Modern spiritism; its science and religion - SpiritArchive.org

DANGERS OF SPIRITISM 183
through the medium of automatic writing. For a
very similar case see Mr. E. F. Benson's recent remarkable
book, "Across the Stream." It is, of
course, fiction, but is a most truthfully drawn
picture of the real thing I am alluding to.
Dr. Thornton's daughter, using the planchette,
got responses from a spirit which had not given its
name. She said, "If you can't write your name,
make a cross." Then the planchette seemed seized
with a fury, and swept away from the hands upon it. *
Miss Thornton put it back, and she again said
"Make a cross." It wrote on the paper, in letters
six inches long, "No, No, No!" "Make a cross or go,"
she replied.
Then it wrote "Curse you," and left.
I fear this savours of the melodramatic; but I
cannot help it, as I believe the story to be authentic,
and there really seems a good deal of "melodrama"
in Spiritism!
Will any say that such beings are not a very real
danger both to faith and morals ?
Immorality
A steady teacher in a board school, thirty-six
years of age, a single man, of temperate habits in all
things, began to dabble in spirit-writing, and soon
was answered by a most unclean spirit writing the
most obscene words and suggesting the most wicked
thoughts and drawing awful pictures. It gradually
destroyed his character, and he entered on a dissolute
life, spending his time and money in orgies of
debauchery.
*
We have also accounts from Sir Wm. Crookes and others of
the apparent "possession" of inanimate objects.