Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 31, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 April 1886 — Rapid Growth of Spiritualism. [ARTICLE]

Rapid Growth of Spiritualism.

A St. Louis clergyman says: Don’t put my in the paper, but you may say that a clergyman who has been twenty years in the pulpit is greatly astonished at the growth of modern Spiritualism, not only in this country, but throughout the world at, the present time. It is spreading in the churches as well as outside of them. Its converts used to be entirely from the infidel and atheist classes—so much so that Spiritualism itself was ranked—and rightly so—as a species of infidelity. But now vast numbers of people who 1 commune With Catholic and Protestant churches are believers in spiritual,manifestations, and would rather give up their Christianity than abandon their “Spiritualism. The Catholic Church made a strong fight against Spiritualism, but it is unable to beat it down. Some of the more intelligent Catholics here and elsewhere are among the most ardent Spiritualists. I cannot say how they reconcile the one belief with the other, but they manage to do it—at least they hold to their Catholic faith openly and to their Spiritualistic faith secretly. And with Methodists, Pfesbyterians, Baptists. and Episcopalians. There is no Christian denomination to-day a part of whose membership is not tinged with Spiritualism.