SPIRITUALIST CHURCH

Evening Star, Issue 22455, 28 September 1936, Page 14

SPIRITUALIST CHURCH

The Radiant Hall was filled last night when Mr Ruebeu A. Webb concluded a very successful three months’ mission in connection with the National Spiritualist Church. The president (Mr R. N. Ridd), in thanking Mr Webb for the splendid work ho had done during his stay, work which had been of very great value to the church and to the cause, added that it had been found possible to arrange that Mrs Webb should remain in Dunedin and take the service at the church until the arrival of Mr and Mrs G. E. Wright, who would be the next missioners. Mr Webb later in the evening expressed his warmest thanks to the officers and friends of tho church for the many kindnesses extended to him during the time he had spent here. Prior to the delivery of his tranc® address, Mr Webb _ expressed his own views concerning kindness to animals, the advocacy of which was being stressed in the churches and elsewhere during the present week. It gave him deep pleasure, he said, to help spread such a gospel, for he had always been a lover of animals, and his experience with horses particularly convinced him that they, as well as other domesticated animals, possessed more than what was commonly called instinct. Children who were taught to be kind to animals would in later years be more likely to extend kindness and consideration to their fellow men and women. Mr Webb urged his hearers to encourage every effort that was being made to introduce more humane methods of slaughtering beasts for the market. If this must be done at all, he said, there was no excuse for not introducing the latest scientific methods, which brought about death quickly and painlessly. The subject of the trance address was ‘ A Kindlier and a Happier World For All.’ All true Spiritualists, said the control, fully realised that real happiness was a necessity in this life and not something which was some day to be our reward when we reached heaven after an earth life of misery and perhaps degradation. AH angelic teaching was to the effect that man should be happy while in the physical state. Spiritualists, who understood this, were happy people taking part in life_ in a joyous way, enjoying it in a social as well as a spiritual sense, and also helping in social and humanitarian causes. Those earlier teachings from which we gathered that it was a heavenly thing to put up with anguish,, pain, and trouble here in tho hope of a greater reward in the hereafter were no longer accepted, nor were the excuses made for pain, sin, injustice, poverty, cruelty, and wickedness. 1 In these days of knowledge, mental attainments, and skill in manufacturing, there should be no need for poverty, for any inability to obtain the necessities of life. Man had reached the stage when he was able to produce in abundance the beautiful and luxurious things, but, unfortunately, ho had not so far become as skilful or scientific in the matter of tho distribution of these things to all people, and such a distribution was necessary in order to make a kindlier and happier world for all. But rays of light and warmth were coming to humanity by way of great minds, by tho aspirations of many sincere idealists. Some day mankind would be able to partake of all those abundant things which knowledge and science had given us tho power to produce, and then the spirit would have the highest place; the kindlier and happier life of tho future would be a spiritual life lived on the earth plane. Then when “death” came it would be just like passing from one room to another, for mankind would have realised that human beings were already spiritual beings. Materialist science was even now meeting up with the realisation of spirit, and soon the scientists who were working up one side of the cone would meet at tho top tho Spiritualists, Theosophists, and members of other organisations of progressive thought, and then would come heaven for all. Modem Spiritualists, _ added the control, may have erred in some of their methods of propaganda; individual Spiritualists may have made mistakes, but the groat avenues of modiumship, inspiration, trance, clairaudienco. clairvoyance, and prophecy had taught man a great deal and lifted him from a state, of absence of psychic sense to a firm belief in such things. Other revelations would come when man had learned more of the kindlier and happier life. * During the service a local singer rendered an appropriate solo very finely, and at the conclusion of the address Mrs Elizabeth Webb delivered clairvoyant messages of a spiritual nature to a number of tho people present.