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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
Charles Drayton Thomas:
The Devil Impersonation Hypothesis
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Preview and Summary: The "Devil Impersonation Hypothesis" is another example of "the Joker is wild" principle. It ascribes to Satan an invincibility, an almightiness and supreme power, allowing him to manipulate history and events of the world by fiat. This notion, in fact, is one more idolatry and misapprehension of the nature of Evil.
CHARLES DRAYTON THOMAS was a Methodist minister in England, who devoted a major portion of his life to systematic psychic study.
His father, John Wesley Thomas, was also a Methodist minister. Drayton, after having gone into business, had felt a call to the ministry, and entered Richmond Theological College in 1889. From 1892 to 1907 he served various Methodist circuits in England. He then gave up circuit work, and was appointed to the Leysian Mission, City Road, London, where he remained until he retired. He continued preaching and lecturing until a few months before his death, in 1953, at the age of eighty-five.
As a minister he had for many years been interested in the life after death. On 3 February, 1917, he had his first sitting, anonymously, with Mrs. Osborne Leonard, the medium who had become famous as the channel through which Sir Oliver Lodge had secured the evidence published in the book to which he gave the name of his son, Raymond.
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Editor's note: the following is an excerpt from Thomas' book, Life Beyond Death With Evidence.
THE HYPOTHESIS OF IMPERSONATION
"HAVE we any guarantee that the communications which seem to come from our friends beyond death are not concocted by impersonating spirits, or by the devil himself?"
This question is asked by some who think that certain isolated texts of Scripture warrant their fear. Others go further and change the question into an assertion. This may be termed The Devil Impersonation hypothesis.
Before adducing specific reasons for its invalidity, there are two considerations which these objectors will be well advised to ponder.
Firstly, it must be emphatically stated that, if appearances of the dead and messages from them are, in these days, the result of impersonation, it is open to anyone to assert that such appearances and messages as are recorded in the New Testament were likewise impersonations and deceptions. But this is a reductio ad absurdum. No evil personality would have wrought deception for such ends as were achieved by the founding of the Christian Church. Our Lord's own test can be here applied, "By their fruits ye shall know them." More than once He had to deal with minds similarly hesitant as to the good or evil origin of what they heard. He directed their attention to the results. "A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." The appearances and messages recorded in the Gospels were instrumental in founding a religious movement which has endured through the centuries with ever widening blessing. The fruit has been good. Who dare suggest that it sprang from an impersonation?
Secondly, it should be realised that present-day messages from those whom we identify with our risen friends have led to good. Multitudes confess that they have been turned thereby from doubt to belief, from agnosticism to faith: in short, the religious instinct has been enriched and intensified and in no wise lessened. The fruit has been good. No one who is aware of the uplifting influence which many have proved in their lives will suggest that this is the work of deceiving spirits who desire to neutralise the influence of Jesus Christ, or to degrade man's thought and life. If evil powers were the source of these communications they would be doing the work of God's ministering spirits and undermining the hold of evil on mankind.
The impersonation hypothesis is founded on an unworthy conception of the world unseen. It pictures evil spirits permitted to impersonate one's risen friends, while these are unable to intervene. Such an idea can only arise from the assumption that the frequent, if temporary, triumph of evil over good, of falsehood over truth, so often observed on earth must still prevail, even in higher realms. But have we any reason for supposing that evil is more triumphant there than it is here? Even in this life truth comes into its own; falsehood is self-betrayed, the will towards good is supplemented by unseen powers and slowly wins its widening way.
To believe that our messages are the work of deceiving spirits is to suppose that the evil beings are more powerful than the good. It assumes that evil intelligences, bent upon the misleading and degradation of humanity, have embarked upon a systematic venture which, in complete variance from their intention, is leading men to a more spiritual conception of life, to keener and more determined aspiration after righteousness, and to a more reasoned trust in Jesus Christ.
For such nightmare fancies there is no foundation in observed fact. Those who speak with us from across the borderland of life are just the same lovable, faithful friends whom we knew before death took them from our sight. They display the same solicitude for our welfare, moral and spiritual, as they did when here. They give numerous and convincing proofs of their identity, both in the definite tests which they volunteer, eager to convince us that they live, as well as in those which we demand of them in order to establish this truth. There are the subtle touches of character and the mannerisms which friendship unfailingly recognises. They show the same love and reverence for whatever is good and honourable; and I bear witness to the fact that my friends retain the same reverence, love and devotion for God and for Jesus which marked their lives when I knew them here on earth.
Throughout eleven years of frequent converse with those beyond the veil I have found nothing to suggest that they are other than they claim to be; nor have I ever observed the slightest indication that those speaking to me are animated by anything save the sincerest desire for my betterment. If, throughout these years, I have been speaking with those who wish to amuse themselves by deceiving me, or to do me hurt by impersonating my loved ones, then the only possible conclusion would be that they are taking considerable pains for no intelligent end. Such amusement must have palled on them long ago. The dullest of them must have perceived before this that instead of doing me harm they are helping me to rise beyond possibility of being hurt, either mentally or spiritually, since they have led me nearer God. In short, the devil of this hypothesis would be neither evil nor clever, but sufficiently inane to be undertaking an immense amount of pains to defeat his own ends by raising me towards a plane of thought and aspiration in which evil has no place.
