p. 510 | Spiritualism by Editor

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 16, 1882

Spiritualism.

By Editor

Sometime since, we clipped the following from a San Francisco paper:—

"A sensible writer in the California Christian Advocate notices the concessions to Spiritualism which have been made by Rev. Joseph Cook, Professor Phelps, and other evangelical clergymen, assuming the superhuman [demoniac] origin of ancient witchcraft, necromancy, etc., and not only allowing but asserting that the phenomena of modern Spiritualism are from the same source. He says that Dr. Buckley, in his review of Professor Phelps' book, entitled 'How Shall the Pulpit Treat Spiritualism?' denies emphatically the superhuman origin of the witchcraft, etc., forbidden in the Old Testament, and shows that the mode of treating the subject is wrong. 'If we concede spirit agency in the rappings, writings, and table tippings we have surrendered to the enemy, and must be vanquished by him in every conflict. . . . Let the Christian church acknowledge the supernatural origin of these phenomena, and the Spiritualists then have two-thirds of the battle."

From all of which we dissent. Joseph Cook saw things for which he could not account on natural principles; and so did Dr. Crooke, who studied the phenomena carefully for a series of years. Dr. Buckley says the Spiritualists have two-thirds of the battle if you concede the supernatural origin of the phenomena. But if you deny it, and the Spiritualists prove it, as they have to the satisfaction of hundreds of thousands, among whom are some of the ablest minds and most careful investigators, then the Spiritualists have the whole of the battle. And so it happens every time; when an investigator, who long and patiently examines it, determined not to acknowledge any superhuman agency in the manifestations, finds that which baffles every effort, and defies every test, to detect collusion, he yields entirely to its claims. But concede the fact that Satan works "with all power, and signs, and lying wonders," to deceive the world; that miracles are of two kinds, to lead and to mislead, as in the days of Moses and the magicians of Egypt; that a power described in

Rev. 13:11 and onward (which we believe applies to our own country), which, in the words of prophecy, "deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by those miracles which he had power to do," and we cannot see where Spiritualists have any advantage. Their works uniformly tend to evil—to prove that which is false and wicked, turning away the minds of the believers from God, the Bible, Christ, and from everything that is pure and good.

The difficulty with the theologians of the present day is that, as the pagans and papists before them, they deify the dead; make them objects of reverence, and ascribe to them more than mortal wisdom and power, often declaring that they are the guardian angels of the living. So doing and so believing, they yield at once to the false claims and pretences of the spirits, and accept them as their friends and kindred. If they believed the words of the Bible, that "the dead know not anything," Eccl. 9:5, and remembered that "Satan and his angels" fell from Heaven by sin, "kept not their first estate," and that "the spirits of devils," or demons, are "working miracles, which go forth unto the kings of the earth and of the whole world, to gather them to the battle of that great day of God Almighty," they would have a shield from the snare and the deception without the necessity of ignoring the testimony of the Bible, as their theory compels them to do.

But that course would be attended with another disadvantage: If they used these scriptures to meet the present phase of Spiritualism they would have to confess that we are in the last days, and that the battle of the great day, and the coming of Christ are near. But that would never do; the people would call them "Adventists," which they could never bear. So they flee to Tarshish, and go down into the sides of the vessel and quietly fall asleep, and let Satan work on and gather his followers by the millions without a word from the armory of the Lord being hurled at him.

"Orthodoxy" lays the track by making the Platonic philosophy their chief dependence; Satan furnishes the rolling stock; Spiritualists run the trains; and thousands go together there, in the broad road to perdition.