Spiritualism | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 26, 1871

Spiritualism.

THE following from the Detroit Post of Sept. 23, 1871, very clearly indicates the tendency of the public mind at the present time, in regard to this delusion. That the predictions respecting its future progress will shortly be fulfilled we have no doubt; for the word of God assures us that thus Satan shall work in the last days:—

“The Golden Age has what seems to us a just rebuke of the light and flippant treatment which some journals visit upon Spiritualism. With many, indeed with every one who has given the subject an investigation, there is a conviction of an underlying truth in Spiritualism which is covered up and degraded by many false, absurd, and disgusting phenomena. Many believe ‘there is something in it,’ who are by no means prepared to define what that something is, or to accept present manifestations as the highest outgrowth of it. But it is not all ‘mumbling and ‘raving,’ and its assurances of a future life and of immortality have comforted many souls who could place an abiding faith in future existence upon no other foundation. Much has yet to be explained, more to be purged away from the doctrines of Spiritualism. But those who believe that it has the germ of a very precious truth, which is to be developed into higher uses and its processes scientifically, if not altogether satisfactorily, explained, are on the increase. Both for their numbers and for their intelligence they are not to be despised nor wantonly abused. In this connection, we quote from the Golden Age the following paragraph:—

“‘The spirit of Henry J. Raymond lately came (as we are informed), to Mrs. J. H. Conant, in Boston, and spoke as follows: ‘The time is now fast hastening when they whom the living call dead will be able to so clearly represent themselves here to your physical senses that death will be no longer death—that they who are dead will be no longer out of sight, for you can see them and hear them.’

“This statement will be received with more or less credulity according to the reader’s belief in Spiritualism. But we do not hesitate to say that many who do not believe Mr. Raymond capable of sending a message to this world, or that the time is hastening when such modes of communication will be unnecessary, do nevertheless look forward to a day when the intercourse between all souls, the souls of the living as well as of the dead, will be in more direct and active communication with each other than they now are; and that forces, powers, and media, now lying dormant and unsuspected, will supplant our present rude methods of conveyance by electricity, and writing and speech.”