ADDRESS

BY

MISS EMMA HARDI NGE,

D E LIV ER E D AT T H E

W IN T E R SOIREES, LONDON, F E B R U A R Y 26, 1865.

L o n d o n : P b i n t e d b y T hom as S o o tt, W a r w ic k C o u r t, H o lb o k n .
P r ic e S ix p en ce.

W e propose this night to address you on a subject that you will

ere long be called upon to consider as a portion of the spiritual
philosophy, namely—the M etempsychosis, oe T ransmigration
op S ouls.

The subject may seem to be somewhat unconnected with

object of these meetings. W e stand here prepared to present
you with any other that you may be pleased to select; since,
however, you have left the choice with your speaker, we propose
to address you as Spiritualists, and to call this hour our own.
It is not to sceptics or investigators merely that we shall appeal
to-night. W e would not stand here willingly to repeat, night
after night, the alphabet of the spiritual science whose investi­
gation is open for all, but rather call upon Spiritualists to
remember what they have already learned, to consider the
demands which the attainment of that knowledge imposes upon
them, and that too ere the hour which is to try their faith shall
be upon tbem. The present is the seed time, but the summer of
our spiritual experience approaches, and the tim e is not. far
distant when the world will expect to see what harvest we are
gathering in from the fields of this great spiritual science. Is
is not well for us to pause and contemplate the ground in which
we have laboured, that we may render in full our answer as to
that which we have sowed? Enough of spiritual revelation
concerning the state of the soul in the life hereafter has already
been given to you, at the spirit circle, to enable you to appre­
ciate the nature of one part of the harvest of knowledge which
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we have gathered up, and therefore it is that I propone to speak
on the subject of tne Metempsychosis. This question is one
that has underlain religious systems almost from the beginning
of historic ages to the present hour, and it is still a subject of
speculation to some of the thinkers of the day, and occupies a
place of some prominence even amongst the believers in modern
Spiritualism; and yet, although it has been constantly interwoven
into systems of various theologies, it is one of those human
opinions that stands without the least foundation in the realm of
received phenomenal facts.
The doctrine of the transmigration of souls is one of those
beliefs that have grown out of human speculation only. It is a
metaphysical attempt to solve one of those vexed problems of
the relation between spirit and matter, to which no age but the
present lias ever yet been able to offer a scientific and demon­
strable solution. Still and notwithstanding the tangible facts
of the spiritual science which we possess, as so many Spiritualists
still din g to the vague and shadowy opinions of the doctrine
alluded to, and as those opinions arc casting the shadow of their
own dim unreality over the still questioning minds of unresolved
investigators, we consider a candid discussion of the subject will
be appropriate to the demands of the hour.
Our first inquiiy concerns our 'possession of any data in
history for the origin of this belief, and we find wc have little
«r none, except when we attempt to refer back to the most
ancient form of theological teaching in Ilindostan. From
this wc find the doctrine of the metempsychosis clearly
taught, and that, too, in records written in the language of
the (Sanscrit, whose very origin is lost in the night of antiquity,
but whose existence, even in an early period of the Hindoo
dynasty, gives us the assurance that it must be one of the most
ancient tongues in the world, from the fact that even in ante-
historic periods it was already complete, full, and very rich in
ideality and imagery. The people, therefore, wlio possessed this
“ perfect language’’ bad many ideas to express; and it is in
their tongue that we recognize the first clearly defined teaching
of the belief in the transmigration of souls. The ancient
Hindoo was by nature and habits disposed to metaphysical
speculation. Ilis southern temperament, indolent habits, and
religion of caste, formed a combination of circumstances which
induced in the Brahmin (the only caste who was permitted the
privilege of exercising thought upon religious subjects) a train
of speculations on the unsolved problems of creation which
favoured the strange and peculiar doctrine.
