The semi-weekly messenger. [volume] (Wilmington, N.C.) 1897-1908, 1900-03-09

| ne QcLld0ueQ Oh me d roam Oh . cents.
When I awakened, / had no idea II
was anything supernatural. And I
have to advise you if you heal and
see strange things at night. 10 stop
eating hot mince pie, and take q dose
of bilious medicine. 1t Is an outraged
physical organism, enough to deceive
the very elect after shutdown n does
nearly all its work in the night. The
witch of Endor held her seances at
night; so do they all. Away with this
religion of spooks.
DEATH TO ITS DISCIPLES.
Still further. 1 learn from my text
that spiritualism is doom and death
to its disciples. King Saul thought
that he would get help from the me
dunn, but the first 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 1t ruins
the body. Look in upon an audience
of NEUTRALITY-SUSPICIOUS., weak, ner-
vous, exhausted, hands clammy and
cold, voices sepulchral and ominous,
bewildered with raps. l never knew
a confirmed spiritualist who had a
healthy nervous system. 1t is incipi-
ent epilepsy and catalepsy. Destroy
our nervous system, and you might
as we'll be dead. / have noticed that
people who are hearing raps from the
future world have but little strength
left to pear the hard raps of this
world. A man can live with only one
lung or with no eyes and be happy, as
men have been under such Affections,
but woe be TO the man whose nerves
are shattered, S~piritualism smites
first of all, and nightly, against the
nervous system n SO makes life
miserable.
/ indict s~piritualism also because it
is a social and marital curse. The
worst deeds of RIGHTEOUSNESS and the
worst orgies of uncleanlineSS have been
enacted under it's patronage. The
story is too vile for me to tell. I will
not pollute my tongue or your ears
with the recital. Sometimes the civil
law has been INVOKED to stop the out
rage. Families innumerable ave been
broker up by it. 1t has pushed off
hundreds of young women into a life
of profigacy. 1t talks about elective
affipities" and 'iaffinital relations and
spiritual matches" and adopts the
whole vocabulary of free loViSm. In
one of it's journals it declares "marri-
age is the monster curse of civiliZa-
ton" 1T is a source of debauchery
and intemperance." If spiritualism
could have it's full swing, it would turn
this world into a p~andemonium of car
nality. 1t is an unclean, adulterouS,
damnable religion, and the sooner it
drops into the hell from which it rose
the better both for earth and heaven.
fol lltc SdhC I'll lioli , llOllO1 ol1u WV
man's purity 1 say let the last vestige
of it perish forever. l wish l could
gather up all the rapS it has ever heard
from spirits bleSt or damned and gath
er them all on its own head in thunder
ing rapS of annihilationi
/ further indict spiritualism for hat
it is a cause of insanity. There is not
an asylum between Bangor and San
Francisco which has not the torn and
bleeding victims of this delusion. Go
into any asylum, 1 care not where it
is, and the presiding doctor, after you
have asked him, "What is the matter
with that MANI" will say, "Spiritual-
ism demented him." or, What is the
matter with hat woman?" he will say,
'Spiritualism demented her" 1t has
taken down some of the brightest in
t%ellects. 1t swept off into mental mid
night judges, senator's, governors, min
listers of the gospel and one time came
near capturing one of the presidents
Of the United States. At Flushing, N.
Y, a man became absorbed with it,
forsook his family, took his only S15,-
600, surrendered them to a spiritual
medium in New York, attempted three
times to put an end to his own life AND
then was incarcerated in the state lu-
matte asylum. Many years g the
steamer Atlantic started from Europe
for the United States. Getting in mid
ocean,, the machinery broke, and she
nde round day after day and
week after week, and for a whole
month after she was due people Won
dered and finally gave her up. There
was great anguish in the cities, for
there were man who a friends
aboard that vessel. Some of the wo-
men in their distress went to the spir-
itual medium and inquired as to the
fate of that vessel. The medium call
ed up the spirits, and the rappings on
the table indicated h steamship lost,
uy;f oil on honr1 TNoronn wont - W
ing mad and were carried to the luna
tic asylum. After awhile one day a
gun was heard off quarantine. The
flags went up on the shipping, and
the bells of the churches were runS.
The boys ran through the streets cry
ing: 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 lu-
matte asylum, where this cheat Of in
fernal spilitualism had put them.
FORAGER FOR A MADHOUSE.
A man in Bellevue hospital dying
from wounds made by his own hand
was asked why he tried to commit sui
to-" Parents have strangled their chill
dren, and when asked why they did it
| replied, 'Spiritualism demanded it," 1t
is the patronizer and forager for the
madhouse. Judge Edmonds, in Broad
way tabernacle, New York, delivering
a lecture concerning s~piritualism, ad-
mitted in so many words. There is a
fascination about consultation with
the spirits of the dead that has a ten
dency to lea people off from their
right judgment n to instill into them
a fanaticism that is revolving to the
natural mind"
1t not only ruins it's disciples, but it
ruins the mediums also, only give it
time. The Gadarene 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 CONSERVATION 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 infdel; then it makes
him half an infidel; then it makes him
a whole infidel. The whole system. as
1 conceive it, is founded on the insult