STRANGE DEATH PACT.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVIII, Issue 20990, 29 September 1931, Page 12

STRANGE DEATH PACT.

Sir, —Beforo occupying space with detailed treatment.* of points raised by "Bible Student" and "Anti-Nothing," tho following will throw light upon this serious subject:—'"l have known cases in which too rash a dabbling in Spiritualism has had serious effects, ending in lunacy" (Sir W. Crookes). "The obsessing spirit is almost always a deceiving and lying spirit" (Sir A. l\ussel Wallace). "If a medium is not specially wicked, be becomes so in the trance" (Prof. Lombroso): Since writing my first letter, a lady in Auckland told rno of a. relative mentally deranged through Spiritualism; and a gentleman told me he had been to many seances and observed the gradual degradation of mediums through this traffic in the unseen. Dr. R. P. Randolph, a noted medium, who was converted to Christ, after being in the trance over 2000 times, says, "I enter the arena against what I believe to be the most tremendous enemy of God, morals, and religion that ever found foothold on tho earth—the most seductive, hence most dangerous, form of sensualism that ever cursed a nation, age, or people. My health of body and mind was almost rained. Today I would ratlnr see the cholera in my house than be a spiritual medium. It pleased God to reduce mo to the zero of human woo that I might be snatched as a brand from tho burning." One of the earliest and ablest, of spiritualists, Robert Dale Owen, says, "There are more plausible reasons than many imagine for the opinion entertained by somo able men that the communications come from tho powers of darkness, and that wo are entering upon the first steps of a career of demonic manifestations the issues whereof men cannot conjecture." Tho Bible never encourages, but only denounces seeking to the. dead. "Try the spirits" (written by John, not Paul), means to test superhuman utterances or works to see if it is tho Holy Spirit of God operating, or a spirit not the Holy Spirit. Tlie "great cloud of witnesses" is by no means "onlookers," but, as the Greek shows, "testifiers," in fact, "martyrs," by their lives and deaths for the (ruth. "The dead know not anything" is certainly literal. Paul wrote that if there be no resurrection of the dead (an event applied to no human being yet, but only to Christ) "they that are fallen asleep in Christ are perished." That sentence could hot possibly apply if lie believed the dead were in conscious life anywhere in any form. Space forlv.ds further reply, which, however, I would gladly give to all the points raised. I trust your readers will be thoroughly warned of this terrible danger, and leave it entirely alone. Spiritualism may preach a grander gospel, but faith in it ia tragic. Wm. Campbell. 7, Herbert, Road, Mount Eden.