Seducing Spirits and Doctrines of Devils: A Sermon, Preached in St. Barnabas Free Mission Chapel ...

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dcvila, A Bbjnaon preached in Bt»
Barnabas* free mlaaion chapel > Burii
ton, HtJ. l*"^^'^

Sibming %i;rits, ani> ^adnmn ai ||tfails.

A SERMOlsr,

PREACHED IN

ST. BARNABAS' FREE MISSION CHAPEL,

BURIjING-XOjN", N. J.

Eev. Wm. Croswell ^oane, B.D.,

BSCTOB OF mart's PARISH AND PRIEST OF THE HISSION.

FXnSIiIBHED B7 A CHUBGHWOMABT.

• . . r •'

49 White Street.
1863.

Qi-

215123

SERMON.

DeUTERONOHT 18, PART Or YEBSES 10, 11, 12 AND 16.

" There shall not be found among you one that useth divmation, . . or an en
chanter, or a witch, or a charmer, or a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard,
or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord:
and because of Ihese abominoHons, the Lord thy God doth drive them out from
before thee, . . . The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet firom the
midst of thee, of thy brethren ; unto him ye shall hearken."

On the third Sunday in Lent, ten days ago, among the teach-
ings of the Holy Chui'ch for that particular day, was the won-
drous record of the transfiguration of the Lord ; of the admission
of the three chosen Apostles, St. Peter, St. James, and St. John, to
behold the glorified body of Jesus, and to hear the mysterious
converse between Him and His faithful servants, Moses and Elias,
who there appeared with Him. Li my office as the teacher of
those whom God has committed to my charge, I had stood with
them, in the afternoon, in the presence of that excellent glory, to
learn, as far as we may, here, the lessons of that mysterious event
and had felt " how good it was for us to be there." When I
came down, I was confronted by the statement, that some of those
souls for whom I am to give account to God, had been drawn
by curiosity into contact with a circle of men who pretend to
hold converse with the souls of the departed. I felt at first that
private warnings would be enough to check the danger. I dread
to give to any thing, which contains so large an admixture of silly

j^*llgarity, the dignity of a public contradiction. But as I thought
^f- the unwearied and varied devices of the adversary of our
*souls : how sometimes, in the majesty of an angel fallen, he leads
us to the high level of argument ^nd reason ; and sometimes, in
the dishonour of a hissing snake, he crawls upon the belly of vul-
gar and insinuating lies ; as I felt how such an infection spreads
and taints, in secret, many souls, which show no outward symp-
toms, till, suddenly, they die ; as I felt that, by God's grace, I
might save other souls than those committed to my care, my
sense of duty took another turn^ and I could feel, in a degree, as
my mind turned from thinking of the glory of the Transfigura-
tion, to thinking of the vile, sensuous blasphemies of modern
Spiritualism, I could feel, in a degree, what the Apostles must
have felt when coming down from the company of the Saviour
glorified, with Moses and Elias, they descended to the loathsome,
terrible sight of that poor demoniac boy, torn by that evil spirit,
gnashing his teeth and withering* away, and wallowing, foaming
on the ground. And I came here that. night, with very little time
for thought, to stand, as I stand now, to speak to Christian men,
to any man who believes the Bible to be the Word of God, upon
the duty of my ordination vow, " the Lord being my helper," to
"banish and drive away from the Church all erroneous and
strange doctrines contrary to God's Word." The dumb spirit
that possessed that boy mastered the imperfect faith of nine
Apostles on the day of the Transfiguration. If your imperfect or
uninstructed faith have yielded to the claim of this new device
of Satan,. it is not his greater power, but your weakness. And
when the voice of Christ speaks out of His old Word, "7* charge
thee ;" the voice of the Revealer of the Scriptures, out of their let-
ter ; the voice of the Incarnate, out of the written Word, of both the
Old and the 'New Testaments ; when that voice speaks out, as it
does out of the text in Deuteronomy and the Scriptures which I
shall quote to-night, then shall the truth prevail. I simply state
as what I mean to prove, that the pretensions of so-called Spirit-
ualism are false, impossible, blasphemous, and dangerous to men's

• Stjpaivercu, S. Mark 9 : 18.

/

/

souls. It may seem strange, beloved, to turn for the rebuke of
to-day's sins to the Scriptures of centuries ago ; but all Scripture
is profitable for reproof and for instruction, because it aU is given
by God. And if Christian men fall into the errors of which Jews
were warned, if Christian men commit heathen abominations, the
old voice of God speaks out, through all the centuries since its
first utterance, to condemn the revived wrong. And while the
comfort of the ancient promises still stands for us, the sternness
of the old denunciations stands as well. They speak in every age
to all who have any need to hear.

Now, the prohibition in the text covers a class of sins which it
denounces in one breath, and gives the reason for their denuncia-
tion. The sins thus put together are kindred sins. Charmers,
enchanters, witches, and wizards, are on a level in the eya of God
with necromancers and consulters of familiar spirits. The dis-
tinctions among these various words are worthy of notice. In
the original they mean, fortune-tellers, consulters of birds, those
who sing enchantments, examiners of the entrails of sacrificed
children,* ventriloquists ;f while the word necromancer J means
directly a man who inquires of the dead.

