THE W. C. T. U. AND SPIRITUALISM.
MISS JULIA A. AMES, a rarely bright, charming, devoted young woman, was for five years, until her death, December 12, 1891, one of the editors of the Union Signal. An editorial in the issue of that paper of December 17, entitled "Julia A. Ames—Promoted," begins thus: "For the first time death has entered our editorial ranks, and he takes from us our brightest and dearest." She was, from the many utterances which appeared from her friends, an earnest Christian, walking in the light shining upon her pathway, lovable, loving, and loved. Our pen would not take from her memorial wreath so much as one flower or leaf. But Miss Ames was mortal, and, sad as it is to those who loved her, she is dead, and, as the Idumean patriarch declared, adapting the language to the case in hand, Till the heavens be no more, she shall not awake, nor be raised out of her sleep. Job 14:12. It is sad to know that our loved ones do not live alway, but the blessed truth of God is better than the falsehood with which Satan would deceive us. The word of Inspiration declares that "the dead know not anything. . . . Their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now perished." Eccl. 9:5, 6. "His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish." Ps. 146:4. The apostle Paul bases the entire hope of life on the resurrection, and declares that if there be no resurrection of the dead, then they that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. See 1 Cor. 15:12-23. Moreover, the reward of the Christian is never set forth in God's word as being bestowed at the time of his death, but always "at that day," the time of Christ's second coming in power. "For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of his Father with his angels; and then he shall reward every man according to his works." Matt. 16:27. "And, behold, I [Jesus] come quickly;210and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be." Rev. 22:12. Death, instead of being "promotion," or "the gate to endless joy," is the result of sin (James 1:15), and "the last enemy to be destroyed" (1 Cor. 15:26). Much more might be said on this phase of the subject; much testimony from the Scriptures of truth might be adduced to show that the dead are unconscious and do not communicate with the living, because they cannot. And, therefore, sad as it is for the friends of Miss Ames to believe her dead, sad as it is to believe any of our friends dead, the best Friend of all declares them to be locked within the prison house of the adversary, slumbering in the enemy's land, till his own good time, when the life that is in his keeping will be restored, and he will call back to life, and to a glorious immortality, all who sleep in him. Here it is, in the holiest affections of men, that Satan has rooted one of his strongest and most delusive errors. In the beginning he gave God the lie, and declared that mankind in disobedience should not surely die, but should be as God. See Gen. 3:4, 5, Revised Version. Knowing that every evidence of the senses would proclaim to mankind that the dead were dead, he invented that most fertile error of the immortality of the soul and its power of conscious existence separate from the body. Based on this came ancestral worship, deifying of the dead, demon worship, polytheism, and numerous other forms of idolatry, down to the present invocation to the saints and the marvels of Modern Spiritualism. Having secured in the world the belief that the dead were not dead, the great Deceiver next began to train his angels to simulate the voice, the style, the mode, the very appearance of the dead. All this many actors in this brief life will do; how much more Satan and his angels, with the experience of six thousand years of deception, if God permit! This is what he is now doing through Modern Spiritualism, which includes not alone those who profess to be Spiritualists, but a greater part of so-called orthodox church members who hold to the essentials of Spiritualism,—a belief in the conscious state of the dead, and that they are in some way cognizant of the living, and can communicate with them. In this way the devil has laid his snare for the W. C. T. U., with its tremendous influence. Mr. W. T. Stead is a very energetic, brilliant editor of London, England, and an enthusiastic, original, somewhat eccentric, semi-religious social reformer. He is the proposer of a civic church, which shall be a controlling element in both Church and State. He is a close friend of the W. C. T. U., and one whom they delight to honor and to follow. What of this? Well, back of Mr. Stead is Spiritualism, and back of Spiritualism, as crooked as the initial letter of his name, is Satan. Mr. Stead has a "controlling spirit," which calls itself "Julia," supposed by him and friends in the W. C. T. U. to be "Julia Ames," deceased. For more than a year he has received communications from "Julia." All this we learn from an article by Mr. Stead in a London quarterly Spiritualist paper called Borderland. The article is entitled "My Experience in Automatic Writing; the Story of Julia and Others." By "automatic writing" is meant the use of the person's hand by the spirit for the purpose of sending messages to those in the flesh. To a friend in Chicago Mr. Stead is reported as saying:— "Julia tells me that I will live to be seventy years old, and then I am to be kicked to death. She tells me I am to become involved in a mammoth work of reform at that time, and it will so arouse the people where I am working that they will meet me in the street and kick me to death. It's not a pleasant prospect, but Julia knows, and I trust and believe her. She is far more reliable than was my Babylonian friend. I do not make any moves at all in any important matters unless Julia assures me that I am right in doing so, and I am well satisfied to do all my life's work under her guidance."—S. F. Examiner, January 24. The paper from which the above was taken, in speaking of "automatic writing," says:— "In this practice and in telepathy, or spirit communication with living people at a distance, and, in fact, in all sorts of theosophical and hypnotic occultism, Mr. Stead has long been an interested student, but it is only within a year or two that he has developed this mediumistic quality and become the oracle of the W. C. T. U." For all this deception the W. C. T. U. has been preparing. One of the friends of Miss Ames wrote of her after her death:— "Is she not already a ministering angel to us who loved her and have lost her a little while?" Said Miss Frances Willard in the funeral address:— "Yolande [Miss Ames' pet name] knew she had her wings. She is trying them to-night." "Her lovely spirit will be an inspiration to those of us who are left behind to fight on until promotion comes." And now the "lying spirit" of an evil demon personates the loved "Yolande," and deceives the great body of women with which she was connected. Thus it is. This is Satan's work. Mr. Stead was deceived by the "Babylonian" spirit; he is worse deceived in the spirit called "Julia;" and deceived are all others who seek to that which is not of the truth. Would we escape the delusion? Let God's word answer: "And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, . . . should not a people seek unto their God? on behalf of the living should they seek unto the dead? To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." Isa. 8:19, 20; compare with Revised Version. The W. C. T. U., which started out so boldly and nobly, even if mistakenly in some respects, have been led astray into one "reform," that of the Sunday-law delusion, by the National Reformers, and now the devil seems to be leading them to that other fatal delusion of Spiritualism. The love of God's truth is the only salvation from the delusions of Satan. 2 Thess. 2:9-12.