056. Spiritualism an Imposture
Spiritualism an Imposture
Deu_18:10; Deu_18:12 : ’93There shall not be found among you any consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.’94
We are surrounded by mystery. Before us, behind us, to the right of us, to the left of us, mystery. There is a vast realm unexplored that science, I have no doubt, will yet map out. He who explores that realm will do the world more service than did ever a Columbus or an Amerigo Vespucci. There are so many things that cannot be accounted for, so many sounds and appearances which defy acoustics and investigation, so many things approximating to the spectral, so many effects which do not seem to have a sufficient cause. The wall between the spiritual and the material is a very thin wall. That there are communications between this world and the next world there can be no doubt, the spirits of our departed going from this world to that, and, according to the Bible, ministering spirits coming from that to this. I do not know but that some time there may be complete and constant and unmistakable lines of communication opened between this world and the next.
To unlatch the door between the present state and the future state all the fingers of superstition have been busy. We have books entitled ’93Footfalls on the Boundaries of Other Worlds;’94 ’93The Debatable Land Between this World and the Next;’94 ’93Researches into the Phenomena of Spiritualism,’94 and whole libraries of hocus-pocus, enough to deceive the very elect. I shall not take time to rehearse the history of divination, Delphic oracle, sybil, or palmistry, or the whole centuries of imposture, but will deal only with modern Spiritualism, which proposes to open the door between this world and the next, and put us into communication with the dead. It has never yet offered one reasonable credential. There is nothing in the intelligence or the character of the founders of Spiritualism to commend it. All the wonderful things performed by Spiritualism have been performed by sleight-of-hand and rank deception. Dr. Carpenter, Robert Houdin, Mr. Waite and others have exposed the fraud by dramatizing in the presence of audiences the very things that Spiritualism proposes to do or says it has done. In the New York Independent there was an account of a challenge given by a non-Spiritualist to a Spiritualist to meet him on the platform of Tremont Temple, Boston. The non-Spiritualist declared that he would by sleight-of-hand perform all the feats executed by the Spiritualist. They met in the presence of an audience. The Spiritualist went through his wonderful performances, and the other man by sleight-of-hand did the same things.
’93By their fruits ye shall know them,’94 is the test that Christ gave, and by that test I conclude that the tree of Spiritualism, which yields bad fruit, and bad fruit continually, is one of the worst trees in all the orchard of necromancy. The post-office which it has established between the next world and this is another Star Route post-office, kept up at vast expense without ever having delivered one letter from the other world to this.
In our times, Spiritualism proposes a materialization. I hold in my hand a specimen of spiritualistic photography; spiritualists bringing up the dead, and then clothing them in bodies somewhat similar to the bodies they once had, but somewhat shadowy. Here are photographs, This, of an editor who calls back a dead editress. She comes clothed in materialization, her cheek against his forehead. The picture of the living and the picture of the dead. And all these pictures. One I cannot show you, for it is of Christ. Men have rushed in, as one man from my own church went behind the scenes, and he found the masks and the false hair and all the apparatus for building up a body. In all cases a swindle.
The first leading remark I have to make in regard to Spiritualism is that it is a very old doctrine. Do you want to know the origin and the history of that which has captured so many in all our towns and cities, a doctrine with which some of you are tinged? Spiritualism in America was born in 1847, in Hydesville, Wayne county, New York, where one night there was a rapping at the door of Michael Weekman, and a second rapping at the door, and a third rapping at the door, and every time the door was opened there was no one there. Proof positive that they were invisible knuckles that rapped at the door. In that same house there was a man who felt a cold hand pass over his forehead, and there was no arm attached to the hand. Proof positive it was a Spiritualistic influence. After a while, Mr. Fox with his family moved into that house, and then they had bangings at the door every night. One night Mr. Fox cried out, ’93Are you a spirit?’94 Two raps’97answer in the affirmative. ’93Are you an injured spirit?’94 Two raps’97answer in the affirmative. Then they knew right away that it was the spirit of a pedler who had been murdered in that house years before, and who had been robbed of his five hundred dollars. Whether the spirit of the pedler came back to collect his five hundred dollars or his bones I do not know. But from that time on there was a constant excitement around the premises, and the excitement spread all over the land. All these are matters of history. People said; ’93Well, now, we have a new religion.’94 No! it is not a new religion. In all ages there have been necromancers, those who consulted with the spirits of the departed’97charmers who threw people into a mesmeric state; sorcerers who by eating poisonous herbs can see everything, hear everything, and tell everything; astrologers who found out a new dispensation of the stars, experts in palmistry who can by the lines in the palm of your hand tell your origin, your history and your destiny. From the cavern on Mount Parnassus it is said there came up an atmosphere that intoxicated the sheep and the goats that came near-by, and under its influence the shepherds were lifted into exaltation so they could foretell future events and consult with familiar spirits. Long before the time of Christ, the Brahmins had all the table rocking and the table quaking.
