Modern Saints and Seers Part 14

An engineer named Morris was cured of cataract instantaneously. A totally blind wood-cutter was able to distinguish colours after being touched by Schlatter. A Mrs. Holmes of Havelock, Nebraska, had tumours under the eyes. She pressed them with a glove given her by the prophet, and they disappeared. (This case is reported in the _Denver News_ of November 12th, 1895.)

Gloves began to arrive from all parts, and lay in mountains on Schlatter's doorstep. He touched them with his hand, and distributed them to the crowd. _Faith_ being the sole cause of the cures, it was unnecessary, he said, to lay hands on the sick. When he did so, it was only in order to impress the souls of those who had need of this outer sign in order to enjoy the benefits sent them by the Father through His intermediary. This explains how Schlatter was able to treat from three to five thousand people every day. He would stand with outstretched hands blessing the crowds, who departed with peace in their souls.

And the "pearl of Colorado" rejoiced, seeing how the deaf heard, the cripples walked, the blind saw, and all glorified the name of the Saint of Denver.

His disinterestedness was above suspicion, and the contempt that he showed for the "almighty dollar" filled all the believers with astonishment and admiration.

"What should I do with money?" he said. "Does not my Heavenly Father supply all my needs? There is no greater wealth than faith, and I have supreme faith in my Father."

Gifts poured in upon him, but he refused them all with his customary gentleness, so that at last people ceased to send him anything but gloves. These, after having touched them with his hands, he distributed among the sick and the unfortunate.

His fame increased with the ardour of his faith. Suspicion was disarmed, and great and small paid him homage. Out of touch as he was with modern thought, and reading nothing but the prophets, he attained to a condition of ecstasy which at last led him to announce that he was Christ come down from heaven to save his fellow-men. Having lived so long on the footing of a son of G.o.d, he now was convinced of his direct descent, and his hearers going still further, were filled with expectation of some great event which should astonish all unbelievers.

Under the influence of this general excitement he proceeded to undergo a forty days' fast. He announced this to his followers, who flocked to see the miracle, preceded by the inevitable reporters; and while fasting he still continued to heal the sick and give them his blessing, attracting ever greater crowds by his haggard visage and his atmosphere of religious exaltation.

Then, having spent forty days and forty nights in this manner, he sat down at table to replenish his enfeebled forces, and the beholders gave voice to enthusiastic expressions of faith in his divine mission.

But the famished Schlatter attacked the food laid before him with an ardour that had in it nothing of the divine. The onlookers became uneasy, and one of them went so far as to suggest that his health might suffer from this abrupt transition.

"Have faith," replied Schlatter. "The Father who has permitted me to live without nourishment for forty days, will not cease to watch over His Son."

The town of Denver formed a little world apart. Miracles were in the air, faith was the only subject of conversation, and everyone dreamed of celestial joys and the grace of salvation. In this supernatural atmosphere distinctions between the possible and the impossible were lost sight of, and the inhabitants believed that the usual order of nature had been overthrown.

For instance, James Eckman of Leadville, who had been blinded by an explosion, recovered his sight immediately he arrived at Denver.

General Test declared that he had seen a legless cripple _walk_ when the saint's gaze was bent upon him. A blind engineer named Stainthorp became able to see daylight. A man named Dillon, bent and crippled by an illness several decades before, recovered instantaneously. When the saint touched him, he felt a warmth throughout his whole body; his fingers, which he had not been able to use for years, suddenly straightened themselves; he was conscious of a sensation of inexpressible rapture, and rose up full of faith and joy. A man named Welsh, of Colorado Springs, had a paralysed right hand which was immediately cured when Schlatter touched it.

All New Mexico rejoiced in the heavenly blessing that had fallen upon Denver. Special trains disgorged thousands of travellers, who were caught up in the wave of religious enthusiasm directly they arrived.

The whole town was flooded with a sort of exaltation, and there was a recrudescence of childishly superst.i.tious beliefs, which broke out with all the spontaneity and vigour that usually characterises the manifestation of popular religious phenomena.

What would have been the end of it if Schlatter had not so decisively and inexplicably disappeared?

It would be difficult to conceive of anything more extraordinary than the exploits of this modern saint, which came near to revolutionising the whole religious life of the New World. The fact that they took place against a modern background, with the aid of newspaper interviews and special trains, gives them a peculiar _cachet_. Indeed, the spectacle of such child-like faith, allied to all the excesses of civilisation, and backed up by the ground-work of prejudices from which man has as yet by no means freed himself, is one to provide considerable food for reflection for those who study the psychology of crowds in general, and of religious mania in particular.

