In the remote districts of Christian Russia, where the rays of our civilization have not yet penetrated the darkness of theology, where Bible morals are still supreme, we are told that even at the present time a more terribly real form attaches to this eucharistic ceremony. From Harper’s Weekly I quote the following:
“We hear of horrid sects at present in Russia, practicing cannibal and human sacrifices with rites almost more devilish than any recorded in history. ‘The communism of the flesh of the Lamb’ and ‘the communism of the blood of the Lamb’ really seem to have been invented by the lowest demons of the bottomless pit. The subject is too revolting to be pursued in detail; it is enough to say that an infant seven days old is bandaged over the eyes, stretched over a dish, and a silver spoon thrust into the side so as to pierce the heart. The elect suck the child’s blood—that is ‘the blood of the Lamb!’ The body is left to dry up in another dish full of sage, then crushed into powder and eaten—that is ‘the flesh of the Lamb!’”
Witchcraft.
I refuse to accept the Bible as a moral guide because it recognizes as a verity the delusion of witchcraft and punishes with death its victims.
The God that inspired the account of Saul’s interview with the witch of Endor was as thorough a believer in witchcraft as the most superstitious crone of the Middle Ages.
Manasseh “used enchantments, and used witchcraft, and dealt with a familiar spirit, and with wizards” (2 Chron. xxxiii, 6).
Isaiah speaks of “wizards that peep and mutter” (Isa. viii, 19).
Samuel (1 Sam, xv, 23) and Micah (v, 12) and Nahum (iii, 4) and Paul (Gal. v, 20) all admit the reality of witchcraft.
The decline in the belief of wizards and witches denotes a decline of faith in the Bible. Until a very recent period, those who professed to believe in the divinity of the Bible also professed to believe in the reality of witchcraft. “Giving up witchcraft,” says John Wesley, “is, in effect, giving up the Bible” (Journal, 1768).