Published in 1859 | 40 pages | PDF reader required
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And when they shall say unto you, Seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto wizards that peep and that mutter; should not a people seek unto their God? —Isaiah viii: 19.
The Law of Moses contains the following passages: "There shall not be found among you a consulter with familiar spirits, or a wizard, or a necromancer: for all that do these things are an abomination to the Lord." "And the soul that turneth after such as have familiar spirits, to go a whoring after them, I will even set my face against that soul and will cut him off from among his people."
In accordance with this law, Saul treated sorcery as a capital crime. When his own misconduct became rebellion,—a rebellion which finally extinguished the fortunes of his house in tears and blood,—he was told by Samuel that it was as the sin of witchcraft. It is made one of the greatest virtues of the good king Josiah, that he set a flinty face against all attempts at dealing with spirits; and one of the greatest crimes of the wicked king Manasseh, that he practised and abetted such attempts. Malachi declares that God will be a swift witness against the sorcerer. Under the ministry of Paul at Ephesus, the dealers in curious arts brought their books together and burned them before all men—so great was the felt antagonism between their new principles and their old practice. And even the mild John is found teaching just the same severe Gospel that lighted up the Ephesian market-place with blazing parchments worth fifty thousand pieces of silver; and closes the record with even sterner words than began it—"And the fearful, and the unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderer, and whoremonger, and sorcerer, and idolator, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." ...