Amongst the most perplexing of the questions which belong
to man’s origin and destiny arose the mystery of evil. Whence
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came it ? I f from the infinitely good, from Brahma the mighty,
the Cause of Causes, the All-wise, All-powerful, Infinite, and
Eternal, for what purpose? Was it a part of Himself? Could
it be a representation of Him— the Supreme Good ? The specu­
lative theorists of Hindostan decided against the affirmation of
this position, and determined that evil grew out of the association
of the perfect and godlike spirit with matter, and they assumed
that from matter sprang all the movements to crime and evil in
the human soul. They taught that inherent virtue, and all
tendencies to good, belonged to the spirit only, while the base
passions and gross appetites, which deform the soul’s nature,
grew out of and belonged only to matter. From this point
Uiey next proceeded to reason upon the various modes in which
spirit was related to matter. They perceived fragments of
spiritual life, of thought and intelligence in the various animals,
and assumed that all the representations of human passions were
to be found in the animal kingdom; the ferocity of the tiger,
the nobility of the lion, the blood-thirstiness of the hyena—in a
word, all the fierce passions which degrade the soul were to bo
found represented in various of those lower creatures that in
some sort they found to typify man, and so they supposed that
they discovered in these representative natures the fact of a
close alliance between man and the brutes, and also that
each of these in their degree represented some of the lowest
conditions of the human soul. But ere they could arrive at the
conclusion of the metempsychosis, or the degradation of the
human soul into the animal form, we must remember that,
though the ancients had mastered some of the many problems
of astronomy, and had eycn made much advance in this science,
'1 had not our present knowledge cither of the movements of
S js in space or of their composition. W e know now some
of the very constituent elements which exist in the mystery of
the mighty sun. By aid of the “ solar spectrum ” wo arc
enabled to determine something o f tho composition of tho
atmosphere issuing from this vast body, and to realize that
minerals of similar character to those on our own earth exist
within i|. W e are enabled, also, by the present status of astro­
nomical science, to decide upon the weight, density, distance,
and motions of the planets, called, by the ancient Hindoos,
“ wandering stars.” The telescope has revealed to us the
immensity of space filled with worlds, and science has disclosed
so much of their characteristics, and even of their composition,
nature, and similarity to onr own earth, that we know that the
entire of what man calls space is but an illimitable realm filled
with life and being analogous to our own.
The ancients knew not this, and but few of their philosophic

r
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minds dared venture on so grand a speculation. Nan-owed,
therefore, in their conception of creation to the existence of this
little world of man’s alone, they deemed that this earth was a l l .
of life and material existence that the Creator had appointed for
man’s probation. On this planet only, they supposed the sub­
lime image of D eity appeared in its full perfection, and that
earth was the scene of all the various grades in which God per­
mitted man to pass through the probationary stages of life
incarnate in matter.
W e have no such excuse to-day for the petty egotism, or cold
Materialism, that would limit the pilgrimage of the soul, to this
little dew-drop in space—the earth. Science reveals to us millions
o f worlds of m atter; Spiritualism reveals its corresponding states
of spiritual probationary spheres. The ancients limiting their
views of material existence of this earth alone, supposed that all
human experiences must be here performed : to them, all the count­
less bodies in space, were either angelic thrones of the subordinate
spirits of the universe, the glittering lamps of the Paradises of their
gods, or the eyes of Brahma shining through the immensity of
space. And so they deemed that earth must be the sole scene
o f the soul’s probation, and that upon this earth were to be per­
formed all those various rudimental conditions by which the
spirit was to be purified for its ascent into the Paradises of
eternity. Upon these foundations they built up the belief in the
transmigration of souls. From the kingdom of Hindostan, we
find the radiating lines of intelligence stretch away to E gypt,
Syria, Assyria, Arabia, and the various dynasties of the East;
though each one modified the doctrine according to the speciali­
ties of the nation by whom it was received, the central idea
remained, and in all the lines of migrating thought that flooded
the nations of the East with tributary streams, whose source
was to be found in Hindoo theology, tno one stationary belief of
the metempsychosis is ever found. Another idea of ancient me­
taphysicians was the demand for universal justice for the soul
of man, and this they thought they perceived in its transmigra­
tion through various material states. They beheld the inequali­
ties of different conditions; above all, the brand of injustice,
which themselves had imprinted by the trick of priestcraft upon
their fellow creatures, in the cruel laws of caste. They realized
as we do, that human life is a harp, upon whose many strings
fashioned of human heart-fibres, and struck by the master hand
of God, every tone, from the lowest bass to the highest treble,
should be sounded. They felt the inevitable fact of inequality
and variety in every member of the human family ; but in
place of aiming to arrange these varieties into order, by in­
stituting high ranks for mind, granting patents of royalty for
 5
intellect and nobility for soul, they determined that the law of
hereditary caste should form the rule of arbitrary distinction on
•earth; and in part as a sterling article of belief amongst them on
the ground of their natural jpliilosophy, and in part by way of
atonement to the victims o f injustice whom they branded with
the law of caste, they interwove into their theology a system
which promised that justice to man hereafter which themselves
denied to him here, and declared that all chances o f progress
and ultimate perfection which the soul had the right to demand
of Creative Justice, was to be found in its transmigratory states.
