage around the world I met him in Paris in a seance of the literati, Mrs. Hollis-Billings being the medium. Hugo wept in gratitude when his risen son gave him a most satisfactory communication in written French, when she [the medium], an American could neither speak nor write a line of French.” “In his work on Shakespeare, Hugo said: ‘Table turning or speaking has been greatly ridiculed; the ridicule is groundless. To substitute jeering for examination is convenient, but it is not very philosophical. As for me, I regard it as the duty of science to fathom all phenomena; science is often ignorant and has not the right to laugh. That which is unexpected ought always to be expected by science. It is its function to arrest it in its passage and to examine it, rejecting the chimerical and establishing the real. Science has not other concern with established facts than to endorse them; it is for her to verify and distinguish. All human knowledge is that of analysis; that the false complicated itself with the true is no reason for rejecting the mass. Since when has chaff been a pretext for refusing the wheat? Root out the worthless weeds of error, but harvest the facts and leave them for others. Science is the sheaf of facts. The mission of science is to study and probe everything. To elude a phenomena, to refuse to pay it the attention due to it; to bow it out; to close the door on it; to turn our backs on it, laughing, is to make bankruptcy of the truth; it is to omit to put to it the signature of science...To abandon these phenomena to credulity is to commit treason against human reason.’”

“In his Toilers of the Sea, Hugo writes: ‘There are times when the unknown reveals itself to the spirit of man in visions. Such visions have occasionally the power to effect a transfiguration, converting a poor camel-driver into Mahomet; a peasant girl tending her goats into a Joan of Arc...Those that depart still remain near us–they are in a world of light, but they as tender witnesses hover about our world of darkness. Though invisible to some, they are not absent. Sweet is their presence; holy is their converse with us...’”

“‘Man is an infinitely small copy of God. That is glory enough for me. I am a man, an invisible atom, a drop in the ocean, a grain of sand on the shore. But, little as I am, I feel that God is in me, because I can bring forth out of my chaos. I make books, which are creations. I feel in myself the future life. I am like a forest which has been more than once cut down; the new shoots are stronger than ever. I know I am rising toward the sky. The sunshine is on my head. The earth gives me its generous sap, but Heaven lights me with the reflection of unknown worlds. You say the soul is only the result of your bodily powers. Why, then, is my soul more luminous when my bodily powers begin to fail? Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart. There I breathe at this moment the fragrance of the lilacs, the violets and the roses, as twenty years ago. The nearer I approach the end, the more plainly I hear the immortal symphonies of the worlds which invite me. It is marvelous, yet simple. It is a fairy tale, and yet is it historic. For half a century I have been writing my thoughts in prose and verse, history, philosophy, drama, romance, tradition, satire, ode, and song. I have tried it all, but I feel that I have not said a thousandth part of what is in me. When I go down to the grave I can say, like many others, I have finished by day’s work; but I cannot say I have finished my life. My day will begin again the next morning. The tomb is not a blind alley: it is a thoroughfare. It closes on the twilight, it opens with the dawn–the dawn of an immortal morning!’”

It has been written by others, that Shakespeare came though from the other side to Victor Hugo at a Persian seance, bringing forth poetry in French, and after Shakespeare “stumbled on a verse,” Hugo asked if he would like him to continue the verse. That was acceptable to Shakespeare.

Victor Hugo was a member of the International Peace Commission, as was Dr. Peebles.

Thomas Carlyle

James Martin Peebles wrote of his meeting with Thomas Carlyle, in his book, Spirit Mates, and the meeting turned out to leave James chilled by Carlyle’s cold, gruffy manner, and not nearly as enjoyable as his time with Emerson, Whitman, or Hugo. He writes: “Near the close of a lecture course in London, I felt a pressing, persistent desire to see Thomas Carlyle of whom Emerson had spoke to me so eulogistically. Accordingly I asked my good friend, Stainton Moses to give me a card of introduction to Carlyle, as he had met and knew him. He very graciously refused, saying, ‘Carlyle is quite old and feeble now, and I learn that he receives very few, if any, visitors.’ Nothing daunted, I stepped into a hansom, Chesshire bound, and was soon at Carlyle’s door. Passing in my card by the servant, and waiting–waiting for what seemed a minute of eternity, I was invited into the drawing room–another long, very long waiting, when the distinguished Carlyle came in, bringing with him not the most psychic-cheering aura. The conversation, rather cool, was brief. The striking point that I now remember was: ‘America–America, a great maw from which are hatched out most of the world’s fads.’ He did not ask me to call again. Leaving, I said to myself, ‘Thomas Carlyle, great, grum, grim, and grand–socially and gracefully, unlike the sweet-spirited Emerson!’ The calling was ‘daring’ and the chill of my reception was doubtless deserved.”

