turneth after such as have familiar spirits, and after wizards, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul, and will cut him off from among his people." The Lord Almighty, in a score of passages which I have not now time to quote, utters his indignation against all this great family of delusions. After that, be a spiritualist if you dare!

Still further, we learn from this text how it is that people come to fall into spiritualism. Saul had enough trouble to kill ten men. He did not know where to go for relief. After a while he resolved to go and see the Witch of En-dor. He expected that somehow she would afford him relief. It was his trouble that drove him there. And I have to tell you now that spiritualism finds its victims in the troubled, the bankrupt, the sick, the bereft. You lose your watch, and you go to the fortune-teller to find where it is. You are sick with a strange disease, and you go to a clairvoyant to find out by a lock of hair what is the matter with you. You lose a friend, you want the spiritual world opened, so that you may have communication with him. In a highly wrought, nervous, and diseased state of mind, you go and put yourself in that communication. That is why I hate spiritualism. It takes advantage of one in a moment of weakness, which may come npon us at any time. We lose a friend. The trial is keen, sharp, suffocating, almost maddening. If we could marshal a host, and storm the eternal world, and recapture our loved one, the host would soon be marshaled. The house is so lonely. The world is so dark. The separation is so insufferable. But spiritualism says, "We will open the future world, and your loved one can come back and talk to you." Though we may not hear his voice, we may

hear the rap of his hand. So, clear the table.

Sit down.

Be very quiet. Five minmotion of the table. No re

Put your hands on the table. utes gone. Ten minutes. No sponse from the future world. Twenty minutes. Thirty minutes. Nervous excitement all the time increasing. Forty minutes. The table shivers. Two raps from the future world. The letters of the alphabet are called over. The departed friend's name is John. At the pronunciation of the letter "J," two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter "O," two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter "H," two raps. At the pronunciation of the letter "N," two raps. There you have the whole name spelled out. J-o-h-n, John. Now, the spirit being present, you say, "John, are you happy?" Two raps give an affirmative answer. Pretty soon the hand of the medium begins to twitch and toss, and begins to write out, after paper and ink are furnished, a message from the eternal world. What is remarkable, the departed spirit, although it has been amidst the illuminations of heaven, can not spell as well as it used to! It has lost all grammatical accuracy, and can not write as distinctly. I received a letter through a medium once. I sent it back. I said, "Just please to tell those ghosts they had better go to school and get improved in their orthography!" Now, just think of spirits that the Bible represents as enthroned in glory coming down to crawl under the table, and break crockery, and ring tea bells before supper is ready, and rap the window-shutter on a gusty night! Is there any consolation in such poor, miserable work compared with the thought that our departed Christian friends, rid of pain and languishing, are in the radiant society of heaven, and that we shall join them there, not in a stifled and mysterious half-utterance which

makes the hair stand on end and the cold chills creep the back, but in an unhindered and illimitable delight?

"And none shall murmur or misdoubt,

When God's great sunrise finds us out."

Yes, my friends, spiritualism comes to those who are in trouble, and sweeps them into its delusions. Saul, in the midst of his disaster, went to the Witch of En-dor. The vast majority of those who have gone to spiritual mediums have been sent there through their misfortunes.

I learn still further from this subject, that spiritualism and necromancy are affairs of the darkness. Why did not Saul go in the day-time? He was ashamed to go. Besides that, he knew that this spiritual medium, like all her successors, performed her exploits in the night. The Dayenports, the Fowlers, the Foxes, the spiritual mediums of all ages, have chosen the night or a darkened room. Why? The majority of their wonders have been swindles, and deception prospers best in the night.

Some of the performances of spiritual mediums are not to be ascribed to fraud, but to some occult law that after a while may be demonstrated. But I believe that now nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand achievements on the part of spiritual mediums are arrant and unmitigated humbug. The mysterious red letters that used to come out on the medium's arm were found to have been made by an iron pencil that went heavily over the flesh, not tearing it, but disturbing the blood so it came up in great round letters. The witnesses of the séance have locked the door, put the key in their pocket, arrested the operator, and found out by searching the room that hidden levers moved the tables. The sealed letters that were mysteriously read without opening have been found to have

been cut at the side, and then afterward slyly put together with gum arabic; and the medium who, with a heavy blanket over his head, could read a book has been found to have had a bottle of phosphoric oil, by the light of which any body can read a book; and ventriloquism, and legerdemain, and sleight-of-hand, and optical delusion account for nearly every thing. Deception being the main staple of spiritualism, no wonder it chooses the darkness.

You have all seen strange and unaccountable things in the night. Almost every man has some time had a touch of hallucination. Some time ago, after I had been overtempted to eat something indigestible before retiring at night, after retiring I saw the president of one of the prominent colleges astride the foot of the bed, while he demanded of me a loan of five cents! When I awakened I had no idea it was any thing supernatural. And I have to advise you, if you hear and see strange things at night, to stop eating hot mince-pie and take a dose of bilious medicine. It is an outraged physical organism, and not a call from the future world. Spiritualism, knowing that it is able to deceive the very elect after sundown, does nearly all its work in the night. The Witch of En-dor held her séances at night; so do all the witches. Away with this religion of spooks!

Still further: I learn from my text that spiritualism is doom and death to its disciples. King Saul thought that he would get help from the "medium;" but the first thing that he sees makes him swoon away, and no sooner is he resuscitated than he is told he must die. Spiritualism is doom and death to every one that yields to it. It ruins the body. Look in upon an audience of spiritualists. Cadaverous. Weak. Nervous. Exhausted. Hands clammy

and cold. Nothing prospers but long hair-soft marshes yielding rank grass. Spiritualism destroys the physical heaith. Its disciples are ever hearing startling news from the other world. Strange beings crossing the room in white. Table fidgety, wanting to get its feet loose as if to dance. Voices sepulchral and ominous. Bewildered with

raps.

I never knew a confirmed spiritualist who had a healthy nervous system. It is incipient epilepsy and catalepsy. Destroy your nervous system, and you might as well be dead. I have noticed that people who are hearing raps from the future world have but little strength left to bear the hard raps of this world. It is an awful thing to trifle with one's nervous system. It is so delicate, it is so farreaching, its derangements are so terrible. Get the nervous system a-jangle, and, so far as your body and soul are concerned, the whole universe is a-jangle. Better, in our ignorance, experiment with a chemist's retort that may smite us dead, or with an engineer's steam-boiler that may blow us to atoms, than experiment with the nervous system. A man can live with only one lung or with no eyes, and be happy, as men have been under such afflictions; but woe be to the man whose nerves are shattered! Spiritualism smites first of all and mightily against the nervous system, and so makes life miserable.

I indict spiritualism, also, because it is a social and marital curse. The worst deeds of licentiousness and the worst orgies of obscenity have been enacted under its patronage. The story is too vile for me to tell. I will not pollute my tongue nor your ears with the recital. Sometimes the civil law has been evoked to stop the outrage. Families innumerable have been broken up by it. It has pushed off