The case of Schlatter is not a difficult one to diagnose. He suffered from "ambulatory automatism," the disease investigated by Professor Pitres of Bordeaux, and was a wanderer from his childhood up.

Incapable of resisting the lure of vagabondage, he thought it should be possible to perform miracles because it was "G.o.d his Father" who thus forced him to wander from place to place. "All nature being directed according to His Will," said Schlatter, "and nothing being accomplished without Him, I am driven to warn the earth in order to fulfil His designs."

Being simple-minded and highly impressionable, the first cure that he succeeded in bringing about seemed to him a direct proof of his alliance with G.o.d. As Diderot has said, it is sometimes only necessary to be a little mad in order to prophesy and to enjoy poetic ecstasies; and in the case of Schlatter the flower of altruism which often blossoms in the hearts of such "madmen" was manifested in his complete lack of self-seeking and in his compa.s.sion for the poor and suffering which drew crowds around him. As to his miracles, we may--without attempting to explain them--state decisively that they do not differ from those accomplished by means of suggestion. The cases of blindness treated by Schlatter have a remarkable resemblance to that of the girl Marie described by Pierre Janet in his _Psychological Automatism_.

This patient was admitted to the hospital at Havre, suffering, among other things, from blindness of the left eye which she said dated from infancy. But when by means of hypnotism she was "transformed" into a child of five years of age, it was found that she saw well with both eyes. The blindness must therefore have begun at the age of six years--but from what cause? She was made to repeat, while in the somnambulistic state, all the princ.i.p.al scenes of her life at that time, and it was found that the blindness had commenced some days after she had been forced to sleep with a child of her own age who had a rash all over the left side of her face. Marie developed a similar rash and became blind in the left eye soon afterwards. Pierre Janet made her re-live the event which had had so terrible an effect upon her, induced her to believe that the child had no rash, and after two attempts succeeded in making her caress her (imaginary) bedfellow. The sight of the left eye returned, and Marie awoke--cured!

The saint of Denver could not, of course, make use of methods adopted by doctors in the hospitals, but he had something much stronger and more effective in his mysterious origin, his prophet-like appearance, and his airs as of one illuminated by the spirit. Suggestion, when acting upon those who are awake, spreads from one to another like an attack of yawning or of infectious laughter. Crowds are credulous, like children who look no further than their surface impressions.

The case of W. C. Dillon, who had been bent and crippled for years, but was able to straighten his limbs at once under Schlatter's influence, recalls that of the young sailor in the household of Dr. Pillet, who for several weeks was bent forward in a most painful position. He had received a severe blow at the base of the chest, after which he seemed unable to stand upright again. He was put into a hypnotic sleep, and asked if he could raise himself.

"Why not?" he replied.

"Then do so," said the doctor--and he rose from his bed completely cured.

A remarkable thing with regard to Schlatter's cures is that they were so frequently concerned with cases of paralysis. Now Charcot has proved that such cases are usually found in hysterical subjects suffering from amnesia or anaesthesia (general or partial loss of sensation), and according to modern medical research paralysis and anaesthesia are almost identical. We know, further, with what ease hypnotic suggestion can either provoke or dispel partial or general anaesthesia, and this applies equally to partial or general paralysis.

Paralysis is often, if not always, due to a simple amnesia--forgetfulness to make use of certain muscles--which can be overcome by suggestion. Schlatter, with his undeniable hypnotic power, had consequently small difficulty in accomplis.h.i.+ng "miracles"--that is to say, in producing incomprehensible and inexplicable phenomena.

His custom of dealing with people in crowds gave him greater chances of success than if he had merely treated individual cases. "Faith is the only thing that cures," he declared--and, as if by magic, his hearers became possessed of faith and intoxicated by the benefits obtained from his divine intervention.

Truly the life of this impulse-ridden vagabond, so lacking in self-interest, so devoted to the needs of the sick and poor, throws a new light upon the souls of our contemporaries. There seems to exist in every human being, no matter how deeply hidden, an inexhaustible desire for contact with the Infinite. And this desire can be as easily played upon by the tricks of impostors as by the holiness of saints, or the divine grace of saviours.