In such company, at the outset, in God's esteem, do spirituaL
ists stand. Fortune-tellers and witches are handed over to be
used by the most ignorant, most vulgar, most degraded human
beings. No man having a claim to the title of respectability
would dare to own that he so much as thought of using them.
They stand with jugglers, and tricksters with cards, as either vul-
gar impostors, forbidden by law, or as clever sleight-of-hand men.
I need not argue against them ; I speak of them to show you in
what esteem the Word of God, and men who believe the Word
of God, hold necromancers, or those who inquire of the dead.
Of these consulters of the dead there are two classes, all de-

* Tertullian, ApoL I. 23. Magicians also produce apparitions, and disgrace the
souls of the departed, . . entrance (edidunt, rather slay) children to make them
utter oracles.

f 'EyyaarpifwOog, a Tentriloquist ; pytho in the Hebrew plural is, mendaccs^
liars.

J EnepoTQv tovs veKpovg,

6

scribed by the one term. Some went and lay all night upon a
grave, with their ear pressed to the earth, and heard the voice of
the dust that there was buried ; or else, fell asleep while there, and
heard it in their dreams. Others, and of such was the Witch of
Endor, by their control of familiar spirits, or demons,* claimed
to bave power over the souls of the departed. Against the whole
practice, in either way conducted, this Word of God protests.
And upon what grounds? That they were heathen abomina-
tions; the veiy abominations on account of which the seven
nations were driven from the promised land. And into these,
men are to fall in Christian times. With abominations such as
these, that good land which God has given us is to be overrun.
O my beloved ! at the start, take in and realize this truth.

Sorely upon our nation lies the heavy hand of God. Religious
men must own this visitation a punishment for sin. How far
does this abomination enter in to fill up the cup which is so over-
full ? Those seven nations of Canaan are, in all Christian esteem,
the type of essential and intolerable wrong, of the seven deadly
sins. Will you draw nigh, on any motive, to touch them ? Can
you, without defilement ? " There shall not be among you one
who inquires of the dead." And there are among us, it is stated,
two millions openly, four millions imperfectly, practising, believ-
ing this, which, in a heathen nation, was abomination unto the
Lord.

But there is a deeper, farther reaching reason even than this.
" The Lord thy God hath not sufiered thee to do " these things.
" The Lord thy God shall raise up unto thee a Prophet out of
the midst of thee, of thy brethren ; unto him ye shall hearken."
Here, my beloved, was the great fundamental truth on which this
prohibition stands. A far-off point, centuries away ; a prophecy,
whose fulfilment should wait, and wait, through generations ; a
prophet to he raised up ; a hope, a promise, a future thing ; this
was ground enough on which to forbid all seeking after revela-
tions from the dead. Toward this the straining eye of every
faithful Jew looked, peering through the lingering twilight of

* Justin Martyr, Dial, cum Trypho. Sec. cv.

that protracted dawn. Toward it the types all turned, tlie pro-
phecies pointed, the providences of God cx)nTerged, And ever
and anon, like a lamp shining in a dark place^ there came a voice
from that expected Prophet, the Reveal er, speaking through Hie
cominisfciioned teachers, and declaring all that was needful and
best for them to know. To those who would be wise beyond this,
intruding into those things which the j could not see, the only way
open to gratify their wicked curiosity was in the use of these
forbidden arts, against which stood out the stem denunciation of
the tejtt.

But, my beloved, you may make the case stronger still,
with the fuller teachings of our time. Listen to that only
voice, that comes to ua out of the mysterious shadows of the
abode of departed souls, in tlie Saviour's parable of the rich
man and Lazarus* The agony of that rich man's helpless
remorse longed for some other voice, some voice from the dead,
to reach his brethren's bearts. And from the Father of the faith-
fill, in whose bosom rest all faithful souls, the answer came —
whose perpetual present is the eternal witness to the sufficiency
of the Seriptural revelation : " They ham Moses and the proph-
ets." How it goes back to take in God's ancient word : ^' A
Prophet shall the Lord raise np of thy brethren.^^ How it sweeps
up from that first revelation every inspired voice, from Moses
down to Malachi. How it holds np to every aonl of man the
completed Canon as containing all needful, ay, all possible raiwii-
festations of God, ^*'ThQj have Moses and the prophets." Ah^
beloved I if tho necromancers of our day could get a voice to
syeak to them fi'om Paradise ; if the vulgar violence of their
knockings and callings could wake even an echo from that blessed
place ; could they so much as stir a ripple of its peace to bi^ak
Itself against those open gates, this would be the only answer, or
else the words of Jesus Christ are false : *' Ye have Moses and
the prophets." ^ay, more for us* This was for Jews, This
was for ante-Christian days. This was for the Scriptures of the
Old Testament only. With what a thousand-fold increased force
do the Divine reason in Deuteronomy, and the word of Abra
ham in St, Luke, come to ua* We have Moses and the prophetis^