Lord Alfred Tennyson

In Dr. Peebles’, 1868 book, Seers of the Ages: Embracing Spiritualism Past and Present, he writes, “Sweet and heavenly sings the Poet Laureate of England,” and quotes Tennyson’s poem:

“‘How pure at heart and sound in head,
With what divine affections bold
Should be the man whose thought would hold
An hour’s communion with the dead.

In vain shalt thou, or any, call
The spirits from their golden day,
Except, like them, thou too canst say
My spirit is at peace with all.’”

In What is Spiritualism? Who Are These Spiritualist?, Dr. Peebles writes: “Tennyson’s poems abound in the philosophy of Spiritualism. His interest in it was great. One of the most pleasant acts of his later life was to desire and receive a visit from W. Stainton Moses, the distinguished London author, editor, and spiritual medium, to whom he gave his autographically signed portrait. He may not have publicly announced himself a Spiritualist. Thousands of the most brilliant minds have not done so. Only their personal friends knew of their firm faith in a knowledge of present spirit ministries.”

“His poems can be intelligently understood only in the light of Spiritualism...Of the intercommunion of spirits in its higher form, he [Tennyson] says, ‘I do not see why its central truth is untenable. If we would think about this truth, it would become very natural and reasonable to us. Why should those who have gone before not surround and minister to us, as legions of angels surround and ministered to our Lord?’”

“Tennyson’s testimony:
In that spiritual biography, In Memoriam, is mirrored the various changes of a poet’s love and tenderness upon the early loss of a friend. Death he considers an upward flight–the leaving of a mortal garment, a ruined chrysalis, a shattered temple.”

“The poems of this gifted son of a song present a type of Spiritualism, as beautiful as philosophical:”

‘God’s finger touch’d him, and he slept!

The great Intelligences fair
That range above our mortal state,
In circle round the blessed gate,
Received and gave him welcome there;

And led him through the blissful climes,
And show’d him in the fountain fresh
All knowledge that the sons of flesh
Shall gather in the cycled times.’”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

“Want of space warrants but a few quotations from the rich poesy fields of Spiritualism. Grand this apostrophe of Coleridge:

‘Contemplant Spirits! Ye that hover o’er
With untried gaze the immeasurable fount
Ebullient with creative Deity!
And ye of plastic power, that interfused
Roll through the grosser and material mass
In organizing surge! Hollies of God!’”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

According to Dr. Peebles’ writings in What is Spiritualism? Who are the Spiritualists?, Longfellow often attended spiritual seances when traveling in Italy and was said to freely express his belief in open communion between the visible and unseen world, and quotes his written words: “‘The spiritual world lies all about us, and its avenues are open to the unseen feet of phantoms that come and go, and we perceive them not save by their influence, or when at times a most mysterious providence permits them to manifest themselves to mortal eyes....’”

‘Some men there are, I have know such, who think
That the two worlds–seen and unseen,
The world of matter and the world of spirit—
Are like the hemispheres upon our maps,
And touch each other only at a point.
But these two worlds are not divided thus,
Save for the purpose of common speech.
They form one globe, in which the parted seas
All flow together and are intermingled,
While the great continents remain distant.’

‘The spiritual world
Lies all about us, and its avenues
Are open to the unseen feet of phantoms
That come and go, and we perceive them not
Save by the influence, or when at times
A most mysterious Providence permits them
To manifest themselves to mortal eyes.’

‘A drowsiness is stealing over me
Which is not sleep; for, though I close mine eyes,
I am awake, and in another world.
Dim faces of the dead and the absent
Come floating up before me.’

‘When the hours of day are numbered,
And the voices of the night
Wake the better soul that slumber’d
To a holy, calm delight;
Ere the evening lamps are lighted,
And like phantoms grim and tall,
Shadows from the fitful fire-light,
Dance upon the parlor wall–
Then the forms of the departed
Enter at the open door;
The beloved ones, the true hearted,
Come to visit me once more;
And with them the Being Beauteous,
Who unto my youth was given
More than all things else to love me,
And is now a saint in heaven.’

‘With a slow and noiseless footstep
Comes the messenger divine,
Takes the vacant chair beside me,
Lays her gentle hand in mine,
And she sits and gazes at me,
With those deep and tender eyes,
Like the stars, so still and saint-like,
Looking downward from the skies.’

‘–As the moon from some dark gate or cloud
Throws o’er the sea a floating bridge of light
Across whose trembling planks our mem’ries crowd
Into the realm of mystery and light–
So far from the world of spirits there descends
A bridge of light, connecting it with this,
O’er whose unsteady floor, that sways and bends,
Wander our thoughts above the dark abyss.’”

