THE REV. J.M. PEEBLES ON SPIRITUALISM.

Evening Star, Issue 3107, 3 February 1873, Page 3

THE REV. J.M. PEEBLES ON SPIRITUALISM.

The Rev. J. M. Peebles, the “ Seer of the Age,” delivered the first of his Sunday lectur sou Spiritualism, at the Queen’s Theatre, last evening. The building was crowded in every part—dress circle, stalls, and pit alike —aud it is estimated that there were between 1.300 and 1,400 persons present. The orchea'ra was occupied by four performers, who played an introit, and ass sted in rendering the hymns that were sung. On the curtain rising there were to be seen on the platform, at a table nearest the footlights, the “Seer of the Age” and his friend Dr Dunn; at the rear of whom were Messrs Garrick, Redmayne, Stout, Logan, Beverley, Armstrong, Moody, Millar, &c. Afttrafew preliminary remarks by Mr Peebles, who discountenanced any demonstration of approval or otherwise on the part of his hearers of his sermon or lecture, whichever it might be termed, Dr. Dunn read what seemed to be a parody on the familiar soliloquy, “To bo or not to be.” Then a hymn was sung to the tune of “The Old Hundredth,” after which the business of the evening commenced.

Mr Peebles said his text would be Mark, ch. xvi., v. 16 and 17— “And He said unto them. Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned ’’ After explaining the ana ogy between the words Moses and Messiah, and the deriva- : tion of the word Gospel, he said the latter embodied four distinct truths—Firstly, the fatherhi'od of God ; secondly, the universal broiherhuod of the human race ; thirdly, the doc rine of progression ; and fourthly, the presence of ministering angels or spirits, who loved to demonstrate to man the fact of a future progressive life beyond this one. The fatherhood of God was a sublime theme for contemplation. All nations under all skies had believed in the existence of some great and supreme power, who governed by fixel and unchanging laws. But the ancient Assyrians and Hebrews had very erroneous ideas of that Divine power. Calamities by fire or water, earthquakes, kc., were by them regarded as manifestations of God’s wrath and vengeance against man; and ile was* often spoke of as being angry with man. But when Jesus came to remove the veil, He said, “Behold your Father, and when ye pray say our Father which art in Heaven.” How many beautiful thoughts ding around the name of father? Sec that sporting ind, when he sometimes dropped Ins marbles, left his kite, and threw his hoop away, rushed on to his father’s knee, and lovingly threw his arms around his father’s neck. Ask him why he did so? and the reply would be, “ Because I love ray father.” And God loved His children. He was not a God of anger, nor an incensed God; but a God of great love and kindness, as was manifested by the whole of Nature’s grand and stupendous works. His love extended as high *as the highest heavens, and as deep as the deepest depths. Proceeding to touch upon the second ( ospel truth—the brotherhood of the human race—he said he loved as his brother every human being that walked the face of the earth, fur God had given to him the breath of life, and he became a living soul. He loved even the drunkard and the inebriate that lay in their streets with swollen face and closed ejos; it was their duty to lift him out of the gutters, for he was their brother still ; in him there still was the Divine spark; they were not to pass him ‘ by on the o her side, but were to pick him up and convey him to their or his own home ; to stand by him and do what they could towards reforming him, because he was their brother and God’s child. They read in the Scriptures that Jesus was asked by a lawyer what was the first great commandment, to which he replied, “ Love the Lord thy God,” and the second, to which he replied, “ Love thy neighbor as thyself,” (He illustrated these commandments by reading an extract from a poem in which the piinciple of man fulfilling his duty towards his neighbor was the highest recommendation to God’s favor.) The third gospel truth was the doc l rine of progress and progression—progress through methods inverse, diverse, and throughout the universe. Earth was but a child of the sun, and was once a vast realm < f fire mist. Air was then formed, then minerals, then vegetables, then animals, then man. There was also progress pointed to in Christ’s parables—for instance in the parable of the mustard seed, which becoming a tree, birds lodged in it. Progress in belief was, however, cramped and fettered by prejudice and bigotry. He blamed no man who did not believe in the present ministering of the spirits on earth. He pitied the millions who, because'of their prejudices and bigotry, or through being cramped by iron creeds, dared not ahd w r ould not investigate this aH-important subject. There was no merit in belief, and no demerit in disbelief ; still man should lie free to investigate every subject in hia search for the truth, which, having accepted, he should manfully defend and proclaim,.. He believed in baptism, ahd in what Paul said about it. There was one Lord, one faith, and one baptism, but the baptism referred to was not water baptism. That was John’s baptism L_ the baptism of the Hindoos and Egyptians. Long before John’s time baptism by immersion was practised. It was before Christ. John was in a clairvoyant state when he said, “'1 here stands One among you the latchct of wdiose shoe I am nob worthy to unloose. Ho shall bap tise you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.” That word ghost was a barbarous translation of the Greek word pnnma, which should uniformly be read “spirit.” “He shall baptise you with the Holy Spirit—with the Divine afllatus, and from angelic hosts.” That was Christ's baptism. “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved.” Saved! from what? Salvation implied deliverance, and he answered not saved from the Wrath of an angry God, for there was no wrath nor angef with God. The anger was in all men’s hearts and* souls. He had been amused and sorry when he heard clergymen reprehend men for not loving God, as they described Him. But could man love a revengeful, vindictive, and wratliful God? He could say, organised as ho was, he could only love a loving Being, and in proportion to clergymen setting forth God’s love, would they excite love in their hearers. What were men to be saved from? Not from just and deserved punishment, for there was no natural nor possible way of escaping the consequences of a breach of God’s laws. I et a person place his hand in a boiling pot and, on finding it injured, pray for it to be cured. The death of a thousand Christs could not step in and Save him from'the natural' penalty of ta transgressed natural law. The fourth great gospel truth was the ministry of spirits to those who arc on earth. It was a truth taught in all nations, and by all people. It was taught in the Vidas, in the New Testament, and in the Keiftp. All teaohiog, in all time, confirmed