8

and the Ptx^phet Uke unto 3fost?Sy ev€7h Christ y we have Him in His
incarnate ILle; we have Hiui m the power of His peq>etual pre-
sence I wc have Him in the Bihle ; we have Him in the Church ;
we have Him in our heaita ; we have Him living^ teaching, reveal-
ing, leading, openinfj Heaven, showing us the Father. How dare
we turn from Him to any other revelation ? How dare we msult
the fulness of Hie mercy by seeking something more, from the
Living to the dead ? Mind yottj hcloved, in the outskirts of this
siihjectj before you touch it, that you may not touch it, the old
Word of God reads so for ns, and we shall be judged by this
reading: "There shall not be fotind among you a necromancer,
one who inquireth of the dead. The Lord thy God hath raised
tfp mito thee a Prophet, from tlie midst of thee, of thy brethren *
nnto him ye shall hearken." And from the place of the departed
comes np the anti[>hon of thek response, w^ho, since the first Eas-
ter even, Imve rejoiced in fuller light and richer peace ; ye have,
nay, ratlier, in the communion of saiDts, wt have Moses and the
prophets, and tk^ Prophet, the Anointed, the Messiah — let na hear
them, I aeeount this in itself to condemn aa tinlawiiil and out-
rageous, the impertinent pretensions of spiritualism.

But I want to look with yovi a little further into the workings
of its claim, and their resnlts. A single error attacks truth on
many sides ; and every side bristles with defenses. The weapons
vary as the points of attack change. And remember, beloved,
that truth does not attack ; it defends itself. These pushing, for-
ward, impudent inventions are the offenders* Kot to be feared,
in one sense \ because the truth of God is sure to prevail \ and
yet, in another, to be feared^ because their epectous falseness will
allure, to destruction, many a silly souL I do not propose to en-
ter into a detailed examination of spiritualism. Whether its
signs and tokens ai*e tricks or not ; whether they are wrought by
natural or by supernatural jueans; whether tlfey depend upon
Bleight-of-hand and ventriloquism ; whether they are tlic uncontroll-
able workings of well-known physical laws ; whether they are
merely, or mainly, the overwrought violence of that imagination
which tunis white sheets upon a clothes-iine into ghosts^ and the

9

phosphorescent marsh-lights into the devil's lanterns; or whether
they are the operations of some yet miknown law of nature ;. with
these things I have no conceni. The vulgarity, the sensuality,
the low common-place, the falseness, the money-making trickery,
the utter folly, the violent absurdity, of much that is mixed up
with spiritualism, refer a good part of its claims to a decidedly
earthly origin, and that ia very low, and* ignorant, and uneducated
one. I am not prepared to say whether or not there is more than
this in it. Nor do I dispute its phenomena. The magicians of
Egypt worked miracles, as well as Moses, up to a certain point.
And Simon Magus was a successful sorcerer. I confess to a gen-
eral disbelief in them. If I were asked to define spiritualism, I
should call it a mixture of the essentially earthly and the super-
natural*; the earthly being of the lowest and most earthy sort,
and the spiritual being evidently, and beyond a doubt, devilish.
But that does not touch the case. What I have to do with is
their right or wrong, their truth or error.* And these are ques-

* The following extract from a notice of Mr. Homers Autobiography, in the Sa-
turday Review, makes it needless for me to expose, as I had meant, just this faL
lacy, which forms the whole basis of the argument in that very curious but very
tedious book, by Robert Dale Owen, suggestively called Footfalls on the JBounda^
ries of Another World, We would advise the former member of Congress to
look out what sort of a world it is, on whose boundaries his feet are falling :

" And here the inquiry becomes one of great«practical importance. Few people
in these days of loose thought are capable of seeing what the question at issue in
regard to spiritualism is, or how far it goes. They are told that if they disbelieve
in the facts of spiritualism they are disciples of a merely material philosophy, and
that they ought, in consistency, to disbelieve in all spiritual things ; that they are
Sadducees, not only as regards revelation, but as regards all religion, and that they
are skeptics to the extent of disbelief in spirit itself. And they are also told that
the objections which are now urged against spiritualism were urged against Galileo,
Copernicus, Harvey, the steam-engme, the electric telegraph, and all sorts of things,
which were at firft incredible, only because they contradicted the registered expe-
rience of mankind. The consequence is, that many persons had wilUngly run the
risto of being thought over-credulous rather than irreligious. And at the same
time, some think it more philosophical to have no opmion on spiritualism, and
hesitate to speak out on its absurdities, because they are truly told that man is not

10

tions independent of any examination of the phenomena. It is
not needful to get drunk in order to preach against drunkenness,
or to mingle with profligates to denounce lust. Nor need you