M. Sully Prudhomme

Dr. Peebles writes of M. Sully Prudhomme, the French poet and essayist, and winner of the first Nobel Prize in Literature, 1901, and calls his admission of the fact he was an avowed Spiritualist, as extremely frank and courageous. Prudhomme had stated that he was very much perplexed by the facts established by such savants as Sir William Crookes in England, and M. Charles Richet, in France; and that some friend in which he had the greatest confidence, resolved upon sending for Eusapia Paladinio [celebrated Italian medium], and on investigating the phenomena for themselves. “They did so in the house of one of the party, and under conditions so rigorous as to preclude the possibility of fraud or delusion. He then related the various physical manifestations which occurred, and after having done so, makes the following statement: ‘My conviction is that I have assisted at some phenomena which I cannot connect with any ordinary physical law. My impression is that fraud in every case is more than improbable, at least, in whatsoever concerns the displacement to a distance of heavy articles previously placed by companions and myself. That is all that I can say. For my own part, I call everything natural which is scientifically established; so that the word, mysterious, simply signifies that which is still surprising for the want of our ability to explain it. I consider that the scientific spirit consist in the demonstration of facts, and not to deny a priori any fact which is contradictory of ascertained laws, and not to accept any which has not been determined by verifiable and certain conditions.’”

Dr. Peebles comments, “Why do not the pseudo-scientific adversaries of Spiritualism imitate the example of M. Sully Prudhomme and M. Victorien Sardou and investigate before they deny and condemn?”

Many of us ask that same question today.

M. Victorien Sardou

French author and dramatist, M. Victorien Sardou, wrote in a letter to a friend that he was one of the earliest students of Spiritualism and that he had passed from incredulousness to surprise and from surprise to conviction and stated, “What I have seen I know. What I have felt I believe. I began as a young man to interest myself in the manifestations of psychic forces in matter. I began as a skeptic, as most people do.”

He wrote of the ridicule often associated with a belief in material phenomena, even under rigorously scientific conditions, and vouched for by scientists and commented, “How would one dare to face the disgusting ignorance that prevails even among so-called educated people–dare to assert that these beings are not chimerical, and that our beautiful (?) humanity is not the work of creation?”

“And so, in order to escape the raillery of official science, the skepticism of ignoramuses and witty people (who so often are fools!), we try to explain away cases by pseudo-scientific hypotheses which are very funny to people who know what I know, who have seen what I have seen, and have done what I have done.”

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Dr. Peebles writes, “Mrs. E. B. Browning’s poetical inspirations are rich in the beautiful teachings of Spiritualism. Several years ago, when wandering through the walks of the Florence cemetery, not far from the flowing Arno, I saw a large, beautiful, and yet plain monument with these simple letters inscribed thereon, ‘E.B.B.’ Anyone would know that they were the initials of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, whose writings reveal her Spiritualism. My eye just now rests upon this poem entitled, A Child Asleep:

‘As the moths around a candle
As the bees around the rose,
As the gnat around a vaper,
So the spirits group and close
Round about a holy childhood,
As if drinking its repose.’”

Harriet Beecher Stowe

James Martin Peebles writes of Harriet Beecher Stowe in Seers of the Ages: “While walking among the trees that surrounded the Aberdeen Cathedral, immortals seemed to accompany this truly inspired woman and author. In Sunny Memories, she wrote: ‘I cannot get over the feeling that the souls of the dead do some how connect with the places of their former habitations; and that the hush and thrill of spirit, which we feel in them, maybe owing to the overshadowing presence of the invisible. St. Paul says, we are compassed about with a great cloud of witness; but how can they be witnesses if they cannot see and be cognizant?’”

“From one of her articles relating to the New Year, we select a few of the more touching paragraphs. As significant of the subject, she commended with the poetic quotation:

‘It is a beautiful belief,
That ever round our head
Are hovering, on viewless wings,
the spirits of the dead.’

‘One of the deepest and most imperative cravings of the human heart, as it follows its beloved ones beyond the veil, is for some assurance that they will still love and care for us. As a German writer beautifully expresses it, ‘Our friend is not wholly gone from us; we see across the river of death, in the blue distance, the smoke of his cottage;’ hence the heart, always suggesting what it desires, has ever made the guardianship and ministration of departed spirits a favorite theme of poetic fiction. But then, is it , then fiction? Does revelation, which gives so many hopes which nature did not, give none here? Is there no sober certainty to correspond to the inborn and passionate craving of the soul? Do departed spirits in verity retain any knowledge of what transpires in this world, and take any part in its scenes? All that revelation says of a spiritual state is more intimation than assertion; it has no distinct treatise, and teaches nothing apparently of set purpose, but gives vague, glorious images, while now and then some accidental ray of intelligence looks out–

“ Like eyes of cherubs shining
From out the veil that hid the ark.’

