MODERN SPIRITUALISM

Publishing Committee · Battle Creek, Mich. · Nov 3, 1859

MODERN SPIRITUALISM

a Profane Parody of the Dispensation of the Spirit.

THERE is a remarkable passage in the Hulsean Lectures of Dr. Trench on "The Fitness of Holy Scripture for unfolding the Spiritual life of men," in which he anticipates a future development of evil and danger to the world in the following striking and prophetic words. The Lectures were delivered in 1845; and it has been reserved for our later years, and pre-eminently for our country, to supply the reality which they prefigured. When this is borne in mind, the term "prophetic" which we have applied to his remarks will hardly seem to any extravagant. We quote from the Cambridge edition of the Lectures, pp. 135-6:

"The hints which in God's prophetic Word we have, and the course of the mystery of iniquity as it is already working, seem to point to this: that as there has been an aping of the monarchy of the Father, in the absolute despotisms of the world, and an aping of the economy of the Son, as though he already sat visibly on his throne, in its spiritual despotisms, and eminently in that of Rome; so there remains yet for the world, as the crowning delusion, a lying imitation of the kingdom and dispensation of the Spirit—such as in the lawless Communist sects of the middle ages, in the Familists of a later day, in the St. Simonians of our own, has attempted to come to the birth, though in each case the world was not ripe for it yet, and the thing was withdrawn for a time. Yet doubtless only for a time; to reappear in an after hour—full of false freedom, full of the promise of bringing all things into one; making war on the family, as something which separates between man and man; breaking down and obliterating all distinctions, the distinctions between nation and nation, between the man and the woman, between the flesh and the spirit, between the Church and the world, between good and evil. This adversary [the Antichrist of St. Paul] is not simply the wicked one, but the lawless one; and the mystery is not merely 'a mystery of iniquity' but of lawlessness. Law, in all its manifestations, is that which he shall rage against, making hideous misapplication of that great truth, that where the Spirit is there is liberty."

How strikingly and fearfully has this prediction been fulfilled in the course of the so-called spiritual manifestations of these more recent years! through which families have been broken up, that had lived before in the close and holy unity of love; through which hundreds of men, and of women as well, have been impelled to give way to all licentious and bestial impulses, plunging out of the midst of morality and refinement into the vilest sloughs of sin; through which multitudes have been carried to a fearful rejection of all God's laws, as having for them no more validity; and not a few have been swept off into the outmost darkness of insanity! A lying imitation indeed, or rather a profane and diabolical caricature, of the kingdom of God's Spirit, has this reign of pride, fanaticism, lust, most palpably shown itself. In that wisdom, in this delusion; in that a sacred and purifying love, in this a gross and vagrant appetite, degrading and debauching; in that meekness, in this the most arrogant and disdainful self-assertion; in that a tendency to all noblest charities, to pureness and self-sacrifice, in this a positive and an ever-increasing predetermination to mendacity, wrath, and every license; in that the silent but bright communications of God's supreme purposes, knowledges, and judgments of duty, in this the uttermost mockery of instruction, seeming to show either laughing devils or crazy fools working and sneering behind the scenes:—so have the two been revealed to the world. And the wildest dreamer, unless largely instructed by observation and by the Scriptures, could hardly possibly have imagined it beforehand as among the things credible, that such a very midnight of darkness should have undertaken in this nineteenth century to style itself "a day of the spirit;" that such an absolute chaotic reign of terror and madness in the moral world should have claimed an affinity with the illustrious kingdom of holiness and of faith whose first-fruits were the wonders of Pentecost, and whose later results have been shown in a prodigal profusion of blessings wherever the gospel and its cross have been preached!

Verily may the attentive student of history and of society believe in the utmost susceptibility of mankind to the arts of the deceiver, especially when these strike with their appeals at the infinite "deceivableness of unrighteousness" which is central in the heart. The secret of all lies in the terse words of the Scriptures, "Madness is in their hearts." And the fact that such things have already occurred, while it shows how constantly man hungers and thirsts in the depths of his nature after the sense of spiritual light, strength, and culture, imparted from beyond himself, can hardly fail also to excite the keenest apprehension in the thoughtful concerning those future developments of impureness and of grossest untruth which may hide themselves in coming years under the same imposing names: "the kingdom of the spirit," "the day of reunion with unseen spheres!"—Independent.