The Woodville Republican

Number 61
SPIRITUAL RAPPERS.

If some of the authorized publications of this new school of philosophy be a fair test, their authors claim for spiritual visitants a higher mission, and more immediate power than the Saviour of mankind taught his followers to claim for Him. According to them, spiritual intelligences are better acquainted with the necessities of man, and the demands that his intellectual and moral nature is making upon a higher Being, than was our Saviour; and are disposed to advance man more rapidly and more effectually even than the received word of God acknowledges or claims. These spirits pretend to know man's wants; they have determined to relieve them, and earthly mediums are their agents in the great work! They claim a divine power; they originate—a new mission from the unseen world, and promise to their disciples a more enlarged field for improvement than any that infinite wisdom, mercy and goodness has yet developed for the restoration of man to abodes of bliss.

It is this new claim that gives to what is termed 'spiritual philosophy' its importance. The fly in amber excited curiosity, not from its own singularity or greatness, but from the puzzling consideration of how it got there. So a systematic attack upon revelation—a combined effort to give to the imaginings of man the seat of Christianity is bound to receive, at the hands of morality and religion, an exposure and refutation that would not be required, were it not for the sacred character of the object of assault. It will doubtless startle many, to whose notice the subject has never been brought except in a mere passing manner, to learn that this new philosophy is at war with revelation and with Christianity; that infidelity is its champion, and atheism will be its attendant. That which opposes the Bible must have such assistants; and if the claims of this new philosophy be truth, the whole Bible is a fable, the God of the Jew and Gentile a delusion, and Christ himself an impostor.

In New York city regular meetings are held for the propagation of this new belief. Wild extravagances are exhibited in some, and more sober argument and appeals characterize others. On the 28th ult., at the Stuyvesant Institute in that city, Mr. Ambler, editor of the Spirit Messenger, and a Mr. Finney, a received teacher of this new school, spoke earnestly and with an ability worthy a better cause.

The subject matter of their discourses is reported in the New York Tribune, as consisting chiefly in startling objections of the received system of Christian Theology.—Christ they recognized as a 'medium,' and some of the Prophets as 'clairvoyants;' but rejected all ideas of the creation of man as a perfect being, his after fall, and redemption through a vicarious sacrifice, as 'fable, unworthy our advanced stage of progress.' The received ideas of future rewards and punishments were, they contended, too material, and not fit motives to actuate man. Everything, said Mr. Ambler, showed progression; the mineral from the vegetable—the animal from the mineral—and man, the most perfect of the animal kingdom, was in a progressive state. As his 'perfection' was more or less developed, he was more or less happy; and as his death was but a mere throwing off the 'mortal coil,' that state of progression continued in the spirit state in equal degree as it had been developed here. Every act then committed against the law of nature or the rules of the 'Great Spirit,' or 'Positive Mind,' retarded the individual's progress, and never, through all eternity, could he get rid of the effects of that act, inasmuch as it was so much lost towards his 'perfection' or happiness. Hence in this consequence, the idea of eternal punishment (as a natural consequence following the act in proportion to its degree) was true. The speakers contended that man received revelation just in proportion as his own perfection was developed; that now we had so far progressed as to receive it by direct communication from the spirit world.—Christians, there were none among those professing sects; for if they were really followers of Christ, (that great and perfect 'medium.') they would be able 'to do the works that he did,'—heal the sick, cure the blind, &c. These same miracles could be, and now actually were being performed by persons in a high degree perfected among the spirit manifesters.'

We have quoted from this report to show what it is the most sober of these teachers recommend for man's belief, and to express a most decided opinion that it is high time that this wretched mixture of impiety, infidelity, blasphemy, and false philosophy, should receive at the hands of the Christian teacher and the religious preceptor that exposure and condemnation they deserve.