A new basis of belief in immortality / by John S. Farmer.

  • Farmer, John S.
Date:
1882
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new basis of belief in immortality / by John S. Farmer. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    servants to the village green, and there ‘ cut them off from their people ’ by the Mosaic mode of stoning them to death. • “But ‘Rustica,’ as the vindicator of the Mosaic law, cannot stop here. This law is equally decisive against all who have gathered sticks on a Saturday—the Jewish Sabbath (Numbers xv. 32-36). ‘Rustica’ win, therefore, have to assemble all the old women who have been guilty of the deadly sin of gathering sticks on a Saturday. She will have no possible escape from this ; for the texts referred to are most peremptory on the subject, and relate the summary infliction of tire sentence on a man caught in the act. “ Having dispatched all the old women and a good many children of the parish for gathering sticks, she will have then to deal with the ‘presumptuous persons’ there (Numb. xv. 30). ‘The soul that doeth aught presumptuously (whether he be born in the land or a stranger), the same reproacheth the Lord; and that soul shall be cut off from among his people.’ The next verse says, he ‘ shall be utterly cut off.’ By the time she has dispatched the presumptuous’—and I am afraid she will find the number great, unless her parish be much more humble- minded than parishes in general—she would have the blasphemers and cursers on her hands, and they must all be put to death (Lev. xiv. 11-16). All these being added to the gory stony heap, the disobedient to parents, and those whose parents said they were gluttons and drunkards, will have to be stoned too (Dent. xxi. 18, 20, 21). ‘ ‘ By this time ‘ Rustica ’ will have brought her family and her parish to a tolerably pretty pass in carrying out the Mosaic law ; nay, if she insist on its orderly execution, I doubt she will not have left a single soul—man, woman, or child—alive ; for ‘ the stiff-necked and uncir- cumcised generation,’ the eaters of black-puddings, of strangled hares, of hens and pullets with twisted necks, the gatherers of sticks on a Saturday, the cursers and disobedient, the drunkards and gluttons, make so formidable a portion of ordin.ary population, that the man who escapes ‘ Rustica’s ’ zeal for the Mosaic law must be more than mortal. “But, as long before the consummation of this catastrophe —the result of an attempt to inaugurate the Jewish code in this Gentile country—‘ Hnstiea ’ would herself be arrested, tried and condemned for manifold capital offences against English law, and would be on the way to the gallows. No doubt the good chaplain would inform her of another book bos'ides the Old Testament, a book called the A^erc Testa- ment, a neio and very different law called Christianity—which ‘ Rustica,’ living in some very rustic place, seems never to have heard of, or if she has, does not happen to mention.” Mr. Shorter points out the real distinction between lawful spirit commrvaion and sorcery in the following extract from his work, “ The Two Worlds : ”— “The truth is, the Bible throughout recognises that there arc two kinds of Spiritu.alism—the good and the bad ; the divine and the diabolical; the lawful luid the unlawful. The hatter, doubtless, is pro- hibited ; the former avas practised by patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and by Christ Himself. Of this kind are the spiritual gifts of the early