CHAPTER V.

THE SUPERNATURAL IN SWITZERLAND AND FRANCE.

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Lavater, Fuseli, Zschokke, Gassner, Oberlin, &c.

E must extend a little our present demonstration from Germany to the border countries, as they present simultaneously similar evidences in men intimately connected with Germany.

LAVATER.

The great father of the science of physiognomy was a great spiritualist. The evidences of this abound in his Views into Eternity,' his Mixed Writings,' and in his son-in-law Gesner's Biography and Posthumous Writings of Lavater.' The evidences meet the reader in almost every cyclopædia notice of him. The Conversations Lexikon says His tendency to the wonderful and mysterious led him more than once openly to express his expectation of miracles and revelations.' He even testified his belief in Gassner's cures, which his neighbours declared proceeded from dealings with the devil, as if the devil were ever likely to heal the diseases, or alleviate the sufferings of mankind. The Penny Cyclopædia takes up the same strain regarding Lavater. 'He always firmly clung to his peculiar religious views, which were a mixture of new interpretation with ancient orthodoxy, of philosophical enlightenment with extreme superstition. One leading article of his faith was a belief in

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the sensible manifestation of supernatural powers. His disposition to give credence to the miraculous led him to admit the strange pretensions of many individuals, such as the power to exorcise devils, and to perform cures by animal magnetism,' &c.

But what now were the doctrines which led the so-called Christian world to stamp Lavater as a superstitious eccentric,' simply because he believed in Christianity being still what Christ promulgated and left it? Because he believed in the efficacy of prayers and the gift of what is called the miraculous being an eternal heritage of the Church. He believed only what the Catholic Church has always believed. He had seen continually that prayer was as efficacious as ever, that faith was not a mere belief but a positive power, by which, according to St. Paul, all the great events of Jewish and Christian history were achieved (Romans ii.). That such a man for such opinions should have been branded as visionary and credulous, shows that Protestantism is but another name for an accredited infidelity. Lavater said truly, If the facts stated by Kant of Swedenborg are true, then revelation and miracle are as active now as ever,' Though he was far from entering into the views of Swedenborg, not probably having sufficient opportunity of studying them, he entertained the same as to a middle-state for souls, and as to the spiritual body of the soul, which he with Aristotle called the vehicle' of the soul; and he believed in apparitions both on these grounds, and on the warrant of Scripture in the cases of Elias and Moses.

In 1769 Lavater drew up Three Questions,' which he sent round in print to a number of clergymen whom he knew, and others, supported by many citations and remarks. In them he states that he is enquiring what the writers of the scriptural books really taught, not what is now our daily experience, and whether it agrees with their representations ; but what they really taught as the true faith of the Church of Christ. He finds, he says, all these writers, without exception, agreeing that there is an immediate and direct

revelation of God to the souls of men, more evident and distinct than the ordinary operations of nature; that he finds appearances and acts of the Deity, which manifestly depart from all our known experience of nature. They represent the Deity as a being to whom man can speak, and who returns him an answer. He finds there operations ascribed to the Spirit of God; sensible operations which cannot be ascribed to nature, but are ascribed to the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit. He finds that these authors are of opinion, that the great and inestimable value of the mediation of Christ is, that it opens this intercourse, which had been lost by ignorance and unbelief, again; and that they confirm this by the facts which they record; that these authors say expressly that to bring man through Christ to an immediate communion with his Spirit, was an eternal purpose, and that the promises of his gift extend to all who believe in Jesus;that these gifts are fully described by the Apostles in the most perspicuous language, who illustrate them by facts, quite beyond the range of ordinary nature, and in perfect agreement with the nature and acts of Christ. He finds that a power is ascribed to prayer, that God heareth and answereth prayer; that he gives the most positive promises of such answer, and does not limit this power of prayer to particular persons, circumstances, or times. Whence he establishes this proposition, that the scriptural writers teach, as a positive truth, that it is not only possible, but that it is the destination of man to maintain a peculiar and immediate communion with the Deity.

His own convictions of these truths was such, that he laid down the following rules of life :-Never to lie down or get up without prayer: never to proceed to any transaction or business without asking God's guidance and blessing. Never to do anything that he would not do were Jesus Christ standing visibly by. Every day to do some work of love; to promote the benefit of his own family; to commit no sin, to do some good, to exercise temperance in all things, and daily to examine himself as to his having kept these rules. Such are the opinions

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and doctrines which have caused all biography and cyclopædia writers to set down Lavater as a 'credulous eccentric.' They are expressly the doctrines of all Scripture and of all the eminent men who have in all ages sought to comprehend and practise real Christianity. Where, then, are the biography and cyclopædia writers? Where, then, is modern Protestantism? Lavater tells us that, instead of precise answers to his questions, he finds only exclamations and declamations, sneers and ridicules, or sighs and lamentations over the consequences which such a doctrine might be expected to produce.'

Instead of noticing these pitiable proofs of the disappearance of substantial Christianity, he issued a circular requesting the friends of truth to send him any well-attested evidence of occurrences beyond the ordinary course of nature, or of such as had followed prayer, of some positive exertions of faith; to ascertain, if possible, whether, after the death of the Apostles and their immediate successors, the same class of events had really continued for which we give credit to them and their times; and especially whether no certain proofs existed of such events, commonly called miraculous, having taken place since the Reformation. He declared that it was very important to know whether there were still living any pious conscientious man, who before the omniscient God would declare that he had prayed with undoubting expectation that he should be heard, and was not heard. He declared it as his object to learn whether the Christian of the eighteenth, as well as the Christian of the first, century might attain to immediate and sensible communion with God, and whether he whose sufferings no human power or wisdom could relieve, might have confident recourse to the omnipotent power of Christ. Can there be,' he says, an enquiry more important to the friend of humanity, who views around him so much dreadful misery; or to the Christian, who sees everywhere infidelity, and the empty, powerless and spiritless name of Christianity triumph?' He warned his correspondents to observe the strictest truth in their communications, declaring

that no crime could be more impious and detestable than falsehood in such a case.

In consequence of this circular he received a mass of extraordinary relations which he read and examined with most unwearied patience and care. Many of them he regarded as fully proved, others as by no means so; and so far from exhibiting a weak credulity, he incurred very severe reproaches for rejecting claims which many able men admitted. Such were the claims of a Catherine Kinderknecht, near Zürich, who had a great reputation for performing remarkable cures in answer to prayer, and whom his friend Fuseli, the great painter, afterwards so well known in England, had great faith in, but who was led by Lavater to give up this faith. Neither did he believe in Gassner without visiting him, nor when he had visited him did he rate his powers so high as many others, and they physicians, did.

In his lifetime we find some incidents occurring to himself or friends which every one learned in such matters will receive as additions to their divine evidences. Whilst he was on a journey, in 1773, to his friend Dr. Hotze at Richtersweile, his wife, though she had received a letter from him the day before, announcing his perfect health and safety, suddenly fell into a severe agony about him, impressed with a vivid sense of his great danger, and prayed energetically for him, though her father regarded her alarm as most unfounded after immediate intelligence of his safety. At that moment Lavater was in a terrific storm on the lake of Zürich, which carried masts and sails away, and made the sailors despair of saving the vessel.

His friend, Professor Sulzer, told him that in his twentysecond year he was suddenly seized with a violent attack of melancholy and terror, and it was impressed on his mind that his future wife was at that moment suffering from some severe accident. He had no thought of marrying, much less any idea who was likely to become his wife. Ten years afterwards, when he was married and had nearly forgotten the circumstance, he learned from his wife, that precisely at that time