Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1866 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER VII. GOD'S TESTIMONT AGAINST SPIRITUALISM. "There is, perhaps, no fact within the range of biblical science," says Rev. C. Munger, "in which critics are more agreed than in this, namely, that the word demon denotes a spiritual being, or that demons among the Greeks, Jews, and Christians, according to common belief and use, were spirits.... There is an entire unanimity among critics, so far as we have examined, in the fact named.... "Whether the spirit is human or superhuman, is not so well agreed; neither is it at all material to our argument." Without such an admission, so far as the Jews are concerned, the practice of Christ and his apostles can never be satisfactorily explained. If they did not regard the spirits, or demons, by them cast out, real existences, they intentionally misled the people. We have shown that demons among the heathen were worshiped as the ghosts of departed heroes, conquerors, and potentates, and that popular superstition had deified them. Many of these demons were supposed to be evil spirits, while many of them were held in high esteem for their moral virtues. This was the heathen view. But the New Testament writers invariably use the term to denote evil spirits. God has regarded the practice of consulting the dead with so much displeasure, that he has enacted stringent statutes against it. The thunderbolts of the divine displeasure are suspended over our heads at every step we take in this direction. To seek unto mediums is to forsake God. "We are to turn from them as from the path to hell. The law declares, "There shall not be found among you a necromancer." Deut. xviii, 11. The people understood this to mean, "one who consulted disembodied spirits." "A man also, or a woman, that hath a familiar...