p. 88 | Spiritualism by Editor

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Dec 11, 1855

Spiritualism.

By Editor

We intend to furnish our readers from time to time with such facts as will show the progress of this doctrine in the land. We have reliable sources of information on this subject from the Christian Spiritualist, published at 553, and the Spiritual Telegraph, published at 342, Broadway, New York.

We are not credulous enough to deny that there is reality in the manifestations. There are agencies at work which are not of earth; but what are those agencies? They claim to be the spirits of the departed; and the only way in which these claims can be met and disproved, as we have often repeated, is to take a scriptural view of the state of man in death. When we read that they "sleep," and shall not "be raised out of their sleep till the heavens be no more," the false pretentions of these spirits recoil upon their own heads. It at once reveals their true character, and shows us that they are spirits, not of our departed friends, but of fallen angels.

We can all but feel deeply interested in the progress of the struggle between this new theory and the teachings of the common theology of the present day. We say frankly that the popular church is inconsistent in denying the claims of spiritualism. She has paved the way for this very work, and yet refuses to acknowledge it as the legitimate result of her teachings. She has furnished the cause, and refuses to recognize the effect. As long as she clings to her favorite dogma, that man has a spirit that is conscious and active and intelligent after death, she has no barrier to present against this strong delusion: she must be entangled in her own net: she must fall into the pit her own hands have digged.

Though the manifestations have become so frequent as to lose much of their novelty, and less excitement is occasioned on this particular, the doctrine is no less rapidly spreading and counting its proselytes by hundreds and tens of hundreds. The way is preparing for that time brought to view in Rev. xvi, 13, 14, when they shall go forth to the kings of the earth, and of the whole world to gather them to the battle of that great day. We clip the following from the Christian Spiritualist of Nov. 17th, 1855, which gives the number of believers in Troy alone at 1200, and states, which is doubtless true, that spiritualism is becoming the faith of the masses.