SPIRITUALISM A SATANIC DELUSION.
As THEY acknowledge Satan to be their god and father, we should naturally expect that when they pray at all, they would pray to him. Miss Lizzie Doten, a celebrated trance lecturer, opened a prayer as follows:— “O Lucifer, thou son of the morning, who fell from thy high estate, and whom mortals are prone to call the embodiment of evil, WE LIFT UP OUR VOICES TO THEE.” Prof. W. Chaney, at San Jose, Cal., Jan. 29, 1874, at the opening of a debate with Eld. Grant on Spiritualism, uttered the following in his prayer to the devil in blasphemous mockery:— “O Devil, Prince of Demons in the Christian Hell! O thou Monarch of the Bottomless Pit! Thou King of Scorpions having stings in their tails, to whom it is given to hurt the earth for five months, I beseech thee to hear my prayer. Thou seest the terrible strait in which I am placed, matched in debate with one of the big guns of Christianity. — Remember, O Prince of Brimstone, that when thou stretchest forth thine arm, the Christian’s God cannot stand before thee for a moment. Therefore we beseech thee to stand by us on this occasion. Bless thy servant in his labors before thee. Fill his mouth with words of wisdom. Enable him to defend thee from the false charges about to be made against thy Sulphurous Majesty, and triumph by truth and logic over his opponent, so that this audience may realize that thou art a prayer-hearing and a prayer-answering devil.” A Spiritualist prayer, called an “Invocation,” found in Banner of Light, April 18, 1871, opens thus: “Thou spirit of the air,” etc. And this of course means no other than Satan, who is called the “prince of the power of the air.” Eph. 2:2. No doubt, Satan inspired that prayer to himself as the spirit or prince of the air. The apostle Peter says: “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell [Gr., TARTARUS] and delivered them into chains of darkness,” etc. 2 Pet. 2:4. Dr. Wm. Ramsey, an able and learned writer, says: “The word tartarus means, according to Greek writers, in a physical sense, the bounds or verge of this material system. . . . That place is, probably, at present, within the atmosphere of our earth.” The learned Ralph Cudworth, D. D., in his “Intellectual System,” vol. iii., p. 363, while speaking of Peter’s remark, says:— “And by tartarus here, in all probability, is meant this lower caliginous [i. e., dark] air or atmosphere of the earth, according to that of St. Austin concerning these angels, ‘that after their sin, they were thrust down into the misty darkness of this lower air.’” De. Gen. ad Lit. lib. 3, cap. 10. Apuleius, de Deo Socratis, says:— “There are certain divine powers of a middle nature, situate in this interval of the air, between the highest ether and the earth below. . . . Through the same demons, as Plato says in his Symposium, all revelations, the various miracles of magicians, and all kinds of presages are carried on.” It must please Satan to see that men are willing to worship him directly by name; but when that is too bold, he is satisfied to receive homage through personification, as in the Egyptian hero-worship, and in that of the Romans, Brahmins, and Hindoos. The following extract is from a prayer offered by E. S. Wheeler, in Music Hall, Boston, Sunday, March 5, 1871, and published in the Banner of Light, July 15, 1871:— “Most holy angels, O ye great and good and beautiful souls, who have made earth the Heaven it is fast becoming, hear our prayers. Unable to comprehend an Infinite Mind, we offer our supplications to you. Great souls that have blessed the world, condescend to bless us. Martyrs, heroes, patriots—ye who have inspired in all times the hearts of men, give us your sympathy, your love, your wisdom, in this hour. Mighty ones of years gone by—Pythagoras, Zoroaster, Confucius, Buddha—come to us. Socrates, Plato, Jesus, Mahomet, Ann Lee, Washington, Channing, Elizabeth Browning, Theodore Parker, hear us as we ask for strength and wisdom, and give, in answer to our practical prayer for help, that assistance which you well know is our necessity. Amen.” Farmer, in “Demonology,” says:— “To some persons it may appear strange that the possessions should be ascribed by many of the fathers after the time of Justin Martyr, to fallen angels.” “Several philosophers taught that the heathen demons were evil spirits of a rank superior to mankind, and that these demons personated the souls of the dead, gods, and genii, and procured themselves to be worshiped under their names.” In this devil-worship, Spiritualists have “progressed” backward into heathenism, so that now they can number their brethren by hundreds of millions! Rev. B. Clough, speaking of the heathen of Ceylon, says:— “I now state, and I wish to be heard in every corner of the Christian world, that the devil is regularly, systematically, and ceremoniously worshiped by a large majority of the inhabitants of the island of Ceylon!” “Ye shall be as gods.” Gen. 3:5. “Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshiped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.” Rom. 1:25. “Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things.” Rom. 1:21–23. A. J. Davis, in a work entitled, “The Educator,” pp. 303, 326, says:— “The being called God exists, organically, in the form of the being called man. . . . Man is God’s embodiment—his highest, divinest outer elaboration. God, then, is man, and man is god.” The “father of lies” said, “Ye shall be as gods,” and we find that Spiritualists take the side of the devil every time. In the last National Convention of Spiritualists at Chicago, Ill., Mr. Pope said:— “I am further convinced by my inspiration that whereas the devil, in the garden of Eden, declared if man, in his compound condition of Adam and Eve, would disobey the prohibition against eating of the tree which was adapted to his tastes and his conditions, he should become as God, knowing good from evil, that voice has gone on until, in the latter days, we hear it repeating, ‘Ye are gods.’ We know that this divinity is in humanity, that this God is manifest in the flesh. . . . When we know that we are gods, and that we have the power, we shall advance to that position in which we shall become judges.” “The soul is a god of itself.”—Spiritualism, vol. i., p. 10.