SPIRITISM IN VICTORIA.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 53, 27 January 1872, Page 5

SPIRITISM IN VICTORIA.

A great discussion is going on in the Melbourne papers on the subject of Spiritism. One of the supporters of this belief, in a letter published in the j" Argus," giyeS S<?]2 e of hie experiences. He says:— I was conversing with the spirits one day at the house of the medium, when some one knocked at the door. The servant was absent, and the knock was repeated twice. The R ?irit uiouonei me to answer the knock. I did so, and found a man at the door who said that he was going to New Zealand by the steamer that morning, and wished to know if Mrs had any message to send to a friend there. On re-entering the room the spirit interrogated me with his eyes, and I repeated what I had been told. Ihe spirit pointed to pencil and paper, and I wrote at his dictation : —" Tell Mr C. that (speaking of the medium in the third person) is quite well, that she will write to him by the next mail, and .that he is not to come to Melbourne until we impress him to do so." I gave the message, and the man departed. I resumed my interrupted conversation with the spirit, and continued it for an hour. When the' spirit left, and the-medium returned to tierself, I studiously avoided all reference | to what had taken place, feeling sure that if she were conscious of it, natural politeness would prompt her to apologise for the trifling trouble I had been put to in answering the door. Nothing of the sort. I then made a guardedly vague and oblique reference to the circumstance, and vigilently scrutinised her countenance. It expressed genuine mystification. I then stated what had happened; and the statement was received with undissimulated incredulity. She evidently believed that I was making her the subject of a practical joke, and it was not until I gave her my solemn assurance of the fact, and repeated the message, that she accepted my narrative as trustworthy. I have had many other opportunities of testing her unconsciousness, end invariably with the same results. When I have asked the spirits to describe her condition, they have said, " She is, and she is not."

Seeing, then, that the oral communications I receive from the spirit do not originate in thebrainof the medium, which is perfectly inert while the spirit has possession of her, how are the phenomena to be accounted for ? It has been suggested that there may be some reflex action of the brain of the person conversing with the spirit upon the torpid brain or the medium, some unconscious cerebration going on in the former which is—so to speak—photographed on the latter, and reproduced by her. . This assumption is as groundless as it is fanciful and speculative. It has more than once happened to me in conversation with a spirit to find all my mental faculties employed in following up a train of thought opened by my interlocutor at the moment he had passed on to speak of another subject, so that I have had to bring my mind back with a jerk, as it were, to the new subject, and have been obliged to ask the spirit to repeat the first words of the sentence. I have been asked to define, what is spiritualism ? I reply that it is a revelation of the unseen world—a removal of the veil which has hitherto concealed it from the eyes of the generality of mankind. That unseen world environs us on every side. I cannot better illustrate its nearness to us than by the words of the spirits themselves — " You have often walked by the banks of a river; you have often seen the fishes swimming in its depths, they moving in their element, and you in yours. They were unconscious of your proximity and presence. We are just as near you as you were to those fishes, and most of you humans are still unconscious of it," So far from decrying or disparaging the earth and our earthly life, the spirits are constantly expatiating on the beauties of the former, and assuring myself and others that this is capable of being made "a little heaven below," if we will only diligently study and affectionately obey those natural laws which God has framed for the express purpose of promoting our happiness and accelerating our progress, both here and hereafter. Instead of denouncing our present home, their complaint is that we

are blind to its wondrous beauty, ignorant of its structure, apathetic to the lessons which are. capable of being taught us by the great book of nature, perversely neglectful of the sources of true hanniness which lie around us in measureless abundance, and living exactly as if this minute fragment of eternity were the be-all and the end-all of our existence. Ten days ago a spirit said to me, " WeS°» oring With n« angeis n ' om other planets, in other stellar systems ; angels who have never lived, as we have done, on the earth; and they can scarcely credit what they see. When we explain to them what is the span of human life, and show them what are its occupations, its chief ambitions, and its highest rewards, these angelic visitors exclaim, 'lt must surely be a planet of mad people,' and they wonder* how it is possible for us to continue to work in the face of such difficulties and disi couragements, in a moral wilderness ! like this."