SPIRITUALISM.

Evening Star, Issue 3134, 6 March 1873, Page 2

SPIRITUALISM.

To the Editor.

Sir, —The Dunedin Presbytery has directed the session of Knox Church to suspend a certain deacon, on the ground “that be had countenanced, by appearing on the platform at public Sabbath services held in Dunedin, whereat doctrines subversive of the fundamentals of our Christian faith have been promulgated.” The clergyman who worded this indictment against the heretical deacon, writes as follows regarding Spir.tnalism :—“The curious thing is that the facts of Spiritualism arc a return to the Bible, instead of a departure from it ” How, then, can it be wrong in the deacon to listen to the exposition of those saving facts of our faith, even though delivered in the Queen’s Theatre ? The more especially since, according to the Rev. Mr Wait, spiritualists “are conscious of standing on a solid foundation of facts,” which mi: terialists and atheists would ignore, but which are uphold by Spiritualism. Mr Watt identifies the Biblical and Spiritualistic phenomena, and accepts, in good faith, “the well.attested appearance of spirit-hands and spirit-faces.” He also directly accepts the modern “manifestations as the production of invisible, intelligent agents ” —in other words, of spirits. The Presbytery is x’eally, in the case of this deacon, “straining at a gnat, and swallow jug a camel,” If Spiritualism, as Mr Watt asserts in the closing sentence of his letter, is to save “ those portions of Scripture which the scientific spirit had evacuated of their meaning,” how, then, can the deacon he censured for countenancing the laudable efforts of Messrs Peebles and Dunn in tiie direction of enabling “Christians to attain to a mors perfect realization of the existence of the spiritual world in its two great compartments of light and darkness.” if the deacon is to be censured and suspended, to be tried and deposed, pray what ought the Presbytery to do in respect to one of his reverend accusers ? Men are not altogether fools to be led about by the nose by the I’resbytery of Dunedin. If Mr Watt’s letter is orthodox, the deacon’s conduct is meritorious : if the charge of abetting heresy is to be fastened upon the deacon, then the pastor is doubly-dyed with the taint of heresy ; for he actually propagates Spiritualism through the Provincial Press.—l am, &c, Logic. Dunedin, March 5.