You want to know what God thinks of all these things. He says in one place, ’93I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers.’94 He says in another place: ’93Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’94 And lest you should make too wide a margin between Spiritualism and witchcraft, he groups them together in the text and says: ’93There shall not be found among you any consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.’94 And then the still more remarkable passage which says: ’93The soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people;’94 and a score of passages showing that God never speaks of these evils in any other way than with lightnings of indignation. After all that, be a Spiritualist if you dare!
Another remark I have to make in regard to Spiritualism is, that, it takes advantage of people when they are weak and morbid with trouble. We lose a friend. The house is dark, the world is dark, the future seems dark. If we had in our rebellion and in our weakness the power to marshal a host and recapture our loved one from the next world, we would marshal the host. Oh, how we long to speak with the dead! Spiritualism comes in at that moment, when we are all worn out, perhaps by six weeks’92 or two months’92 watching’97all worn out, body, mind and soul’97and says, ’93Now, I will open the door; you shall hear the voices; take your place around the table; all be quiet now.’94 Five minutes pass along; no response from the next world. Ten minutes, fifteen minutes, twenty minutes. Nervous system all the time more and more agitated. Thirty minutes; no response from the next world. Forty minutes pass, and the table begins to shiver. Then the medium sits down, his hand twitching, and the pen and the ink and the paper having been provided he writes out the message from the next world.
What is remarkable is that these spirits after being in the illumination of heaven, some of them for years, forget how to spell right. People who were excellent grammarians come back and with their first sentence smash all the laws of English grammar! I received such a letter. I happened to know the man who purported to have signed it. It was a miserably spelled letter. I sent it back with the remark, ’93You just send word to those spirits they had better go to school and study orthography.’94 Now, just think of spirits enthroned in heaven coming down to crawl under a table, and break crockery, and ring the bell before supper is ready, and rattle the shutters on a gusty night. What consolation in such miserable stuff as compared with the consolation that our departed friends, free from toil and sin and pain, are forever happy, and that we will join them, not in mysterious and half utterance which makes the hair stand on end and makes cold chills creep the back, but in a reunion most blessed and happy and glorious.
And None Shall Murmur or Misdoubt
When God’92s Great Sunrise Finds Us Out.
I denounce Spiritualism because it takes advantage of people when they are weak and worn-out and morbid under the bereavements and sorrows of this life.
Another remark I have to make in regard to Spiritualism is, that it is an affair of the night. The Davenports, the Foxes, the Fowlers, and all the mediums prefer the night, or, if it is in the daytime, a darkened room. Why? Because deception is more successful in the night. Some of the things done in Spiritualism are not frauds, but are to be ascribed to some occult law of nature which will after a while be discovered; but nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand of their feats are arrant and unmitigated humbug. I suppose almost every one sometimes has been touched by some hallucination. Indigestion from a late supper generally accounts for it. If you will only take in generous proportions at eleven o’92clock at night, lobster-salad and mince-pie and icecream and lemonade and a little cocoanut, you will be able to see fifty materialized spirits! All the mediums of the past did their work in the night. Witch of Endor held her seance in the night. Deeds of darkness. Away with this religion of spooks.
Another remark I have to make in regard to Spiritualism is that it ruins the physical health. Look in upon an audience of Spiritualists. Cadaverous, pale, worn-out, exhausted. Hands cold and clammy. Nothing prospers but long hair’97soft marshes yielding rank grass. Something startling going through that room, clothed in white. Table fidgety as though to get its feet loose and dance. Voices sepulchral. Rappings mysterious. I never knew a confirmed Spiritualist who had a healthy nervous organization. It is the first stage of epilepsy or catalepsy. I have noticed that people who hear a great many rappings from the next world have not much strength to endure the hard raps of this. What a sin it is to be trifling with your nervous system. Get your nervous system out of tune and the whole universe is out of tune as far as you are concerned. Better tamper with the chemist’92s retort that may smite you dead, or with the engineer’92s steamboiler that may blow you to atoms, than trifle with your nerves. You can live without eyes and with one lung and with no hands and no feet. Be happy as men have been happy in such misfortune; but alas! if your nervous system is gone.
