LECTURE ON SPIRITUALISM.

Tuapeka Times, Volume V, Issue 222, 2 May 1872, Page 5

LECTURE ON SPIRITUALISM.

! aspite the unpleasantness of the weather, a larg-.; audience assembled in tbe Masonic Hall Dunedin, on Sunday to hear Mr James Smith, for some years Parliamentary librarian, Victoria, and now editor of the Australasian, on the above subject. The chair was taken by Mr J. Millar, F.S. A.

The lecturer premised his remarks by observing that, in giving expression to his thoughts, he was the instrument of an intelligence higher than his own, from whom, during the last six months, he had received an amount of infor.nation upon this subject which must concern his happiness on earth and eternal welfare hereafter, 'therefore, whatever good was to be found in his remarks belonged to that higher intelligence ; if he failed to reach the hearts of his audience, the fault he feared would be exclusively his own. The craving for communion with the sp rit world, while it was a testimony to the immortality of the soul since mere matter could not be abstracted towards or by what was immaterial, was also one of the deepest and strongest instincts and desires of our nature. -It was an evidence of the emancipation, to some extent, of what was spiritual within us, from the trammels of animalism. But people required to be extremely careful how they endeavored to gratify that craving. Indulged in according to some methods, it merely gratified an idle curiosity, or brought about them undeveloped spirits with sentiments and sympathies which were still directed to the earth they had quitted, and about whose precincts they were still hovering ; and it subjected'people to be misled, deceived, and in some instances mentally destroyed. Spiritual com nunion was governed by immutable law, like all the pro- [ cesses of nature ; and obedience to that law was essential for the safe and salutary enjoyment of that intercourse for which so many human beings instinctively yearn. There was no such thing as a supernatural phenomenon in the universe. Whatsoever was called by this name was a natural circumstance uncomprehended by us ; and therefore superaaturalism was a phrase which ought to be discarded from the dictionaries. Spiritual communion was one of the facts of the world ; it had existed from the beginning of time upon this earth ; and it would continue to exist until our globe fulfilled its appointed work. Sacred and profane literature was full of testimonies to the truth and actuality of this communion ; and all the religions of civilised mankind reps-sed on a spiritual basis. Take away that aud they crumble to pieces : ns everything that was human and material would necessarily do in virtue of the law of its being. But the record and preceptive teaching of all these religions being larg ly adulterated and contaminated by human error ; and what was historical in them having reference merely to but a small fragment of our race, and to a limited period in its annals, mankind had gone astray with respect to its apprehension of spiritual truths. Te get at the truth of spiritual intercourse, and to understand the beautiful gradations of intelligence and rule by which the world was governed it was necessary to go to the foundation of things, and to understand that the human race made its appearance on the earth tens of thousands of years before the da'e assigned to the Creation in the Mosaic cosmogony, 'ihere have been jfreat ingatherings of the human race — spoken of in the vision of John as churches — at intervals of many thousand ytars. The first took place in what we now call India ; the second in (Syria ; the third in Egypt ; and some idea might be formed of the incorrectness of our systems of chronology from tbe fact that tbe ingathering of the third church occurred at a period evidently anterior to the bondage of the Israelites iv Egypt. The time had arrived for the commencement of the ingatheriug of tbe fourth chnrch. ; and although a thousand years might probably elapse before it was completed, it was steadily proceeding, and would eventuate in the establishment of such a spiritual civilisation of tbe globe, and of such a confraternity of the spiritualminded in all countries, as had not been witnessed since the consummation and fulfilment of the Egyptian Church. The first church was gathered in 21 000 years ago, when the earth was smaller than it is at present. Its members, on their ascension, became the spiritual guides aud counsellors of the human race next dwelling on earth. At the conclusion of each church the earth underwent a great convulsion ; its physical aspect was changed, and its bulk expanded. At the expiration of 7000 years the second church was gathered iv : the first ascended to a higher scale, and became the teacher of the second ; and so with the third. When those arose the first passed into the sun, and its members were invested with a lustre corresponding with the glorious radiance of the centre of our planetary system. Prior to the third ingathering there was but one continent and one sea. The four continents which now exist were riven asunder, and the islands we iuhabit began to emerge from the ocean. We foolishly imagined that America was discovered a few centuries back. That land was perfectly well known to the members of the third church ; it was the seat of a pure and spiritual civilisation, and the dwelling-place of a noble, and natural race of beings. It was because the fourth ingathering had commenced that a spiritual awakening was now taking place all over the globe. Men of science and theologians were finding themselves brought face to face with dour-ts and difficulties they were unable to solve ; old superstitions were crumbling to ruin ; scepticism was invading the sanctuary of orthodoxy, and the belief in a physical devil and physical hell being discarded by all but an unenlightened few ; the theory of the plenary inspiration of the Bible rejected by many of those who were formerly its staunched advocates and defenders ; and mankind beginning to extricate themselves from thi meshes of a pernicious theology, and to seek communion with God through the instrumentality of his angels. These things were but the prelude to the change awaiting us. Upon the subject of inspiration or impression he spoke at great lent>tb. The question of inspiration was one upon which civilized mankind had agreed to differ— chiefly because we had- been accustomed to consider the gift as something partial and exclusive — as limited to one set of books produced by a family of people, arrogantly assuming to be the chosen of the Almighty. But when they came to recognise the fact proclaimed by all the million voices of nature, and testified to by our reason that God was the Father and Creator of all things, loving all squally, and regarding all with an eye of uniform benificence, then it was that we began to apprehend the erroneous of the popular superstition that the Old and New Testaments have exclusive claims to be considered inspired — then it was that we came to the rational conclusion that the sacred books and even the profane literature of all nations put forth similar claims to inspiration ; and these claims must be allowed. On the one hand, while mankind — or rather Christendom — had abanded by almost universal cons-nt the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Bible and the .New testament, and had agreed what was historical and what preceptive, must be submitted to the test of criticism, and be accepted or rejected as it stood or resisted that test, so in liko manner they were called upon to subject the sacred books of the Hindus, the Chinese, and the Mahomedaue, the philoeo-