this doctrine. They preached the Fatherhood of God, and the brotherhood of men. They taught the progress and progres ion of our lives—the ministry of angels. “ lie that believeth” ; i.e., who believe s.o-pol truths. He knew that doctrine was taught, but not by holy inspired men; and to talk of saving men Lorn that to which they were never exposed was absurd. But sa'-ed from what? Those who believed those final truths were saved from darkness, bigotry, moral blindness, fear of God, fear of death, fear of hell. As St John truly said, “ Perfect love casteth out fear,” so that they who loved God believed He would save them. His text said “ He that believeth not should be damned,’ and, upon the whole, he thought he ought to be : but he would have them mark that when he said “damned” he simply meant those who would not investigate—who would not study nature’s Jaws, who would not obey God s laws, who would not receive the truth —ought to suffer the natural consequences of their unbelief. In the American Baptist Bible, the word was translated “ condemn,” instead of, as in the English Bible, “ damn,” and no doubt it was correct. To show the effect of that unbelief, ho would refer to a case that occurred in New York, which was told him by the 11 ev. VV; Cook, It shewed the sad effect of false doctrine. In a family, the heads of which were Calvinistie Baptists, were two sons, Alfred and William. These lads, one Sunday, after their parents had gone to church, agreed to go into the bush near the home to shoot, and while thus engaged, William’s gun went off, the contents lodged in his left breast, the blood flowed from his mouth, and, after a convulsive scream, he died. Ho was taken home just as his mother returne 1 from church. Her anguish might be conceived, but it was immeasurably aggravated by the fear that his soul was irretrievably lost. He had not been baptised nor professed any saving failh in Jesus Christ; in fact, he was a gay, giddy, yet, perhaps, moral young man. At the funeral, the clergyman wished to make a powerful impression, and took for his text, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the foil of Man be lifted up,” Ac. The whole burden of that sermon was to the unconverted, and Ihe doctrine was there was no salvation except on the condition of belief m the creed laid down by that Church. In effect, he told those mourning parents that only once again would they i ee their son William, and that would bo at t e judgment seat of Christ, when ihey woud acknowledge that his condemnation to eternal tire, to companionship with the devil and h : s angel-', was just. ’J ho coffin lid was bfted, and the mother gazed on t ie face of her dead son. She stepned back, shrieking. “Oh! is William in he.l ? is be in hell ? and swooned on the church floor. She was taken home raving, and shortly afterwards to a lunatic asylum, where, in a few months, she died, the victim to a false doctrine. The doctrine of future torments in hell he utterly ignored. He would read a few quotations from works of Christian clergymen, showing the conclusions to which it led. The first were from Benson’s Commentary : *• Infinite justice arrests the souls of the guilty, and coniines them in the dark prison of hell, till they bavesatisib d all its demands by the’r personal sufferings, which, alas ! they can never do. . . . God will exert