Another remark I have to make in regard to Spiritualism is that it is a marital and social curse. Deeds of darkness and orgies of obscenity have taken place under its wing. I cannot tell you the story. I will not pollute my tongue or your ears with the recital. Enough to know that the criminal courts have often been called to stop the criminality. How many families have been broken up here in Brooklyn and throughout the United States! Women by the hundreds have by Spiritualism been pushed off into a life of profligacy. It employs all that phraseology about ’93spiritual affinities,’94 and ’93affinital relation,’94 and ’93spiritual matches,’94 and the whole vocabulary of free love. It is at war with the marriage relation. I read in one of their prominent papers that ’93Marriage is the monster curse of civilization.’94 The Spiritualist paper goes on to say: ’93Marriage controls education, is the fountain of selfishness, the cause of intemperance and debauchery, the source and aggravation of poverty, the prolific mother of disease and crime. The society we want is men and women living in freedom, sustaining themselves by their own industry, dealing with each other in equity, respecting each other’92s sovereignty and governed by their attractions.’94 If Spiritualism had full swing it would turn this world into a pandemonium of carnality. It is an unclean and an adulterous religion, and the sooner it goes down to the pit from which it came up, the better for earth and heaven. For the sake of man’92s honor and woman’92s purity, let it perish. I wish I could gather up all the raps it has ever heard, from spirits blest or damned, on its own head in one thundering rap of annihilation.
Another remark I have to make in regard to Spiritualism is that it produces insanity. There is not an asylum from Bangor to San Francisco where there are not the torn and bleeding victims of Spiritualism. You go into an asylum and say: ’93What is the matter with this man?’94 The doctors will tell you again and again, ’93Spiritualism demented him.’94 ’93What is the matter with this woman?’94 The doctors will tell you: ’93Spiritualism demented her.’94 They have been carried off into mental midnight’97senators, judges of courts’97and at one time they came near capturing a President of the United States. At Flushing, Long Island, there was a happy home. The father became infatuated with Spiritualism, forsook his home, took the fifteen thousand dollars, the only fifteen thousand dollars he had, surrendered them to a New York medium, three times attempted to take his own life, and then was sent to the State lunatic asylum. You put your hand in the hand of this influence and it will lead you down to darkness, eternal darkness where Spiritualism holds an everlasting seance.
You remember the steamer Atlantic started from Europe for America. After it had been out long enough to get to the middle of the ocean, the machinery broke, and for days and weeks the steamer Atlantic tossed about in the waves. Well, there were many friends of passengers in these cities and they said, ’93That vessel has gone down; it is a month since she was due; that vessel must have sunk.’94 There were wives who went to spiritual mediums to learn the fate of that vessel. The spirits were gathered around the table and they said that vessel had gone to the bottom with all on board. Some of those women went to the insane asylum and passed the rest of their lives. But one day, off Quarantine, a gun was heard. Flags went up on all the shipping, bells of New York and Brooklyn were rung, newsboys ran through the streets shouting: ’93Extra! The Atlantic safe!’94 The vessel came to wharf, and there was embracing of long-absent ones; but some of those men who were passengers went up to the insane asylums to find their wives incarcerated by this foul cheat of hell, Spiritualism.
What did Judge Edmonds say in Broadway Tabernacle, New York, while making argument in behalf of Spiritualism, himself having been fully captured. What did Judge Edmonds say? He admitted this: ’93There is a fascination about consultation with the spirits of the dead that has a tendency to lead people off from their right judgment and to instil into them a fanaticism that is revolting to the natural mind.’94 Spiritualism not only ruins its disciples but it ruins its mediums. No sooner had the Gadarean swine on the banks of Galilee become spiritual mediums than they went down in an avalanche of pork to the consternation of all the herdsmen. Spiritualism bad for a man, bad for a woman, bad for a beast.
