1899 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



771 



i OUR 

 HOMES, 



BY A.I. ROOT. 



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. 



Continued from Oct. ist issue. 



' In our issue for June 1 I spoke of the way 

 in which Satan seems of late to get hold of 

 people when they are sorely tempted — perhaps 

 when they are worn out with fatigue and ex- 

 haustion. He seems to whisper to them that 

 life is a miserable failure anyhow ; that the 

 great Father above is not a good father; and I 

 am led to believe that people have at times 

 yielded to his suggestions, and committed sui- 

 cide when they had hardly thought of the 

 matter before. He takes us unawares. 



In the latter one of our two texts we are 

 told he sometimes comes as an angel of light. 

 I wish to give you something that illustrates 

 this text especially. From away off in a dis- 

 tant land a letter conies to me that was 

 prompted by these two articles I have alluded 

 to, concerning demoniacal possession. A 

 young man of excellent parentage and of ex- 

 cellent habits married a beautiful and talented 

 girl, but she was afflicted with an incurable 

 disease. If I am correct they were both pro- 

 fessing Christians, and talked over the matter 

 of her approaching death with coolness and 

 calmness. During their married life both of 

 them were somewhat acquainted with spirit- 

 writing on slates ; and, if I am correct, the 

 wife promised the husband to communicate 

 with him as speedily after death as possible, 

 if, indeed, it were possible at all. Of course, 

 this is no new thing. Many such contracts 

 have been made, and perhaps quite a few good 

 people think departed friends have sent mes- 

 sages to them in accordance with this promise. 

 Within a few hours after the death of the dear 

 wife he received messages purporting to come 

 from her ; and he further on discovered that 

 no medium was needed. His own hand mov- 

 ed in response to some power unknown to 

 himself, and gave him messages from the dear 

 departed wife. We could scarcely call our 

 friend insane over the loss of his wife, for 

 while this thing was going on he had charge 

 of a large and important business, and did 

 his work well and faithfully. Unfortunately, 

 perhaps, he roomed alone in a building by 

 itself. In a little while he spent a great part 

 of his time in communicating with his wife in 

 the spirit world. I believe he made no confi- 

 dant. Had he talked with somebody else 

 about it, and told what he was doing — had 

 some relatives been near him, he might have 

 been delivered from the power of the evil one. 

 Permit me to digress a little right here. 



It was shortly before getting this letter that 

 I read the book I have mentioned in our last 

 issue. This book explains many queer phe- 

 nomena of the mind by stating that every 

 person has two kinds of consciousness (or un- 



consciousness, whichever it is). Some of our 

 friends may remember that I have before this, 

 in these Home Papers, ventured the belief that 

 there are two sets of reasoning powers in 

 every person. One takes care of the physical 

 body as a sort of instinct. This "other fel- 

 low " is stupid and unreasoning ; but the au- 

 thor of this book says that this subjective self 

 has a memory away beyond the objective. 

 That is why in dreams we recall things that 

 we never should have thought of in our wak- 

 ing moments. Every act in life — almost every 

 thought in life — is pigeon-holed and laid away 

 by this other fellow. I would suggest that he 

 runs the imagination. When a man is crazy, 

 or is a somnambulist, this other fellow runs 

 the whole thing. He remembers every thing, 

 receives suggestions from everybody and 

 everywhere ; sometimes takes the reins, and 

 makes people do things that a person in a nor- 

 mal condition never could do. When the ob- 

 jective self can be got rid of, this suggestive 

 fellow produces the phenomena of hypnotism 

 and clairvoyance — yes, and spiritism too; and 

 yet the person may be honestly innocent of 

 the whole matter. When our friend shut him- 

 self up during his leisure hours, and listened 

 to the messages which he supposed were from 

 his wife in the other world, he was simply let- 

 ting this other fellow bring up incidents from 

 memory in regard to the dear wife when she 

 was with him, and thus make up talks that 

 sounded exactly like her — in fact were her — 

 by this wonderful faculty of memory, manag- 

 ed by this other intelligence I have been 

 speaking of, so that it was really herself, 

 though she was dead and gone ; and it is not 

 necessary to bring her spirit back to earth to 

 explain the strange phenomenon. 



With this state of affairs Satan very soon 

 stepped in ; and, dear friends, if you follow 

 hypnotism, clairvoyance, mesmerism, spirit- 

 ism, and slate-writing anywhere in any part of 

 the world you will find Satan gets in his work 

 sooner or later. Look about you and tell me 

 if this is not true. In time our friend became 

 so proficient in talking with his wife that he 

 dispensed with the slate entirely. They talk- 

 ed back and forth by word of mouth. He 

 probably talked out loud — I do not know. 

 Through his mind he heard his wife answer. 



A time came one bitterly cold night when 

 Satan's cloven hoof betrayed his presence. 

 The spirit was so unlike that of his wife that 

 he protested, and she (or Satan rather) admit- 

 ted that it was some other individuality, and 

 said that his wife was in torment, and he was 

 the cause of it. Our friend, who was a Chris- 

 tian man, prayed for help, and help and de- 

 liverance came. He slept in peace, and sup- 

 posed the delusion was over. But the Devil 

 had not got through with him. The next day 

 our friend longed for the presence of his wife 

 again, and tried to see if she would not come 

 back and explain. But this time still another 

 spirit answered him, and said that his wife 

 was suffering from something like insanity be- 

 cause she persisted in clinging to him and to 

 earthly things. Our text tells us that Satan 

 sometimes comes as an angel of light. In this 

 case he put on the appearance of an angel of 



