SPIRITUALISM AND MESMERISM.
Thft Rev 0. D. Oi c' 1 . delivered a lie n f on Tmsdy night at Wioabw cn Spiritual Jam and Mysmariam ; their history, phenomei)'. and dinners. Thera was a fair gathering for the elza of the place, and several had oma a dUterce of 7 to 10 miles The Rev A; Biake who was calls I to the chair, the meottog iu the usual way, briefly introduced the lecturer. The attention given and the hearty applau e at the close, aho .ved the appreciation of the audience. At an Interval some sacred songs were, effectively aong by a choir composed of friends from Willowby and Tinwald ; and at the close a vote of thanks moved by Mr Molvor was oordialiy carried. The leoturSr began by objecting to the name “ spiritualism " as a misnomer, spiritism wou'd more correctly describe it. He traced the history of it to ;ho Fox family in America In 1847; ‘4B, who were unwilling at first to ascribe the unsought phenomena to any other than natural oousaa. In consequence of these, however, even miterialists who experimented became convinced cf the reality of phenomena which could not be erplained by natural cans os ; and they had since become the subj-et of investigation by members of the London Dialectical Society in the years 1869, ‘7O wm came to the cor c usion that they were brought about by the agency of invisible beings. The Rev Joseph Cook had recently made the matter the subject of several hotures to a Boston audience, in which he stated that all cou’d not he accounted for bv fraud, and that there was a residonm pointing to a psychic force controlled by men only or by men and spirts. The lecturer s ated that a distinction mast be drawn between per-
formanoea where certain results ware expected by an audience, and private In* ▼eatigathns; In the former, as results could not be commanded, there was often an admixture of fraud He then detdled bona tide investigations con- ' ducted by himself and a friend. A message came purporting to bs from his own mother to be sent to hie eldest siste<-. He understood the meaning as his friend oonld not, but he also perceived the snare. And the lecturer gave his audience to understand that as we were naturally moat carious to have command cations from departed friends, evil spirits were ready to take advantage of this to personate anoh friends, and draw us on. As for his friend, who'was an artist, he was so susceptible a medium, as to became more and more subject to spiritist influence, until at last it interfered with his business and his nerves became upset. Besoming alarmed, he quitted the study of spiritism for ever The lector r stated he had never suffered beean-e he would never surrender his will. He detailed the stages or st’ps in investigation as of musical instruments ; (3) writing or speaking ; (4.) Materialisation. He pointed oat, to all who would take his testimony, the da-'gar that lay in the surrender of the will to the spirits, who were evil spirits and who having once gained accets to the body as to a dwelling, might return unsought, bringing with them others worse than themselves Oar Saviour had referred to this, and, in His day, evil spirits bad obtained access to the bodies of men. In the Word of God were fields of truth open for ns to explore, and a s ifficient ground of faith and practice ; while from ancient times endeavours t > communicate with spirits were expressly forbidden. His i-veanga-lions led him to conclude that the-e were beings living about and among ns ; that they purported to be spirits of the departed ; that they were evil spirits, and by playing on the weakness of human nature beguiled unstable souls. The t-ee would be known by its frn t, and ths fruit as far as .religion la concerned was a vague deism : the denial of a real heaven and bell ; and the diminishing of the sense of responsibility for sin. The result of yielding to spiritism was a kind of fatalism, a dependence on the favor and assistance of spirits ; whi'e, at the same time the authority c{ the Bible was ridlcnUd, and signs and lying wonders were wrought, with which to decisive, if possible, the elect. The lecturer proceeded, after an interval, to gve the history of mesmerism, which had often, like spiritism, been dragged into contempt, after the death of its founder, Mesmer, in 1813. He detailed the four stages —sleep, control of personality, clairvoyance, and trance, or, ns it was wrongly called, universal illumination. Under mesmerism the power of dissimulation was lost—a presage of the state of matters at the Day of Judgment. There was some force, not magnetism, not electricity, connected with will, brain, and senses, called pyschic force. There was a danger in mesmerism, as in spiritism, arising from a drain on the vitality and the surrender of the personality to the will of another.
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Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1349, 23 September 1886, Page 2
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839SPIRITUALISM AND MESMERISM. Ashburton Guardian, Volume V, Issue 1349, 23 September 1886, Page 2
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