SPIRITISM obtains a tremendous hold upon the people of Brazil. The Church of Rome is opposed to it, but powerless to combat it. Many cases might be given of the evil effect it has, and how the Gospel is the only power to overcome its evil influence.
I was sitting writing one day on a fallen tree, when a young man, whom I did not recognize, accosted me. I inquired who he was, and he told me that he had been converted down in the coffee machine-house during a Gospel meeting we had held there a year previously. I asked him for details, and he told me that he had been a spiritist. The spirits had haunted him, followed and tormented him. When walking out by himself along the road he would hear them calling him by name, and he would turn round angrily, but there was no one near. At times he was seized and thrown bodily into the bush, no man being near him. At nights, ofttimes, he was forced to get up and go out, and that when it was raining heavily. He tried drinking caxaca (fire-water) but this form of spirits had no power to overcome the more evil ones, and he gradually got worse. As a last hope he came to the Gospel meeting, and committed spirit, soul and body into the care of the Saviour. At that hour the spirits left him. He is now a Sunday school teacher and a communicant in the local church.