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Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4724, 27 February 1884, Page 2

(To the Editor of the Evening Star.) Sib, —I think that Brother Taylor is too bad in including in his pious frauds, all those who believe that the spirits or souls of men exist after death. As this is such a general belief among man of different ' creeds and religions, he might have been - more rtiild, and not have given such a broad sweep; He says "that to base such a belief on the Bible is blasphemy." Gently, my good Mr Taylor, do not lay it ou quite so thick as that. I will give one passage or two from the Bible from many, f.i-1 am .ure I could fill this letter with them; Christ said bis followers should never die, but have eternal life. IfMr T, wanted to convey the idea in plain language that the spirit lived on after * death he could not do it; let him try if he thinks he can. Then John-said he saw a great number that had lived on earth, and he saw them after thay had died. V He saw then what spiritualists now see every..... day, therefore, you, Mr T., out with your £10; let us have it. As Spiritualists are included in the pious frauds I will give Mr T. four names of four very public men who are Spiritualists,—Lord Lytton or Bulwer, Sergant Cox, Robert Chambers, and William Howitt; every one of those names are above suspicion, and could not be charged with fraud. Mr Hall says that it would be hard to find four men whose testimony would be more readily received in any court of law or equity—men of larger experience, sounder judgment, more enlightened integrity, less likely to be deceived, less subject to be affected by imposture, or influenced by delusion could not anywhere be found in the ranks of intellectual Englishmen. Are the testimonies of these men,'and thousands more, who say they have had, communion with their departed friends after they departed this life,—that they have seen, heard, and felt -them,—has all this evidence to be blown away by the breath of men who never would take- the trouble to examine into the phenomena of Spiritualism, which is actually based upon knowledge, and not upon a belief? If immortality is not natural to man, and only acquired by complying with certain conditions laid down in a book; and suppose that book is not true, then it is utterly without a foundation to stand upon. But Spiritualism relies upon a great fact and not upon what someone said. They say that man has a spiritual body and an earthly body, and what is called death, is the separation of the natural body from the spiritual body. The spiritual body never dies. We might be asked how we prove that man has a spiritual body; we say we prove it by the effects produced, the same way as we prove the existence of magnetism or electricity or any other of the subtle invisible forces. There ia en intelligent force about our bodies which moves them j what is it? If we analyze, any part of the body, we cannot find it, although we are sure it is there, and to confirm this, thousands of spiritualists all over the world have seen, heard and felt them, after those spirits have returned to this earth. No theory of immortality has such a solid basis to rest upon as this. 'Sergant Cox, a short time before he died, whea standing upon the platform of the Great Western Railway, used these words:—" I am as sore and convinced that I have seen and conversed with friends that I have known and .jved iv life, who are in the ordinary phrase dead, as I am that those are railway carriages that I see before me ; and if I did not so believe, I could credit nothing for which the evidence was my own sense* and my intelligejce." And nearly ♦he same words were said to Mr Hall by Robert Chambers and by William Howitt; aud to say that such men as those would have lent them solves to" blasphemous frauds is out of the question. JBut, as we ) cannot get all people to think as we think —neither* is it desirable, if we could,—we ought to cheerfully allow others the liberty we take, and be charitable and tolerant to all.—lam, &c, ■ J. Hobn.