Can Our Dead Speak to Us?
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will be right, because it is the judgment of self.... The throne is within
you.” Said a spiritualistic teacher, as the “spiritual consciousness”
awoke within him: “My fellow men, all were unfallen demigods.” And
another declares: “Any just and perfect being is Christ.”
Thus, in place of the righteousness and perfection of the infinite
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God, the true object of adoration; in place of the perfect righteousness
of His law, the true standard of human attainment, Satan has substituted
the sinful, erring nature of man himself as the only object of adoration,
the only rule of judgment, or standard of character. This is progress,
not upward, but downward.
It is a law both of the intellectual and the spiritual nature that by
beholding we become changed. The mind gradually adapts itself to
the subjects upon which it is allowed to dwell. It becomes assimilated
to that which it is accustomed to love and reverence. Man will never
rise higher than his standard of purity or goodness or truth. If self is
his loftiest ideal, he will never attain to anything more exalted. Rather,
he will constantly sink lower and lower. The grace of God alone has
power to exalt man. Left to himself, his course must inevitably be
downward.
To the self-indulgent, the pleasure-loving, the sensual, spiritualism
presents itself under a less subtle disguise than to the more refined and
intellectual; in its grosser forms they find that which is in harmony
with their inclinations. Satan studies every indication of the frailty of
human nature, he marks the sins which each individual is inclined to
commit, and then he takes care that opportunities shall not be wanting
to gratify the tendency to evil. He tempts men to excess in that which
is in itself lawful, causing them, through intemperance, to weaken
physical, mental, and moral power. He has destroyed and is destroying
thousands through the indulgence of the passions, thus brutalizing
the entire nature of man. And to complete his work, he declares,
through the spirits that “true knowledge places man above all law;”
that “whatever is, is right;” that “God doth not condemn;” and that
“all sins which are committed are innocent.” When the people are
thus led to believe that desire is the highest law, that liberty is license,
and that man is accountable only to himself, who can wonder that
corruption and depravity teem on every hand? Multitudes eagerly
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accept teachings that leave them at liberty to obey the promptings
of the carnal heart. The reins of self-control are laid upon the neck