[49] This person, whose name was most accurately given, had died five days previously. He was a servant on the estate, and had belonged to the sect of the Anabaptists.
[50] "Notes of an Enquiry into the Phenomena called Spiritualism, during the years 1870-73." By William Crookes, F.R.S.
[51] "The reader who has not been in the habit of attending _séances_ should be informed that the peculiar phraseology of some of the questions is rendered necessary by the fact that if you ask the spirits, 'Where did _you_ die?' or 'Where were _you_ buried?' they will sometimes tell you that it was not _they_ who died and were buried, but merely the external shell or material covering of the real man."--Note by the Editor of the "Spiritual Magazine."
[52] "There is scarcely a city or a considerable town in Continental Europe, at the present moment, where Spiritualists are not reckoned by hundreds if not by thousands; where regularly established communities do not habitually meet for spiritual purposes: and they reckon among them individuals of every class and avocation."--"Scepticism and Spiritualism." In a letter to the "Spiritual Magazine," dated May 4th, 1867, Judge Edmunds, of America, estimated the number of Spiritualists in the United States at ten millions. "In London, ten years ago," writes Mr. R. Dale Owen, "there was but a single Spiritual paper; to-day there are five."--"The Debatable Land," p. 175. London: Trübner, 1871.
[53] The Rev. John Edwards, jun., M.A., Vicar of Prestbury, near Cheltenham.
[54] "We do not, either by faith or works, _earn_ Heaven, nor are we sentenced, on any Day of Wrath, to Hell. In the next world we simply gravitate to the position for which, by life on earth, we have fitted ourselves; and we occupy that position _because_ we are fitted for it."--"The Debatable Land," by R. Dale Owen, p. 125. London, 1871.
[55] Howitt's "What Spiritualism has Taught," p. 8.
[56] Howitt's "What Spiritualism has Taught," p. 10.
[57] "Spiritualism is avowedly opposed to the Christian Religion. 'The Creed of the spirits' is published in the shape of a little tract, one of those called 'Seed Corn,' which active agents love to distribute gratuitously wherever readers can be found, and these are its clauses: 'I believe in God'--'I believe in the immortality of the human soul'--'I believe in right and wrong'--'I believe in the communion of spirits as ministering angels.' Nothing more. Those well-intending persons, therefore--and we believe that among Protestants there are many--who go to _séances_ out of curiosity, and who are sometimes heard to say that if Spiritualism be true it must therefore be right, should be warned that they are lending countenance to persons in whose writings the doctrines of the Trinity and the Divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ are emphatically denied--the Holy Ghost scoffed at in words too blasphemous for repetition, our Blessed Lady insulted, and the whole fabric of Religion attacked and undermined; and whether this is done by spirits who actually manifest themselves for the purpose of leading people astray, or by impostors who work upon the credulity of their audience, the thing can have but one origin, and that is the same as that of any other work by which the Arch-enemy seeks to close the heart of man against the True Faith. It is time therefore to use other weapons than that of ridicule against the baneful and, we fear, widely increasing delusion."--"Tablet," September 6, 1873.