JOHN WILLIAM· FLETCHER, Clatrunuant. A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH, WITH SOliE CHAPTERS ON THE PRESE!I'"T ERA AND REUGIOU8 RD'OBH. BY SUSAN E. GAY. Not Licenee, but Liberty: not Revolution, but Reform. W.NDON: E. W. ALLEN, 4, AYE MARIA LANK. 18!1 s. [ALL RIGHT~ BK811RVIW.] 2./o. o. Digitized byGoogle o;gitizedbyGoogle • • • j I JOHN WILLIAM FLETCHER FROH A PHOTOGRAPH BY PBADELLE. Taken in llfl9. I Dig1t1zed bvGoogle There is no death t The dust we tread Shall change beneath the summer showers To golden grain or mellow fruit, Or rainbow-tinted flowers. The granite rocks disorganise To feed the hungry moss they bear; The fairest leaves drink daily life From out the viewless air. There is no death ! The le!IIVeS' may fall, The flowers may fade and pass away ; They only wait through ~ihtry' .hours The coming of the M-ay; -· · And ever near us, though unseen, The dear immortal spirits tread ; For all the boundless universe Is life ; there are no dead ! Digitized byGoogle Dig1t1zed bvGoogle PREFACE. The following pages are written in utter indif­ ference to all critics and reviewers, for the earnest man ~r woman who loves truth. They contain a brief outline of the history of a man who stands forth to-day, amid the scepticism, the worldliness, the thousand distractions of a century which is with pain and disruption ushering in a new era, not as one of its inventors, not as one ~f its fearless physicists, not as one of its gifted in art and song,-but as a Seer, and a Teacher ~f something to which men are very blind. Victor Hugo has said, and said truly, that the next century will be " the century of seers ;" but the one born before his time occupies at this hour a lonely height. His psychic faculties de­ veloped to their full extent-his physical nature subordinated to the spiritual, he appears as a representative of the abnormal, rather than the ideal man ; his powers excite curiosity, interest, suspicion, ridicule, even hatred ; but they rarely Digitized byGoogle viii Prejac& bring complete conviction as to the living faot of an unseen world. Anything is believed in, in these days, rather than · that sacred reality before which our physical life becomes an ever-changing world of shadows, taking only countless forms, which appear, and alter, and pass away according to the law which decrees that :Matter shall be but a temporary expreBBion of--what ? The Eternal Spirit ; which the materialist, for want of a better and higher word, calls--Force. And when our seer, who wearily spends life, health, energy, and time in the interests of those with whom his very nature has nothing in oom­ mon,-claims the fee without which he cannot live, and which is given to the physician, the lawyer, and the clergyman with gratitude and love-the climax of his sins against society is reached, and the term "p1·ojessional " is used against him as it is used against no other man. Where, however, are the ·men who will give their teacher a home and a subsistence, and bid him render up his testimony to all in freedom, as the true spiritualist must ever desire ? They are nowhere to be found, and the man who has been blessed with the most Dig1t1zed bvGoogle Pref~. ix. divine gifts that God can give to His creatures here below, must face an ordeal and fight a battle before which the strongest spirit might well fail. In England there is no real liberty ; we are chained hand and foot to old customs, old habits of thought, old laws, old theologies; it is the stronghold of conservatism ; and the destiny of the reformer is as likely to be the felon's dock in this age as in the time of Mary, who added to it the brief, and perhaps, considering the differ­ ence of organisation between that day and ours, hardly more terrible suffering of the ~aggot and the stake. Should it be my destiny to bear witness to the truth whose light is now hungered for by the very minds which reject it, and should English ignorance and English bigotry be employed to crush the fairest and most noble work which has ever been a.ooomplished in our sin­ stained metropolis, I can only say that as it is a pleasure to me to write these pages, so also would it be a pride-! may say indeed the proudest hour of my life-to bear testimony to it, and to stand even in a London police-court beside John William Fletcher-him of whom I boldly Digitized byGoogle I X. Prejace. say, that did men but know the truth, they would cheer him in the street ! Him, too, who has, I believe in my inmost heart, received a mission from the ~aster, to oomfort the