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New Zealand Listener, Volume 26, Issue 666, 10 April 1952, Page 5

Sir,-Your correspondent, Gertrude Brooks, has rightly drawn attention to the remarks made about mediumship and Spiritualist services, by Professor Arnold Wall in a recent broadcast. I have always understood that the NZBS did not permit anyone to make statements that might violate other people’s feelings and religious beliefs. In rebuttal to the charges of "remarkably low mentality" and "unculture,"

might I be permitted to say that over a long period in ‘close association with spiritualism this has not been my experience, In a general sense spiritualism appeals easily to ordinary people as in like manner did early Christianity. These are unfettered by intellectual inhibitions. There are always, in all movements and groups, more simple-minded Peters than intellectual" Pauls. But simplemindedness does not in any way mean weakmindedness. Neither does a lack of intellectuality necessarily connote a lack of true spiritual culture. The hypotheses of the intellectualist, the agnostic, and the religiously prejudiced, where these are made to account for psychic or physical manifestations, are each more fantastic and unbelievable than the simple truth, that they are what they themselves claim to be, ‘survivors of bodily death, However, as with the redoubtable Professor Joad, it takes more than one Damascus Road experience to overthrow the most deeply entrenched antagonists. However, again, it is from these Paul-like converts that much strength is drawn by propagandists for human survival of bodily death. Men and women of note, drawn as they are from every field of science, literature, art, religion, politics, medicine, industry, war, etc, have been pleased to give their comments and admissions in support of personal conviction of the truth of human survival. With these as with all who are lesser lights, it is not the man who has to be overthrown’so often as it is his sense of intellectual] superiority. The age-old cry, "Why persecutist thou Me?" might well be repeated today. It was a-cry to an intelligent man to give a reason for an otherwise unintelligent series of actions. It has to be admitted that there is a deplorable practice of psychometry and clairvoyant fortune-telling parasitical in the Spiritualist movement, and that a number of one-man churches adopt these means to attract sufficient money to sustain a perhaps otherwise useless spiritual identity. But ‘those churches united throughout New Zealand under the Act of the Spiritualist Church of New Zealand, ftom the earliest date, incorporated bylaws prohibiting such degrading demonstrations as are indeed defamatory of the name of mediumship in its true function, that of uniting loved ones parted by death, of proving thereby survival of bodily death, and of imparting spiritual communications received from enlightened minds in the world beyond death. Over and above this, mediumship is the channel through which healing power flows, curing the sick of hysical and mental ailments in a way that has not been exceeded at any time. One might: ask as did the man Jesus of old, "For what good work -am I-called in question?

J. S.

MANDER

President, Spiritualist Church of N.Z. (Christchurch),

Sir,-"Another Student" in your issue of March 7 asks me. to whom have I proved human survival after death, St. Paul tells of those who can discern spirits. I have this spiritual- gift. Not once, but many times have I given proof to people who have acknowledged the description to be correct. Your other correspondent, J. Malton Murray, seems to be dubious about qa future life. All of us must eventually pass on. Each materialist, each one who denies God, must

pass through physical death. What of those who have turned from the light? ‘What of those who have spurned the teachings which would have brought them spiritual emancipation? They pass into their own world. Doubt and self build a prison from which it is hard to extricate the victim, Let us send out our compassion to all who believe not in a future life. That life is a life of compensation, where we reap our harvest, for God is not mocked.

THE STUDENT

(Wellington).

(ihis correspondence is now closed,--Ed.)