SPIRITUALISM AT THE CHURCH CONGRESS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 6501, 16 February 1882, Page 4

SPIRITUALISM AT THE CHURCH CONGRESS.

We give further extracts from the report of the discussion upon Spiritualism at the Church Congress at Newcastle upon Tyne, in October last, the Lord Bishop of Durham presiding. The Rev, Dr, Thornton said:—At the name of Spiritualism some will at once cry out, “Frivolous!” others “Imposture!’ and others “ Sorcery and devilry !” Let me protest in the outset against all hasty, sweeping condemnations. No doubt in approaching the subject we find (to use the words of Mr Fage Hopps, a friend of Spiritualists, though not one of them) that “ the way had been defiled by fraud and blocked up by folly,” Gross absurdity and ' gross deceit have been exposed in the doings of pretended Spiritualists. But we must not rush to the conclusion that all Spiritualism is pure deception, any more than we must involve all statesmen and all ecclesiastics in universal censure, because there have been political and religious charlatans. And as to charge of diaoolical agency, I do most earnestly deprecate the antiquated plan of attributing all new phenomena which we cannot explain to the author of all evil. Far be it from me to deny that such agency is possible ; on the contrary, I believe that Satan may enable men to possess themselves of unlawful knowledge and unlawful powers. But Galileo, and the ridicule with which we now speak of his persecutors, may teach us not to so mix up science and religion as to come to an a priori theological decision upon matters of simple facts.

The doctrine of those who are said to profess Spiritualism is, if I do not misrepresent it, something of this kind “God is a spirit, and the visible universe is an expression to man of His infinite life. Man is a spiritual being : each individual spirit is a part of a great Over-soul, or Aninia Mundi. The spirit is enthralled in a body during this life ; when released it at once enters upon the possession of higher powers and more extended knowledge ; and its condition is one of regularly progressive advancement. Disembodied spirits are able to hold converse with those in the body ; not with all immediately, but through the instrumentality of privileged or specially gifted persons called mediums who are on occasions influenced, or, as they term it, controlled, by the spirits. Spirits can also apply force to physical objects, perform certain actions, such as writing and producing sounds ; they can sometimes show themselves in materialised forms, some of the material being borrowed from the medium. A new era is now dawning on us. The old religions, Christianity included, have played their part and must pass away in face of clearer light. By intercourse with the spirit-world, man will advance, as he never has advanced before, in knowledge, purity, and brotherly love.” I may fairly, I think, speak of this teaching as opposed to the system of the Church. It sympathises deeply with what we hold to be error; it ranges itself on the side, of Arius, and Photinus, and Macedonius, and Nestorious. “ Every heretic,” says a Spiritualist writer “of the church of all religions has been a pioneer in spiritual discernment,’’ “ Priestcraft, hypocrisy and cant,” their lectures tell us, are characteristics of all existing Christian communities. “ The Church,” says another writer, “is such a partial thing, sq antagonistic in spirit to the higher worlds, so literal, so dogmatic, that he who feeds there is kept down from the lofty tone necessary for spirit communion.” Nor is the Church the only object of censure. Mr. Spurgeon’s intellect is “ dwarfed and cramped,” “ he dogmatises and plays the Pope in his own way.” Now there is much of the Spiritualists’ teaching with which the Church can, most cordially agree. It is a system of belief, not of mere negation of all that is not logically demonstrated. Its adherents are not ashamed to avow that they hold, as true, propositions which are incapable of mathematical proof. They are, at least, Theists, if no more ; certainly not Atheistic.

It is in its very nature antagonistic to all Sadduoeeism and Materialism. It flatly contradicts the assertions of the miserable philo ophy that makes the soul but a function of the brain, and death an eternal sleep. It proclaims that man is responsible for his actions, against those who would persuade us that each deed is but the resultant of a set of forces, an effect first, and then a cause, in an eternal and immutable series of causes and effects, and that sin and holiness are therefore words without meaning. It tells of angels, of an immortal spirit, 1 of a future state of personal and conscious existence.

It inculcates the duties of purity, charity, and justice, setting forth as well the loving fatherhood of God as the brot erhood of men, to be continued, with personal recognition, in the future life. From the statement of these points of agreement I pass on to those on which I think Spiritualism warns the Church that her trumpet sometimes gives but an uncertain sound.

