# Lehre und Wehre_St. Louis Missouri_Mai 1859_S156
# AI translation — CHI Digital Archive (demonstration)

156 Church and Contemporary History.

48 of the Heidelberg Catechism, where it says, for example: "According to his human nature Christ is not now on earth. Because the Godhead is incomprehensible and present everywhere, it must follow that it is indeed outside of the manhood it has assumed, and nevertheless none the less also within it." It takes, indeed, a long habit—explicable enough, to be sure—not to recognize from this alone that genuine Reformed believers are far from believing in the union of Godhead and manhood in Christ into One Person. By this we by no means wish to make Arians of all the Reformed. Thanks be to the Lord that simple souls do not see through the consequences of the doctrines of their sophistical teachers, hold artlessly to their orthodox-sounding expressions, and are thus kept in the right faith by the good Shepherd even under false teachers. It is an old and true proverb: Saepius puriores sunt aures auditorum, quam labia doctorum, that is: often the ears of the hearers are purer than the lips of their teachers. And to such hearers belong, thank God, many also who bear the preaching office. The point of doctrine here touched on is of the highest importance. We intend to go into it thoroughly on another occasion.

The growth of the Protestant churches.—The total number of members of so-called Protestant congregations in the United States is said to have been 400,000 fifty years ago, while it now amounts to about 3¼ million. Accordingly, during this period the population of the country has increased fourfold, but the Protestant churches eightfold.—

Spiritualists. According to the Spiritual Register for 1858 there are now some 5,000 men and women in America who more or less publicly advocate Spiritualism. Besides these there are said to be some 40,000 mediums who ply their trade privately (private mediums). The number of Spiritualists in this country is given as about 1,440,000, and those inclined toward them as 4,500,000. Even should the "spirits"—who, as is well known, do not take things so very precisely with the truth—have given out a figure ten times too high, as may well be supposed, it remains a fact that half a million of our countrymen seek light and salvation among ghost-spirits, a dreadful sign of the times.

Since the lying spirits have shown themselves so grossly immoral that even moderately respectable people are horrified at their doings, they have of late struck out on a new path, so as if possible to draw Christians too into their nets. This new direction had its beginning in Battle Creek, Mich. There they are supposed to give revelations, print tracts, ordain and send out elders in pairs to preach the new gospel and to proclaim the coming of the Millennium and the destruction of the ungodly—their annihilation in body and soul—through the flames of the last day, and to call upon all men to have themselves immersed and to receive the Spirit. They demand no wages, take up no collections, preach in a simple and popular manner, make use of a great many biblical expressions, and affect in every particular the bearing of people entrusted with a divine commission. Although they have plied their trade for only a few months, they have already scattered the seed of the lie in many places and led astray a good many souls, Baptists and Methodists especially, but also Congregationalists and Presbyterians.

All the Spiritualists agree in this, that they claim to be in intercourse with spirits. Thus a man near Dunden, Ill., claims to be in rapport with the spirits of Isaiah, Napoleon, and Christ. They are said to perform wonderful feats and to fall into strange raptures when they have dealings with their spirits. Now whether it be true that these wretched people have intercourse with spirits, that is, with devils, or whether the whole pretense is fraud: in any case the whole business of Spiritualism is a work of Satan. As such, as a hellish lie, Spiritualism is unmistakably branded by its own confession that the source of saving truth is not Holy Scripture. May the faithful Lord graciously keep all his servants from the powerful errors of this last time!—