“A NARROWING CULT”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21358, 11 June 1931, Page 16

“A NARROWING CULT”

ATTACK ON SPIRITUALISM. (From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, April 17. Speaking on Sunday at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Somers Town, the Rev. Desmond Morse-Boycott described Spiritualism as a dangerous and delusive cult. “ Spiritualism inevitably attracts the curious and the crooked/’ he said. “Tt tickles the lovers of sensation. Have there been, within memory, anything more nauseating end silly than the hysterical scenes that followed the death of that eminent man of letters, Arthur Conan Doyle? I am persuaded that not a few who took part in the memorial sevice in the Albert Hall secretly hoped for a vision of the creator of Sherlock Holmes. “The very claim made by spiritualists to represent the Church, more perfectly, as she was in the beginning, may prove their undoing in the eyes of scholars. When it was suggested seriously that Christ was a medium (in the spiritualistic sense); that the Holy Apostles conducted seances; that the Prophets were controlled by discarnate spirits rather than by the Holy Spirit directly, and that the whole of Christendom has gone astray for centuries, there can be no question of the delusive nature of this narrowing cult, prompted, I am bold to say by the very Father of Lies. NOT ALL TRICKERY. “Spiritualism is not all trickery,” continued Mr Morse-Boycott, “ far, far from it. I believe that many of the results are genuine. One cannot suppose that Conan Doyle and Vale Owen could be utterly deluded, yet I am sure spiritualism clouds the vision. “My friend, the honest Mj- Hannen Swaffer, could not easily be tricked. But I believe there is subtle fraud planned in the heavenly places by the powers of darkness. Are all the rogues on this side? " Mr Morse-Boycott described spiritualism as spiritual adultery, and added, “The medium possessed of that most dangerous of all God’s gifts, psychic power, which should never be used save in the service of God and at His clear bidding, exposes his or her personality to invasion by unknown and unknowable spirits from the other world. “ Must we turn to the Doyles and Vale Owens and their company, wandering in the darkness? ” asked the preacher in conclusion. “ Shall we not come, rather, into God’s own light, free from fears and fantasies? ”