THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23857, 11 July 1939, Page 12

THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY

Sneaking to the Dunedin Lodge on Sunday evening, Mr W. E. Reynolds said he had been an earnest seeker after truth for 60 years, and, not having found it in orthodoxy, he. had investigated spiritualistic phenomena of all kinds with the result that the revelations disclosed by them had brought all the truth he sought. His subject was " Some Thoughts on Pres-ent-day Revealings." Mr Reynolds prefaced his remarks by Biblical quotations from Matthew, Luke and Revelations. To-day, he said, the world needed tolerance as much as anything else, in regard to religious thought. Present-day investigation into psychic phenomena could be placed in three divisions—spiritism, spiritualism and communion. Spiritism included all outward manifestation such as photographs of spirits; spiritualism included phenomena through a medium and communion was really the "communion of saints." Theosophy had ploughed the hard ground of materialism, thus paving the way to a better understanding and broader tolerance of such spiritual truths. Since in God "we live and move ana have our being," it was God's purpose that every living creature should become the medium of His life. As we trod the Path to Truth we became more and more the vehicles of His Divine expression, but occasionally we drifted off the road into all kinds of pleasant, or unpleasant byways, thereby shutting ourselves off from the light for the time being. Eventually we returned. The speaker quoted many extracts from leaning authorities on spiritualism—Mrs Helen Wells's book "Spiritual America," containing letters from eminent departed citizens; George Vale Owen's book. "The Battalions of Heaven "; Stain ton Moses and others. In her book "The Intelligences of the Spaces," Mrs Wells gave some remarkable messages from spiritual beings who maintained that man contained all the potentialities of divinity and that through suffering in this physical world he would experience enough to bring out these latent qualities Still, the world of the spirit was man's true home, and the glories of those higher worlds which he trod after death (so-called death, for it was only the loss of the outer vehicle) were wonderful beyond imagination This book had proved to the speaker, beyond all question, the life of the soul beyond the grave and had for ever cleared for him and for thousands of others all gloom, depression and uncertainty of death. This latter view of life and death came from following the illusion of matter, whereas the gift of God was Mfe, and the lines of the following hvmn were a reality to the truth-seeker —"O God, our help in ages past, our euide for yeara to come. Our shelter from the stormy blast, and our eternal home."