DOES READING AND STUDY IMPROVE
MEDIUMSHIP?
Most emphatically, yes. We have met
with many mediums, and even some lecturers who professed to have
"progressed beyond" reading or study. "They never looked at the spiritual papers," and
it has been notable that one and all of these have dropped out of sight.
There is no use of spirits writing
that which has already been demonstrated, to save some indolent medium
the trouble of reading it in book or paper. No, learn all you can, from
every source available. Make your mind a receptacle for thought, by activity of thinking. Mediumship
is one method of gaining
knowledge, not the only one. It may become a most important assistant
when understood and rightly directed. What has been gained, can only be
known by reading the literature of Spiritualism.
It is a fountain of new thought, and
prepares the mind for receptivity of its
own.
Many mediums become infatuated with
the notion that as the spirits are
their teachers they are started on
the royal road to knowledge, and boast of
their ignorance of books and the
teachings of mortals.
Freedom from the prejudice created by
current ideas may be beneficial, but to believe that culture is not
valuable is a mistake, and attended by
pernicious consequences. It is by no
means a modern idea, but is common to all religious systems in a
modified form. The devotee trusts in God and
discards the vain wisdom of the
world. It appeared in the Reformation,
which owed its origin to the
increase of intelligence, in a fanatical crusade
against learning. The teachers in the
schools of Wittenberg sent the pupils home, for they said there was no
need of learning, as the spirit of God would inspire the true believer.
This fanaticism was more injurious to
the cause of Luther than the hatred of the Pope, and brought it to the brink of ruin.
It was soon learned that the spirit
of God left everyone to acquire knowledge for himself, just as it is now
being learned that the spirits do not intend putting mankind in
leading-strings. The inspired "exhorter" moved his hearers with his
magnetic power, but his vapory ranting gave no instruction. They who
pass by the accumulated stores of knowledge of past ages, expecting to
have their minds filled with thought as a vessel is through a funnel,
will reap bitter disappointment. Truths
found in books, or taught by men,
are just as valuable as if spoken by
the lips of an archangel.
The more cultured the medium, the
better is his mind prepared to receive and transmit impressions.
Let not learning be discarded,
priceless as impressibility may be. The
two should walk hand in hand, mutually
assisting each other.
Those who possess impressibility are
pardonable for their egotism, for it
cannot be too highly valued. At the
same time, when they boast of not reading anything, not even the spiritual
journals, they do themselves a great wrong.
The teacher plodding through the A, B,
Cs, prepares the way for the
college. The eagle can learn a lesson from the burrowing worm. The spirit
teacher comes not to supersede but to supplement earthly wisdom.
MEDIUMSHIP FOR SALE.
There are many advertisements offering
to instruct in the art of mediumship, or by initiation into some "occult
order" pour a fountain of secret knowledge into the deluded subject.
Everyone who advertises to sell
mediumship, or bestow it through secret
organization, is a fraud, for it cannot be bought or sold. There are no
secrets about it, and no society can bestow it. Write it down, however
plausible the pretensions or persuasive the inducements, they are frauds,
and all the time and money
given for that purpose is worse than wasted.
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