acquainted as yet with all the secrets and hidden forces of nature. The result is,
on the one hand, an undue and blind submission to testimony, or rather to the
name and pretense of testimoiiy ; on the other hand, an intellectual vice is made
to do duty as a moral virtue, and inquiry and investigation, if they result in ad-
verse conviction, are stigmatized as treason to the habit of religious faith, and also
to philosophic caution and hesitation. Men of science, atid still more, men who
would be thought to be men of science, are promised the revelation of higher and
yet undeveloped laws of nature ; and a greater discovery than that which adorns
the name of Newton is to be the reward of those scientific investigators who will
only not say that Mr. Homers floating on the ambient air is a delusion. Men of re-
li^on are told that they practically disbelieve the New Testament if they dare to
doubt that the spirits of Franklin and Coleridge dictate bad English to ai^ ignorant
old woman in Boston, or to an ungranmiatical medium who lodges up two pair of
stairs in Red Lion street, Holbom. It is only testimony of a certain kind, then, that
can give credibility to any alleged facts ; and the requisites of testimony vary in pro-
portion to the nature of the alleged facts. The testimony which is sufficient to
guarantee the alleged fact that it rained yesterday at Windsor may be very slight ;
but it would require an amount of testimony of the very strongest kind, that is,
the uncontradicted assertion of a vast multitude of persons dwelling on the spot,
and of unimpeachable veracity, and who had no interest in propagating a false-
hood, and who had every requisite for the right use of their senses, to accredit
the fact that the constellation Orion was visible at Windsor for a whole hour yes-
terday at midday. Further, though the nature of the proof from testimony is the
same if three, or if three thousand witnesses depose to it, yet the credibility of the
witnesses varies. That is to say, all persons are not equally credible. In the case
of the alleged facts of spiritualism, we are bound to demand testimony which can
stand the very severest tests, because the facts alleged are directly contradictory to
the experience of the whole world. It is quite true that for some of them there is
precedent As Mr. Home's introduction writer aptly remarks, the Cock-lane ghost
anticipated all the phenomena of rapping; and Mr. Howitt can, with a good sup-
ply of paste, put together two, as he might have put together two doasen volumes
of ghost stories and old wives* tales, which have grown up within the last two
thousand years. But the alleged fact of Mr. Home floating on the air is quite
another matter. We are not aware of any instance of the suspension of the laws
of nature and of the human body in space parallel to the prodigy related o^Mr.
Home, except a similar, and not uninstructive, miracle attributed to Apollonius of
Tyana, and recorded by his biographer, Philostratus."

11

eataiume and ti^y the working of spiritiialieEi in order to denotmoe
and disbelieve it. Kay» false as it iSj there is danger in go doing*
Ton do wrong in dabbling with it at all* Tlie h€gifming of it is
a sin. And when jou begin it, when you enter into it, you do
wrong, you commit a sin. Ainnseinent, curiosity, love of nov-
elty, BpecTilatiTe iequiryj are no excuse for committing sin. It
was only the curiosity to see the dangbters of the land that led
Dmah, the daughter of Jacob, to her own disbononr, and caused
the death of all the men of the city of Shechenij the son of Ha^
mor. Wbeu you presume, when you tempt the Lord, when you
go out of the path of your Christian duty, you go away from the
protection of God and the angelic care, I do not know, beloved^
n^r you, how thin the veil is that partti us from unknown and un-
imagined mysteries. That invidbk spirit of evil, that great and
terrible reality, the devil, is near us ; bow near I know not, but
always very near, .And when you reach your hand out wilfiilly
into this veil, hung up by God, to grope and grasp after what God
ha^ purposely concealed, that evil power may be there to clutch
it ; to fill It with what seems a discovery, to draw this groping
hand^ and the eoul with itj into utter destruction and deatk
*' Touch not the aecux^sed thing," This is the only rule. If to
inquire %£ the dead be, as we have seen, an abomination to the
Lord, even the fact of their answering, even if it bo proved, does
not juBtify it. If any further revelation is contrary to the re-
veal t-d word of God, then the Christian duty of every man m
plain : to condemn it and avoid it as an evil, no matter what its
seeming tokens. Try the spirits whether they be of God or no.
If they contradict, nay, if they are in the fact of their pretef%ded
existence^ contrary to what h written, they are tried and selfn^on-
demned, I dwell on this because I would have you understand
it* It is St, PauVB urgency against the miinifcstation of the man
of sin, with *' all deeeivablenesa of unrighteousness," Not ex-
amine it, but ** hold fast the traditions which ye have been
taught," Oppose possible error with positive truth . " If we, or
an angel from Heaven, preach unto you anf/ oth^^ gospel, kt him
Im aceiirscdJ*-

13

But now, taking holy Scripture as our guide, let us look at the
two inspired records of communication with the world of spirits.
Let me contrast, for the benefit of spiritualists and Christians,
Saul the wicked king of Israel, and Paul the holy Apostle of
Christ. I have just read to you the strange* story of Saul's inter-
view with the Witch of Endor. On the face of it, it seems a war-
rant for consulting the dead. I should be willing to grant that
the prophet Samuel did really answer to the call of the woman,
and appear to Saul. And if modern spiritualism prefers to claim
this story as a testimony to its truth, I will gladly give it over.
Now let us look at the company, consulters of the dead get into,
in this, story. Who was Saul ? He was the chosen and anointed
king of Israel — every inch a man, every inch a king. This was
his first estate, when the cry, " God save the King," called down
God's freely-given favour and full blessing upon His faithful servant.
And yet that same man stands before us, in this picture, sneaking,
in disguise and under cover of the night, to the poor out-of-the-
way hovel of an old despised and persecuted witch, and stooping
to the whisper of an old crone, who peeped and muttered. of gods
ascending out of the earth, of an old man coming up, covered with
a mantle. There is no such picture of abject degradation ; his
royalty, his godliness, ay, his mere manhood dishonoured and
degraded and defiled. Spiritualists are welcome to this pattern.
For how did Saul come to this ? The steps of his fall are grad-
ual and evident, down to this lowest deep. And there are too
many of Saul's sort among our spiritualists, too many who have
travelled Saul's downward path, that easy descent to hell of which
the poet speaks, to add the dignity to it of either manliness or
godliness. Saul started, as we have seen ; but he soon fell away.
His first sin was an intrusion upon the sacred office of the prophet.
It was a sin of which modern days, with their large words of lib-
eral Christianity, would have made little, would have applaud-
ed. Before the battle with the Philistines at Michmash, the He-
brews became alarmed. The Philistine host was larger ; and no
sacrifice was offered to the Lord to secure the victory. And Sam-

* 1 Samuel xxvlii. This whole chapter ought to be read.

