This story has its parallel in our days. In our times there is a God and Father always nigh to those who diligently seek him. There is communion with spirits through Jesus, the great High-Priest. There are promises of guidance in difficulties and support under trials to all who come to God by Him.
In our days, too, there are those who propose, for the relief of human perplexities and the balm for human sorrows, a recourse to those who have familiar spirits, and profess to call back to us those who are at rest with God.
Now, while there is no objection to a strict philosophical investigation and analysis and record of these phenomena considered as psychological facts, while, in fact, such investigation is loudly called for as the best remedy for superstition, there is great danger to the mind and moral sense in seeking them as guides in our perplexities or comforters in our sorrows. And the danger is just this, that they take the place of that communion with God and that filial intercourse with him which is alone the true source of light and comfort. Most especially, to those whose souls are weakened by the anguish of some great bereavement, is the seeking of those that have familiar spirits to be dreaded. Who could bear to expose to the eye of a paid medium the sanctuary of our most sacred love and sorrow? and how fearful is the thought that some wandering spirit, in the voice and with the tone and manner of those dearest to us, may lead us astray to trust in those who are not God!
The most dangerous feature we know of in these professed spirit-messages is their constant tendency to place themselves before our minds as our refuge and confidence rather than God. "Seek us, trust us, believe in us, rely on us,"—such is always the voice that comes from them.
In Isaiah viii. 19, the prophet describes a time of great affliction and sorrow coming upon the Jews, when they would be driven to seek supernatural aid. He says: "And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and to wizards that peep and mutter; should not a nation seek unto their God? should the living seek unto the dead? To the law, and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, there is no light in them." The prophet goes on to say that those who thus turn from God to these sources of comfort "shall be hardly bestead and hungry, and shall fret themselves."
All our observation of those who have sought to these sources of comfort has been that they fall into just this restless hunger of mind, an appetite forever growing and never satisfied; and as their steps go farther and farther from the true source of all comfort, the hunger and thirst increase. How much more beautiful, safe, and sure that good old way of trust in God! The writer has had a somewhat large observation of the very best and most remarkable phenomena of that which is claimed to be spirit communion; she does not doubt the reality of many very remarkable appearances and occurrences; she has only respectful and tender sympathy for those whose heart-sorrows they have consoled. But when this way of guidance and consolation is put in the place of that direct filial access to God through Jesus which the Bible reveals, it must be looked upon as the most illusive and insidious of dangers. The phenomena, whatever they are, belong to forces too little understood, to laws too much unknown, that we should trust ourselves to them in the most delicate, critical, and sacred wants of our life.
Better than all is the way spoken of by Jesus when he, the Comforter, Guide, Teacher, Friend, will manifest himself to the faithful soul as he does not to the world: "If a man love me, he will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come and make our abode with him."