The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-07-20
SPIRITISM.

Not long ago the Salt Lake Tribune published
| III It's Sunday edition an interview between its
| New York correspondent John E. Watkins and
the fairly well known psychologist, James II. Hys-
lop, late of the faculty of Columbia university and
now secretary of the American Society for Pyschi
cal Research. Mr.. Hyslop is a spiritist and the
society of which he is secretary is experimenting
with occult science and with the unseen world
Lombroso, Stead Miles Grant and an army Of
| French, Italian and German experimentists have
anticipated Mr. Hyslop by many years. Mr.. Hyslop
and his society can tell us nothing new or advance
any theory touching the spirit world that has not
been exploited many years since. The substance
of Professor Hyslop's statements, reduced to ordi-
nary language is that heaven and hell simply are
states of mind; the members of his society are spr
itists, not spirituasts which is but another word
for fakirs; ghosts, in many instances, are simply
| phantasms fancies of the imagination the com
munications between disemboded souls or spirits
established facts; spirit bodies have all the or
gans of human living bodies aetherialised Ex-
cept the substitution of the word spiritist and its
acceptance by his society for spritualist Mr. Hys-
lops presentation of his case suggests nothing new
or interesting.
For the man who processes belief in the divinity
of Divine Lord, that is in the Christian and ac-
cepted sense, which the spirtists or followers of
spiritism do not, the position and conduct of hu-
man being face to face with the awful mystery of
the unseen world and with necromancy or evoca-
ton of the dead is settled definitely.
For those of who are members of the imper
shable church of God this grave question of spir
itism is for all time answered and our position to-
ward it made clear and ineligible The Catholic
church has declared the practice of spirtism, evo
cation calling up the dead consulting spirits or
holding communication with them-that is
cromancy-to be unlawful and against the CON-
mand of God. She prohibits spiritism to all her
children in the most positive manner. She knows
what she is doing for she has in her keeping the
experience of the human race for 1000 years the
Catholic who mixes himself up with spiritism is a
fool, and though he may not now acknowledge his
folly he will do so before he gets through with the
spirits. A more fruitful cause of insanity and inl-
morality and even crime does not exist and cannot
be imagined than necromancy. Moses, by the
mand of God, entreated the Jewish people to alb
stain from all intercourse with the spirits. Read
this extract from Deuteronmy, chapter xvii,
consultetb spirits that seekeh the truth from the
dead" Scoring this advice of the great patriarch
thousands of foolish people are daily experimenting
with the dead and wrecking their souls Once again
let us consult the word of God: "And when Jesus
was come on the other side of the water, into the
country of the Gerasens there met him two men
possessed of devils \ and behold, they
cried out saying, What have we to do with thee,
0 Jesus, son of Godp (Math., viii, 2S) Who
told these possessed men that Jesus was the Of
God, and why did they publicly declare that they
were not on his sde"
Notwithstanding the claims put forward by
spirtists that their cult has opened to the under
standing and knowledge of man mine of infor-
nation about himself, his latent and hitherto unde
veloped psychic faculties the state OF disembed-
led souls, and mans control the dead we arc
not persuaded that they have added anything to the
sum of information already possessed by the man
familiar with the history of the human race. The
apparition of spirits clairvoyance or illumination
of the mind, mechanical phenomena, such as the
production of light heat and sound; bi-location
the pretended disclosure of future events or or
aceism, the manifestation of another persons
cret thoughts, reading of concealed writing, table
turning deviation, acceleration of vegetation like
the Mango wonder; suspension of vital functions,
acceeraton of respiration and of the circulation
of the blood; clairandence, speaking foreign Ian
guages; automatic writing the formation of hu-
man faces limbs or even of the entire person; al
teration of the weight of bodies and all the phe-
nomena of modern spiritism were known to the
Chaldeans and Egyptians in the days of Moses and