The Signs of the Times, vol. 13

“Which of These Is Not Spiritualism?” The Signs of the Times 13, 33, pp. 519, 520.

HERE is one statement:— SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.1

“There is, strictly speaking, no such thing as death, in the popular signification of that term. Death, so called—the death of the human—is a veritable birth into a higher life. It is a change in the condition consequent upon outward dissolution... The real man survives the process intact, and still exists in full life and consciousness, upon a plane beyond, far beyond, the reach of fire and flood.” SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.2

Here is another:— SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.3

“At the death of the outer body, the true life of the inner spirit commences.” SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.4

Here is another:— SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.5

“Hence the dark hearse, the black pall, the bitter lamentation over the grave, which shows that it is not realized that death is only a glorious birth.” SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.6

And another:— SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.7

“But hark! a voice comes from beyond the grave to tell us that death is not our foe; that he is the messenger of life and joy; that he is the grand accoucheur of the soul, and comes to usher it into light and life eternal.” SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.8

And then here is another, the very latest production on this subject that we have seen:— SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.9

“One of our dear Sabbath-school pupils has graduated into the higher school. The great Teacher has promoted her to the celestial sphere where the freed spirit shall never tire as it soars into the knowledge of the infinite, which only God and the angels can reveal to her. Death, whom we call the great destroyer, set free from flight this immortal soul after a struggle of only nine days with the fair form which held it to earth.... Ah! death has proved to her the genius of the fountain of eternal youth.” SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.10

Now can anyone tell which of these quotations speak the language of Spiritualism and which do not? We cannot. And yet all but the last were written by avowed Spiritualists, by people who make no pretensions to anything else, while the last is from a strictly evangelical—heaven save the mar—paper. The first quotation is from the Spiritual Telegraph; the second from Andrew Jackson Davis’s “Healing of the Nations;” the third is from Dr. Hare’s “Spiritualism Scientifically Demonstrated;” the fourth is from a lecture on Spiritualism by Joel Tiffany; and the last is from the official organ of the Presbyterian Church of East Oakland, a paper entitled the Christian Home, in an editorial notice in the issue for August, 1887. But not one of the first four is a whit more impregnated with Spiritualism than is the last. SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.11

The fact is that to-day the churches are to Spiritualism the basis of its strongest hopes. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul is the sole foundation of Spiritualism, and in the estimation of the evangelical (?) pulpit to deny the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is to proclaim yourself an infidel if not an atheist. The churches lay down the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, and Spiritualism builds upon it and destroys its multitudes. The pulpits defend it by such arguments as that “matter cannot think, nor move, nor feel;” and then the so-called “Christian Science” stands upon the doctrine, and accepts the arguments, and carries them in their logical conclusion into practice, and deludes its thousands into the belief that it is really so, and into the expectation of thereby surviving all that is, in their estimation, miscalled disease. Then too there comes the New Theology, of probation after death, because it cannot admit the justice of an eternity of torment, upon those who have lived and died without a knowledge of the gospel; and all that the orthodox can do against these and numberless other heresies springing from the same source, is to make ineffectual attempts to stem the tide of evil, because she herself stands upon the doctrine of which the evils and heresies are only the logical outcome. SITI August 25, 1887, page 519.12

Let the truth of the word of God be preached as it is, that “The dead know not anything, ... also their love, and their hatred, and their envy, is now perished; neither have they any more a portion forever in anything that is done under the sun” (Ecclesiastes 9:5, 6); “His breath goeth forth, he returneth to his earth; in that very day his thoughts perish” (Psalm 146:4); and Spiritualism can have no place. But as long as the pulpit tells the church and the world that the dead are conscious and know all about us, and are hovering round us, just so long is Spiritualism going to seize the logic of it and do its best to show both the church and the world that through it the channel of communication is open. And when the pulpit presents the proposition, it will find that the logic that leads to Spiritualism will prove a thousand times stronger than will be any attempt that the pulpit can make in opposition to the logic of its own proposition. SITI August 25, 1887, page 520.1

Let the truth of God be preached and believed that man is mortal, and that immortality is the gift of God alone, and that alone through the faith of Jesus Christ; that man is made of the dust of the ground and will never be anything else except through an abiding faith in Christ;—let this be preached and believed, and the so-called Christian so-called Science can have no place. But so long as the pulpit furnishes the arguments, so long this Christian Science, that is neither Christian nor science, will use the arguments which the pulpit furnishes. SITI August 25, 1887, page 520.2

Let the truth of God be preached and believed, that the dead know not anything, and that without a resurrection from the dead even they “which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished” (1 Corinthians 15:16-18), and that will annihilate at once the New Theology with its question of probation after death. SITI August 25, 1887, page 520.3

Let the truth of God be preached and believed that “the soul that sinneth it shall die,” and “the wages of sin is death,” and that will annihilate forever the horrible doctrine of an eternity of torment, and with it will be annihilated the infidel charge of cruelty and injustice against God, who is supremely just and who is Love itself. SITI August 25, 1887, page 520.4

And so God charges men: “I charge thee therefore before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom; PREACH THE WORD ... with all long-suffering and doctrine. For the time will come [“will come?” it has come] when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” 2 Timothy 4:1-4. SITI August 25, 1887, page 520.5