18

nel waited seven ctavF^, nud the king grew itnpatieut, and tbe peo-
ple been me frightened ; and he did not wait for Samuel to come,
but forvM hrmsilf^ and offered the burnt offering* God, the same
yegiterdny, to-daj, and fore%*er, hates the wilful intrusion of un-
aiithorized persons into holy offices. It ia the spirit of sect and
ecbism^ in direct oppofiition to God's essence^ which ia nnitj.
And for this §in, Samuel rebuked Ijini, wammg Idin of the loss of
his kingilom. Again, at Sliur, when the vietoiy was won over
the Aniak-lvitCH, 8aid disolx^ed God's express comm^jnd to des-
troy utterly the whole nation, king, subjects, and cuttle. He
spared the king, and ke]>t the spoil, under a mean and flilae pre-
teuse, and then Bought to deceive God and Hia prophet about hh
digobedience. He rebelled against the Lord. In the strong word
of Godj he rejected the Lord ; and though there caiue the eonti-
mi^nt of repentance, of fear, and the hope of restoration, we hear
of him next, that for his contijuied sin and disobedienecj the Spirit
of the Lord departed from him, mid an evil spint troubled him.
Ton will remember how from tins time he ran down the lung line
of continuous and repeated ains, till he committed suieide ; how
he betrayed David and sought Ms life, by the meanest and most
contemptible treachery ; how he pursued him as men hunt wild
beaf^tH^ imtouched by David's magnanimity and forgetful of his
former love ; how he slew, in their defenselessuee&j eighty-three
of God's anointed priests ; how he drove Samuel away, bo that he
saw him no more till the day of hia death ; how ho eeased finally
to inquire of the Lord at alh He would not turn to Samuel ; he
would not consult the school of tite prophets at Ramah ; he would
not inquire of Unm and Thummim* Saul has ceased to inquire
of the Lord, in His appointed Toices, and so the Lord eeased to
answer him j and in the la^t ^tage of his ruin and despair, when
after his siu all else had failed him, he tumed to the Witch of En-
dor, and sought to inquire of the dead* And this nian^bad in all
ways, a rejecter of God, and rejected by him, a refuser of all
proper sources of revelation or of worship, the betrayer and
would-be alayer of his friendj the murderer of God^B priests, &
man possessed with the devil, desperate, ruined, an unbeliever

14

virtually, and a gmcide — this roan, stDd XM heathen nations of
Canaaiij are the Scriptural patterns of men who inquire of the
dead, Bpiritualists are welcome to their exemplar and tlioir eom-
pany. But there h a further quetstion even than thia* When
under the cover of the night, that hides from men's eyes thieves
and man-slayers and adulterers, this hopeless man had crept with
stealthy steps and in disguise to Endor ; when he had humbled
himself to a wicked woman^ whom by the consistency of hia
kingly word he was bound to Ijantsh from the land, what did he
find? It was bad company he got into there, my friends^ and
cold comfort that he found. The description which I have read
to you answers Yery well to the wicked farces of our day ; the
mystery, the darkness, the woman's fear, the pretended vision,
seen only by the witch, the old man coming np, the mantle. But
who was it that spoke ? Beyond a shadow of a doubt to my
mind, it was the devit* I know that Justin Martyr, in a casual
passage, takes the other view. But the general consent of the
fathers, and the context of the story, go to show that the soul of
Samuel was nndistm^bed, and that, under a phantasm, Satan him-
self wrought one of "those lying wonders/' of which Bt. Paul
warns us to beware to*day, Kow, so far as the lesson goes, it
matters not whether it was Samuels soul or not. The power that
brought np whatever spoke to Saul, was the devil. This Witch
of Endor had a familiar spirit, a daemon, a python, one of the same
evil spirits that inspired the false oracles of heathen Greece and
Kome ; and to this demon, this devil^ this evil spirit, Saul ap*
pealed, and from it got his answer. All contact, therefore, with
the dead, if it be possiblej if it be suggested — as the context and
Catholic interpretation declare it is not, in this passage — all eon-

*That "scourge of iho FatherSj" Dfdllej makes a ^at point of this in Ms
attacks. That lie doea, pfores the general view of Chrtitiauity to be opposed to
the rcolitj of this appantion. If Jufitm Martjr needed defense aguinst such a foe,
it is enough to mj^ that errontiouji peraooal opinio na on points not essential to the
Faith, do not tu validate the value of his finptvptov to wlmt that Faith waa. I am
pefsaaded, from an exumioAtion itiScientljr thorongb^ that the views here ad-
vanced are sustained bj the grett bulk of Christian interpreters^ aneieiit and
moderm

