Spiritualists' National Convention.
The Spiritualists held their eighth National Convention at Lyceum Hall, N. Y., commencing Tuesday, Sept. 12, and holding three days. The matrimonial question was freely discussed, and much opposition raised to the present system of marriage, and the laws regulating the same. Several Mormons in Salt Lake City, who have lately embraced Spiritualism, sent their friendly greetings to the convention. As these Mormons have several wives, the subject of a plurality of wives was noticed; when Dr. Gardner, of Boston, said: “If you want to erect a standard of morality for Spiritualists, where are you going to begin? I don’t care if a man has one thousand wives. . . . Let us make each our own standard.” Wednesday morning, Miss Hinman, of Connecticut, opened the exercises by a speech in the form of a prayer addressed to the Creator, as “Our Father and mother.” She also called on the spirits of Theodore Parker and John Wesley to be present during the meeting. After some further exercises, another prayer was offered by Mr. Horton, a Universalist Spiritualist, which was addressed to the God of Heaven, after the manner of ordinary prayers by Universalist clergymen. This brought forth strong denunciations from the leading members of the convention. The reporter says:— “Mr. Storer protested against these innovations. Here was the time spent in listening to a prayer to an unknown God, concerning whom nobody knew any thing, that might be appropriated to some subject of interest. Dr. Gardner said he had not come from Boston to attend a prayer-meeting. He did not want to listen to invocations to Josh or Jehovah. Dr. Bailey moved no more invocations be allowed.” This shows the tendency of Spiritualism. Mr. Horton informed the reporter that the Presidentess said to him during the discussion of the subject, that if he had addressed his prayer to electricity it would have been well received by the convention. Mrs. Victoria C. Woodhull (Col. Blood’s wife), editress of the Revolution, and a Wall street broker, who has been nominated by the Female Suffrage Party for the next President of the United States, was chosen as President for the next National convention of Spiritualists. She is a well-known avowed free-lover. She said if the next Congress refused to give woman the right of suffrage, she should advocate secession, treason, a new government, and the overthrow of the present. Spiritualism is beginning to develop itself in its true light in political matters. Satan is trying, through Spiritualism, to get full control of the governments of this world. His plan is, first to break up all the present governments, throw them into confusion, make them so corrupt that all confidence in them will be destroyed, and then propose a new system of government, on a new basis, having for a motto, “LIBERTY, EQUALITY, FRATERNITY,” and let him run the machine by spirit control, selecting the proper men and women who will best carry out his purposes. His only way to accomplish this is to run Spiritualism into politics and religion. This he is doing with astonishing success.—World’s Crisis,