The Religion of Ghosts

“BeliolJ, there is a woman that hath a familiar spirit at En-dor. And Saul disguised himself, and put on other raiment, and he went, and two men with him, and they came to the woman by night: and he said, I pray thee, divine unto me by the familiar spirit, and bring me him up whom I shall name unto thee.” — 1 /Samwexxviii., 7, 8.

‘^’pEOUBLE to the right of him and trouble to the left of him, Saul knew not what to do. As a last resort, he concluded to seek out a spiritual medium, or a witch, or any thing that you please to call her — at any rate, a woman who had communication with the spirits of the eternal world. It was a very difficult thing to do, for Saul had either slain all the witches or compelled them to stop business. A servant one day said to King Saul, “I know of a spiritual medium down at the village of En-dor.” “Do you?” said the king. Night flxlls. Saul, putting off his kingly robes, and putting on the dress of a plain citizen, with two servants goes out to hunt up this spiritual medium. It was no easy thing for Saul to disguise himself, for the tallest people in the country only came up to his shoulder, and, I think, from the strength of the man and the way he bore himself, he must have been well proportioned. It must have been a frightful thing to see a man walking along in the nio;ht eisrht or nine feet hig;h. I suppose, as the people saw him pass, they said, “Who is that? He is as tall as the kins;” — bavins: no idea that in such a plain dress there really was passing the king. Saul and his servants after a while reach the village, and they say, “I wonder if this is the house;” and they look in, and they see the haggard, weird, and shriveled - up spiritual medium sitting by the light, and on the table sculptured images, and divining-rods, and poisonous herbs, and bottles, and vases. They say, “Yes, this must be the place.” One loud rap brings the woman to the door, and as she stands there, holding the candle or lamp above her head and peering out into the darkness, she says, “Who is here?” The tall king informs her that he has come to have his fortune told. “When she hears that, she trembles and almost drops the light, for she knows there is no chance for a fortune-teller or spiritual medium in all the land. But Saul having sworn that no harm shall come to her, she says, “Well, whom shall I bring up from the dead?” Saul says, “Bring up Samuel.” That was the prophet who had died a little while before. I see her waving a wand,, or stirring up some poisonous herbs in a caldron, or hear her muttering over some incantations, or stamping with her foot, as she cries out to the realm of the dead, “Samuel! Samuel!” Lo, the freezing horror! The floor of the tenement opens, and the gray hairs float up; and the forehead, the eyes, the lips, the shoulders, the arms, the feet, the entire body of dead Samuel, wrapped in sepulchral robe, appear to the astonished group, who stagger back, and hold flist, and catch their breath, and shiver with the terror. The dead prophet, white and awful from the tomb, begins to move his aslicn lips, and he glares upon King Saul, and cries out, “What did you bring me up for? Whydid you break my long sleep? What do you mean. King Saul?” Saul, trying to compose and control himself, makes this stammering and affrighted utterance, as he says to the dead prophet, “Tiic Lord is against me, and I have come to yoa for help. Wlmt shall I do?” The dead prophet stretched forth his finger to King Saul, and said, “Die to-morrow! Come with me into the sepulchre. I am going now. Come, come with me!” And, lo! the floor again opens, and the feet of the dead prophet disappear, and the arms and the shoulders and the forehead. The floor closes. Nothing is left in the room but Saul, and the two servants, and the spiritual medium, and the sculptured images, and the divining-rods, and the bottles, and the vases, and the poisonous herbs. Oh, that was an awful seance!

I learn first from this subject that spiritualism is a very old religion. It is natural that people should want to know the origin and the history of a doctrine which is so widespread in all the villages, towns, and cities of the civilized world, getting new converts every day — a doctrine with which many of you are already tinged.

Spiritualism in this country was born in 1847, in Hydesville, Wayne County, New York, when one night there was a loud rap heard against the door of Michael Weekman; ‘a rap a second time, a rap a third time; and all three times, when the door was opened, there was nothing found there, the knocking having been made seemingly by invisible knuckles. In that same house there was a young woman who had a cold hand passed over her fice, and, there being seemingly no arm attached to it, ghostly suspicions were excited. After a while, Mr. Fox and his family moved into that house, and then eveiy night there was a banging at the door; and one night Mr. Fox said, “Are you a spirit?” Two raps, answering in the affirmative. “Are you an injured spirit?” Two raps, answering in the affirmative. And so they found out, as they say.

