SIGNS AND LYING WONDERS.
By Editor
In the Spiritual Telegraph of the 18th inst., we find an extract from M. S. Avery’s Letter to her Sister, recently published in the REVIEW, containing these words: “See 2 Thess. ii, 9. This working of Satan is nothing more nor less than ‘Spirit Manifestations.’” To this the Telegraph replies: “We answer, they might be any thing else rather than what the question supposes; at all events they are not ‘lying signs and wonders.’ Spirit Manifestations claim to signify the presence of the spirits of persons who have lived on earth, and this claim is fully demonstrated to the natural senses of every person of ordinary observation and comprehension who has investigated the subject.” We would suggest to the Telegraph that it is this very claim, above put forth, that these spirits are spirits of persons who have lived on the earth, that proves them false. On the expression, “lying wonders,” Dr. Cumming very appropriately remarks, “If you look at your Greek Testaments, you will find it is terasi pseudous, miracles that prove a lie, not miracles that are false.” We do not deny but that the miracles are genuine. There are real agencies at work which produce real wonders; but they are wrought to prove a lie. What is this lie? According to the spiritualists’ own claim, it is their design to prove that the soul is immortal; that the spirits of men in death are conscious and can “demonstrate” their presence “to the natural senses of every person of ordinary observation and comprehension,” &c. But why these manifestations to prove these points? Is not the Bible, which thoroughly furnishes the man of God unto all good works, sufficient for these things? No; they cannot be sustained from the Bible. Satan well knows this. An extra effort therefore is requisite to confirm men in a belief which is absolutely essential to the success of his schemes. The spirits claim to be the spirits of dead men. We take our stand upon the Bible; and the Bible declares that the dead know not anything. Here is the issue between us and Spiritualists. If the dead know not anything—are unconscious—and spirits come to us professing to be the spirits of the dead, they come to us with a lie in their mouth, and we detect them to be ministers of evil, emissaries of Satan. And when we see them doing great signs and wonders, to confirm their false doctrines, we behold the very work contemplated in the text above referred to. To say, in reply to the declaration that “the dead know not anything,” that it is the dead body, “the form which is buried in the tomb,” that does not know anything, is a most foolish quibble. We care not if the spirits themselves have so expounded it through Mrs. C. L. V. Hatch. Was the body, in itself considered, ever supposed to know anything? Is knowledge an attribute of the bones, muscles and ligaments of the human frame? If so, there may be some propriety in applying the scripture to the dead carcass, and contending that there is a sentient principle which still lives on. But it is not so: that part of man, and whatever part of man, knows anything in life, is affirmed to know not anything in death. “For the living know that they shall die: but the dead know not anything.” To put any other construction upon this passage, is to make the language of scripture manifestly absurd. “In the latter times,” says Paul to Timothy, according to Wakefield’s translation, “some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doctrines about dead men.” Spiritualism must prove to us from the Word that the dead do know something, before it will produce in our minds the first shadow of conviction, that it is not Satan’s great crowning deception, to be manifested, according to many prophecies, in these last days. Till it does this, our eyes will be sufficiently open to enable us to see and dash from our lips, the Lethean potion that Satan would fain have us swallow. Here as we said before is the true issue; and it is an issue too, on which we have not yet seen a Spiritualist attempt to defend himself.