Synopsis "Spiritism: The Modern Satanism (in English)"
"The most popular amusement this year is Spiritism. A vast proportion of the population is practicing it, consulting mediums, purchasing the latest books, magazines and newspapers dealing with it and attending lectures by the leaders of Spiritism and Psychic Research in such numbers that no hall in America has been large enough to contain those clamoring for admittance." Although written in the 1920's this problem is with us today in the New Age movement, which has declared that we are all our own 'god'. Let us consider these words and compare them to what we hear today: "Whether Spiritism is a New Revelation or a New Religion, as is loudly claimed by its propagandists, whether it is to afford a firmer foundation for Christianity, whether it will modify or destroy the Church of Christ, may be apparent from the teachings of its well known and recognized leaders whose principal doctrines will be examined in some detail. They stagger us at the very outset by declaring that Christ himself was a Medium. His Divinity is brushed aside by the assertion that he is not God, but only a creature, a human being, one who is near to God. They call him the 'Christ Spirit' who represents God." Let us consider this warning: "In substantiation of the fact that a repudiation of one of the truths of Christianity speedily resuits in a denial of all, we have as a consequence of the rejection of the Divinity of Christ a number of conclusions that to the Christian mind are startling. They deny the fact of original sin; they ridicule the idea that man fell from grace; they spurn the Scriptural account of the sin of Adam and Eve by calling it a baseless figment of the imagination; they repudiate the lapse of our grand first parents from a state of primal innocence. Once started on a path of negation such as this, we may be prepared for the most surprising conclusions leading to still further denials. The results of this initial error in Theology are so tremendous and so far reaching that if there were no fall, what becomes of the Atonement, of the Redemption? What is left of a large part, if not the whole of historic Christian Theology? To hack away at the keystone of the arch of Christianity in this fashion is to cause the whole edifice to totter. Christianity must be taken in its entirety or not at all." The chapter that Spiritism is against human reason begins: "Those who on earth were quite choice about their company are not likely to be supremely happy in the Spiritistic heaven where the souls of the good and bad mingle so promiscuously as they do in seances. Who would wish to go to heaven if all the unrepentant villains of the earth were there, mingling intimately with them, and turning heaven into hell? What one believes on earth seems to make little difference in the realms of the Spiritistic heaven. It is quite useless to be a Christian at all, to practice virtue, to be selfsacrificing, to follow the counsels of perfection, or to aim at a devout life, because murderers, adulterers and blasphemers will get just as much reward as those who lead an upright life." If everyone goes to heaven as some today preach, then why be good?
