- 157 - breathing through them as a flutist plays his flute.” Elsewhere Athenagoras repeats that “the spirits have caused the prophets’ organs of speech to function as though they were instruments.” In the Justinian Oratio ad Graecos we read: “The heaven-sent Divine plectrum played the righteous as it would a musical instrument, a zither or a lyre.” Justin and Theophilus make use of the same images, saying the same thing as the spirit that spoke out of Montanus. Among the Montanists the methods of spirit communication were the same as those practiced by the earliest Christian communities. The book titled “The Shepherd of Hermas”, a spiritistic work through and through, was so highly regarded in post-apostolic days as to be added to the Holy Scriptures. This book also explains in detail how to distinguish the speaking mediums of good spirits from those of the evil ones. From what is said there it is clear that “the spirit from on high” and the terrestrial spirit cannot be distinguished by their manner of speaking. Apart from the content of what is said, Hermas identifies the following features as characteristic of the speech of good spirits through a medium: “No Divinely sent spirit will submit to being questioned.” That is, such a spirit will not allow itself to be used as an oracle, to satisfy human curiosity. Naturally, people may ask questions of a spirit, if they have failed to understand its message or if they remain in doubt as to some point or other contained therein. The good spirit world even demands this of its hearers, for it imparts its messages, teachings, and admonitions for their benefit and earnestly desires that its words be thoroughly understood and correctly construed. Hence it welcomes any necessary questions. Indeed, the spirits often invite their hearers to ask questions, even such as may have no bearing on the immediate subject of the communication. This happens in those cases in which a spirit knows that there is someone present who wants to ask a question, which, however, must never pertain to purely material issues. A second mark that distinguishes the presence of a good spirit in a medium is: “It is not for human beings to determine whether and when a spirit shall speak. A spirit speaks only when God wants it to speak.” In all communications with good spirits, it is therefore impossible to put a medium in trance for the sake of obtaining a spirit message. It comes when it is meant to come. People cannot make it come. People can, indeed, create the conditions required for spirit communication by making available the necessary odic force, but whether or not communication will follow does not depend on them. The process is described by Hermas as follows: “The angel of the attending prophetic spirit fills a person, and that person, filled with a holy spirit, speaks to the congregation as the Lord wills.”
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