15

tflct with the dead is contact mth the devil, disqtueting the dead.
* Aiid it ia utterly ftud foimally opposed to the whole ScriptaraJ
rcreJation of the state of the departed^ that the souls at rest can
be disquieted by any power of earth or hell. Here, then^ you
have your eboicey to turn foi- knowledge to the Hving God, Whose
manifestation is Tnerciiul and alUBufficient, or, kamng Him — for
you can not have both — to tnm to the dead, through the devil ;
in plainest wordp, to the devil directly. Tiie spiritualist is com-
pelled to abandon God's ancient and attested revelation in the
Bible, and take instead the mlgar, eilly, pensual, material mixture
of twaddle snd lies, whose base absurdity would disclaim their
devilisb origLii, wcra it not that they seem cunningly smted and
adapted to base and absurd minds. When God^ had refused to
answer Saul in the appointed way, He surely would not have an-
aw^ercd him in ways forbidden, His holy prophet, Samuel, surely
could notj and would not bave done that which God in terms re-
fused to do. But for this crowning act of sin, in turning to for-
bidden arts for knowledge, there must have been a plea to repent-
ancCj had God^s prophet really spoken to the king- The sin at
Amalek could not have been stated by Samuel as a failure to
execute God*s wrath^ when the great wrong was the fiict^ and
not the nature of the disobedience. And the prophecy (tiot acou-
i-ate, because the time fixed was not true) that Saul and his sons
should die on the 7¥iOTro%(j^ tnay well have been a clever guess,
based upon Satan's knowledge of God's declared purpose to take
the kingdom away from Saul* Tims, under that cbnjured up old
man at Endor, whom, ofdy ths old tr<mB mw^ Satan seems evident-
ly to follow the victim of his long deceiving, mdth devilish taunts
of his desperate ruin. '* The Lord is departed from thee, and is
become thine enemy. To-morrow shalt thou and thy sons be
with me" We give Saul over, then, and the woman with her
familiar spirit, and the abominations of the heathen nations, and
the devil their fellow, to keep consort with modem consulters
with the spirits of the dead ; only, for the sake of the dignity of
Satan, an angel aUhough /alien , utterly disclaiming the purpose
of referring to him a tenth, a thousandth, a millionth part of

16

the shallow, flimsy, self-condemning folly of the spiritualists of
to-day.

But now, beloved, turn from this painful picture of humanity,
drawn down beneath that little lower than the angelic level, to a
contemplation of another sort, that lifts earth towards heaven,
and draws up man, redeemed and restored in likeness to the God-
man, to his legitimate communion with the saints departed, the
holy angels, the triune Gt)d. It breaks upon us like the breath
and light of upper air to those who come up from the almost suf-
focation of the deep pit of a mine. I must read you, in his own
inspired words, the record of St. Paul's communication with the
place of the departed, and with heaven. " It is not expedient
doubtless to glory. I will come to visions and revelations of the
Lord. I knew a man in Christ about fourteen years ago, (whether
in the body, I can not tell, or whether out of the body, I can not
tell : God knoweth ;) such an one caught up to the third heaven.
And I knew such a man, (whether in the body, or out of the
body, I can not tell : God knoweth ;) how that he was caught up
into paradise, and heard unspeakable words, which it is not law-
ful for a man to utter." * Here is an inspired, authentic, attested
record, attested by the miracles of the writer, by the testimony
for eighteen centuries of the Christian Church, by God's wonder-
ful preservation of the sacred volume that contains it. Here is a
record of a vision of Paradise, ay, of heaven itself. There is no
wrinkled, muttering, frightened witch ; no sneaking, disguised,
desperate man ; no shade of night, no pretense of magic, no dis-
quieting of the consecrated dead. The old serpent has not wiped
his snaky tail across, to blur the fair, celestial colours of this pic-
ture. Notice the attractive modesty of the introduction. St.
Paul withdraws himself from sight ; he is coming to visions and
revelations of the Lord, not to self-glorification. He begins with
the purpose of not alluding to himself. He is impersonal in his
shrinking modesty : " I knew a man in Christ." He has so shrunk
from any boastfulness, that he has kept locked up in his own heart
for fourteen years the amazing honour and privilege which God

*2 Corinthians 12 : 1-6.

