Blind Guides

THE ancient Pharisees were very punctilious about following the traditions of the Elders in regard to external cleanness. So fearful were they of defilement that every time they came into the house they washed their-hands, fearing that they might accidentally have touched some unclean thing while without. Many of their duties had to be performed by others who were not so fearful of becoming ceremonially unclean. At the same time, however, they were teaching and practicing those things which could proceed only from a heart defiled with sin. So long as their sin remained concealed, they were complaisant.

Our Saviour very justly characterizes these Pharisees as "blind leaders of the blind." Like a blind man, they stumbled over the very obstacle they seemed anxious to avoid. Of course those who depended on them for instruction, must necessarily be in the same condition.

But the race of "blind guides" did not cease with Pharisees. There are those to-day, who are blindly rushing into that which they profess to condemn. The following item from an article in the Christian Herald seems to be a case in point. The writer is relating an incident by which his life was saved when in great danger:—

"I cannot now tell what it was, but then I did not doubt it was from God. Might it not have been the spirit of my mother who then was dead, sainted guardian of my youth, permitted to act as guardian angel of her son, then near a death of despair? God knows; but I then did not doubt, and plucked up hope."

Another religious paper contains the following similar paragraph:—

"Whatever others may say; or however they may try to account for such a remark at such a time, and under such circumstances, I have not the shadow of a doubt but that the spirit of that dear girl saw the spirit of the father, who had been dead for some years, and recognized it; and there is not philosophy enough in the world to convince me to the contrary."

In almost any religious journal similar passages may be found. At the same time they denounce Spiritualism, and express no sympathy with it whatever. They do not realize that the immortality of the soul, and the possibility of communion between the living and the dead, constitute all there is to Spiritualism proper. The immorality which characterizes many of its devotees, is only a natural out-growth of their disbelief of the Bible—the foundation of morality—and is not upheld by most Spiritualist papers. Once admit the theory of the unconditional immortality of the soul, and Spiritualism follows as a natural sequence. So-called orthodox ministers have no ground whatever on which to attack Spiritualism. We once heard a minister denounce Spiritualism in no measured terms, and in the same hour he tried to console the mourners by telling them that the spirit of their dead friend would hover near them and minister to them. It is difficult to see why such teachers do not justly merit the appellation, "blind guides," and how they, with those who blindly follow them, can escape the natural result,—"They shall both fall into the ditch."