CHAPTER V

IS SPIRITUAL SCIENCE HOSTILE TO RELIGION?

In a previous chapter I referred to some fanciful theories as to the origin of the belief in immortality among the primitive races of men. I have contended that the belief must have sprung as a corollary from a knowledge of actual phenomena, such as millions have had proved to them in our own day. I am glad to learn from one of the pamphlets of my esteemed friend, Thomas Shorter, of London, that my convictions on this point are supported by the philosophical inferences of so high an authority as the late John Stuart Mill, who wisely says:

"The argument from tradition, or the general belief of the human race, if we accept it as a guide to our own belief, must be accepted entire; if so, we are bound to believe that the souls of human beings not only survive after death, but show themselves as ghosts to the living; for we find no people who have had the one belief without the other. Indeed, it is probable that the former belief originated in the latter, and that primitive men would never have supposed that the soul did not die with the body, if they had not fancied that it visited them after death."

Here we have the subtlest skeptical philosophy corroborating one of our most important positions, namely, that the primitive tribes drew their belief in immortality, not from seeing their faces in the water, or their shadows against the sunlight, as Mr. Spencer supposes, but from seeing actual, objective, recognizable apparitions of deceased persons.

The ground-thought of the system which I. H. Fichte

drew from his knowledge of our phenomena is, according to Professor Franz Hoffman, of Wurtzburg, a God-given, spiritually-real individualism. Fichte accepts the facts of modern Spiritualism, and refutes the materialism, the pantheism, and the merely realistic individualism of the day. From the standpoint of psycho-physical science, he argues in favor of the objective nature of the soul itself. It has a certain where in space, but is all-present in every part of its space-existence. Its body is the real, its consciousness the ideal expression of its individuality. From its inner, continuing, invisible body, the separable exterior body must be distinguished.

The inner body is the soul itself considered in its senserelations only. The outer body is the chemical material body, appropriated and then dissolved, and, in death, altogether separable from the imperishable soul. The whole body is the organ of the soul, the instrument of its activity, and consequently a system of organs; and the soul, considered still in its sense-relations only, is unconsciousrational, body-fashioning force. Thus the spirit-form is fair or otherwise, according to the character of the individual. To higher spirits the hypocrite unmasks himself by his very aspect. "There is no shuffling-there the action lies in its true light." Fichte says of our facts:

"Through their inner analogy, one with another, they become credible, and through their frequent recurrence among different peoples of different grades of culture in ancient and modern times, are found to cohere so remarkably that neither the theory of an accidental reception of ever-returning delusions, nor that of a superstition transmitted from generation to generation, can suffice as an explanation. However offensive, therefore, to the ruling notions of the day, they must be admitted to the domain of well-accepted psychical facts."

"No faith," says Leibnitz, "can be real or intelligible unless its foundations are detected in the human reason.

Religion, dissevered from the reason of man, can have no hold or standing-place." It is the glory of Spiritualism that its appeal is to the reason through science; that it gives us the elements of a religion, old as the world, and at once rational, scientific, and emotional. But this religion the individual must himself deduce from our facts, and thus make it truly his own, and not a graft from some other man's tree of life. This being the case, there must be diversity of religious insight.

"Anything becomes religious to us," says Mrs. Louisa Andrews, "which tends, directly or indirectly, to lift the mind above the lower and narrower spheres of thought into a contemplation of realities that are eternal, and by this uplifting to inspire in the heart that worship of something afar from the sphere of our sorrow,' which is the soul of all true religion, irrespective of creeds. Spiritualism may do this or it may not. 'The fool sees not the same tree that the wise man sees;' nor do all the wise necessarily see the same. 'We receive but what we give.''

The same writer tells us that Spiritualists differ, one from another, in their views in regard to right living and right thinking, as widely as it is possible for men to do; some insisting on a purely moral life, and others ready to sweep away all recognized boundary lines between right and wrong that may interfere with an indulgence of their own unchallenged desires. There are many of the latter class who claim to be Spiritualists; and where are we to draw the line of exclusion? The influence exerted by Spiritualism having its source in the phenomena, we must not leave these behind as things outgrown, but continue to study them, and draw from them-confirming as they do belief in spiritual, immortal life-such truths as may make us wise unto eternity.

Because many persons do not draw these precious inferences, it does not follow that the repeated demonstration

of spirit power ought not to elevate us by filling us with the sense of immortality. Even the manifestations of an evil spirit may have their impressive lesson; though unless we can do him good, the less we have of his society the better. "These proofs of spirit existence and energy," says Mrs. Andrews, "with all the mysteries involved in the exercise of unknown forces as they act upon the things we call material, must, rightly used, be of incalculable value."

Spiritualism is not, as the ignorant have called it, "a form of religion." To the pure in heart it is religion itself. Theodore Parker, though lack of opportunities of investigation left him without personal proof of our facts, intuitively recognized their vast significance; for in his "Notes for Sermons," he says: "In 1856 it seems more likely that Spiritualism would become the religion of America than in 156 that Christianity would become the religion of the Roman empire, or in 756 that Mohammedanism would be that of the Arabian populations: (1) It has more evidence for its wonders than any historic form of religion hitherto. (2) It is thoroughly democratic, with no hierarchy; but inspiration is open to all. (3) It is no fixed fact- has no punctum stans-but is a punctum fluens. (4) It admits all the truths of religion and morality in all the worldsects."

Thus Spiritualism is eclectic. It gives us a basis of demonstrable truth for our religion. It is remarked by Henry Thomas Buckle that those who would found their belief in immortality on their religion, instead of founding their religion on their belief in immortality, are making a great mistake. "They imperil," he says, "their own cause. They make the fundamental depend upon the casual; they support what is permanent by what is ephemeral; and with their books, their dogmas, their traditions, their rituals, their records, and their other perishable con

trivances, they seek to prove what was known to the world before these existed, and what, if these were to die away, would still be known, and would remain the common heritage of the human species, and the consolation of myriads yet unborn."

Again he says: "It is to that sense of immortality with which the affections inspire us, that I would appeal for the best proof of the reality of a future life. So surely as we lose what we love, so surely does hope mingle with grief.”

I grant that the testimony of the affections is supplementary and important; but it is not the original factor which made the belief in immortality so prevalent even among uncivilized tribes. That belief, as I have shown, had actual phenomena for its basis.

And what is religion? For no word have more definitions been invented. I will give another, acknowledging that it is a limited one: Religion is the sentiment of reverence or of appeal, growing out of a sense of the possibility that there may be in the universe a Power or powers unseen, able to take cognizance of our thoughts and our needs, and to help us spiritually or physically.

The religious sentiment is then genuine, legitimate, and almost universal. It will detract nothing from its authority for some Darwinian to tell us of its pedigree, to inform us that, like many traits of character, it is mostly the result of heredity; of the gradual complexity of the brain-cells; that it is a mere evolution from certain experiences, fears, hopes, and imaginations, all of which can be traced through merely material developments, like the physical faculties of man and beast, till by the survival of the fittest, and a progress over long tracts of time, we have arrived at our present state. Grant that this is all so, it does not explain how the original cell or germ should have been endowed with these amazing potentialities, nor does it detract from the legitimacy and the efficacy of the religious sentiment.