that it was the ghost or spirit of a peddler who bad been murdered in that house, many years before, for bis five hundred dollars. Whether the ghost of the dead peddler had come there to collect his five hundred dollars, or bis bones, I can not say, not being a spiritualist; but there was a great racket at the door, so Mr. Weekman declared, and Mrs. Weekman, and Mr. Fox, and Mrs. Fox, and all the little Foxes. The excitement spread. There was a universal rumpus. The Honorable Judge Edmonds declared, in a book, that he had actually seen a bell start from the top shelf of a closet, heard it ring over the people that were standing in the closet; then, swung by invisible hands, it rang over the people in the back parlor, and floated through the folding-doors to the front parlor; rang over the people there, and then dropped on the floor. IST. P. Talmage, Senator of the United States, afterward Governor of Wisconsin, had his head completely turned with spiritualistic demonstrations. A man, as he was passing along the road, said that he was lifted uj) bodih’-, and carried toward his home through the air at such great speed he could not count the posts on the fence as he passed; and, as he had a hand-saw and a square in his hand, they beat as he passed through the air most delightful music. And the tables tipped, and the stools tilted, and the bedsteads raised, and the chairs upset, and it seemed as if the spirits everywhere had gone into the furniture business! Well, the people said, “We have got something new in this country; it is a new religion.” Oh no, my friends. Thousands of years ago we find in our text a spiritualistic sdance. Nothing in the spiritualistic circles of our day has been more strange, mysterious, and wonderful than things which have been seen in the past centuries of the world.

In all the ages there have been necromancers, those who consult with the spirits of the departed; charmers, those who put their subjects in a mesmeric state; sorcerers, those who by taking poisonous drugs see every thing, and hear every thing, and tell every thing; dreamers, people who in their sleeping moments can see the future world and hold consultation with spirits; astrologers, who could read a new dispensation in the stars; experts in palmistry, who can tell by the lines in the palm of your hand your origin and your history. From a cave on Mount Parnassus, we are told, there was an exhalation that intoxicated the sheep and the goats that came anywhere near it; and a shepherd approaching it was thrown by that exhalation into an excitement in which he could foretell future events, and hold consultation with the spiritual world. Yea, before the time of Christ the Brahmins went through all the table-moving, all the furniture excitement, which the spirits have exploited in our day; precisely the same thing, over and over again, under the manipulations of the Brahmins. Now, do you say that spiritualism is different from these? I answer, all these delusions I have mentioned belonsr to the same flimily. They are exhumations from the unseen world. What does God think of all these delusions? He thinks so severely of them that he never speaks of them but with livid thunders of indignation. He says, “I will be a swift witness against the sorcerer.” He says, “Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.” And lest you might make some important distinction between spiritualism and witchcraft, God says, in so many words, “There shall not be among you a consulter of familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer; for all that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord.” And he says again, “The 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.” The Lord Almighty, in a score of passages which I have not now time to quote, utters his indignation against all this great family of delusions. After that, be a spiritualist if you dare!

Still further, we learn from this text how it is thai jyeople come to fall into spiritualism. Saul had enough trouble to kill ten men. He did not know where to go for relief. After a while he resolved to go and see the Witch of En-dor. He expected that somehow she would afford him relief. It was his trouble that drove him there. And I have to tell you now that spiritualism finds its victims in the troubled, the bankrupt, the sick, the bereft. You lose your watch, and you go to the fortune-teller to find where it is. You are sick with a strange disease, and you go to a clairvoyant to find out by a lock of hair what is the matter with you. You lose a friend, 3’ou want the spiritual world opened, so that 3’Ou may have communication with him. In a highly wrought, nervous, and diseased state of mind, you go and put yourself in that communication. That is why I hate spiritualism. It takes advantage of one in a moment of weakness, which may come upon us at any time. We lose a friend. The trial is keen, sharp, suffocating, almost maddening. If we could marshal a host, and storm the eternal world, and recapture our loved one, the host would soon be marshaled. The house is so lonely The world is so dark. The separation is so insufferable. But spiritualism says, “We will open the future world, and your loved one can come back and talk to you.” Though we may not hear his voice, we may hear the rap of his hand. So, clear the table. Sit down. Pat your hands on the table. Be very quiet. Five minutes 2;one. Ten minutes. No motion of the table. No response from the future world. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Nervous excitement all the time increasing. Forty minutes. The table shivers. Two raps from the future world. The letters of the alphabet are called over. The departed friend’s name is John. At the pronunciation of the letter “J,” two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter “0,” two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter “H,” two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter “N,” two raps. There you have the whole name spelled out. J-o-h-n, John. Now, the spirit being present, 3’ou say, “John, are you happy?” Two raps give an affirmative answer. Pretty soon the hand of the medium begins to twitch and toss, and begins to write out, after paper and ink are furnished, a message from the eternal world. What is remarkable, the departed spirit, although it has been amidst the illuminations of heaven, can not spell as well as it used to! It has lost all grammatical accuracy, and can not write as distinctly. I received a letter through a medium once, I sent it back. I said, “Just please to tell those ghosts they had better go to school and get improved in their orthography!’’ Now, just think of spirits that the Bible represents as enthroned in glory coming down to crawl under the table, and break crockery, and ring teabells befoi’c supper is ready, and rap the window-shutter on a gusty night! Is there any consolation in such poor, miserable work compared with the thought that our departed Christian friends, rid of pain and languishing, are in the radiant society of heaven, and that we shall join them there, not in a stifled and mysterious half- utterance which makes the hair stand on end and the cold chills creep the back, but in an unhindered and illimitable delight?

