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Show i Fake Spiritualism. 13AAC K. FUNK, D. D., the well known publisher of New York, is the latest victim of the spiritualistic spiritual-istic craze. He seems to be laboring under the delusion that the spirit of his former friend, Henry Ward Beecher, came to him at the bidding of a medium medi-um and told him where to find a copper coin known as the widow's mite, which , he had mislaid years ago. This is a fair sample of these manifestations. mani-festations. Nothing of true importance is ver divulged. The veil which hides the future is never unfolded. Only trifles easily learned or guessed at are imparted by the spirits. No good is ever done. The believer is told a few things he himself or some other person knows about the past, and is perhaps startled on finding out that others know what he supposes is a secret. If the average citizen only knew the amount of information regarding his personal affairs that is stored away for future reference in the brain of an able city editor he would be just as much taken aback and would feel a great deal more uncomfortable about it. These manifestations are either the work of the evil one or they are arrant frauds chiefly, if not altogether, the latter. The prince of darkness probably knows everything that has ever happened, hap-pened, but to him, as to mortals, the I future is a closed book. If these things be his work this explains why mediums j Inspired by him have never yet prophesied prophe-sied successfully. But it is not necessary neces-sary to pursue this line of argument further. Fraud explains most if not all such pretended revelations. The folly of the whole business is apparent ap-parent when it is remembered that wealth beyond the dreams of avarice would be possessed by any man who could read the future from day to day. It would not be necessary to unravel such tangled skeins as the events to happen in the life of a man or a nation in time to come. Something that should be much easier and simpler such as knowing the price of wheat in Chicago tomorrow afternoon would be ail that would be necessary. Yet these mediums and clairvoyants who claim to look behind be-hind the veil want for money and are glad to get it two bits at a time. The whole business is too absurd for serious seri-ous discussion, yet such is the prone-ness prone-ness of man to fall into error that hundreds hun-dreds are carried off their feet by such unsupported claims to supernatural power. Ask the first fakir who claims such power why he wants a dollar from you when millions upon millions are within his grasp. His stumbling explanations will be all the answer necessary. nec-essary. There are many traditional cases in which the spirits of the departed have manifested themselves for some great purpose. The tradition of Joan of Arc is one of these. But the idea that God Almighty would permit a vulgar mountebank moun-tebank to call back from heaven to earth a single soul at a dollar a throw is too ludicrous and too impious to be entertained for a moment. Yet Dr. Funk, a distinguished scholar somewhat some-what in his dotage, is puzzled to explain ex-plain the alleged appearance to him of the spirit of the greatest Protestant clergyman w ho has lived on this continent, con-tinent, when the best use this spirit could make of his opportunity was to tell the location of a bogus copper coin. |