p. 7 | SPIRITUALISM

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 15, 1898

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 24, No. 37.

SPIRITUALISM

Mr. W. T. Stead and Automatic Writing.

It is well known that Mr. Stead, of worldwide fame, is a Spiritualist and medium. That is, Mr. Stead has a “familiar spirit” named “Julia,” who uses Mr. Stead’s hand for the purpose of writing messages to her friends as well as to Mr. Stead. It has been suggested that the writing is done by the sub-conscious self of the one whose hand and pen is thus used, but Mr. Stead gives abundant proof to show that he is not the one who guides the pen, but that it comes from another personality. Mr. Stead tells this and much more in a little volume, “Letters from Julia, or Light from the Borderland.” We quote from the Literary Digest of May 7, 1898:—

The evidence may be briefly summarized under the following heads: (1) The beginning of the communication as above described. (2) The giving of a test in the first message of an affectionate sobriquet bestowed by her [“Julia”] on her death-bed, which was known to her friend but unknown to me. (3) The minute description of an incident which had occurred in or about 1885, of which I had never heard, and which Ellen [Julia’s friend] herself had entirely forgotten until her memory was revived by the mention of details of place and time, which were quite unknown to me. (4) The writing out with my hand of names, Christian and surname, entirely unknown to me, who were her friends in her native land. (5) The intense personal and affectionate interest taken by the user of my hand in persons and movements in which my interest was by no means so deep as was Julia’s. (6) The strongly marked and unvarying personal idiosyncrasy of the writer of these letters, which is certainly not my own—is, I am afraid, in many respects very much superior to my own.

In addition to these internal evidences, there was the evidence of psychic persons gifted with the power of seeing the spiritual forms which surround all of us. To those who deny that such forms exist, or are visible to any one, this evidence naturally does not count. But even those skeptics would probably weaken in their dogmatic incredulity if, after accompanying me to seer after seer, persons to whom I was totally unknown either by name or by features, they were to find that each and all of these gifted with psychic vision described, among others, the easily recognizable form of Julia. Those who know that certain persons have this gift of clear seeing will realize my increased sense of the objective reality of her presence when I state the following facts: (1) That strangers who have never heard of her existence have described her as standing near me when my automatic hand was writing. (2) That several of them have not only described her but have given her name. (3) That one here and one in her native land have also given her surname, which I have refrained from publishing, and which I have equally in vain endeavored to telepath to the minds of other mediums. (4) That in one case the seer picked Julia’s portrait out of a score, from which there was nothing to distinguish it, and identified it as “the lady who writes with” me. (5) That in another case details were given in the description by the seer which I believed and asserted were mistaken, but which, on reference to her more intimate friends, were admitted to be correct; and (6) that, by arrangement, Julia has kept appointments with seers at great distances from me.

Besides these reasons for believing that the intelligence which moved my hand when the “letters from Julia” were written is not my own, but a superior intelligence independent of my workaday consciousness, there is the fact that on several occasions she has foretold with no less persistence than accuracy events which did not happen for months, and which I roundly told her I did not believe could possibly happen.

Certainly, this evidence is sufficient to show that another intelligence operated the hand of Mr. Stead. What was it? Was it some dead person? The Word of God declares: “The dead know not anything.” “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish.” Other scriptures also show that the dead are wrapped in profound, unconscious slumber and insensibility, which will be broken only by the resurrection of the dead at the last day.

What, then, is this intelligence?—It is the spirits of demons, who, taking advantage of popular belief, originating in Satan’s falsehood to Eve (Gen. 3 : 3, 4), and fostered by erroneous theology, come in the guise of the spirits of the dead, assuming their names, their manners, their voices, their forms. They come professing to bring great light from the world beyond, while their teachings are diametrically opposed to the Word of God. The power is indeed superhuman, but it is the power of the prince of darkness coming to us in the guise oftentimes of earth’s holiest friendships. Would you know the truth?—Take the Word of God.