phical writings of the Greeks and Romans, and the " profane literature " of all creatures and ages to the same test, carefully discriminating between what was impure' and what was spiritual or human. The object could be gained intuitionally or by impression, for impression and inspiration were synonomous term*. What was inspired came to us from without — was communicated to us by tbe higher intelligences, and from that source we derived the capacity of discriminating between inspired and uninspired literature. The lecturer then commented on two wellknown passages in the Bible, contending that Moses receiving the commandments from God— since no merely human being could look upon Him and live— was obviously a gross impossibility ; and that the standing still of the snn and moon at the battle of Gideon, was equally so. These, he gave as instances of the necessity of discrimination between what was inspirational and what human. All darkness and misconception was the result of disobience to impression. There was and could not be any religion. The lecturer the traced the relationship between God and man — pointed out that man was the only animal disobedient to impression, and accordingly the only subject to vice, disease, and misery ; that single obedience to impression would gain happiness. That the earth was a vale of tears was a simple invention of the theologians ; it was a possible paradise, and would actually become so before our branch of the human race finally disappeared from its surface in their physical bodies. The more the great truth of impression was investigated the more harmonious did it appear with God's benificeut purposes and man's nature and necessities. According to the general belief He was remote from us ; in our prayers we acknowledge his nearness. But if that he were a living reality, could we act, think, sp-'ak (and live as we do ? The question had only to be stated to be answered with jan emphatic "No." Once a week we made a sort of compromise with our consciences. We entered what we called the House of God— as if the whole Universe were not the abiding place, and each of us were not or ought to be the living temple — and we declared .ourselves to be miserable sinners. On that day we abstained to a considerable extent from worldly occupation and endeavored, sometimes with a reasonable degree of success, to appear as gloomy and morose as if we actually supposed that the Infinite Being, who was love itself, and who willed that ail men should I c happy on the simply condition of obedience, could be pleased or propiated by the spectacle of austere countenances and mortifying practices. But on the morrow we resumed our buying and selling, our cheating and over-reaching, our adulteration^, and our sordid practices of all kinds, with a sort of tacit understanding that we could live for ourselves during the rest of the week and make our peace with God by means of putting up certain prayers, singing hymns, and listening to certain edifying dis ourses on ths Sunday following. — (Applause. ) And so wo went on from year to year — balancing the worldliness of six days by the devotional exercise of the seventh, as we imagined, by keeping a kind of debtor and creditor account with tbe Almighty. — (Loud applause.) But it was not his purpose to v ake a tirade against Sabbatarianism : what he was anxious to declare waa that every day, week, and year should be a Sabbath, and consecrated by the love of God, by the love of a neighbor, by the abnegation of self and by a growth of knowledge, and by a steady advancement in happiness and spiritual light. Tracing the rise of what he called the forth ingathering, he said by carrying out the principles he had just enunciated, vice and wrong-doing would speedily disappear, and with them our gaols, hospitals, and lunatic asylums. Were not the signs of this transformation a ready visible on the horizon ? Let any man who had lived for fifty years look back to the state of society all over the civifised globe in 1820, and compare it with what it is now, and then let him attempt to dispute the imminency of the great change which was impending. It would be attended with great convulsions, he believed ; indeed that the whole fabric of social life in Europe and America is threatened with subversion, and then, because it is fpunded upon, a rotten — because a Godless basis — upon the worship of wealth and the apothesis of egotism : and. that when the convulsion shall have been over— the great body of the people— the poor and ignorant a? we term them — more impressionable to angelic instruction and guidance, than their "superiors" will proceed to reconstruct the edifice upon the enduring foundations of righteousness, truth, and love. — (Loud and long-continued applause). On the motion of Mr J. G. S. Grant, a vote of thanks was awarded to the lecturer.