t far away, nor
prescribe the proper remedies without knowledge of medicine. Therefore
these effects, when they really exist, are due to intelligent agents,
agents distinct from the persons visibly present; invisible agents,
therefore, spirits of another world.

Who are these agents? God and His good angels cannot work these wretched
marvels, the food of a morbid curiosity, nor could they put themselves
at the disposal of impious men to be marched out as monkeys on the
stage. The spirits which are made to appear at the seances are degraded
spirits. Spiritualists themselves tell us they are lying spirits. Those
lying spirits say they are the souls of the departed, but who can
believe their testimony if they are lying spirits, as they are
acknowledged to be? This whole combination of imposture and superstition
is simply the revival in a modern dress of a very ancient deception of
mankind by playing on men's craving for the marvellous. Many imagine
these are recent discoveries, peculiar to this age of progress. Why?
This spirit-writing is and has been for centuries extensively practised
in benighted pagan China, while even Africans and Hindoos are great
adepts at table-turning. It is simply the revival of ancient witchcraft,
which Simon Magus practised in St. Peter's time; which flourished in
Ephesus while St. Paul was preaching the Gospel there. It is more
ancient still. These were the abominations for which God commissioned
the Jews in Moses' time to exterminate the Canaanites and the other
inhabitants of the Promised Land. In the Book of Moses called
Deuteronomy, or Second Law, admitted as divine by Catholics,
Protestants, and Jews alike, we have this fact very emphatically
proclaimed by the Lord. He says: "When thou art come into the land which
the Lord thy God shall give thee, beware lest thou have a mind to
imitate the abominations of those nations; neither let there be found
among you any one that ... consulteth soothsayers, or observeth dreams
and omens, neither let there be any wizard, nor charmer, nor any one
that consulteth pythonic spirits, or fortune-tellers, or that seeketh
the truth from the dead."

Is not this just what spiritualists pretend to do? Many may call it only
trifling and play. The Lord does not. The Scriptures continue: "For the
Lord abhorreth all these things, and for these abominations He will
destroy them at thy coming." I certainly do not mean to say that all
that passes for spiritualism i