1/1, November 30, 1878-November 17, 1883. $2.00 per year; 4 huge folio pages (24 x 36), then, in November 1879,8 pp., 12 x 17, then 17 x 23, then 12 pp., in June 1881.
Masthead of Ben Franklin with printing press, flying a kite into dark clouds that are being dispersed by the rising sun and the word "Truth."
The dating of the issues is based upon a system using 1848 (the year the Fox Sisters first communicated with spirits) as its base, so 1880 is "M.S. [Modern Spiritualism] 32." Roberts (1821-1888) is peculiar in many respects and deserves a book: he was a practicing lawyer, leading abolitionist and prominent Republican (son of a U.S. senator). He is frequently referred to as "General" or "Colonel," and may have played some role in the Civil War as well. He made his fortune as a manufacturer of cast-iron stoves and spared no expense or effort to further spiritualism. He became convinced of the truths of spiritualism about 1873 when he contacted the spirit of his father, and became a fanatic for the movement when he was put into contact with his deceased daughter through James A. Bliss. No fraud or imposture was too broad or gross to be believed and defended by Roberts.
His journal gave pride of place to attacks on Colonel John C. Bundy, editor of the Religio-Philosophical Journal (which tended to air criticisms of mediums' frauds), and featured accounts of the likes of Bliss (who advertised a magnetic healing paper and at least once confessed in court to his fraudulent performances - a confession which in no way deterred Roberts from supporting him) and his materializing wife; Jesse Shepard (the singing medium); R.D. Goodwin, M.D. (a follower of P.B.
Randolph); Eveline Hatch (the "Flower Medium"); Alfred James (who mediated the spirit of Randolph, among others but specialized in Greek and Roman figures); J.V. Mansfield (the "Spirit Postmaster,") and the like. And he was litigious, suing at the drop of a hat those defaming him or criticizing his proteges - even suing on behalf of Alfred James after James had signed an affidavit that he had been cheating. He also defended (against Madame Blavatsky and others) the Holmes materializing mediums (Jennie and Nelson), again bringing a lawsuit for defamation against a Philadelphia newspaper. Roberts carried on a vendetta against Blavatsky and Colonel Olcott, the founders of the Theosophical Society, and the journal is a mine of information about their time in Philadelphia at the end of 1875.
Roberts combined his interest in spiritualism with a rabid free-thought fervor that opposed "Christian spiritualism" and sought to disprove Christianity through the mediated discourses of Apollonius of Tyana and others who demonstrated that Christ was really Apollonius and Christianity really Buddhism, and that both had been delivered by the spirits and then perverted by "the priests" (Eusebius and the Council of Nicaea) into the form we have today. Roberts was vociferous and unrelenting, and the following diatribe was a not untypical example of the entertaining rhetoric that graced the pages of Mind and Matter: "a groundless, gratuitous, absurd, ridiculous, evil-intended, silly, uncouth, shameless, 'black-lie,' from first to last, inside and out." Quoted in W.E. Coleman, "Pappus and the Synodikon.-'Scholastic Nescience' Ventilated," Mind and Matter, July 16, 1881, 8.
Crabtree 1007. Boston Public Library microfilm; LOC; University of Rochester; Ohio Newspaper Project; Library Company of Philadelphia (complete run).
The periodical of choice for free-thought, pro-phenomena, stridently-defensive American Spiritualism in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The editor, Jonathan M. Roberts, was a controversial and combative figure within the movement. Contributors include many Spiritualists whose work does not appear in The Banner of Light, The Religio-Philosophical Journal or The Carrier Dove.