17

vouchsafed to him. But there are other points than this. This
is not a trance, a theoretical, sentimental, nervous agitation of the
feelings, an enthusiastic unbalancing of the mind, in which judg-
ment is dethroned, and discrimination inebriated. It is a transla-
tion so perfect, that perhaps soul and body, certainly the soul,
were absolutely caught up, removed from earth. Not crouching
on the earth-mounds that cover decay and human dust, not bow-
ing down to the groimd in a crone's cavern, and lying all along
upon the earth, but lifted up, translated, the Christian Apostle
held communion with the living souls of the departed, in their
blessed abode ; ay, with Him that liveth and was dead, the
ascended Saviour, Who is alive for evermore. And for this com-
munion, remember, the spirits of the dead were not brought
down, or called up ; they were not disquieted and called from
their rest, but the soul of the Apostle was caught up from earth
to the high level of their home. Again, here in this inspired
statement of an attested fact, the unity of God's truth and the
consistency of these divine revelations are perfectly preserved.
St. Paul is caught up into heaven, and into Paradise. The broad
distinction is drawn. There are two distinct translations, two
separate visions. He is twice caught up ; first, ^w^ rptrov dvpavov,
eve7i as far as the third, the highest heaven ; and then, after that,
you must have noticed how the distinction is kept, and the sepa'-
ration guarded ; after that, distinct and separate from that, he is
caught up into Paradise. First into the far-off holiness and glory
of perfect heaven, of angelic intercourse, of God's immediate
presence ; and then, after that, by a second translation into Para-
dise, the garden, " the palace park," the calm and sweet abode,
where the spirits of the just, made perfect, are in joy and felicity ;
whence they behold " the vision of the king m his beauty," and
of the heavenly land, from them not very far off; whither Paul is
entered now, among God's special saints, and the thief from the
cross, among God's accepted penitents ; where all God's saints
of every age still wait, " God having provided this l^etter thing
for us, that they without ics should not be made perfect." Be-
loved brethren, I dwell strongly upon this. I know the outer

18

world has fallen far away from the accurate fulness of the Scrip-
ture revelation of the state of the departed. I know how men
talk as though their souls went mstantly from earth, to heaven or
to Gehenna. I know how many assert it, out and out. I do not
stop to combat this error, with such texts as I have alluded to ;
with the surface absurdity of calling back for judgment^ souls
already entered upon their punishment or their reward. You
know the Catholic faith, of the communion of saints in the holy
Catholic Church, as its reach extends to Paradise, by the further
Catholic doctrine of Christ's soul descending into Hades, or hell.
But while the gates of hell, irvXai ddov^ the gates of Hades, of
Paradise, of the place of departed spirits, while these gates pre-
vail not, according to Christ's promise, against the Church ; while
through them she holds fast her communion between the living
members of the body, on earth and in Paradise ; while she points
us, through their opening, to see the dim disclosure of their rest
and peace, who " rejoice in their beds," who yet have " received
not the promise," whose souls are in the hand of God, who are
" in Abraham's bosom ;" while those gates prevail not against
her, the powers of hell, of Gehenna, prevail not either. But they
do prevail, where men have made shipwreck of their faith. And
this very foolery and falsehood of the devil bringing souls up from
hell, or down from heaven, where 7/et the souls of men are not —
to speak of their final condition — this very fact, that his revelation
through spiritualism ignores and denies the Scriptural, Catholic,
comfortable truth of the soul's resting-place, and waiting place, is
argument enough against the pretensions of his claim.

But go with me a step more. Listen to the voice of this one
only man, who certainly and beyond a doubt had communication
with that mysterious world of spirits then in Paradise, He
heard unspeakable words, apprjja prjuara^ (it is as though, he said,
unwordable words,) words that could not be put into words;
which {& ovK ^ov) it is not lawful for a man, rather which it is
out of the power of a man to utter. Need we go further to con-
trast the impudent fluency of the flash revelations of to-day, with
the reverent, compulsory unutterableness of the true revelation

19

of eighteen centuries ago ? For fourteen years, closely locked up
in Lis heart of hearts, the blessed Apostle kept from the ear of
man the fact of his vision of Paradise. And when it was forced
from him, when he was compelled to its avowal, he stops there.
He can go no further. His soul bursts with the glowing con-
sciousness of that unveiled glory. But the door of his mouth
is kept. His tongue can not find or frame an utterance. The
visions of heaven and the voices of Paradise can not articulate
themselves in human speech. Man's earthly language has no vo-
cabulary for such glory. And he can only say, what is always
true, that the voices of the dead, the visions of their place of
peace, the communications of departed souls, are unutterable;
unspeakable words, which it is not lawful, is not possible for a
man to utter.

Beloved, the case is ended. Spiritualism with its mock revela-
tion, its voices of departed souls, its message from the spirit-land,
tested by the plain self-evident letter of the word of God, is self-
condemned, and has no room left, no spot of ground this side of
the unbottomed pit, whereon to stand.

Thus are they false^ as contrary to God's w^ord; impossible^
because the souls at rest in God's hand can not be disquieted, and
because their voices are unutterable by human tongues in earthly
words; blasphemous^ because thus violating God's ancient law,
they refer for all their little spirituality to the evil spirit, the
devil ; and dangerous^ how ?