“And none shall murmur or misdoubt,
AVlien God“s great sunrise finds us out.”

Yes, my friends, spiritualism comes to those who are in trouble, and sweeps them into its delusions. Saul, in the midst of his disaster, went to the Witch of En-dor. The vast majority of those who have gone to spiritual mediums have been sent there through their misfortunes.

I learn still further from this subject, that spiritualism and necromancy are affairs of the darlcness. Why did not Saul go in the day-time? He was ashamed to go. Besides that, he knew that this spiritual medium, like all her successors, performed her exploits in the night. The Davenports, the Fowlers, the Foxes, the spiritual mediums of all ages, have chosen the night or a darkened room. Why? The majority of their wonders have been swindles, and deception prospers best in the night.

Some of the performances of spii’itual mediums are not to be ascribed to fraud, but to some occult law that after a while may be demonstrated. But I believe that now nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand achievements on the part of spiritual mediums are arrant and unmitigated humbug. The mysterious red letters that used to come out on the medium’s arm were found to have been made by an iron pencil that went heavily over the flesh, not tearing it, but disturbing the blood so it came up in great round letters. The witnesses of the seance have locked the door, put the key in their pocket, arrested the operator, and found out by searching the room that hidden levers moved the tables. The sealed letters that were mysteriously read without opening have been found to have been cut at the side, and then afterward slyly pot together with gum arable; and the medium who, with a heavy blanket over his head, could read a book has been found to have had a bottle of phosphoi’io oil, by the light of which any body can read a book; and ventriloquism, and legerdemain, and sleight-of-hand, and optical delusion account for nearly every thing. Deception being the main staple of spiritualism, no wonder it chooses the darkness.. You have all seen stran2;e and unaccountable thing-s in the night. Almost every man has some time had a touch of hallucination. Some time ago, after I had been overtempted to eat something indigestible before retiring at night, after retiring I saw the president of one of the prominent colleges astride the foot of the bed, while he demanded of me a loan of five cents! When I awakened I had no idea it was any thing supernatural. And I have to advise you, if j-ou hear and see strange things at night, to stop eating hot mi nee -pie and take a dose of bilious medicine. It is an outraged physical organism, and not a call from the future world. Spiritualism, knowing that it is able to deceive the very elect after sundown, does nearly all its work in the night. The Witch of En-dor held her seances at night; so do all the witches. Away with this religion of spooks!

Still further: I learn from my text that spiritualism is doom and death to its disciples. King Saul thought that he would get help from the “medium;” but the first thing that he sees makes him swoon away, and no sooner is he resuscitated than he is told he must die. Spiritualism is doom and death to every one that yields to it. It ruins the body. Look in upon an audience of spiritualists. Cadaverous. Weak. Nervous. Exhausted. Hands clammy and cold, Nothing prospers but long hair — soft marshes yielding rank grass. Spiritualism destroj-s the physical health. Its disciples are ever hearing startling news from the other world. Strange beings crossing the room in white. Table fidgetj’, wanting to get its feet loose as if to dance. Voices sepulchral and ominous. Bewildered with raps.

I never knew a confirmed spiritualist who had a healthy nervous system. It is incipient epilepsy and catalepsy. Destroy your nervous system, and you might as well be dead. I have noticed that people who are hearing raps from the future world have but little strength left to bear the hard raps of this world. It is an awful tiling to trifle with one’s nervous system. It is so delicate, it is so flrreaching, its derangements are so terrible. Get the nervous system a-jangle, and, so far as 3’our body and soul are concerned, the whole universe is a-jangle. Better, in our ignorance, experiment with a chemist’s retort that may smite us dead, or with an engineer’s steam-boiler that may blow us to atoms, than experiment with the nervous system. A man can live with only one lung or with no eyes, and be hny)p3 as men have been under such afflictions; but woe be to the man whose nerves are shattered! Spiritualism smites first of all and mightily against the nervous system, and so makes life miserable.

I indict spiritualism, also, because it is a social and manial curse. The worst deeds of licentiousness and the worst orgies of obscenity have been enacted under its patronage. The story is too vile for me to tell. I will not pollute my tongue nor your ears with the recital. Sometimes the civil law has been evoked to stop the outrage. Families innumerable have been broken up by it. It has pushed off

Imndrecls of young women into a life of profligacy It talks about “elective affinities,” and “affinital relations,” and “spiritual matches,” and adopts the whole vocabulary of free-lovism. In one of its public journals it declares “marriage is the monster curse of civilization;’’ that “it is a source of debauchery and intemperance.” If spiritualism could have its full swing, it would turn this world into a pandemonium of carnality. It is an unclean, adulterous, damnable religion, and the sooner it drops into the hell fi’om which it rose, the better both for earth and heaven. For the sake of man’s honor and woman’s purity, I say let the last vestige of it perish forever. I wish I could gather up all the raps it has ever heard from spirits blest or damned, and gather them all on its own head in one thundering rap of annihilation!

I further indict spiritualism for the fact that it is the cause of much insanity. There is not an asjdum between Bangor and San Francisco which has not the torn and bleeding victims of this delusion. Go into any asylum, I care not where it is, and the presiding doctor, after you have asked him, “What is the matter M’ith that man?” will say, “Spiritualism demented him;” or, “What is the matter with that woman?” he will say, “Spiritualism demented her.” It has taken down some of the brightest intellects. It swept off into mental midnight judges, senators, governors, ministers of the Gospel, and one time came near capturing one of the presidents of the United States. At Flushing, near this city, a man became absorbed with it, forsook his family, took his only fifteen thousand dollars, surrendered them to a spiritual medium in New York, attempted three times to put an end to his owni life, and then was incarcerated in the State Lunatic

Asylum, where he is to-day a raving maniac. Put 3’our hand in the hand of this Witch of En-dor, and she will lead you to bottomless perdition, where she holds her everlasting seance.

Many years ago the steamer Atlantic started from Europe for the United States. Getting mid -ocean, the machinery broke, and she floundered around day after day and week after week; and, for a whole month after she was due, people wondered, and finally gave her up. There was great anguish in the cities, for there were many who had friends aboard that vessel. Some of the women, in their distress, went to the spiritual mediums, and inquired as to the fate of that vessel. The mediums called up the spirits, and the rnppings on the table indicated the steamship lost, with all on board. Women went raving mad, and were carried to the lunatic asylum. After a while one day a gun was heard off Quarantine. The flags went up on the shipping, and the bells of the churches were rung. The boys ran through the streets, crying “Extra! The Atlantic is safe!” There was the. embracing as from the dead, when friends came again to friends; but some of those passengers went up to find their wives in the lunatic asylum, where this cheat of infernal spiritualism had put them. A man in Bellevue Hospital, dying from wounds made by his own hand, was asked why he had tried to commit suicide, and he said, “The spirits told me to.” Parents have strangled their children, and when asked why they did it, replied, “Spiritualism demanded it.” It is the patronizer and forager for the mad -house. Judge Edmonds, in the Broadway Tabernacle, New York, delivering a lecture in behalf of spiritualism, admitted, in so many words, “There is a fascination about consultation with the spirits of the dead that Las a tendency to lead people off from their I’ight judgment, and to instill into them a fanaticism that is revolting to the natural mind.”

It not only ruins its disciples, but it ruins the mediums also, only give it time. The Gaderean swine, on the banks of the Lake of Galilee, no sooner became spiritual mediums than down they went in an avalanche of pork, to the consternation of all the herdsmen. The office of a medium is bad for a man, bad for a woman, bad for a beast.

