Re: Ch. 2: Who was the first person?
Posted: Thu May 16, 2013 9:21 am
Society cannot teach people the truth - because we don't know what the truth is. We do know what is a great lie and a deception, and we do know how easily people can be misled.Robert Tulip wrote:
Society has a moral responsibility to teach people the truth.
I would like to share this article transcribed from a newspaper called 'The Two Worlds' March 26th 1948.
What Has Spiritualism achieved since 1848?
Spiritualism, during a century of existence, has proved survival to millions of people in many countries. It has saved a myriad of stricken mourners from despair. It has forced innumerable scientists to admit its claims after a hostile enquiry. It has explained so-called 'miracles' by spreading a knowledge of natural law.
After saying that, I find it hard to answer the question, 'What has Spiritualism achieved since the Rochester rappings?'
It is always difficult to estimate the effect on society of a revolutionary idea. The change takes so many forms. Often, it is indefinite. Progress is seldom a move in a straight forward direction.
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Besides, it must be recognised that proof of our claims have not been confined in a 'movement'; in my view, they will never be. Over and over again, spirit guides have declared, 'There are too many organisations already. They have always failed us. We intend to permeate society with our revelations, not to build up a new body or establish a new Church'.
The result of the permeation is, indeed, remarkable.
When I was a boy, the trappings of funereal woe spread grief wherever they were seen. Horses dragging along hearses wore ugly plumes that were as black as coal. Hired mutes looked like ravens walking to the gallows. The horrors of Hell were preached from the pulpit, by Soloman Eagles who told of the wrath to come.
Anglicans sang, at burial services: 'Day of Wrath! O day of warning! Heaven and Earth in ashes burning!'
They chanted, 'Worthless are my prayers and sighing' and 'While the wicked are confounded'.
I recall, too, the abyssmal gloom of the hymn: 'When the solemn death-bell tolls, for our own departed souls, When our final doom is near.'
Even the poorest workers spent the insurance money on a funeral that would impress the neighbours. After it, they handed round ham sandwiches made from meat they had often kept for weeks to consume after what was a ceremony of which 'savages' should have been ashamed. Christianity then seemed to be based on fears of the anger of a vengeful deity.
Today, much of that has gone - and yet the only new teaching about death that has come to the world to effect the change is the teaching that has poured through humble mediums that, even today are subject to punishment intended to stop 'witchcraft' and 'vagrancy'.
Preachers at funeral services now frequently speak of the 'dead' as people present in the congregation. Death is regarded as a release and not as a prelude to punishment. Cremation is becoming more and more general, largely because Spiritualist teaching has insisted that the idea of a physical resurrection is ridiculous.
Spiritualism, too, has done much to bridge the gap between religions that not long ago were almost openly at war. People belonging to all the Christian sects except the Catholics, the Salvationists and the Plymouth Brethren have all shared our platforms. So have Buddhists, Moslems and Hindus. I have myself spoken on Spiritualism in the mosque at Woking.
The earthly reasons for our failure to organise Spiritualism into a mighty army are many. For one thing, it is almost impossible to control mediumship, most of which has started spontaneously in families outside our ranks. It would be hard, indeed, to evolve a way of placing it under management, even if we had the financial means with which to endow it.
As for our religious services, many former Christians used to ritual and a liturgy are dissatisfied with the comparative coldness of our lack of a formula. On the other hand, most Agnostics who become convinced of Survival cannot fit themselves into devotional practices. Many folk to whom we prove our cause prefer to remain inside the orthodoxies from which they cannot mentally free themselves. They object to the fact that we do not hail Jesus as 'divine'. Only in the framework of the democratic systems of Britain and the United States can Spiritualism function with any freedom. It is, indeed, in those countries where, apart fromt he healers in South America, nearly all mediums are to be found.
No, most of the results of a century of Spiritualist propaganda are hard to fasten down or to explain in words that would not need much qualification. It has been an enfranchising mission. It has swept away infinite prejudice. It has been a unifying influence, whereas most of the other ideas born in the field of religion have become barriers between nations, between classes and between sects.
But in the case of most of its adherents, fervent in their early days, what was a fervour has become merely an acceptance. That is one reason why the statement, 'There are perhaps 1,000,000 Spiritualists in Britain' can neither be proved nor controverted. People enquire, they receive proof, and then they drift back to the churches in which they spent their childhood - or else they give up religion altogether.
Our speakers, since they cannot threaten a Hell or promise a Heaven, cannot continually interest them. And, except in the home circle, mediumship loses its attraction soon after its wonders have ceased to excite.
Spiritualism, whatever the weaknesses of the bodies that proclaim it, is the only religion out of which a new world can be born. The orthodox creeds are dying because of the narrowness of their doctrines and because of the dreary reiteration of texts and hymns which no longer have a meaning.
By Hannen Swaffer 1879 - 1962
I have typed this directly from the newspaper article because I think it is so very well expressed. And I think it demonstrates that it is not just the intellect that needs to be fed....but the soul.....What does the soul feed on? Hope, I suppose. Anything which suggests that there is more to us than flesh and blood, like music, poetry, love, compassion.....feeds the Hope......long may it do so.