Let us now regard the situation from another point of view. Supposing Jesus did come back and speak to His friends on earth; supposing Peter, Paul and others were truly favoured with communications from heavenly helpers; supposing my own friends are enabled to speak with me by psychic means, so that I receive the purport of what they wish to say; then all that I have met with during these years of experimental study is intelligible. Indeed, it is exactly what one would have expected, provided one had realised something of the difficulties of transmitting thought through imperfect channels. The occasional confusion in the messages, together with the inability to get certain names and words correctly reproduced, are precisely what must result from the limitations of the method used. Like the blurrings of celestial objects in the earlier and imperfect telescopes, which were easily resolved into clear definition by the employment of better instruments, so do we find that confusions arising with poorly developed mediums are made clear when the communicator speaks to us through a more gifted and practised human instrument.
I doubt if any impartial seeker after truth could retain the devil hypothesis after studying the modus operandi of trance messages with a medium of fine power and high mind. By such study one learns experimentally some of the difficulties under which our friends work while communicating, and how greatly they are limited in expressing themselves by the mental resources of the medium employed. One discovers the causes of confusions and mistakes, and how to apportion these between communicator, medium and control. But such study does not explain to any logical mind why, on the devil hypothesis, these particular classes of mistake and limitation should be present. For the mistakes and confusions are not such as would happen were the speaker reading our thoughts at the moment. For example, I am frequently aware of the name which would clinch the message, or of some fact which has been misstated. But my clear thought upon these points does not help the speaker; it is rather the rule that the less one thinks of what ought to be said, the more likely is it to be correctly given. Again, I am frequently aware of items which, if stated, would greatly add to the completeness and convincing character of the evidence which is being given; but the speaker does not avail himself of my recollections; he gives his own ideas of the matter and not mine.
Just as I am always careful to consider how much of the information given might have been obtained by the medium through normal channels, so also do I ask myself how much of it existed in my own mind, whether conscious or subliminal. My interest would not have been sustained through years of study had I found that the medium was weaving messages from material obtainable from outside sources, or that the communicator's conversation was composed of my own memories. I have found that the medium freely transmits what could not have been discovered normally, and that my communicators consistently give their own ideas and draw upon their own memories. They also reveal those characteristics with which I was familiar as pertaining to my friends during their earthly life, and each remains true to himself; their respective individualities never blend. All happens as if I were conversing with those whose names the speakers claim; and, so far as I can see, the happenings are quite unlike attempts at impersonation. I speak, of course, of my experiences with capable mediums. The confused messages in elementary experiments with automatic writing, planchette, ouija, or glass-and-letter methods of communication, are frequently baffling and open to doubt. These are best studied by giving the communicators an opportunity of clearing them up while speaking through more satisfactory channels.
If our messages originate with deceased friends then the latter do remarkably well, considering the difficulties under which they have to work, difficulties which must continue while our ability to provide them with adequate channels of communication remains so limited.
In discussing the "devil impersonation hypothesis" one cannot forget that Our Lord's critics raised the same cry of "Devil." Unable to disabuse their minds of fear, even in presence of His blameless personality and beneficent activities, they attributed his works to diabolic co-operation. "Thou hast a devil," was their reply to his teaching. A similar trend of mind now regards with suspicion communications which do not conform with conventional ideas about our relation with the world unseen.
My father [on the other side] speaks of Our Lord Jesus in terms which would satisfy orthodoxy. He and my sister, as well as others who have conclusively proved their identity, describe occasions on which they have seen Our Lord and have heard Him speak. Is this the action of a subtle enemy who desires my undoing? It is not what one would expect from diabolic agencies. On the other hand, it is exactly what I should expect from those who claim to be giving these teachings. Why should I doubt their bona fides? I have never found the slightest cause for so doing in all the years of my intercourse with them.
The devil hypothesis has no basis in observed fact conscientiously interpreted, nor is it held by those who have first-hand experience of these studies. I recall with amusement the solemn pronouncement made by a minister of religion who told me that he was sure that all these communications were the work of the evil one. He described how he had proved this by his own automatic writing; for as soon as his hand had acquired the power of writing without his conscious volition and had scribbled messages purporting to come from deceased friends, he had gravely demanded, Are not you who write really a devil? To his great satisfaction the word "Yes" was written in reply. And so, for him, the matter was settled. Had he cared honestly to study the subject he would have learnt that his reply was the reproduction by his subconscious mind of an idea which he had committed to its keeping. A genuine devil would have replied in the negative.
I believe in One God, maker and ruler of this world and the next. I entirely disbelieve in any omniscient and almighty evil spirit. Evil there must be in the unseen; for multitudes of evilly disposed people are continually passing thither from this earth. I know no reason for supposing that their power for evil is increased when they change this life for the next, nor do I believe that they will perpetually retain the state of mind in which they pass over. In the clearer light of the Beyond, evil loses the disguise which hid its real nature here, and it then appears in its essential hideousness and folly...
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