It would not be safe for departed spirits to be intrusted with the power of communicating with the living.  Though they know far more than we, yet their information is limited; and, especially, if they should undertake to counsel us about the future, as they would do in their earnestness to help us, we can easily see that, being finite as they are, and unable to look into the future, they might involve us in serious mistakes, either by their ignorance, or by the contrariety of their information.  Far better is it for man to look only to God, who sees the end from the beginning, with whom is no variableness, and who is able, as our anxious friends would not be, to conceal from us the future, or any information respecting it, which it would be an injury for us to know.  Should we be informed of certain things which will happen to us years hence, either the expectation of them would engross our attention, and hinder our usefulness, or the fear of them would paralyze effort, and destroy health, if not life.  Borrowed trouble, even now, constitutes a large part of our unhappiness; but the certain knowledge of a sorrow approaching us with unrelenting steps, would spread a pall over every thing; while prosperity, far in the prospect, would tempt us to forget our dependence upon God, and would weaken the motives to patient continuance in well doing for its own sake.

Then, with regard to any assurance which the dead would give us about truth and duty, we need not their help.  For the dead can tell us substantially no more than we find recorded in the Bible.  They would describe heaven to us, and speak of future punishment.  But suppose that they did.  What language would they use more graphic, or more intelligible to us, than the language of the Bible?  Whatever they said, we should feel obliged to compare it with the Scriptures; if it should be according to them, we do not need it.  Besides, the appearance to us of departed friends, would, in many cases, only operate on our fears.  But the Bible pleads with us by many gentle motives, as well as by warnings and terrific descriptions, and sets before us numberless inducements to repent, which the whole world of the dead, uninspired, could not so well furnish.  The appearance and words of a spirit would excite us, and make us afraid; we could not feel and act as well, under such influences, as we can under the calm, dispassionate, convincing, and persuasive influences of the Bible.  One of the most intelligent and cultivated of women, the wife of a missionary in Turkey, in her last sickness, having heard her husband read to her several times, from the Pilgrim’s Progress, respecting the River of Death and the Celestial City, at last said to him, as he was opening the book, “Read to me out of the Bible; that soothes me; I can hear it for a long time; but even Bunyan agitates me.”

As much as we suppose it would comfort us to have intercourse with the dead, it is easy to see that the great law of the divine government, by which faith, and not sight, is the appointed means of our spiritual good, would be violated, could the dead speak with us.  We are to trust in the mercy and the justice of God.  This we could not so well do, if we knew things about which, now, we are obliged to exercise faith.  The inspired Word, the only and the all-sufficient rule of faith and duty, is a better guide than the voices of the dead.