p. 60 | IS SPIRITUALISM DECLINING? by Joseph Harvey Waggoner

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Feb 21, 1878

IS SPIRITUALISM DECLINING?

By Joseph Harvey Waggoner

So some people believe. They say, “We do not hear much more about spiritualism.” The novelty is worn off, and people pay little attention to what is said; and other matters of absorbing interest attract the attention just now. But it is true that spiritualism is making giant strides toward a popular position in the public mind. A Georgetown, Mass., correspondent of the Newburyport Herald says:—

“Liberality in religious matters is becoming a marked characteristic of this town. Rev. Charles Beecher, following the lead of his brother Henry Ward, has gone back on hell, and is now preaching a course of what are denominated Universalist sermons. Spiritualism is rapidly gaining ground, and lectures and ‘seances’ are in order every week, at which clergymen and ‘pillars in the churches’ are interested attendants. One minister declares that he is certain he talked with the spirit of his daughter, and another is sure that his seeing over twenty ‘materialized forms’ at a recent sitting was not an illusion of the senses or a freak of the imagination.”

The following I clip from a Jackson, Mich., paper of Feb. 6, 1878:—

“SPIRITS, OR WHAT IS IT?”

“An Hour with C. E. Watkins, the Independent Slate Writer:

“I went to Paris and Duffins, and bought two small slates of the same size; after washing them I placed a small piece of slate pencil the size of a small kernel of wheat on one slate and then laid the other slate on the top and screwed them together with four screws, one screw in each side and one in each end. I then went with my slate to C. E. Watkins’ room. I said to Mr. Watkins that I would like to have him make the little piece of slate pencil write me a message without his taking the slate out of my hands. He (Watkins) said that that was a ten-dollar test, at the same time he placed himself at the table, requesting me to sit opposite, which I did, all the time holding my screwed slates in my hands. In a very few minutes I could hear within the slates the writing and then three taps, when Mr. Watkins said I could unscrew the slates, which I did and found a message of ten words. All this in the daylight and inside the slates screwed together.

“Dr. Wm. E. Choate.”

I was informed in Jackson that Dr. Choate is a practicing physician in that city. This “test” was certainly a very decisive one, and not easily explained except on the theory of the interposition of spirits.

Among the clergy, and the “pillars in the churches,” it is now making its conquests. This is a sure way to secure popularity. It will make its power felt in due time.

Years ago, in a work published by Mrs. E. G. White, it was stated that the time would come when it would be considered blasphemy to speak against spiritualism. To the world that did not then seem probable; but it is already a fact. Church members raise their hands in pious horror when we say that spiritualism is of the devil. They are ignorant of what “the law and the testimony” say (Isa. 8:19, 20), and forsake the word of God to inquire of familiar spirits.

J. H. Waggoner.