WITNESSES TO SPIRITUALISM.

Southland Times, Issue 1191, 4 January 1870, Page 3

WITNESSES TO SPIRITUALISM.

{Morning Star.) "What treasure of a beater has unearthed all the curious people who are giving evidence on Spiritualism before the Committee of the London Dialectical Society ? Who would have thought there was so much excellent game hidden away in the pastures in which the tame herds of society love to browse ? Better hunting for those who like that sport has surely never been found before. To go no farther back than Saturday, the report of the committee's proceedings, which appears in that day's issue of the Eastern Post, ought to be enough to make the funny journals sparkle for a twelvemonth. That report shows the committee devoting its attention to the remedial branch of the subject, and examining witnesses whpknow how to make the spirits be still. Adjuration would seem to be the most approved method of putting a stop to an unpleasant manifestation. One gentleman relates how> having been for some

time in communication with the spirit of his deceased daughter, he was one day talking to it, when a little " tripod table " joined in the conversation. The gentleman was puzzled, not knowing whether the table was worthy of the family confidence, till he bethought him of catechising it as to its views on the Atonement. The answers were unsatisfactory, so the gentleman, addressing the table as an " accursed spirit," bade it leave the room. The table tried to obey, and walked quickly in a sidelong manner to the door, but it could not turn the handle. The gentleman opened the door, repeating the adjuration, and the table made the best of its way to the hall. It would not quit the house, however ; but, as it appeared to have been sufficiently humiliated, it was allowed to go up stairs again, and do penance for its fault by putting itself in a corner, "just," says the gentleman, *' as I my child used to do when I reproved I her." The same gentleman, still unsatisfied, went to the house of a well-known medium, and witnessed a manifestation. He asked the name of the spirit, and that of his child was given. He repeated his adjuration in the name of the three persona of the Trinity, and asked the spirit if it was speaking the truth. Its reply was " No." " Who are you then ?" asked the gentleman, and the word " Devil " was spelled out. The witness's general conclusion is that the spirit, which is put. in communication with, us on these occasions is a fallen one,and isof the Devil, the Prince of the Power of the Air. His sovereign test for a spirit is a question as to its belief in the Trinity and the Christian ■ scheme, for he thinks that no spirit which denies the Atonement, or does not believe in the Trinity, can be of divine origin. A lady who is present objects to this as too narrow. "It is hard," she says, "to suppose that good Mahometans, or persons of other non-Christian faiths, should not have good spirils." Another lady has not much to say as to the test itself, but she has a very decided objection to the severity with which it seems to have been applied. Her way is to go gently to work with spirits, and not always to take them at their iword, for they are often skittish rather than deliberately mischievous. Thus, when she, or rather her sister, whose experience she narrates, sees a spirit trying to write " Satan," or " Beelzabub," in answer to her request for its name} she is wont to bid it, in a good-humored way, not "tell such Outrageous lies," since nothing shall make her believe in tne existence of the spirit named. This lady, however, has a test hardly less vigorous than the preceding, for when she sees a spirit writing so j much as the first letter of "Satan, she will never suffer it to proceed, forgetting that its name may be really Samuel, and it may be anxious' to tell the truth. Another witness (of the literary profes- j sion) believes that what is called spiritualism is simply evil possession, j His mode of adjuration is very simple — : " Are you the spirit that imposed on Ananias the sorcerer ?" he once enquired, when he saw manifestations going on. '*¥e«j" the spirit felt constrained to ijeply. "In the name of God, then, depart — go away," said the witness, and the spirit departed, and went away. A similar formula would have sufficed, according to another witness, who on one occasion caused a spirit to leave a shoeblack by simply saying to it " Be off with you." Perhaps these extracts may, of themselves, without one word of comment, suffice to show the exhaustive nature of the inquiry now being pursued by the Dialectical Society.