Compare this with the language of St. Augustine, and we shall see that it is simply a return to the stand-point of the primitive Church.
Among the open and professed Spiritualists are some men and women of pure and earnest natures, and seriously anxious to do good, and who ought to be distinguished from the charlatans who have gone into it merely from motives of profit and self-interest. Now it is to be remarked that this higher class of spiritualists, with one voice, declare that the subject of spiritual communication is embarrassed with formidable difficulties. They admit that lying spirits often frequent the circle, that they are powerful to deceive, and that the means of distinguishing between the wiles of evil spirits and the communications of good ones are very obscure.
This, then, is the prospect. The pastures of the Church have been suffered to become bare and barren of one species of food which the sheep crave and sicken for the want of. They break out of the inclosure and rush, unguided, searching for it among poisonous plants, which closely resemble it, but whose taste is deadly.
Those remarkable phenomena which affect belief upon this subject are not confined to paid mediums and spiritual circles, so called. They sometimes come of themselves to persons neither believing in them, looking for them, nor seeking them. Thus coming they can not but powerfully and tenderly move the soul. A person in the desolation of bereavement, visited with such experiences, is in a condition which calls for the tenderest sympathy and most careful guidance. Yet how little of this is there to be found! The attempt to unvail their history draws upon them, perhaps, only cold ridicule and a scarcely suppressed doubt of their veracity. They are repelled from making confidence where they ought to find the wisest guidance, and are drawn by an invisible sympathy into labyrinths of deception and error—and finally, perhaps, relapse into a colder skepticism than before. That such experiences are becoming common in our days, is a fact that ought to rouse true Christians to consideration, and to searching the word of God to find the real boundaries and the true and safe paths.
We have stated in the last article, and in this, what the belief and the customs of the primitive Christians were in respect to the departed. We are aware that it does not follow, of course, that a custom is to be adopted in our times because the first Christians preached and taught it. A man does not become like his ancestors by dressing up in their old clothes—but by acting in their spirit. It is quite possible to wear such robes and practice such ceremonies as the early Christians did and not to be in the least like them. Therefore let us not be held as advocating the practice of administering the eucharist at funerals, and of praying for the dead in the eucharistic service, because it was done in the first three centuries. But we do hold to a return to the spirit which caused these customs. We hold to that belief in the unbroken unity possible between those who have passed to the higher life than this. We hold to that vivid faith in things unseen which was the strength of primitive Christians. The first Christians believed what they said they did—we do not. The unseen spiritual world, its angels and archangels, its saints and martyrs, its purity and its joys, were ever before them, and that is why they were such a mighty force in the world. St. Augustine says that it was the vision of the saints gone before that inspired them with courage and contempt of death—and it is true.
In another paper we shall endeavor to show how far these beliefs of the primitive Church correspond with the Holy Scripture.