SPIRITUALISM NOT NEW

 

History records it; the poets have sang of it in all ages. It forms a part of the sacred and common literature of all, races. The Old and New Testaments are inwrought with allusions to its beauty. In the year 364 of the Christian Era, in the reign of Roman Emperor Valens, mediums are said to have conversed with departed spirits by means of rappings and the alphabet. The spirit-pendulum, resembling the dial in its method, was then in use. It consisted of a ring suspended by a thread over a basin of water, around the margin of which the alphabet was arranged. By successive swinging to the various letters, words and sentences were spelled. Numa Pompilius used it in this manner in augury. Such a pendulum has been used by modern mediums successfully.

 

Spiritualism is as old as mankind, but there is a marked distinction in what is known as "modern."

 

In the olden times a spirit appeared as a ghost, an intangible being that came uncalled and left the affrighted spectator a subject of ridicule. Spirits were lawless and came as warnings or without purpose.

 

Modern Spiritualism came as a reaction against materialism, and the single idea which gave it birth was that ghosts or spirits were individualized entities subject to law. It is distinguished from the ancient by its sweeping claim that all spiritual phenomena and the evolution and existence of spirits are by the operation of fixed and ascertainable laws. Creation by law, that is by evolution, dispenses absolutely with the ancient idea of independent spiritual beings becoming incarnated. According to evolution, individualized spirit is the last and highest term, and if this theory be accepted it follows, as a corollary that all spiritual beings must have attained their individualization by this process.

 

The creation of spirits, not by law, but by a personal creator, and their introduction into earth-life, as the means whereby the human race exists, calls for a continuous miracle, and while science has shown that there is absolute reign of law in the animal world up to man, when he has reached this conception, gives him over to the miraculous. The processes of life with him are distinct from the beings below him. Yet we know there is no such break, and that every law applicable to forms of life below him are equally applicable to him.

 

Modern Spiritualism maintains the absolute supremacy of law; the other is a remnant of the old religion which expresses the childish ideas of nature and life entertained by primitive man. The old Spiritualism is a continuity of miracles; a miraculous God, a strangely born Savior, and a spiritual existence maintained by fiat in defiance of the known order of the world. Modern Spiritualism is the directly opposite view of nature and life. It is a realm of law in earth-life, and a realm of law in the spirit life.

 

The purpose of the physical body is the evolution of the spirit. It is thus through matter that individualized being is attained. The immortal spirit is at the highest round of the ladder of progress, of which the protoplasmic cell is the lowest. This spiritual being, although present in all forms of life, does not reach individualization sufficiently perfect to be permanently maintained after the death of the body, except in man.

 

Scientific men have investigated spirit phenomena in all its phases and have become satisfied that behind all the mystery there is the fact of spirit being and return.

 

With the new Spiritualism we have the means to communicate with the spirits at will by methods conforming to fixed laws. We claim that the spirit is evolved as the last term of a long line of beings; the protoplasmic monad being the first. Death is only a transition to a higher plane. We are able to comply with the conditions which allow the spiritual beings to communicate with us in an orderly and legitimate manner. There are demands made by all religions of to-day or the past to have faith, to believe. The demand made by Spiritualism is to know.