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Spiritualism, for the most part, is a shower from the realm of intelligences and uncultured affections. It is rapidly irrigating and fertilizing everything that has root and the seed-power to grow. It is starting up the half-dead trees of Sectarianism, causing the most miserable weeds to grow rapid and rank, and of course, attracting very general attention to religious feelings and super-terrene existences.
As an effect of this spiritualistic rain, you may look for an immense harvest of both wheat and tares the grandest growths in great principles and ideas on the one hand, and a fearful crop of crudities and disorganizing superstitions on the other. There will be seen floating on the flood many of our most sacred institutions. Old wagon-ruts, long-forgotten cow-tracks, every little hole and corner in the old highways, will be filled to the brim with the rain. You will hardly know the difference between the true springs and the flowing mud-pools visible on every side. Many noble minds will stumble as they undertake to ford the new streams which will come up to their very door-sills, if not into their sacred and established habitations. Perhaps lives may be lost; perhaps homes may be broken up; perhaps fortunes may be sacrificed; for who ever heard of a great flood, a storm of much power, or an earthquake, that did not do one, or two, or all of these deplorable things?
Spiritualism is, indeed, all and everything which its worst enemies or best friends ever said of it; a great rain from heaven, a storm of violence, a power unto salvation, a destroyer and a builder too each, and all, and everything good, bad, and indifferent; for which every one, nevertheless, should be thankful, as eventually all will be when the evil subsides, when the severe rain is over, and the clouds dispersed when even the blind will see with new eyes, the lame walk, and the mourners of the world be made to rejoice with joy unspeakable.
Of course, my kind brother, you know that I look upon wisdom organized into our daily lives, and love inspiring every heart, as the only true heaven appointed saviour of mankind. And all spiritual growth and intellectual advancement in the goodnesses and graces of this redeemer I call an application of the Harmonial Philosophy. But I find, as most likely you do, that it is as hard to get the Spiritualists to become Harmonial Philosophers as to induce ardent Bible-believers to daily practice the grand essentials which dwell in the warm heart of Christianity.
It is not long since the writer was in conversation with a very celebrated and popular minister of the modern Church, who has for years fulfilled a fruitful ministry in New England. He was speaking of modern Spiritualism as one of the most dangerous forms of error as an unaccountable infatuation. The idea was expressed by a person present that it was after all true that the spirits of the departed friends were in reality watching over our course and interested in our affairs in this world.
The clergyman, who has a fair right, by reason of his standing and influence to represent the New England pulpit, met that idea by a prompt denial. A pleasing sentimental dream, he said, very apt to mislead, and for which there is no scriptural and rational foundation. We have shown in our last article what the very earliest Christians were in the habit of thinking with regard to the unbroken sympathy between the living and those called dead, and how the Church by very significant and solemn acts pronounced them to be not only alive, but alive in a fuller, higher, and more joyful sense than those on earth.
We may remember that among the primitive Christians the celebration of the Lords Supper was not as in our modern times a rare and unfrequent occurrence, coming at intervals of two, three, and even six months, but that it occurred every Sunday, and on many of the solemn events of life, as funerals and marriages, and that one part of the celebration always consisted in recognizing by a solemn prayer the unbroken unity of the saints below and the saints in heaven. We may remember, too, that it was a belief among them that angels were invisibly present, witnessing and uniting with the eucharistic memorial a belief of which we still have the expression in that solemn portion of the Episcopal communion service which says, Wherefore with angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven, we laud and magnify thy Holy Name.
This part of the eucharistic service was held by the first Christians to be the sacred and mysterious point of confluence when the souls of saints on earth and the blessed in heaven united. So says Saint Chrysostom:
The seraphim above sing the holy Trisagion hymn; the holy congregation of men on earth send up the same; the general assembly of celestial and earthly creatures join together; there is one thanksgiving, one exultation; one choir of men and angels rejoicing together.
The martyrs are now rejoicing in concert, partaking of the mystical songs of the heavenly choir. For if while they were in the body whenever they communicated in the sacred mysteries they made part of the choir, singing with the cherubim, holy, holy, holy, as ye all that are initiated in the holy mysteries know; much more now, being joined with those whose partners they were in the earthly choir, they do with greater freedom partake of those solemn glorifications of God above.