Lectures on Spiritualism

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE II. 72. Previous to entering upon a critical examination of the philosophy of these spiritual manifestations, I deem it advisable to present the subject of the power of spirit over material substances, in such a form as to obviate a class of objections which tend to prejudice the mind, and prevent...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LECTURE II. 72. Previous to entering upon a critical examination of the philosophy of these spiritual manifestations, I deem it advisable to present the subject of the power of spirit over material substances, in such a form as to obviate a class of objections which tend to prejudice the mind, and prevent it from appreciating certain positions, which I deem essential to a proper elucidation of the subject. POWER OF SPIRIT. 73. One of the first great difficulties which seems to beset the public in giving credit to these manifestations, is this: They cannot conceive how spirit can exercise power to produce sounds or make physical manifestations. This difficulty amounts to a great mystery, and even to an absurdity in the minds of the mass, and it appers so absolutely incredible, that it takes a large amount of evidence to induce a belief that these things can be so. 74. This difficulty is owing to our false education respecting the true nature of spirits. From infancy, we have been educated to think it was impossible for us to know anything respecting the mode of existence or action of spirits; our spiritual teachers have instructed us to say that spirit is immaterial: that is, that it is not material, and that is all they have been able to tell us about it. They assume to tell us what it is not, but in their visdom they have never attained to the idea of what it is. In thus giving to ft this negative sort of existence, subject to no law of whichman has or can have any knowledge, they have placed spirit beyond the power of investigation, and have attempted to make up for lack of knowledge, by magnifying the mystery of its existence. 75. They say it is absurd to suppose spirit can exert physical force. But wherein is it absurd ? What do these objectors know about the c...