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GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



Oct. 1. 



OUR 



HOMES, 



BY A. I. R OOT. 



Your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh 

 about, seeking whom he may devour. — I. Peter 5:8. 



Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. 

 II. Cor. 11 :14. 



Since my Home talk in regard to devils 

 taking possession of people in modern times, 

 I have received man}' communications in re- 

 gard to the subject ; and a great many facts 

 in regard to murders and suicides that are 

 still going on together have been sent in to 

 me. I need not tell you that almost every 

 daily paper records how some parent murder- 

 ed all the children; then the husband or wife, 

 as the case may be, finally ended in suicide. 

 Quite a few cases of this kind are recorded 

 where the would-be murderer or suicide did 

 not succeed in putting them all to death. 

 Some few have been prevented from carrying 

 out their murderous designs, and have after- 

 ward confessed (or claimed) that some spirit 

 they could not exactly understand had got 

 possession of them. Intemperance is usually 

 at the bottom of it all, but not always. There 

 are several other agencies, one of which I 

 wish to speak about especially in this Home 

 talk. And, by the way, let me remark that 

 we are told in the papers that the spirit of 

 Robert G. Ingersoll has come back to the 

 world, and he tells us something about the 

 future state through a spiritual medium. 

 These statements have called forth sufficient 

 attention to cause a little pamphlet to be pub- 

 lished, entitled " Evidences of the Continued 

 Existence of Man after the Change Called 

 Death." Notwithstanding the full facts in 

 the matter are subscribed and sworn to by 

 affidavits, I would never for a single instant 

 give a particle of credence to the statements. 

 I do not mean to deny that every thing hap- 

 pened as narrated in the pamphlet ; but I do 

 deny that any spirit from the other or spirit 

 world ever had any thing to do with it. The 

 talk is astonishingly like Ingersoll's. In fact, 

 it is exactly as Ingersoll was in this world ; 

 and if passing to another world makes no 

 change in a man for better ox worse, what pos- 

 sible advantage can there be in existence after 

 death ? Permit me to observe that Ingersoll 

 uses profane language as a spirit ; in fact, 

 that comes in in one of his first salutations to 

 the people in this world. In reply to ques- 

 tions he makes the following reply : 



Yes, yes ! and yet some of them see me in their 

 hell — burning ! burning ! Brimstone and eternal 

 damnation ! How disappointed they will be ! No 

 leering devil here ! No brimstone in this country. 

 If there is, I haven't seen it nor smelt it nor felt it ! 

 They'd have to get a telescope to find a grain of it 

 where we are now. 



He does make a little concession, however, 

 in the following words : 



I find that I was wrong in thinking death might be 

 the end. but I was right in saying there was no devil 

 and no hell. 



He also refers to the text at the head of this 

 talk, as follows : 



But there's no devil hiding here, or "going up and 

 down seeking whom he may devour." Ha ! ha ! ha ! 

 ha ! No, no. Instead of devils waiting to torment 

 me, I found loving hands outstretched to me. 



From the above it would seem that Ingersoll 

 blunders as badly in the spirit world as he 

 did while on earth ; for the Bible nowhere 

 makes the statement that Satan goes about as 

 a roaring lion, etc., in the spirit world. This 

 present world is his field of labor, and the only 

 place, if I am correct, where he ruins man- 

 kind, both soul and body. 



Now, friends, I have, since childhood, read 

 with exceeding care every revelation claimed 

 as coming from the spirit world, that gave us 

 any reasonable glimpse of affairs beyond the 

 grave ; but I have never yet found any thing 

 a bit more reasonable or sensible than the 

 above extracts. It seems to me we have 

 every possible evidence that every thing that 

 comes from mediums and the whole domain 

 of spiritism has the stamp of earth plainly 

 and unmistakably impressed on it. There are 

 curious and perplexing things, I grant you ; 

 but nothing that can not be reasonably sup- 

 posed to emanate from the mind of some living 

 being. The bright meteor, coming to this 

 globe from the immense realms of space, 

 brings us no knowledge of any thing new or 

 foreign to this earth ; and neither has any so- 

 called communication from the spirit world 

 added one whit to the realm of poetry, science, 

 or a knowledge of the beyond. 



Permit me to direct attention right here to 

 an excellent book on this subject — that is, a 

 great part of it is excellent. In some chapters 

 it seems to me the author has become a little 

 "rattled" himself on spooks and spirits. 

 The book was written particularly to show 

 that all the phenomena of spiritism, hypno- 

 tism, clairvoyance, etc., can be rationally ex- 

 plained without the help of spirits from an- 

 other world in any shape or manner. The 

 title of the book is, "The Law of Psychic 

 Phenomena," price $1.50 (A. C. McClurg & 

 Co., Chicago, 111.). 



This book starts out by assuming that every 

 person has two separate intelligences. You 

 may, perhaps, remember in some previous 

 writings of my own I have called attention to 

 this matter — that there is a sort of second or 

 involuntary self that looks after the general 

 economy of the human being. The author of 

 this book does not say so, but I suggested that 

 this other self takes care of the respiration, 

 beating of the heart, and makes the individ- 

 ual look out for sudden emergencies without 

 his own will having any thing to do with it. 

 Well, the author of this book calls these two 

 intelligencies or minds, if you choose, the ob- 

 jective and the subjective. The objective 

 takes notice of the world all around us through 

 our five physical senses. It is the reason and 

 common-sense part of our person. The sub- 

 jective works more by what is sometimes call- 

 ed "intuition." While the objective remem- 

 bers events wonderfully, the subjective goes 

 away beyond, you might almost say into the 

 realm of impossibilites. This queer second 

 self reveals things in our dreams that we had 

 forgotten. He has charge of the somnambu- 



