Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. CAST OUT DEVILS. Casting out devils?The saints try it?Devils are obstinate?Epilepsy and insanity?A modern instance?Great trial to the faithful?Unknown tongues not necessary?Conditions have changed? An Unknown tongue impossible?A tongue and its interpretation ?Missionaries cannot speak in tongues?1 Cor., twelfth chapter? 1 Cor., thirteenth chapter?Tongues shall cease and prophecies fail?A rule?Gifts for Gentiles?Take up serpents. In my name shall they cast out devils. Did any Mormon prophet, priest or king, ever cast out a devil?a real, genuine, live devil? Of course they will say, Yes, many of them. But who among them has the ability to determine the presence of a devil, if, indeed, there be such a thing to-day as demoniacal possession? During my forty years of experience and observation among Latter Day Saints, I have never known a man among them, from Joseph Smith down through the ranks of apostles, high priest and Seventy?and I have personally known them all?who could distinguish, if, indeed, such distinction in fact exists, between demoniacal possession and epileptic fits. Epilepsy is usually regarded as evidence, prima facie of the presence of one or more devils, and frequent efforts are made to cast them out. In fact I confess to having, in connection with others, undertaken the job myself; but his Satanic majesty was uniformly obstinate, and persistently refused to be cast out; and so the unfortunate sufferer continued to have fits right along, just the same as ever. These latter day devils not infrequently manifest their presence in the form of insanity, and I have never yet known a single instance where this kind of a devil was cast out. Many such cases are now being cared for in that modern and humane institution known as the asylum for the …