broken-hearted, to strengthen the suffering, to heal the sick. Some there are who <lan with me, testify to. this, and who with me would also say of one who is the Hampden of religious liberty in our land- " Thou art a. prism who dividest light Into its various colours. Thou hast seen The vision of the Holy O~e and been Tra.nsfigured on the lonely mountain height. One such as thou would, in the semi-night Of Israel's noon, have risen and stood between God and His people a.s a. seer serene In humble consciousness of inward might. Thou might'st have sat with Jerome in his ca.ve ; The church of old had gladly ca.lled thee sire; If Christ had seen thee drag the Syrian wave, He would, I ween, have pledged thee heavenly hire, Bid thee the scribe and sophist teach and save, A Gospel write, and on a. cross expire !" S. E. G. Fal·mouth, .Apri~ 1880. o;9itizedbyGoogle SECOND PREFACE. The little volume which is now pTeeented to English readers, was completely written as far as page 273, in the summer of 1880, a fact which can be proved by seveml witnesses, and but for an ap­ parently insignificant event, would undoubtedly have been prematurely published. Since then, the remarkable series of prophecies recorded in tha second chapter, and to which allu­ sion was made in an article in Life of October 4th, 1879, have been almost entirely, and as literally as possible, fulfilled, and save for a few insignificant revisions of an historical or argumen­ tative nature, the work, including the preface, has been left absolutely untouched. Not a line relating in the remotest degree to anything of a prophetic character has been altered. The clot~ing chapters were written this yenr and I earnestly trust that they will in some degree contribute to a realisation of the object of the singular events which have covered the name of Digitized byGoogle xii. Second Prefac6. Fletcher for a time with the most undeserved oppro­ brium, particularly when studied in connection with the facts about to be made known with regard to the " trial , of 1881. U.ead iri the light of prophecy, known long ago, and in many countries, they become simply an extraordinary design, carried out, as in the past, through the cruelty of one human being and the heroism of another. And us before, the fight has been one in behalf of liberty, of truth, of a higher form of religion, of the demonstration of immortality, in which selected instruments have been called forth to ac­ complish, at the price of great suffering and sacrifice, a necessary work for the instruction and welfare of others. Our acknowledgments are due to Dr. T. L. Nichols, of London, for the unflinch­ ing determination with which he made known the evidence . of Mr. Francis Morton and others, who had done their utmost in the cause of justice, and in vain. In William l!.,letoher a man may be recognised whose exceptional gifts might have attracted the attention of the scientific world, had their possAssor bowed to the prejudice of the moment, styled Digitized byGoogle Second Preface. xiii. himself a " thought-reader," and repudiated his position as an agent-a :MEDIUM-of spirits. That he never did this for one single hour, in sunshine or in shadow, that he everywhere and at all times avowed himself a medium, a spiritualist, and n reformer, is the reason of all others which moves me to make known so far as I can, his life, his purposes, and his inalienable belief. To avoid all misconception with regard to this object, I may state that at no time have I ever had any professional connection with either literature, or the great and honourable work of spiritualism. I will only add that., in perfect sympathy with his love of reform, and e~mest desire to spread n clearer know ledge of the nature of man as the po88essor of a spiritual life which survives physical dissolution, I considered it a duty, even before he himself had reoognitled its necessity, to publish of my own wish and will, all I had written and realised on the first available opportunity, and without any other aid, direction, or sympathy than I have received from spiritual souroes. fJ. E. G. October, 1882. Digitized byGoogle Digitized byGoogle CONTENTS. l'AGL Preface vii. Second Preface xi. CBAl'TBR I. Early Life and Development of Mediumahip 1 CHAPTER II. Commencement of Public Work . 10 Sent into the World . 22 CHAI'TER IV. Work in London . CHAPTER v. Winona and Spirit Identity • 47 CHAPTER VI. Spirit l~entity (contiwued) CHAPTER VIi. The Relation of Spirit~ism to Science and Religion • 99 Digitized byGoogle xvi Contents.