SPIRIT-RAPISM, alias PAGANISM.
By Ad. Herald
To define the terms at the head of this article, we mean by "Spirit-rapism" the religious belief of those who profess to receive revelations from departed spirits, accompanied by audible sounds, moving of furniture &c., which is called by its advocates, Spiritualism. As this last term does not specify anything that is peculiar to that form of religious belief, we adopt as more expressive that at the head of this article. Nor by "Paganism" do we mean anything contemptuous, or different from the refined mythology of intellectual Greece and Rome. We do not propose to go into any labored comparison of these two systems at the present time; but simply to express our convictions, from all we have been able to learn of them, that the two are essentially identical—both in the objects of their worship, and the tenets of their faith. In the early history of the Church, Paganism was the great antagonism of Christianity, as infidelity has been of later years; but now, strange as it may seem, that which Christianity met and defeated, is being propagated as Christianity by multitudes of its advocates. And those who have become convinced of the doctrine of a future state, by the phenomena of spirit-rapism, have been proclaimed as converts to Christianity by it—such a result being hailed as evidence of its divine origin. A belief in a future state, is however no peculiarity of Christianity,—it being alike believed by Christians and Pagans. The Egyptians represented the soul as brought, after death, into the presence of its judge, attended by accusing and approving spirits. The Greek mythology, which was likewise adopted by their imitators in everything, the Romans, carried the soul across the river Styx, in the boat of Charon, to the bar of three righteous judges, under whose award it passed to an appropriate abode, according to its works on earth,—those "Who suffered wounds
In fighting for their country's cause; and priests
Who kept their souls unspotted whilst their lives
Endured; and pious bards who warbled strains
In honor to Apollo: those who polished
Life by invented arts; and such as made
Their memories dear to others by the deeds
Of goodness,"
were admitted to
"The realms of joy,
Delightful haunts of never-fading green,
The blessed seats in groves of happiness,
Where ether more diffusive, robes the fields
In purple glory." Here they gave themselves up to the more rational pleasures of our nature, following at the same time, such paths to happiness, and such occupations, as had been dear to them in life. But the wicked were cast down into hell,—a place inhabited by care, sorrow, disease, want, fear, hunger, toil, &c., and in which59
"An hundred tongues,
An hundred mouths, and speech by iron lungs
Inspired, could not enumerate the names
Of all their punishments." The Scandinavians taught that the brave were to revel forever in the halls of Valhalla, and drink mead offered them by maidens, from the skulls of their enemies. Some of the Pagan Arabs said that of the blood near the brain a bird was formed, which once in a century visited the sepulchre, and others believed a resurrection. The first natives of this continent seen by the Spaniards, taught that the souls of good men went to a pleasant valley, where all kinds of fruit were abundant; and that the dead walked abroad in the night and feasted with the living. Charlevoix says, that the Indians paid a great regard to dreams, as embracing an intercourse with spirits. They imagined a paradise in the west, a land where nature glowed with an internal sunset.—The Mexicans supposed three places for the departed: the house of sun, for such as fell in battle, or died captives, and women who perished in childhood; the place of the god of water for the drowned, for children, and for those who died of dropsy, tumors, and similar diseases, or of accidental wounds; and the place of darkness, in the center of the earth. The Patagonians, in mentioning the dead, call them those who are with God, and out of the world. The Tongo people suppose the souls of their dead to be in a delightful island of shadows. The Yucatanese represent the abode of the good as a pleasant land of plenty, under the shade of a mighty tree. The Chickasaws believe that the souls of red men walked up and down near the place where they died, or were laid; and said they often heard cries and noises where prisoners had been burned. The Indians of Cumania supposed echo to be the voice of the departed. It is a common belief of the Indians of America, that the spirits of the slain haunted their tribe till they were avenged. To convince an infidel merely of a future existence, is to do very little towards making a Christian of him. Christianity is the way of salvation effected by the death and resurrection of Christ, faith in him.