Another remark I have to make in regard to Spiritualism is, that it ruins the soul. It first makes a man quarter of an infidel, then it makes him half an infidel, then it makes him a full infidel. The whole system is built on the insufficiency of the Bible as a revelation. If God is ever struck square in the face it is when men sit at a table, put their hands on the table and practically say: ’93Come, you spirits of the departed, and make a revelation in regard to the future world which the Bible has not made. Come, father; come, mother, companion in life; my children, come, tell me something about that future world which the Bible is not able to tell me.’94 Although the Bible says he that adds a word to it shall be found a liar, men are all the time getting these revelations, or trying to get them from the next world. You will either have to give up the Bible or give up Spiritualism. No one ever for a very great length of time kept both of them. I received a letter from a gentleman saying he was a Christian and a Spiritualist, and that he had been brought up under the excellent teaching of Theodore Parker, of Boston. Theodore Parker, a worse infidel than Tom Paine, because Tom Paine never pretended to be anything but an infidel. I can understand how a man brought up under Theodore Parker could believe Spiritualism or anything else. You will either have to give up Spiritualism or you will have to give up the Bible.
How do I know that Spiritualism is antagonistic to the Christian religion? I know it by the fact that Spiritualists call up the spirits of those who believed in the Christian religion here, but coming now from the next world, denounce it. They call up for instance, as I have evidence to show, Lorenzo Dow, the evangelist. What does he do? Coming at their call he denounces all Christians as idolaters. They call up Tom Paine. He says he is stopping at the same house with John Bunyan! They call up John Wesley, who denounces Christianity, coming from the spiritual world, although all his life he so gloriously preached it. Andrew Jackson Davis, the chief of their apostles, says that the New Testament is a dismal echo of a barbaric age. In another place he says the Bible is a pen-and-ink relic of Christianity. I have in my house a book used in Spiritualistic service in this city years ago. It contains a catechism and a hymn book. The catechism has these questions and answers:
Q. What Is Our Chief Baptism?
A. Frequent Ablution in Water.
Q. What Is Our Inspiration?
A. Fresh Air and Sunshine.
Q. What Is Our Love Feast?
A. Clear Conscience and Sound Sleep.
Q. What Is Our Prayer?
A. Physical Exercise.
And then it goes on to show that a great proportion of their religious service is a system of calisthenics. Then when they want to arouse the devotion of the people to the highest pitch, they give out the hymn on the sixty-fifth page:
The Night Hath Gathered Up Her Silken Fringes,
Or, on the fifteenth page:
Come to the Woods, Heigh-Ho!
But you say you are not such a fool as that. You will be if you keep on with your Spiritualism. ’93Oh!’94 says some one, ’93Don’92t you really think it might authenticate Christianity? don’92t you know there are some people who deny there is any future world? and don’92t you realize that if spirits come back from another world it will persuade them that there is another world?’94 To that question I answer in the ringing words of the Son of God: ’93If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they believe though one rose from the dead.’94
I believe this sermon, under God, will save some from disease and death and darkness and doom. I think we have come to the time spoken of by the apostle when he says: ’93In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits.’94 And I think never so much as now the words of my text need to be rung in all churches: ’93There shall not be found among you any consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer, for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.’94
I invite you to a Christian seance’97not a midnight but a noonday seance. The whole church is a family. Here is the table. Put the Bible on the table. Then let us put our hands on the Bible and listen if we can catch a voice from the next world. The answer comes: ’93The secret things belong unto the Lord our God; but those things which are revealed belong to us and to our children forever.’94 That is a voice from the next world. Before you quit this Christian seance I want you to promise that you will trust in the Word of God as it is until the light of the eternal world flashes upon us. Do not sit at a worldly seance either in fun or in earnest. Have your tables so well made that they will not tip. If the table must move, have it move under the offices of industrious housewifery. Let your children know there are no ghosts except those that walk on two or four feet’97human or bestial. Do not go to get somebody to tell your fortune. Tell your own fortune by putting your trust in God and doing your best. I will tell your fortune. ’93All things work together for good to those that love God.’94 Do not insult your departed friends by asking them to come into a dark closet to cut up capers, or crawl under the extension table. I give you the advice that Isaiah gave to the people of this day: ’93When they shall say unto you, seek not them that have familiar spirits and unto wizards that peep and that mutter. Should not a people seek unto their God?’94 Remember there is only one spirit you have a right to invoke, and that is the grand, the glorious, the august, the holy, the Omnipotent Spirit of God who now hovers around your soul and that has been around you all your life long. That Spirit now moving upon your soul. Grieve him not away. The voice dropping through the roof, coming in at the window, filling all this room from door to door and from floor to ceiling, with tender and overmastering intonation saying: ’93My spirit shall not always strive.’94
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage