Connecticut western news., 1900-03-01

ent rom these. l answer, all tneSe delusions I have mentioned belong to the same family. They are exhuma- tions from the unseen world.
 What does God think of all these de- lusions? He thinks so severely of them that he never speaks of them but with livid thunders of indignation. He says, II will be swift witness against the sorcerer." He says, Thou shalt not suffer 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 consulter of familiar spirits, or wizard, or nee romancer, for they that do these things are an abomination unto the Lord" The Lord God 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 bel spiritualist if you dare!
 Take. Advantage of Weakness.
 Still further, we learn from this text bow 1t Is that people come to fall into spiritualism. Saul had enough trouble to kill ten men. He did not know where to go for relief. After awhile he resolved to go and see the witch of En-dor. He expected that somehow she would afford him relief. It was his trouble drove him there. And 1 have to tell you now that spiritualism finds Its victims in the troubled, the bank rupt. the sick, the bereft. You lose your watch, and you go to the fortune teller to find where it is.
 You lose friend; you want the spir- itual world opened, so that you may have communication with him. In q highly wrought. nervous and diseased state of mind you go and put yourself in that communication. That is why hate spiritualism. It takes advantage of one in 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 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 insuf- ferable. 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. quiet. Five minutes gone. Ten min utes. No motion of the table. No re- sponse from the future world. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Nervous excitement all the time increasing. Two raps from the future world. The let ters of the alphabet are called over. The departed friends name Is John. At the pronunciation of the letter J two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter O two raps. At the pronuncia- ton of the letter H two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter N two raps. There you have the whole name spell ed out-J-o-h-n, John. Now, the spirit being present, you say, John, are you happyT 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 hiShCN, u uCSSdSt HUH lut tltIudl world. What is remarkable, the de- parted spirit, although 1t has been amid the illuminations of the heaven, cannot spell as we'll as 1t used to. It has lost all grammatical accuracy and cannot write us distinctly. I received q letter through a medium once. I sent 1t back. I said, Just please to tell those ghosts they had better go to school and get improved in their or biography" Now, just think of splr- it's, that the Bible represents as en- throned in glory, coming down to crawl under the table and break crock cry and ring tea bells before supper is ready and rap the window shutter on a gusty night! What consolation in such miserable stuff as compared with the consolation of our departed friends free from toll and sin and pain are for ever 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 reunion most blessed and hap py and glorious!
 And none shall murmur misdoubt
 When Gods great sunrise finds out.
 Affairs of Darkness.
 I learn still further from this sub, ject that spiritualism and necromancy are affairs of darkness. Why did not Saul go in the day? He was ashamed to go. Besides that, he knew that this spiritual medium, like all her success sors, performed her exploits in the night. The Davenports, the Powders ages, have chosen the night or a dark ened room. Why? The majority of their wonders have been swindles, and deception prospers best in the night. Some of the performances of spir- itual mediums are not to be ascribed to fraud, but to some occult law that aft Fer awhile may be demonstrated. But 1 believe that now nine hundred and ninetynine 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 so disturb i ing the blood that it came up in great round letters. The witnesses of the | seances have locked the door, put the key in their pocket, arrested the op- orator and found out by searching the | room that hidden levers moved the ta- | bles. The sealed letters that were | mysteriously read without opening have been found to have been cut at the side and then afterward slyly put ! together with gum arabic, and the me. | dium who, with a heavy blanket over his head, could read book, has been found to have had a bottle of phos. | phoric oil, by the light of which any body can read book, and yentrilo- quism and legerdemain and sleight of hand and optical delusion account for | nearly everything. Deception being | the main staple of spiritualism, nc wonder 1t chooses the darkness!