SPIRITS AS TEACHERS.

Thames Guardian and Mining Record, Volume I, Issue 242, 18 July 1872, Page 3

SPIRITS AS TEACHERS.

Mr Smith, late editor of the Australasian, is a great spiritualist, and has recently been lecturing in Dunedin, and discussing the subject with Dr Copland in that city in the newspapers. Here is a quotation from one of Mr Smith’s letters, which has justly been characterised as “most extraordinary” : “As to the evidences in favour of Spiritualism, they are far stronger than any Dr Copland could adduce in favour of tlie genuineness of every word of the New Testament. Ilis religious belief rests upon the contents of a book 1800 years old ; mine rests, not on the inspired and uncorruptcd portions of this book only, hut on the testimony of spirits with whom I have conversed face to face for many consecutive months, in the presence of a dozen people, and which spirits are educating four of my children in every branch of liberal education inlcuding music, drawing, the latin language, Greek and Roman history, chemistry and botany, geology and arithmetic ; and this, magnetically, and without the utterance to them of a single Sword, except in correction of new lessons after they have been written by the children. These arc facts which can he testified to by many witnesses, and of which \ shall be prepared to give Dr Copland ocular demonstration if lie should ever visit Melbourne.” Dr Copland explains the wonders in this way : llic facts which Mr Smith presents as evidence of spirit-work in the education of his children arc quite capable of explanation without the intervention of spirit agency at all. In all probability they possess inte.llectunal power beyond many others of similar age. It is quite possible, too, that they may have been encouraged, as some children are (I think prejudicially), to exert their mental powers to the utmost. They prepare lessons by themselves on the various subjects of their studies ; their exercises, when prepared, are collected, and the mistakes pointed out to them. Is not that, I ask, what every teacher does? The pupils may be more apt than others ; they may •even be painfully precocious; hut all this is no proof tnat spirits have anything more to do with them then those who have never seen them.'