And it is ever s o ; where man himself is the author o f his
theology, he seems compelled to fashion his system, with a view
of rendering that justice to his fellow-man which his civil laws
deny him else. Human and divine laws are commonly supposed
to correspond; doubtless they do in one respect, at least, for
divine laws are the substance of justice— human, alas 1 but too
generally only the shadow ; and so in this case, the metempsy­
chosis was a shadowy attempt on the part of priests to render
that justice that God has allowed to all in the laws of natural
life. Repeated, as I have said, in the various theologies of most
ancient nations, the metempsychosis struck its deepest roots into
the philosophies of Greece and Rome. W e find, that amongst
the most prominent of its advocates in these countries is the
honoured name of Pythagoras. B y some it has been believed
even that the “ Pythagorean doctrine,” and the transmigration
of souls, were such synonymous terms, that its promulgation has
been ignorantly attributed to the great Samian sa g e ; but
Pythagoras was but the culminating point of his age. All great
men are the torch-bearers of the century, the mirrors in which
are reflected the various intellects of the time. So of Pythagoras ;\^
he the concentration of the grandest thoughts of his period,
taught and realized the doctrine of the transmigration of souls,
not only as the idea of the age, but also because his strict sense
o^justice and his tender humanity demanded compensation for
the suffering and unequal conditions of the degraded classes of
his race— unhappy ones, for whom there seemed in those dark
ages no other compensation in a degraded destiny than the .
chances o f progress hereafter through the soul’s transmigrations.
W e now quit the mythical ages, and arrive at a period when
the transmigration of souls assumes a yet darker and even more
superstitious form ; wo mean, when in the age of Christendom,
it appears in the shape of a physical resurrection of the body,
for this is nothing but a transmigration of the soul, and that
without the beauty and justice which the ancients taught, in the
belief that transmigrations were progressive, and were permitted
for the purpose of reform and improvement. But the resurrcc-
 6
tion of the physical body is merely a degradation o f the soul,
by assuming that after having enjoyed a spiritual freedom from
matter, it is compelled to return to it again, and re-assume all
the inevitable tendencies to crime and material attractions
■which matter, as such, must ever impose upon the spirit associated
with it. So that either we must believe that the Bpirit slumbers
in an unconsciousness, which prolonged through ages becomes
tantamount to annihilation; or else living and acting as con­
sciousness and intelligence must, the spirit which has escaped
from the painful trials and material experiences which life upon
earth necessarily entails upon it, after passing through countless
ages in eternity, and experiencing the inconceivable changes of
those vast periods which, if progressive, must carry the spirit
onward ana upward through spheres of ever-widening and
glorious existence must, after all, return to this dull, cold life of
matter, quit heaven, or migrate from Paradise, and from the
bright and glorious psyche, a purified and spiritual essence,
become once more the dark and mournful grub incarnate in the
prison-house o f matter.
