SPIRITUALISM IN EUROPE.
By C. W. Stone
The following item from the New York Times will call to the reader’s mind the prophecy of John in Rev. 16:14,—“For they are the spirits of devils, 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.” The Times says: “What is called Spiritualism seems to be far more rampant in Europe than it is here. Like many American inventions, it meets with greater favor there than in the land of its origin. In London and the leading cities of Great Britain, spiritual séances are said to be a sort of entertainment as common as kettle-drums and dinner parties. They are very fashionable, and everybody who is anybody attends them. Pictures of mediums and materialized spirits, as they appear in open circle, are published in the English spiritual journals. Slade, whose tricks were exposed here, has received magnificent presents of watches, jewelry, and diamonds in Berlin. His séances have been attended in Germany and Russia by the highest nobility. In the capital of the former empire he exhibited to the chief of police, and the court conjurer, who narrowly watched the proceedings, made oath that the phenomena were not tricks. Mrs. Macdougall Gregory, widow of Prof. Gregory of Edinburgh university, is pronounced a firm believer. She gives spiritual receptions—so they are styled—and they are attended by high church dignitaries, some of whom are asserted to have proclaimed the truth of the new philosophy from the pulpit. The imperial family of Russia and Germany, Bismarck, Pres. McMahon, Gambetta, Gladstone, Disraeli, Browning, Carlyle, Tennyson, and all other renowned personages, are reported to be Spiritualists; but the report must be accepted, we suppose, as the Milesian stories that every noted man since the Ptolemies has, at some time or other, been born in Ireland.”