‘But out of all the different hints and assertions of the Bible, we think a better inferential argument might be constructed to prove the ministration of departed spirits, than for many a doctrine which has passed in its day for the height of orthodoxy.’

‘What then? May we look among the band of ministering spirits for our own departed ones? Whom would God be more likely to send us? Have we in heaven a friend who knew us to the heart’s core?-a friend to who he have confessed our weaknesses and deplored our griefs? If we are to have a ministering spirit, who better adapted? Have we not memories which correspond to such a belief? When our soul has been cast down, has never an invisible voice whispered, ‘The is lifting up?’ Have not gales and breezes of sweet healing thought been wafted over us, as if an angel had shaken from his wings the odors of paradise? Many a one, we are confident, can remember such things. And whence come they?’

‘But again–there are some spirits (and those of earth’s choicest) to whom, so far as enjoyment to themselves or others is concerned, this life seems to have been a total failure. A hard hand from the first, and all the way through life, seems to have been laid upon them; they seem to live only to be chastened and crushed, and we lay them in the grave at last in mournful silence. To such, what a vision is opened by this belief!’

‘They have overcome, have risen, are crowned, glorified; but still they remain with us, our assistants, our comforters, and in every hour of darkness their voice speaks to us: So we grieved, so we struggled, so we doubted; but we have overcome, we have obtained, we have seen, we have found; and in our victory behold the certainty of thy own.’

‘Sweet Souls around us, watch us still,
Press nearer to our side;
Into our thoughts, into our prayers,
With gentle helping glide.’”

“In a poem clipped from the New York Independent, she writes her clairaudient experiences in Spiritualism, in lines thus sweet and tender:

‘Those halting tones that sound to you
Are not the tones I hear;
But voices of the loved and lost
Now greet my longing ear.

I hear my angel mother’s voice;
Those were the words she sang;
I hear my brothers’ ringing tones,
As once on earth they rung.

And friends that walk in white above
Come ‘round me like a cloud,
And far above those earthly notes
Their singing sounds aloud.’”

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s words are shared by Dr. Peebles in What is Spiritualism? Who are the Spiritualist?: “In the Church Union she wrote these telling words: ‘We hold to the belief in the unbroken unity possible between those who have passed to the higher life and this. We hold to that vivid faith in things unseen which was the strength of primitive Christians. The first Christians believed what they said they did–we do not. The unseen spiritual world, its angels and archangels, its saints and martyrs, its purity and its joys, were ever before them, and that is why they were such a might force in the world. St. Augustine says that it was the vision of the saints gone before that inspired them with courage and contempt of death–and it is true.’”

Dr. Peebles adds, “Mrs. Stowe further tells us that she did not really write Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it was given to her–it passed in vision before her. She had to tell it as it came, and suffered in so doing.”

Ella Wheeler Wilcox

In the same book, Dr. Peebles quotes Ella Wheeler Wilcox: “‘I believe hundreds of well-authenticated instances exist where these spirit forms have been seen–not in darkened rooms, under linen sheets, but in broad light, and in their own likeness. I believe thousands of instances have occurred where messages have been received from them, and I have no doubt that we are often visited by departed friends whose presence we vaguely feel, but whom we cannot see or hear. Since such visitations are our only absolute proof of a future life, I fail to understand why religious people cry out against a belief in spirit return. The Bible is full of such occurrences, and God’s universe is the same today as it was in those historic times. Meanwhile I feel that since the spirit life is the more advanced life, we should not intrude upon its higher usefulness by continual attempts to bring our friends back to earth. Let them make the advances.’”

William Wordsworth

“Poets and prophets, being inspired, they get down to the very soul of realities, and I am proud to state that the worlds’ great poets have taught pre-existence.

“Wordsworth assures us–

‘Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting;
The soul that rises with us our life’s star,
Has had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar,
Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness,
But railing clouds of glory, do we come
From God, who is our home.’”