We habitually remind those whom we teach that “ they have an immortal soul.” We too seldom convert the phrase, and tell them that they are really spirits, and have a body which contains an immortal part, to be prepared for immortality. We make them look on the body as the true being, the soul as a sort of appendage to it ; an error against which Socrates could caution his disciples (“ Phaedo,” pp. 115, s. 64). No doubt, bodily existence is (in appearance) more of a reality to us in this life than spiritual being, and thus, if I may venture on the allusion, nine out of ten people, when they hear the word Real Presence, understand bodily presence ; they have not grasped the truth that to the spiritual only can the epithet “ real” be justly applied even here below. Minds thus disciplined are easily led away to believe that the soul is only a certain phase of the bodily organism, and is dissolved with its dissolution. Those who have learnt with Socrates that soul—or, more properly speaking, spirit—is the essence of the man, could never suppose that the existence of the reality depended upon the existence of its instrument. We should have taught, more carefully than we have done, not that men are bodies and /irtre souls, but that they are souls and have bodies ; which: bodies, changed from the glory of the ter-; restrial to the glory of the celestial, will be, theirs to do God’s work hereafter.

Again, we are terribly afraid of saying a word about the intermediate state. We draw a hard and fast line between the seen and the unseen world. In vain does the Creed express our belief in the Communion of Saints ; for if we hint that one; who prayed for his beloved on earth may not forget them w r hen, his earthly frame dissolved, he is removed nearer to the presence of his Lord, popular religion confuses such intercession with the figments of the Mediation and. Invocation, of saints. Once again, the bodily life, and not that of the spirit, is made; the true life.

Further, there is a wide-spread reluctance, even in the Church, to accept the super-! human, as such. Ido not say this is universal, far from it, but it is very general. There are some, for instance, who abhor all spiritual exposition of Scripture. The four rivers of Paradise (to use a Rabbinical illustration) have no meaning for them ; they may accept two, but the other two, ■ ‘ ‘ searching’ ’ and ‘ ‘ mystery, ” they cannot do away with. Others do not like to hear of the, work of, the Eternal Spirit in His Chnrch, or ofthings done in God’? wisdom,: otherwise than earthly wisdom would direct or conjecture. They acknowledge indeed 1 some divine guidance, but shrink from! spiritual influence or spiritual illumination,! the ministry of angels, or the snares of the evil one. Mr. W. R. Browxe Said that some years ago several men of the very highest culture agreed together to investigate the phenomelia called Spiritualism. The name of one of them he was at liberty to mention—a name that stood as high as any amongst the scientific men of England, or, indeed, of Europe—Lord Rayleigh. For a period of some two or three years these scientists spent a considerable part of their time in attending seances, in holding seances at their own houses, and in doing everything in their power to get at the bottom of, and to make up their minds on the cause of, such phenomena. The remarkable feature which he wished to place before their notice was that at the end of the time they were unable to come to any final conclusion on the subject, or to make up their minds as~to whether the claims of Spiritualism were true or false. From that fact he was compelled to draw the conclusion that they must not pooh-pooh Spiritualism. They must not say that it ■was an imposture, all nonsense, and that no sensible man could spend his time in attending to it. If these men, with all their experience; and all their skill, could not settle the matter, there must be something in it. That was the first conelusion. ; The next conclusion was that the belief in the reality of these phenomena was not a mere hallucination, a delusion, which was a theory that certain medical men had very strongly put forward. He knew no one less subject to. hallucinations than the distinguished man of science whose name he

had mentioned; or some of his friends. It was absurd to suppose that over the period of two or three years they should be subject to hallucinations at the moments during which they were investigating this subject, and at no other time. Thirdly, they must adopt the view that the cause of these phenomena was a very difficult scientific problem, and that it must be solved by scientific methods ; that, firstly, there must be either a supernatural cause, as the advocates of Spiritualism said ; or, secondly, that there were certain natural laws of mind and matter which were not as yet understood, such as the power of reading thoughts ; or thirdly, that Spiritualism, was a mere extension of the ancient and wellknown science, of conjuring. Looking at the subject from the point of view of these conclusions, what should be the duty of the Church ? It appeared to him, in the first place, that the investigation of the phenomena were incredible because they were supernatural. The Church was founded on the belief of supernatural events having occurred at least 2000 years ago. Therefore it would not do for them to say in the next breath that these things were impossible because they were supernatural.