AN EVENING WITH THE SPIRITUALISTS.

Evening Star, Issue 3081, 3 January 1873, Page 2

AN EVENING WITH THE SPIRITUALISTS.

The following is an abstract from an article published by the Australasian under the above heading, by “An Eclectic.” It contains the really interesting portions of it, and we give it because the subject has excited some interest here as well as elsewhere :

I took the opportunity afforded last Sunday evening by the lecture delivered by Mr Peebles at the Prince of Wales Theatre to do what I have never done before—listen to a spiritualistic lecture, and observe the way in which this new religion presents itself to the public, and the way in which it is accepted by its hearers. Mr C. Bright was in the chair.

Proceedings were opened by singing a hymn, being a portion of Pope’s “Universal Prayer,” which, as the chairman mentioned, had lately been spoken of as “wretched doggerel” by a provincial newspaper, when it was sung at a spiritualist gathering. He then made a short introductory address, referring to spiritualism as a subject that could fairly claim investigation, and speaking of himself as having been rather attracted to it by its philosophical side than by its phenomenal side. This seemed to me to be rather apologetic. He went on to refer to the charge of blasphemy that the orthodox were so ready to bring against all who stated opinions different from theirs. He is listened to with attention. The audience are not assenting or dissenting, but attentive and expectant. Anything said against the narrowness of orthodoxy, or in assertion of the right of free thought, is applauded. These people evidently do not belong to the sects. Sectarian distinctions are clearly nothing to them. Their experience of orthodoxy seems to have left a bitter feeling of hostility in their mind. They arc warmly approving when the speaker refers sarcastically to the Christian theory of eternal punishment. Certainly it would be no use to set out the doctrine of vicarious atonement or Justification by fajth before them. $o far, their attitude is merely a erb

tical one They are prepared to listen and to judge, but they are by no means com* mi‘l,od to the creed of the spiritualists. Mr Poebb s conies next, and meets with a fair receptio •. He speaks very well, with great fluency and some forc\ It seemed to me that he had met with very unfair treatment from some of hia critics. He is not a cultured man, but by no r-eans the illiterate man he has been represented. There is a hard American intonation in his speech, hut I think that what faults of delivery he possesses were very well explained by himself when he ascribes them to his clerical education. They are the maimerh ms of a class, and are possessed by him in less than the usual measure. His appearance is uot unfavorable. If he would cut his hair I should think it an improvement, but this is his own concern. His speech is vague. It is made uo of reference to a spirit life and precepts of morality. It i-: distinguished by the one characteristic of the written and spoken assertions of this class of thinkers. It appears to them to be sufficient to assert the most extraordinary prepositions and stupendous doctrines to ensure them acceptance. Ordinary logic requires that the weight of proof should he in proportion to the antecedent improbability of the matter to be proved; but these people reverse the rule, and seem to consider that the more remote is the proposition from ordinary belief, the less it stands in need of demonstration. Hence their quiet assertion of statements that to the general view n> conceivable force of evidence would make certain, hut which they, like a respected father of the chuich, believe “ because they are impossible.” The speech is not much better in this respect than niue tenths of the sermons being preached in the churches and chapels of Melbourne at the same moment. It is hardly superior to them in argumentative power, in logical coherence, in dis inct purpose. It is not so lifeless as they, and is based on a consci msness of the existence of a want of which they know nothing. But in other respects it gives us the same general unintellcctual declamation, and furnishes us with little that 1 we can reduce to logical form and submif to test.

Independently of its failing to supply the demand for proof, the discourse was deficient in definition. Sometimes the opinion expressed was a shadowy pantheism. God was asserted to be immanent in everything. Inspiration is universal, and not limited by time, place, or race. All men in all times who have done anything good or great have been inspired by God. Inspiration did not cease 2000 years ago. God did not then exhaust himself, nor did he then cast the race ad lift, and leave them to grope their way in the darkness unguided Whenever nations have wanted a prophet—meaning a great moral leader —a prophet has been sent. We want now prophets speaking our tongue and addressing themselves to the spiritual wants of to-day. It is well to know that the hungry multitudes were miraculously fed 2000 years ago, but what is that to those who hunger now, and who pine for living spiritual bread to-day ? Let those who wi! 1 , digin the crumbling ruins of the pas f , but lee thinking progressive men go to worship in the temple of nature, and seek for a new revelation. All truth is inspired. All truth is God’s truth. The lecturer makes no attempt to define this. We are not told whether it is a mere repetition of the truism that all good comes from the infinite fountain of good, or whether it means an assertion of a supernatural interference. I think the lecturer desires to be “all things to all men”—that he is quite aware of the ambiguity, and would explain io differently if pressed from different quarters. There is little “spiritualism” in what he says. He omits all reference to the phenomena of spiritualism, and a great deal of what he advances would be equally in place if he called it rationalism. He appears to deal with the characteristic tenets of his creed like many an orthodox preacher when addressing a rationalist and intellectual audience. He slurs over the dogmas that he knows would be rejected, and makes that display which has been spoken of as a theological egg-dance, where the performer has to take heed at every step that he does not come into collision with one of the Thirty-Nine Articles. Still, it appears to me that listening to this must bring about s better intellectual result to this audience than if they had been sittingout an orthodox sermon, with all its barrenness, its dead heartlessness, its complacent assertion-all pervaded by the implication that it must be accepted blindly, uninquiringly. on peril of perdition. This man constantly urges his hearers to use their reason, and to test all that is submitted to them. I think that they are doing this. I am sure that they exhibit a response to the attacks he makes on orthodoxy, but his claims on behalf of spiritualism seem to be coldly received. As L said, there is very little spiritualism in the lecture. The physical proofs are not even alluded to. The doctrine seems to have arrived at the stage that all religions reach when they become ashamed of their mythology, which yet is their foundation and the only ground for their existence as separate faiths. They then explain mythology intq allegory and poetry, or refine it away into subtle developments and transformations of meaning with the most distressing results. And this seems to be now the case with spiritualism. Mr Peebles spoke a good deal about higher spheres of being and the spirit life. And there was a good deal of feeble morality and ethical platitude—not very strong food for a human soul hungering for living bread as be had described, I think the audience went disappointed away. There was nothing in what they had heard to supply the mental and spiritual wants of the age.