PART III

THE DEPTHS OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS MIND

CHAPTER I

SECTS IN FRANCE AND ELSEWHERE

During the second half of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, scarcely a single country has been free from religious manifestations of the most varied kind, all concerned with new ways and means of attaining salvation; and if one were to include all the different phases of occultism as well, one would be astounded at the mystical ardour of which modern humanity is possessed.

From the spiritualists and the theosophists to the crystal-gazers and the palmists, all these occult practices are, in reality, merely the result of a more or less intensified desire to communicate with the spiritual worlds.

France, although considered a country pre-eminently sceptical, has not escaped the general tendency, for even in what appeared to be the most rationalistic epoch--that of the Revolution--the "Cult of Reason" was founded, to be succeeded by the "Religion of the Supreme Being"

introduced by Robespierre. And what numbers of new sects and religions can be recorded since then!

There was, first of all, the _Theophilanthropy_ of Jean-Baptiste Chemin and Valentine Hauy, representing the faith of those who love man in G.o.d, and G.o.d in so far as He loves man. The Empire, in persecuting this doctrine, only added to its vitality, for it has hot even yet completely died out.

The religion of Father Enfantin, which had a great vogue in the last century, conformed in many respects to the name of its founder. Man and woman, united by religion, were to form priests "in duplicate" for the guidance of their flock, young and old, lovers and married couples alike. The Saint-Simonites--so admirable in some ways--allied themselves to this doctrine, and succeeded in attracting a number of sympathisers.

The life of French sects has always been of short duration, though there have existed among them many that in other countries would certainly have won for their founders the laurel-wreath of fame. Such was, for instance, the _Church of France_, inaugurated by the Abbe Chatel, whose idea was to entrust sacerdotal functions to the most worthy among his followers, by means of a public vote. The sect prospered for a time, but soon disappeared amid general indifference, and the Abbe ended his days as a grocer.

The doctrine of Fabre Palaprat had more success, being drawn from the esoteric teachings of the Gospel of St. John. He either suppressed or modified many of the Catholic dogmas, abandoned the use of Latin and inaugurated prayers in French.

The _Fusionists_ were founded by Jean-Baptiste de Tourreil. After a divine revelation which came to him in the forest of Meudon, near Paris, he broke with Catholicism and preached the intimate union of man and nature. He antic.i.p.ated to some extent the naturalist beliefs which spread through both France and England at the beginning of the present century, and his posthumous work ent.i.tled _The Fusionist Religion or the Doctrine of Universalism_ gives an idea of his tendencies. There was an element of consolation in his doctrine, for the harmony between man and the universe, as taught by him, renders death only a prolongation of life itself, and makes it both attractive and desirable.

The _Neo-Gnostic Church_ of Fabre des Essarts was condemned by Leo XIII with some severity as a revival of the old Albigensian heresy, with the addition of new false and impious doctrines, but it still has many followers. The Neo-Gnostics believe that this world is a work of wickedness, and was created not by G.o.d but by some inferior power, which shall ultimately disappear--and its creation also. While the Manichaeans teach that the world is ruled by the powers of both good and evil, G.o.d and Satan, the Neo-Gnostics declare that it is Satan who reigns exclusively upon earth, and that it is man's duty to help to free G.o.d from His powerful rival. They also preach the brotherhood of man and of nations, and it is probably this altruistic doctrine which has rendered them irresistible to many who are wearied and disheartened by the enmities and hatreds that separate human beings.

In 1900, after a letter from Jean Bricaut, the patriarch of universal Gnosticism in Lyons, the Neo-Gnostics united with the Valentinians, and their union was consecrated by the Council of Toulouse in 1903. But some years afterwards, Dr. Fugairon of Lyons (who took the name of Sophronius) amalgamated all the branches, with the exception of the Valentinians, under the name of the _Gnostic Church of Lyons_. These latter, although excluded, continued to follow their own way of salvation, and addressed a legal declaration to the Republican Government in 1906 in defence of their religious rights of a.s.sociation.

In the Gnostic teaching, the Eons, corresponding to the archetypal ideas of Plato, are never single; each G.o.d has his feminine counterpart; and the Gnostic a.s.semblies are composed of "perfected ones," male and female. The Valentinians give the mystic bride the name of Helen.

The Gnostic rites and sacraments are complicated. There is the _Consolamentum_, or laying on of hands; the breaking of bread, or means of communication with the _Astral Body of Jesus_; and the _Appareillamentum_, or means of receiving divine grace.

In peculiarities of faith and of its expression some of our French sects certainly have little to learn from those of America and Russia.