all his divine attributes to make them as wretched as the capacity of their nature will admit..” The Lev. Thomas Boston, in his “ Four fold State,” said:—“ The godly wife shall applaud tin: justice of the judge in the condemnation of her ungodly husband. The godly husband shall say ’amen !’ to the damnation of her who lay in his bosom ! The godly parents shall say ‘hallelujah!’ at the passing of the sentence of their ungodly dual. And the godly child shall, from the heart, approve the damnation of his wicked parents who begot him, or the mother who bore him.*’ The Rev. Mr Walworth, in a sermon on the parable of the rich man nd Lazarus, said : “ The rich man, tormented in hell, ‘lifted up.his eyes ’ and saw Lazarus in Abraham’s bosom, and to his entreaties for succor or intercession, Abraham had replied, ‘ between us and you there is a great gulf fixed.’

. . Water boi s at two hundred and twelve degress 1 ahreuheit, but it requires two thousand and six hundred degrees to melt rocks. This, therefore, was the minimum of the heat of hell, whose frontiers therefore lie twemy-one miles below the surface of the earth. ... In these eternal

fires every limb and member of our bodies, every nerve and muscle and tendon, every part of us, in lire, over which the sense of feeling predominated. would bo for over racked and tortured, and yet never consumed. ” And that doctrine was still preached as part of Christianity It it were true, the martyred i resident of the United States Abraham Lincoln, was for ever lost; for although he was a highly moral man, he was never regarded as being a Christian, for he had joined no Church, never professed to be born again, was never baptised : yet he was by one fell shot hurled into the eternal world. If that doctrine were true, he was for ever lost; but ho would rather be lost with him, w.th Poe, Shelley, Burns, and Dickens, and great men of that class, than be companions with those in a future state who sat on golden seats in whitened rubes. “Thesesigns shall follow them that believe,” namely, healing by the laying on of hands, speaking in new tongues,” .»c, as described in the 12th chap, of Ist Corinthians. The power of discerning, or clairvoyance, was one of these signs, and was possessed in a high degree by his friend Dr Dunn, as would be shown by his practice here. Oh mortals, how worldly and selfish yon have become that you cannot discern these things ! On Sundays you give yourselves up to the search after i ruth, but for the remaining six days you devote your time to the grovelling tilings of the world, and forget the great object of life. He knew a singular instance iu the person of Mrs Hawkins, who pos in a large degree the gift of healing. On one occasion a Mr H. .F Williams was laid up ill for a period of nineteen and little hopes were entertained rf his recovery, Mrs Hawkins visited him, laid her bauds upon him, and prayed, bhe again came to him, laid her hands upon his shonlder, and as did Peter and John of old, prayed in the name of God that the disease might be removed from him. He sprang from his bed, and wondering at the cause of his cure, said, “ Madame, f thank you ; lam recovered.” This was one instance of God’s power demonstrated by the agency of those who believe in his laws and practise his truths. Several similar cases had. taken place in the experience of Dr Dunn. The lame, the halt, the blind had been cured, bub the result had been attributed to the agency of the devil. If such was the case, then the devil ought to be glorified in them, while God being the author of all things in his creation ought to have known better than create' him. The devil was not a personal being, and the original word translated simply meant adversary of truth or force of bad ideas. Those who imbibed ami practised these ideas passed into the Spirit World as they lived in this, but they were not doomed to eternal punishment. Our condition was progressive trom birth throughout eternity. Christ said, “ In my Father’s house there are many mansions,” and these words simply indicated the progressive character of our creation. There was an illustration of this fact in the ease of a miser iu Scotland, who had large deposits at his bank, and was very prosperous ; but, amidst all his prosperity, he was not happy. Near to his residence there was a dark stream. Ho resolved on self-destruction, by aplungointo this stream. One morning, as he approached the dark, cold water, he felt some one putting at the skirt of his coat. He turned round a little girl, who said, “ My mother is sick ; my father dead * give ibo a penny to buy a loaf for my brothers’ and sisters’ breakfast.” He asked her where she lived, ai d she replied, “ Over the hill.” He acconipai ied her to the miserable hut on the other side of the hill, and found the unhappy mother lying on a bed ill, surrounded by four or five hungry children, He gave them

some money, and the mother exclaimed : “You have saved the lives of my children—oh, how can I thank yon?” The children clung to his knees, while expressing their tbankfulnes. A new spirit possessed him, and he said, “ Oh, what was 1 about to do, when there is so much good to be done in this world ?” This one incident turned the course of that mao’s life, and led to his pursuing the practice of truth, charity, and love in after life. He then concluded, showing ihat, by the ministry of angels, men were enabled to lead better and purer lives.