Oliver Wendell Holmes

James Martin Peebles writes, “Oliver Wendell Holmes’ writings, especially his poems are in the line of Spiritualism. Here follows one of his paragraphs: ‘You don’t know what plague has fallen on the practitioners of theology,’ said Dr. Holmes in his Professor at the Breakfast Table. ‘Spiritualism,’ says the professor, ‘is quietly undermining the traditional ideas of the future state, which have been and still are accepted–not merely in those who believe in it, but in the general sentiment of the community–to a larger extent than most good people seem to be aware of.’ He asserts that ‘this Nemesis of the pulpit comes in a shape it little thought of,’ and ‘ends with such a crack of old beliefs that the roar of it is heard in all ministers’ studies in Christendom. You cannot have people of cultivation,’ continues the Professor, ‘of pure character, sensible enough in common things, large-hearted women, grave judges, shrewd business men, men of science, professing to be in communication with the spiritual world, and keeping up constant intercourse with it, without its gradually reacting on the whole conception of that other life.’”

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Within a chapter on “Death and the Bridging of the River,” of James Martin Peebles’ book, What is Spiritualism? Who are the Spiritualist?, he discusses Shelley: “This inspired and etherealized soul of poetry and worshipper at the shrine of nature, struggled, considering the world’s imperfections, to make himself believe in a sort of atheistic materialism, and no doubt became stung to the quick by the taunting words perpetually hurled at him by the ecclesiastics of the church. Their tongues termed him an atheist and his only resort for rest was in deditating upon the gorgeous glories of nature and the realms of the invisible. At times of mortal distress he fell into ecstacies and had visions.”

And again in Immortality, Dr. Peebles writes: “The poet Shelley tells of a Paradise-garden in which all sweetest flowers and all rare blossoms grew in perfect prime. This garden was tended by a wonderful spiritual lady, and all the flowers knew her and rejoiced in the influence that spread from her; their sweetness passed into her, and hers was reflected in their bloom and fragrance. Suddenly she died, says the poet, and soon the garden and flowers came to perceive that she had passed away, and began to droop and die too; roses and lilies withered away, the bright, sweet-scented Indian plants fell rotting in the mud, and the garden, once so fair, slowly changed into a foul, leafless wreck, or seemed to have done so, for as Shelley, with strange spiritual intuition, hints, that decay and death haply were ‘like all the rest a mockery.”

“‘ What garden sweet, that lady fair,
And all sweet shapes and odors there.
In truth have never passed away,
Tis we, ‘tis ours, are changed! not they.’”

“Seen in the light of the spiritual philosophy, and studied from the Mount of Vision, death is but a hyphen connecting the two worlds–is but a renunciation of the physical body–is but a flower-wreathed arch under which mortals march on one by one to the shining shores of immortality; or it may be compared to the rosebud that climbs up the shaded garden-wall to bloom on the sunward side.”

One of my favorite statements of James Martin Peebles is this:

“Full of trust, I consciously see God, the Divine Energy, everywhere–
pulsating in the growing corn, purpling in the vineyard
blushing in the peach, smiling in the sunshine,
and awing us as we gaze into the infinite depths
filled with stars, circling suns, and systems of universes.”
– James Martin Peebles, Seers of the Ages, 1868

Many years ago, Lord Byron expressed well my own sentiments about the power, influence, and inspiration of words, when he penned:

“Words are things; and a small drop of ink,
Falling like dew upon a thought, produces
That which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”

We have been given a gift from the pen strokes and voices of brilliant minds of the 19th century: a wealth of philosophical and theological ideas, beautiful poetic expressions, enjoyment, and inspiration. It is truly a meeting of the minds, each of their minds, with each of ours.

– Linda Pendleton

© Copyright 2006 by Linda Pendleton, All Rights Reserved.
This article is protected under U.S. Copyright Law and may not be used or reproduced in any form
without written permission, including but not limited to print, electronic, digital, audio.

Bibliography and Suggested Resources

Barrett. J.O.. The Spiritual Pilgrim, Boston: William White and Company, 1872.
Peebles, James Martin. Seers of the Ages, Boston: White & Co., 1868, 1869.
__________________. Immortality, Boston: Colby and Rich, 1880, 1890.
__________________. Spirit Mates, Battle Creek, MI: Peebles’ Publishing Co., 1909.
__________________. The Pathway of the Human Spirit, Battle Creek, MI: Peebles Institute of Health, 1906.
__________________. What is Spiritualism? Who are the Spiritualist?, Battle Creek, MI: Peebles Pub. Co., 1910.
__________________. Death Defeated, Los Angeles: Peebles Publishing Co., 1900.
__________________. Around the World, Boston: Colby and Rich, 1875.
“New York Conference,” The Spiritual Age, New York: 1857, August 1, Edition.
Whipple, Edward. A Biography of James M. Peebles, Battle Creek, MI: Whipple, 1901.

For additional information on 19th century Spiritualism, visit John B. Buescher’s website, spirithistory.com He is the author of The Other Side of Salvation: Spiritualism and the Nineteenth Century Religious Experience.