And mark, here is the point that I would have you note*
W hence comes this gloomy and fantastic doctrine ? whence this
opinion so fatal to the truth and justice of that divine teaching
which you call Christianity?— a teaching so frill of spiritual
doctrine and replete with assurances of the soul’s immediate
entrance through the gates of death to a spiritual existence,
where the experiences of life practised in compensative and
retributive states are still continued, that I repeat, amongst the
followers of Him who declared, even on the very threshold of
the land of souls, that spirit should meet with spirit in Paradise!
and hence that spirit slumbered not; nor lost its consciousness in
death. Most strange it is, that this impossible doctrine of the
return of the soul to a physical resurrected body should obtain
amongst those who avow themselves worshippers of Christ and
followers of Paul, who so graphically describes the shedding of
the natural body and the putting on o f the spiritual as the
result of the decay of the natural form of earth.
W hen we reflect upon the full and elaborate descriptions
which the noble Apostle Paul gives of the spiritual body, and its
triumph over the natural, we can only account for the perversity
which would acknowledge his authority and yet deny his teaching,
by remembering the tendency of mankind to worship mere per­
sonalities and forget principles—to be contented with crying the
name, and beneath its sanction inaugurate the vague theories of
long-cherished superstitions and antiquated and therefore sacred
errors. And thus mankind has contented itself with acknow­
ledging the name and worshipping the personality of its masters
 7
and apostles; and whilst battling over mere phrases and dogma­
tizing about words, designed ‘only for the time and enunciated
merely for the age and personages to whom they were spoken,
they have forgotten or neglected the sublime principles taught
in those words, and substituted for them the teachings and
traditions of men. The teachings of Christ as principles were
given for eternity. H is doctrine was the gathering up of the
ood and true of all other ages. “ The Christian religion,” says
f lusebius, “ was nothing new nor strange.” The doctrine o f
love and the belief that the sword of kindness ever conquers evil,
the realization that to do good is to build up the kingdom of
heaven within us,— all this was no new teaching of the age o f
Christendom; it is and ever was the realization of the “ Word
made flesh” which God has incarnated in every age in all that
is good and true, and pure and beautiful.
But we have forgotten all this, and the great query of what
became of the body of Jesus, the desire to determine that o f
which no absolute record exists, has superseded with thousands
the Sermon on the Mount, and for the sake of a mooted point in
history, even with the fact that in the evangelical records o f
the disposal of the body of Jesus there is marked discrepancy,—
even with the fact that traditions existed at the time that “ the
body was stolen,”— age after age we have kept piling up volume
upon volume and filling libraries with disquisitions, in attempts
to settle the question of the physical resurrection of that very
flesh and blood which Christ while inhabiting jt, declared could
not inherit the kingdom of heaven. And so \I repeat, in the
resurrection of the physical body we have reinaugurated the old
material doctrine of thetransmigration of souls and their degra­
dation from a spiritual to an animal life ; but I say that the
teaching of the possible return o f the risen, ascended, purified
and progressed spirit to the dust which it has spurned, is even
a worse version of the transmigration of souls than was ever
rendered by Buddha or Pythagoras. •
And now arises another point. This material myth is again
cropping out to overshadow our spiritual atmosphere to-aay.
W e have a revelation given to us of the great and glorious truth
— in a word, Spiritualism is a combination of all the truths for
which religion in every age has been searching; it is the promise
of the Master that the day would come when the Comforter
should reveal to us all of truth that we are able to bear. The
teachings of all systems of religion ever include the belief that
the soul shall maintain a continued existence after death which
we call immortality.
But independent of all systems of religion, the soul itself is
its own witness of immortality in the realization of its own
 8
consciousness. I believe, if we could disintegrate that mysterious
function of mind which we call consciousness from the rest of the
intellect we should find that immortality is there concentrated as
the one sole fact of consciousness. Annihilate that, and we
annihilate our b ein g ; change it even in the least respect, let it
be so tampered with as to make the recognition of self, imperfect,
and we have found that which all nature denies, the fact of
annihilation. W e know not the falsity or truth of pre-existence.
