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

  • Farmer, John S.
Date:
1882
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

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

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    ur<re human nature on to a heavenly destiny. It will advance from st^ to step of demonstration till death shall be disarmed of its terrors, and will usher in a new era of faith, hope, and charity.” I have now dealt with the principal of the many objections urged against Spiritualism, and it will have been seen that some are due to ignorance, that others arise from a misconception, and that not a few are utterly false. Before concluding this paper, however, I should like to point out several very glaring fallacies which obtain with relation to this subject in the popular mind, and 1 will at once plunge in medias res. XIX.—Sph'it Communication not Infallible. There are those who consider that a spirit message or communica- tion is necessarily infallible, and by blindly accepting all that spirits teach as gospel, sooner or later get deceived, and retire in disgust from the subject. This is altogether a mistake. Spirits are but disem- bodied men and women, and the mere change by death from one sphere of existence to another, though in some measure conferring higher and clearer powers and perceptions, does not make them any better or any worse—neither more nor less reliable. The same discrimination and common sense should be brought to be.ar upon the subject as is brought to bear upon affairs of every-day life, and we are not more bound to implicitlj' trust to everything a spirit may say than we are obliged, to accept the advice of any casual acquaintance we may meet in the street. We know that many men in the body wilfully deceive and lead astray their fellows, and it is equally certain that men out of the body have done and still will do the same if we choose to surrender our reason to them and be wholly guided by their advice. Of the tw’o classes of investigators, the one who blindly accepts as infallibly true all communications from the spirit world is probably far more likely to be deceived and led astray than the con- firmed devil-fearer, who only sees in each and every spirit an emissary of .S.atan. The following words of Robert Dale Owen arc fuU of wisdom with relation to this subject. He remarks :— “The lesson taught by a thousand warnings from the past is un- mistakable ; and it is of vital moment that we heed it. It is dangerous for men and women who are confirmed in certain old superstitions, or who believe in their own possession of infallible truth, to put them- selves in the way of communings with a higher sphere of being; they cannot bear them yet. We seek aid or enlightenment for another world in vain, unless we enter the spiritual school, not only in a reverent spirit, but in a fit frame of mind. We must seek ere we find, and we must seek in that catholic temper which is willing to put to the proof all things, and to accept the truth wherever found. It is not given to dogmatism, shut up in its contracted shell, to distinguish the still small voice ; it hears but the echo of its own delusions. Rxeept we be converted from wisdom in our own conceit, except we draw near to the shrine .as little children, the spiritual voices in their purity will not reach our ears. “It is with the teachings of Spiritualism as with the praying of