Page:On the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism.djvu/80

74 received through the spiritual mediums of the day?

As this is the great question between the New Church and modem spiritualism, we are not unwilling to devote some attention to it. We shall have space on the present occasion only to open the subject, and lay out the general ground; it is therefore our design to follow it up at a future time with a fuller adduction of reasons and considerations.

1. The first point to which we shall invite attention is the difference of claim set up by the two systems. This difference is apparent upon the very face of the two. The system of Swedenborg sets out with the averment that it is a divine revelation, and this asseveration it constantly carries with it throughout its entire length and breadth. Spiritualism, on the other hand, makes no such claim. It professes to be, and from the very nature of the case must of necessity be, a set of variable miscellaneous communications received from departed spirits, human and fallible like ourselves, and capable of giving forth only their own views and opinions. They tell you from the first that they are some departed brother, father, or other relative, or some neighbor, friend, or acquaintance; or, where this is not the case, some other person of whom you have heard, or who, at any rate, not many years ago lived here in the world—men, women, and children like ourselves. All they can testify to are the facts which have come under their own personal observation since they have been in the world of spirits; and can tell nothing concerning the higher or lower spheres of spiritual existence, except from hearsay or conjecture; and in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred