Enter Martin Luther

An Open Letter

Enter Martin Luther written by Author:D. Duff

The Royal Canadian Academy

From The Canadian Forum, December 1920, p. 82

On the afternoon of Sunday, the twenty-third day of the tenth month of the year of grace nineteen hundred and twenty, I was led by the good hand of Providence (and an advertisement in the daily press) to attend a meeting at which the hero of the Diet of Worms was to lecture on "The Reform of Modern Religion," The meeting was opened with prayer, delivered by Mr. Louis Benjamin, whose freedom of speech Godward was arresting even in this age of the "direct method".

Written questions of a non-personal character were then invited. These were to be answered by Mr. Elbert Hubbard, who would take up a temporary abode in the medium. Mr. Benjamin at once prepared to leave. Music was invoked. David skilfully played the devil out of Saul: a young lady, clad in red, skilfully played Mr. Hubbard into Mr. Benjamin. Encouraged by the strains of her violin, Mr. Benjamin submitted himself to the influence of some weird power, and soon gave unmistakable [p.83] evidence of the impending change. While the audience watched with tense interest, not unmingled with awe, the shoulders of the medium, who stood between two solitary lights, began to heave, his head was now jerked sideways, now thrown back, and heavy, sibilant sighs escaped his lips. Meantime the chairman, all unmoved, had sorted out a few questions; and, aware, whether by intuition or by reason of certain physical tokens, that Mr. Elbert Hubbard had arrived, put them to the medium. "How," ran one of them, "can there be so much pain in the world, if there is a God of love?" Mr. Hubbard betrayed no hesitation. The answer was easy: You see things quite differently from the Twentieth Plane (five hundred miles distant); and, besides, every time a child is born, has not intense suffering to be borne? The explanation, I felt, would prove a great comfort to the mouse when mangled by the cat. It also occured to me that Mr. Hubbard might have availed himself of the opportunity to pay a graceful tribute to the sufferings of Mr. Benjamin.

Strongly as we realized that this was at once interesting and edifying, we were eagerly waiting for Martin Luther. And though, owing to delay in the opening of the meeting, he must have been kept in suspense, he came. Mr. Benjamin, suddenly returning to himself, had collapsed into a chair, but the lady of the violin — with something like cruelty, I thought — stept forward again; whereupon, exhibiting the same signs of physical distress as before, he made way for the reformer. I was disappointed at not hearing the translator of the Bible speak in his own tongue, but it had been explained at an earlier stage that beings of the Twentieth Plane (five hundred miles distant) only think to one another. And certainly, as far as the substance of Luther's remarks was concerned, it mattered little that it came through the grammar, pronunciation, voice, and accent of Mr. Benjamin.

"Sludge would introduce

Milton composing baby rhymes, and Locke

Reasoning in gibberish. Homer writing Greek

In noughts and crosses, Asaph setting Psalms

To Crotchet and quaver",

but no such nonsense came through our medium. Luther spoke quite sensibly. True, I did miss something of the vigour and originality that reveal themselves even in the printed page, but I remembered the poems that Shakespeare sent recently to the American lady, and had to admit, with infinite regret, that life on any other plane than ours is detrimental to intellectual activity.

After referring to his Ninety-five Theses, Luther, speaking with Mr. Benjamin's loud voice, proclaimed that the corroding influence in modern religion was the faultiness of our economic system. "Who," he cried, "are the men you appoint to high position in the Church? The rich! Everyone knows that the poor man finds neither promotion nor welcome in your religious assemblies. . . . . . ."

Two friends I had with me, one a sculptor, the other a musician, and I, a teacher, felt that Martin's diatribe was beginning to touch us too closely; so, leaving our hard and narrow seats, we slipped away through the darkened hall. Questions of a personal nature being disallowed, I was unable to discover what arrangements had been made for Luther's attendance at the theatre, and whether it would be possible for him to speak simultaneously, on the same subject or on different subjects, at the Albert Hall in London, the Hippodrome in Paris, and St. Peter's in Rome.

I confess I was just a little disappointed that Sunday afternoon. No doubt Mr. Benjamin and his friends are doing their best for us, and one may readily believe that free communication with the Twentieth Plane (five hundred miles distant) might heal our ecclesiastical divisions and put an end to war among the nations; but one must sorrowfully admit that in these days there is a marked falling-off in thaumaturgic ability. God forbid that anyone should cheat us, as Alexander, for example, cheated the people with his serpents! But could we not have something in the older style? It is not so very long since three women raised eight unborn kings, and in an earlier age the woman "that had a familiar spirit at Endor" had simply to say to her client: "Whom shall I bring up?" I desired greatly to see Luther, and, indeed, was haunted by the pleasing dread that his burly form might suddenly roll in from behind the dark-coloured curtains of the stage. I should like to get from his own lips further particulars of the Devil and the Inkwell, and to ask for an introduction to Catherine von Bora and the six little Luthers. And should the capacious urn ever shake me out a meeting with the reformer, be it on earth or on the Twentieth Plane (five hundred miles distant) — which God grant I may one day reach — I will ask him his candid opinion of Mr. Benjamin's inside.

D. Duff.