First and least, beloved, because spiritualism is the mother of
insanity. Those terrible and yet merciful charities, the mad-
houses, the asylums for the insane, by absolute and undeniable
statistics, are filled up by this devilish imposture of spiritualism
more than by any other ten causes. Spiritualism creates the ma-
niacs of this century. This is bad enough — - this is gain enough
for the devil. But this is not the most dangerous. This foul
womb, impregnate with satanic seed, has borne two monsters;
and its twin offspring, the last more dangerous, more deadly than
the first, insanity and infidelity, are stalking, like gigantic curses,
through the land. I warn you, beloved, who, for fun, for excite-

20

ment, for amusement, for curiosity, are playing with this monster
in disguise, I warn you that it is the mother of lost minds, and
of lost souls. How shall it not be? The spirit of this thing,
when you try it, is opposed to God's word. You must give up
one or the other. If you deny, renounce the Bible, you are an
infidel. Not merely do its pretended revelations contradict God's
revealed word, but the pretense of any added revelation is a de-
nial of the Word of God. Mark this well. It is the preaching of
another Gospel. It is adding to that complete and perfect Book,
the Bible, which, by God's explicit declaration, contains all trvth^
which is sealed up and closed, as the final and only revelation of
God manifest in the flesh, of the incarnate Word, Who is, in the
revealed word, the Image, whole, perfect, and complete, of the
invisible God. To seek after such a thing, to touch, to dabble in
it, is, whether you own it or not, virtually, necessarily, to deny,
to disbelieve, to denounce the Bible.

Such, my beloved, is the awful danger against which I would
warn you. Is it weak thus to fear ? Does it imply want of con-
fidence in the truth to plead with you not to come into contact
with such error ? I fear not for the truth, but for your souls.
While you do right they are safe, angel-guarded, protected by
God. But the devil is stronger than you, stronger than any but
God and godly men, and if you leave God out, and banish His in-
dwelling in your hearts by disobedient presumption, how shall it
not be with you as with poor, wretched Saul of old : that, having
rejected the word of the Lord, the Lord also shall reject thee ;
that the Spirit of the Lord shall depart from thee, and an evil spirit
from God shall trouble thee ; that the Lord, against whom you
fight, shall become your enemy. Receive, dearly beloved, as the
blessed Apostle exhorts the Thessalonian Christians, the love of
the truth, the love of the truth, (as it is in Jesus,) in His Scrip-
tures, His Church, that ye may be saved — lest God should send
you strong delusion that you should believe a lie.

So far for you and me, and* for them who are asleep in Jesus,

* It is not a little curious that Justin Martyr's individual admission that the
Witch of Endor really raised Saul, is followed by this declaration, against which

21

how shall we bear this insult and dishonour to them ; how shall
we endure as the old Father Tertullian said that " the souls of the
departed" of God's special saints, and of our best beloved, should
be " thus disgraced f^ that any should think to disquiet them, and
bring them up from the deep well of their calm peace to the
troubled, turbid surface of our outer world. No, my beloved, of
them think this, that " they are in peace," with Christ in Para-
dise, for Paradise is the garden of the Lord, in which His voice
walketh with His beloved. Not yet the Palace of the great King,
yet it is the Park, the Garden of the Palace, where the King lives.
Think that there, conscious with a deep spiritualized perception,
they see God, not yet close to, but no more through the darkened
glass of any window of flesh ; that there, mindful of us and yet
untouched with any sense of our sorrow, their prayers rise up
with ours, for us, as ours, with tt^rs, for them ; they saying,
" How long, O Lord ! holy and true ?" and we, " Thy kingdom
come ;" asking so for God's completed kingdom set up over
all ; and that " we, with them" in it, " may have our perfect
consummation and bliss in body and soul." Think that their
whole atmosphere is rest and peace, beyond the reach of fear, of
doubt, of earthly disturbance, no ripple of any wave from our
life's sea, so much as reaching that far-oif and quiet shore ; that
there, in the only not inspired words of the wise man, " the care
of them is with the Most High : for with his right hand shall he
cover them, and with his arm shall he protect them." Ay, and
remember the day shall be when we shall be caught up together
icith them to meet the Lord in the air, and 50, together with
them, we shall ever be with the Lord ; that, here and now, we
believe in the Holy Catholic Church, which is the communion,
the knitting together, the fellowship, the oneness of all the saints.
Think this of them ; and of yourselves, think this : That to touch
pitch is to be defiled ; that over the fathomless deep of the sea of
God's revelation, the ship sails safely when the pilot steers with

humanity revolts, and all Scriptural assertion and catholic belief rebel : " All the
souls of the prophets and of just and righteous men are subject to such opera-
tions."

22

compass and with chart ; but when he casts these away and nears
the outer circle of the maelstrom, meaning just to see it and sail
by, the quiet circling of its outer edge sweeps him in slow com-
posure round and round, almost unfelt, at first,, till he grows
giddy and the whirl goes faster, and the central gulf is nearer,
and the jaws of the whirlpool open ; and there is a shipwrecked
soul. " Thou^shalt not bring an abomination into thine house ;
but thou shalt utterly detest it, and thou shalt utterly abhor it,
for it is a cursed thing." And for those outside of you, who
have forsaken the right way and gone astray, remember this;
that neither controversy, nor denunciation avail so much as
prayer. And yet forget not His solemn words Who is the Author
of all revelation, the Source of all truth ; Who is, as He reveals
Himself, the Alpha and Omega, the Beginning and the Ending ;
Who, as such, opens and begins in Genesis and ends and seals in
the Apocalypse, the only revelation from God, till the beatific
vision is allowed; forget not His solemn words that end the
Revelation of St. John the divine : I, Jesus, have sent mine angel
to testify unto you these things in the churches : ... for I testify
unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this
book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto
him the plagues that are written in this book. ... He which tes-
tifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly ; amen. Even so
come. Lord Jesus !