1518. _To the Friends of this Circle_: After various inquiries made at
this circle, we deem it highly necessary to reply by stated reasons,
why our presiding spirit declines to give the names of the spirits
present during our performances at this room:
1519. 1st. Let the inquirer conceive himself entering a congregated
promiscuous assembly of persons, who are all anxiously awaiting his
approach under the discharge of some important and general mission,
in behalf of those in attendance. On entering the assembly, he looks
around upon his anxious inquirers, and sees them attended with their
respective safeguards, such as he never saw before. In the discharge of
his official duty, however, he is necessitated to exclude himself from
the direct view and intercourse of the safeguards, so as to be brought
into a nearer relation to the corresponding parties. The interlocution
accordingly takes place, when each one in turn begins to interrogate
the speaker in his excluded position, on subjects relating to their
excluded guard, of which the speaker knows but little or nothing,
except the cognition of their presence on his arrival; and in order to
acquaint himself with the circumstances and matters inquired after, so
as to answer correctly, the speaker has to disencumber himself at every
inquiry, and not only so, but would also fail to perform his _devolved_
duty by submitting himself to the scrutiny and criticism of the
corresponding parties. Which, then, of the two requirements would be of
the most consequence—to discommode the general interest of the assembly
and that of his own official duty, or to omit the latter and attend to
the discharge of a more important and higher duty, by which the peace
and consoling riches would be augmented to the fulness of their cup?
1520. Now, this is the position our presiding spirit occupies. When
himself and band enter the room, he recognises, many bright guardian
spirits interspersed among the promiscuous assembly, of whom he has
no knowledge. And in the discharge of their manifesting performances,
they necessarily must assume physical incumbrances, which shuts them
from a direct view of the attending spirits; and as many questions that
are led in relation to them so often, the corresponding spirit has
to disrobe himself so as to give a correct relation, to say nothing
of the possibility of receiving and conveying wrong impressions from
spirits who do not regard the truth.
1521. Given by Second King, at the council of the presiding band.