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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    turn of mind, which entirely preclude accurate observation, and facili- tate trickery and deception. In reply to this, I can state that, with the ex- ception of the very few cases to which I have alluded in a previous para- graph, where—whatever might have been the motive for exclusiveness, it certainly was not the vailing of deception—I have chosen my own circle of friends, have introduced any hard-headed unbeliever whom I pleased, and have generally imposed my own terms, which have been carefully chosen to prevent the possibility of fraud. Having gradually ascertained some of the conditions which facilitate the occurrence of the lihenomena, my modes of conducting these inquiries have generally been attended with equal, and, indeed, in most cases with more success than on other occasions, where, through mistaken notions of the import- ance of certain trifling observances, the conditions imposed might render less easy the detection of fraud. “I have said that darlcness is not essential. It is, however, a well- ascertained fact, that when the force is weak, a bright light exerts an interfering action on some of the phenomena. The power possessed by Mr. Home is sufficiently strong to withstand this antagonistic influ- ence—consequently, he always objects to darkness at his seances. In- deed, except on two occasions, Avhen for some particular experiments of my own, light was excluded, everything which I have witnessed with him has taken place in the light. I have had many opportunities of testing the action of light, of different sources and colours, such as sun- light, diffused daylight, moonlight, gas, lamp, and candle-light, electric light from a vacuum tube, homogeneous yellow light, &c. The inter- fering rays appear to be those at the extreme end of the spectrum. . . . ” CHAPTER IX. IMMORTALITY IN THE LIGHT OF MODERN SPIRITUALISM, “They do not die Nor lose their niortal sj-mpathv, Nor change to us.—In Memoriain, “For we iiww that if our earthly house of this tabernatle were dissolved, we have a building of Uod, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavejis.— I’aid of Tanus. The primal mission of Spiritualism to the Christian Church and the woild at large is the presentation of demonstrable proof of the reality of a spiritual world, and the continuity of individual existence after death. It achieved this end by supplementing the testimony of the past with present evidence, thus placing the doctrine of human immor- tality upon a basis that is strictly scientifle, and one, withal, in thorough accord with the advanced thought of the age. That the subject of immortality is one which all thinking mind.s regard with the most intense interest cannot, I think, be doubted, and yet, strange as it may appear, a state of passive unbelief is the charac- teristic attitude of all except a small minority. I have already pointed out that the difficulty of modern culture with regard to this doctrine has mainly been the seeming iinpossibiRty of demonstrating that death is not the end of conscious being—that.