Modern spiritism; its science and religion - SpiritArchive.org

SPIRITISM AND CHRISTIANITY 221
to obtain a prize, but one of the many halting
stations on a long, long trail.
Maeterlinck, who is so puzzled and worried by
the phenomena, not the doctrines, of Spiritism,
seems equally anti-Christian in his beliefs.
He says: "Theosophy is immeasurably superior
to that of the barbaric Heaven, and the monstrous
Hell of the Christian, where rewards and punishments
are for ever meted out to virtues and vices,
which are for the most part puerile, unavoidable, or
accidental."
"In facing death," he says, "let us lose no time
in putting from our minds all that the positive
religions have left there." (He does not say what is to
take their place.)
After all this, is it any wonder that we find in
Galatians v. 20, among the "works of the flesh,"
"sorcery?"
Sorcery Forbidden
Turning now to the Scriptural denunciation of all
attempts to penetrate the mysteries
of the other
world, further than what is revealed, I think it
worth while to record here, for reference, a list of
these warnings, which, of course, the somewhat
jaded reader may skip if he wishes, as the remainder
will still be intelligible without reading them all
through. The principal ones are as follows (I quote
throughout from the Revised Version)
:
"Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live."*
Exod. xxii. 1 8.
* See further on for comments on this severe enactment, so
much abused in early American history.