I bring against this delusion a more fearful indictment: it ruins the soul immortal. First, it makes a man a quarter of an infidel; then it makes him half an infidel; then it makes him a whole infidel. The entire sj-stem, as I conceive it, is founded on the insufficiency of the Word of God as a revelation. God says the Bible is enough fur you to know about the future world. You say it is not enough, and there is where you and the Lord differ. You clear the table, 3-011 shove aside the Bible, you put your hand on the table, and say, “Now, let spirits of the future world come and tell me something the Bible has not told me.” And although the Scriptures say, “Add thou not unto his words, lest he reprove thee, and thou be found a liar,” you risk it, and say, “Come back, spirit of my departed fiither; come back, spirit of my departed mother, of my companion, of my little child, and tell me some things I don’t know about you and about the unseen world.” If God is ever slapped square in the face it is when a spiritual medium puts down her hand on the table, invoking spirits departed to make a revelation. God has told you all you ought to know, and how dare you be prying into that which is none of your business? You can not keep the Bible in one hand and spiritualism in the

Other. One or the other willslip out of your grasp, depend upon it. Spiritualism is adverse to the Bible in the fact that it has in these last days called from the future world Christian men to testify against Christianity. Its mediums call back Lorenzo Dow, the celebrated evangelist, and Lorenzo Dow testifies that Christians are idolaters. Spiritualism calls back Tom Paine, and he testifies that he is stopping in the same house in heaven with John Bunyan. They call back John Wesley, and he testifies against the Christian religion which he all his life gloriously preached, Andrew Jackson Davis, the greatest of all the spiritualists, comes to the front and declares that the New Testament is but “the dismal echo of a barbaric ago,” and the Bible only “one of the pen-and-ink relics of Christianity.” They attempt to substitute the writings of Swedenborg, and Andrew Jackson Davis, and other religious balderdash, in the place of this old Bible. I have in my house a book which was used in this very city in the public service of spiritualists. It is well worn with much service. I open that book, and it says, “What is our baptism? Answer, Frequent ablutions of water. What is our inspiration? Plenty of fresh air and sunlight. What is our prayer? Abundant physical exercise. What is our love-feast? A clear conscience and sound sleep.” And I find from the same book that the chief item in their public worship is gymnastic exercise; and that whenever they want to rouse up their souls to a very high pitch of devotion thoy sing page sixty-five, “The night has gathered up her moonlit fringes;” or page sixteen, “Come to the woods, heigh-ho!” You say you are not such a fool as that; but you will be if you keep on in the track in which you have started.

“Bat,” says some one, “wouldn’t it be of advantage to bear from the future world? Don’t you think it would strengthen Christians? There are a great many materialists who do not believe there are souls; but if spirits from the future world should knock and talk over to us, we would all be persuaded.” To that I answer in the ringing words of the Son of God, “If they believe not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.”

Now I believe, under God, that this sermon will save many from disease, insanity, and perdition. I believe these are the days of which the apostle spake when he said, “In the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits,” I think my audience, as well as other audiences in this day, need to have reiterated in their hearing the passages I quoted some minutes ago, “There shall not be among you a consul ter of familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer; for they that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord;” and “The soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, I will even set my flice against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people.”

But I invite you this morning to a Christian seance, a noonday seance. This congregation is only one great family. Here is the church table. Come around the church table, take your seats for this great Christian seance, put your Bible on the table, put your hands on the top of the Bible, and then listen, and hear if there are any voices coming from the eternal world. I think there are. Listen! “Secret things belong unto the Lord our God, but those things which are revealed belong unto ns and to our children.” Surely that is a voice from the spirit-world! But,

4r before you rise from this Christian seance, I want you to promise me you will be satisfied with the Divine revelation until the light of the Eternal Throne breaks upon your vision. Do not go after the Witch of En-dor. Do not sit down at table-rappings, either in sport or in dead earnest. Have your tables so well made and their legs so even that they will not tip and rattle. If the table must move, let it be under the offices of industrious housewifer’. Teach your children there are no ghosts to be seen or heard in this world save those which walk on two feet or four, human or bestial. Kemember that spiritualism at the best is a useless thing; for if it tells what the Bible reveals it is a superfluity, and if it tells what the Bible docs not reveal it is a lie. Instead of going out to get other people to tell your fortune, tell your own fortune by putting your trust in God and doing the best you can. I will tell your fortune: “All things work together for good to them who love God.” Insult not your departed friends by asking them to come down and scrabble under an extension-table. Remember that there is only one Spirit whose dictation you have a right to invoke, and that is the holy, blessed, and omnipotent Spirit of God. Hark! He is rapping now, not on a table or the floor, but rapping on the door of your heart; and every rap is an invitation to Christ and a warning of judgment to come. Oh, grieve him not away! Quench him not. He has been all around you this morning. He was all around you last night. He has been around you all your lives. Hark! There comes a voice dropping through the roof, breaking through the window, filling all this house from door to door and from floor to ceiling with tender and overmastering intonation, saying, “My spirit shall not always strive.”