We cannot attempt to go fully into this subject here; we have no time, nor space, nor inclination, for any thing of the sort. We merely feel it to be our solemn duty to warn the reader against having any thing whatever to do with consulting departed spirits. We believe it to be _most dangerous_ work. We do not enter upon the question as to whether souls can come back to this world; no doubt God could permit them to come if He saw fit, but this we leave. The great point for us to keep ever before our hearts is, the perfect sufficiency of divine revelation. What do we want of departed spirits? The rich man imagined that if Lazarus were to go back to earth and speak to his five brethren, it would have a great effect.--"'I pray thee therefore, father, that thou wouldest send him to my father's house; for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.' Abraham saith unto him, '_They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them_.' And he said, 'Nay, father Abraham; but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.' And he said unto him, 'If they hear not _Moses and the prophets_, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead.'" (Luke xvi. 27-31.) Here we have a thorough settlement of this question. If people will not hear the Word of God, if they will not believe its clear and solemn statements as to themselves, their present condition, and their future destiny, neither will they be persuaded though a thousand departed souls were to come back and tell them what they saw and heard and felt in heaven above or in hell beneath; it would produce no saving or permanent effect upon them, It might cause great excitement--great sensation, furnish great material for talk, and fill the newspapers far and wide; but there it would end. People would go on all the same with their traffic and gain, their folly and vanity, their pleasure-hunting and self-indulgence. "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, [and, we may add, Christ and His holy apostles,] neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." The heart that will not bow to Scripture will not be convinced by any thing; and as to the true believer, he has in Scripture all he can possibly want, and therefore he has no need to have recourse to table-turning, spirit-rapping, or magic. "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? for the living to the dead? _To the law and to the testimony_; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them." (Is. viii. 19, 20.)