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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    cations are sometimes untrue and lying, the ensuing reply by Adin Ballou is clearly to the point:— “ Because some of the communications come from lying spirits, do you feel justified in throwing the loliole away ? Do you act as wisely in all other cases? Religion is professed by thousands of irreconcilable sects ; do you therefore reject all religion ? Politics and governments are full of deception, contradiction, and confusion; do you therefore repudiate all social organisation, law, and order ? Almost every case tried in our courts has false or contradictory witnesses, sophistical counter pleadings, and more or less nonsense ; do you therefore come to the conclusion that there is no truth or right in their controversies— that no witnesses and no lawyers are there—that the whole demonstra- tion is a phantasm ? Trading, throughout the world, involves an im- mense amount of deceit and incongruity ; do you therefore eschew all trade, and doubt the existence of such beings as traders? There are liars, hypocrites, knaves, and fools in all human societies; do you therefore believe in the non-existence of truth, honesty, and wisdom— in the nqn-existence of human society—in the non-existence of man- kind ? In your circle of friends, however loving and beloved, there is more or less of falsehood, discord, contradiction, and puerility, to dis- appoint, disgust, and shake your confidence; do you therefore throw away all friends and friendship, and disbelieve in their actual exist- ence? There are few human beings, decently couversant with them- selves, who do not find that they are streaked with self-contradiction— that they are at some times what they despise at others—that they are bundles of incongruity, weakness, and folly; would you therefore throw away and resolve yourself into a nonentity? Why not? ‘ Con- sistency is a jewel.’ You have no faith in the reality of these spirit manifestations, because there is so much lying, contradiction, &c., about them. How much is there of all this about them after all ? Any more than you find elsewhere in men and things throughout nature? No. Just tell mo who or what in the universe you can inplicitly accept and confide in, without question, without discriiniaation, and without making some allowance for tare ? Let the objector think a few second, sober thoughts on this part of the subject, and he will cast his objec- tion to the winds. Then he will take his winnowing-sieve into this investigation, resolved to ‘ prove all things, and hold fast that which is good.’ And then he will see that these same lies, contradictions, incongruities, and puerilities, by which he has been so repelled, are precisely the incidentals to have been expected, in the crude stage of spirit manifestations, made, as they necessarily are, through imperfect media, and sometimes by spirits of the lower circles. ^Vho had a right to look only for perfect and unquestionable demonstrations, in such a stage of the thing, and under such circumstances ? Pray let us use a little reason and consideration in this as well as other subjects.” I will close my replies to this clause of the objection by indicating the lesson to be learnt from these contradictory and lying communica- tions. It seems to me that it is one of the providential designs of these manifestations to teach mankind that spirits, in general, maintain the characters they formed to themselves during their earthly life; that