There are many spirits who teach it, many who believe it, some
say they know it. B e that as it may, we know the fact of our
own existence here. W e may attempt by sophistry and hair­
splitting of words to question the fact of self-consciousness, but
so long as man can say I am, he is self-conscious. Change the
characteristics of that consciousness and let the question be
doubtful of the soul’s identity to itself, and, I repeat, you have
found annihilation. You cannot put out of existence one grain
o f d u st; you cannot destroy from the realm of being the largest
or the smallest atom. A ll which you may call in its infinite
littleness even an indivisible atom lives for ever. Can you
destroy, therefore, one function that makes up the integrity of
the soul ? You may not touch it, we may not tamper with it,
and Spiritualism proves that which nature and science teaches.
W e hope for, trust in, and even intuitively feel, the truth of
a spiritual existence. The poor savage knows it. H e buries
bow and arrows by the side of the dead, and supplies, in his
trusting faith of continued existence, the mouldering form of
death with provisions for the inevitable future to which he believes
the risen spirit has passed. Save the traditions of his fathers, no
priest or gospel instructs him of immortality, and yet he questions
it not, for he feels it in his own soul. From the time when man
first cat of the fruit o f the knowledge of good and evil, from the
tiino when he learned to think, and looking, in the face of his
fellow-man, loved, and Bccing him fall like the last year’s snow,
and decay in dust and ashes, while love and life and conscious­
ness stiffened into the rigid monumental form of death, the soul
has followed the departed spirit into the land of spirits, and
believed in its unquenched and unquenchable existence. But
the age of reason and analysis has come, in addition to the ago
o f intuition. W e know that there are men who have stood m
our midst— men of mind, and power, and station— who have
written volumes to prove that we have no existence at a ll; that
life is atshadow, and the substance of life a myth. Philosophers
there have been who not only question the existence o f spirit,
but chop logic on the query of—whether there is even matter.
And who can answer them ? W e feel we know ; but this is no
admitted argument. Destitute of the angelic phenomena which
 I
9
in a Spiritual existenco prove all tilings, infidelity, in the unre-
peatea past, has swept the earth, and those who have thought
the most, speculated the deepest, and analyzed in the most
profound realms of being, have come out of the investigation
shorn of the glorious belief in immortality. They have looked
upon this sorrowful life, and so many a pilgrimage of pain and
w o e ; they have beheld the beggar, the outcast, tne cripple, and
the blind, and have thought that life and death was all of them.
— life a failure and death a terror, and yet this was all 1 They
have seen young children die— sweet buds of promise blighted !
— and thought there was nothing more of them but their
blighted life and death. B ut this dark philosophy eflcls not h ere:
it bears its fruits in action ;— mark them. Bring to the tribunal
of human practice the influence of such a belief as this, and let
it become disseminated as a fact among all people. W e know
that the psychology which we call public opinion originates first
from the leadings of one or two master minds, and then spreads
among the masses Ontil it becomes public opinion. It is the
“ little bird ” that whispers first in the ear of one and then
another, and' carries the tidings far and wide, until it masses
itself into public opinion. And what did infidelity do in the
shape of influence upon public opinion, when the psychology of
Danton, Marat, and .Robespierre, had banished the belief in God
and immortality from the land of France, in .the.days of the
lie d Revolution of 1793? W e know that sp- long as the re­
straints of law anTabout us, wc act as if thorcstraint proceeded
from within. W e do not know ourselves or realize what we
would be in the large liberty that is void of all restraint; but
we know what we have been when such restraints are rem oved;
and woe to a nation of infidels ! woe to a nation that has no hope
beyond the grave 1 and woe to the ihdividuals who govern it,
the people who riot in it, the souls that arc wrecked by it. It
may begin in “ reason,” but the reason that narrows down life.
