Glasgow Courier. — 1853-12-27 (Glasgow, Strathclyde, Scotland)

SPIRIT RAPPING AND ITS EFFECTS.  Great passions are fatal to weak brains. As long as the current of existence flows smoothly, and the modicum of judgment which the feeble-witted possess is put to no severe trial, their conduct is regulated by the ordinary laws which govern mankind, and their onses are impressed by external objects pretty much fit the same manner on the senses of common mortals. But when the storm comet, and the mind is a prey to powerful emotion, then the senses begin to play false; the eye sees sights, and the ear hears sounds which have no objective existence; the judgment draws wrong conclusions, the moral faculties are perverted, and the actions of the individual become fantastic, and altogether irrational. There is no safety for such persons if the/ once quit the even tranquillities of life. A weakbrained lover, disdained by the object of his love--a weak-brained merchant, unsuccessful in business—a weak-brained Student of divinity, harrassed by religious doubts—a weak-brained poet, denied the fame which he considers his dessert—a weak-brained soldier, defeated in a campaiAn, are each and all exceedingly liable to become insane. Indeed, this liability of the infirm of brain to lose their reason under similar provocation is as great, that it comes within the experience of every one to have witnessed such accidents; for the emotions are no respectors of persons, but, like the arrows of Apollo, which spared not dog, nor mule, nor Greek, they hit every living soul, firm or weak. The two passions which net mast powertully on man are love and religion, and these two passions have made more madmen than all the others combined ; for, of course, just in proportion to the intensity of the mental excitement is the danger of resulting insanity to be apprehended; and of this fact the registers of our lunatic asylums bear ample evidence, proving, as they do, that thousands owe their incarceration to these two causes. Of course it is not meant to be asserted that true religion has this effect; for true religion conducts to peace and quietness, and sobriety. It is that spurious religion which shakes the mind by incessant fiery denunciations of God's wrath and of eternal punishment, and which agitates the spirit and convulses the physical frame. It is false religion—it is fanaticism—it is superstition, which peoples the wards of our mad-honses with groaning lunatics. It might easily have been predicted, by one familiar with the effects of strong emotion upon the human mind, that this new doctrine of spirit rapping would, if it should ever become prevalent, destroy the reason of multitudes. The initiated in these mysteries hold converse, through the toe of a table, with the spirits of the departed. The bereaved husband or lover is reunited for a space to the object of his attachment, and long dormant feelings are powerfully re-excited. Past and future are annihilated; the curtain of the invisible world is w ithdraivn, and the spirits strut upon the stage ' of their immortality a iti; all the noise and pomp of a drama at the Adelphl. What mind can remain wholly untouched daring a scene like this? Why, we laugh and weep at the earthly performances of a 'Wright and a Rachel; but when the stage is heaven and hell, and the plot of the drama is inunortnlity, and the actors are  spirits of the dead, angels, and denten% there n be no limit to our emotion but insanity. The ri medicine are full of reported cases of person\.. gone mad upon beholding an individual wrw sheet and personating a ghost. Surely, of those who hold, from hour to hour, and day, conferences with ghosts, may well we ought not to be surprised when we American newspapers, of the frightful el.. and suicide which are occurring, from thi: part of the Union. It is greatly to be lir. spirit rapping will not make in Engles i th gems that it has made in America. W., of the character of this visitation—we kaoa • to hanging, to throat-cutting, and to raviri: and we know, also, that the secrets, whiel. be the mission of these spirits to reve.,l, and subversive of the authority of the