SPIRITUALISM AGAINST THE GOSPEL.
By Ellet Joseph Waggoner
LET it not be forgotten that Spiritualism is simply the belief that the dead are conscious, that they are interested in the affairs of men on the earth, and that they may communicate with them. That it is against the gospel is sufficiently shown in the fact that it contradicts the Bible. But we wish to trace a little more minutely its natural working. Take, for instance, the paragraphs quoted from Dr. Talmage last week. Read them carefully again, and see what is set forth as the motive for right doing. Is it the approval of the Lord Jesus?—Not at all, it is the approval of dead friends. The words are, "Young man! Better look out what you do and where you go, for your glorified mother is looking at you." But that is not the motive to set before any man, in order to get him to do right. Even if his mother were alive, something higher than the fact that she is looking at him ought to be the motive of his actions. But the idea that people are alive after they are dead, and that they are watching the living, puts them in the place of the Lord Jesus Christ and the angels. Here is a fragment of an editorial in a religious paper that has a circulation of many thousands among all denominations of Christians:— Some of the saintly faces of fathers and mothers, which are a benediction to all who look at them, could never have shone as now with the reflected light of heaven, unless they had been summoned to frequent upward lookings through the clouds in loving communion with their children in heaven. There are manly and womanly children, who are more serious and earnest and devoted in their young life struggles, because of their constant sense of the overwatching presence of their dead parents.
That is the Spiritualist way of being glorified. But now read the Bible way: "But we all, with unveiled face reflecting as a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory." "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. 3:18; 4:6. That which can in reality be done only by the Lord Jesus Christ, Spiritualism thinks to have done by the spirits of the departed. Thus the Lord is robbed of the honor due him. But further. Life and righteousness are inseparable. "To be spiritually minded is life and peace." Rom. 8:6. This is so because God alone is good. See Rom. 3:9-12 and Mark 10:17. God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, and therefore the life of Christ was the life of God. His life is the only perfectly sinless life that was ever manifested on this earth. Therefore no one can be righteous unless he has the righteousness which is by the faith of Jesus Christ, the righteousness of God by faith. It is by the righteousness of one that many are to be made righteous. Rom. 5:19. That one is Christ. But as the life of God in Christ is the only righteous life, and righteousness is inseparable from the life of Christ, it follows that all who are made righteous by his obedience, are made so by having his life in them. It is in him that we are made the righteousness of God. So we read, "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me; and the life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me." Gal. 2:20. Now since righteousness is inseparable from the life of God, it follows that both eternal life and righteousness are attributes of Divinity. For one to claim that he has life in himself regardless of his faith, is to claim that he has also righteousness in himself, and that he has no need for the Saviour. For nothing is more certain than that Christ came to this earth for the sole purpose of giving life to men. See John 3:16; Col. 3:3, 4; John 10:10. Therefore Spiritualism is opposed to the very fundamental truth of the gospel. It is an easy matter to show, as we have many times, that Christ gives righteousness by giving his own life. But that teaching that would make out that man has life in himself, frustrates the grace of God, and makes out that Christ died in vain. The apostle Paul, after showing the necessity of faith in Christ as the only means of righteousness, says, "I do not frustrate the grace of God; for if righteousness come by the law, then Christ is dead in vain." Gal. 2:21. And in the next chapter he says, "If there had been a law given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." Wherever life is, there is righteousness. Therefore the man who thinks that he has life in himself, unconsciously denies that Christ is the source of righteousness for men. The tendency of this teaching is to throw man upon himself for righteousness. Thus the Pharisees who would not come to Christ that they might have life, "trusted in themselves that they were righteous." But this tends most directly to vice and immorality, for man is by nature corrupt, and out of evil only evil can come. Again, take the temptation by which Eve was made to fall. Satan said, "Ye shall not surely die." Being deceived, she ate, and gave to her husband, and he ate. This disobedience "brought death into the world, and all our woe." All the iniquity in the world has resulted from a belief of the words, "Ye shall not surely die." Nothing but evil can come from that belief. For this reason we lift up our voice in warning against any approach to the doctrines of Spiritualism. Shun as a pestilence any teaching that makes Christ and his sacrifice of none effect; accept nothing but the teaching of the word of God; and remember that man has life only by that same word.