— cause and effect,'responsibility and being— to this dark and
finite section of existence bounded by earth, is madness, not
reason; blindness, not lig h t; slavery to animal passions, no^
liberty in spiritual good. Hence, its rule is vice, passion, sensu­
ality j— it begins in licence and ends in blood— dethrones a king
and sets up the rule of an executioner— upsets a thrpne to
elevate a guillotine 1 -
To the. people, such a condition is but the government of
tigers and panthers thirsting for blood; to the-rulers, it is the
war in heaven, where the fabled Lucifer—incarnate in the
demonaical form of the human mind, that rejects in its blind
and miserable pride the rule of God and the responsibility of a
hereafter— calls itself a monarch in its supposed' freedom from
 10
the light of religion. A la s! such minds only wake up at last,
like the rulers of the Red Revolution of France, to find that they
are but monarchs in Pandemonium, and that the laws of God,
whom they have Bpumed, find them out even in the hell they
have vainly thought would hide them from His presence. T o
the Spiritualist assured of the inevitable fact of a hereafter,
conscious that man’s vain boast of annihilation cannot avail to
quench the life he is not master of—to those who smile at the
baseless conceit of theoretical philosophers, that life’s mistakes
may be atoned for by the myth of re-incamation—to those who
feel as we do, that our deeds must follow us and that every
wasted drop of blood man sheds, and all the throngs of victims
he sends out, in the power of a wild and lawless rule, to death,
array themselves in a ghastly tribunal, before whose awful judg­
ment seat his ever-living spirit must appeal— to those who feci
that such a doom awaited the men who proclaimed in fated
France, “ there is no God,” “ there is no immortality”— think,
think of the doom of him who stood in the dying hour of his
blood-stained, shipwrecked life, but still in the insane triumph of
Iits age and time, went forth from the day of reddest crime to
the day of inevitable retribution, crying, “ I am Danton. My
age is thirty-five, my abode will soon be in nonentity 5 but my
name will live in the pantheon of history.”
Friends, it is for us to answer the question whether that
name of terror has outlived that soul o f crime. W e k n o w that
Danton still liv e s ; but how, and for what, is with him, not us,
the question, except for a sign and waymark to the insane
Materialist who would follow in his darkened footsteps. Danton
may yet he within this very chamber, and still cry, “ I am
Danton! my name will soon be nonentity, but I SHALL l i v e FOR
EVER 1”
Like the Jews of old, when wo would offer man the glorious
light of Spiritualism, he cries, “ W e have our Moses and the
Prophets; what need have we of strange new revelation ? ” II ad
not Danton, Marat, Robespierre, witli all their destroying
myrmidons, this faith in heroes and the Prophets to rely on ?
H ave not the blind eyes of Materialism, which throughout the
length and breadth of Europe is even now spreading its pall of
darkness over religious faith, their heroes and the Prophets?
H ave not the solemn utterances of Christianity been reverberating
for eighteen centuries through the corridors of timo? and been
chanted forth by the lips of highest civilization, but m the cars
of thousands of earth’s greatest thinkers with such little meaning
that thousands would say to-day with Danton, “ My name will
live, while my soul will be nonentity.” If, then, a true spiritual
faith is the mightiest law of life that can bind the soul of man
 11
and compel him, in the fetters of eternal responsibility, to livo,
not only for time but for eternity, may we not say, “ Thank
God for modem Spiritualism! Bless H im that we have now
the assured knowledge of immortality!” And were there no
other results outworking from this knowledge, at least we may
fairly calculate that every rap that proves the continued existence
of a human soul will make its impress of conviction in the
salvation of a human soul from the blindness of infidelity. But
this is not all that Spiritualism has done, or will accomplish
for mankind. One of its basic revelations is the fact of a law of
mind, and the clue to the discovery of a science of mind. Other
ages have reg a led to us the fact that all things in nature (mind
excepted) are governed by laws immutable. Science has taught
man to discover law in everything—law in the tossing wave, the
falling leaf, the blossoming flower, the pattering rain. A ll
nature moves within the circle of eternal law, save mind alone;
and for lack of a science and law of mind, we have not known
the causes of crime. W e have visited upon our criminals
punishmejil, instead of reform. have taken vengeance
for the errors of society, which itself has created criminals,
because we have not comprehended the links of causation, nor
understood why the solemn edict of Moses that “ the sins of
the fathers should be visited upon the children,” was not the
vengeance of God, but the writing o f an eternal law in mind
as well as matter. But with the comprehension -,that mind
was shaped by the human organism, that matter helps to stamp
the character of mind with the Revelation of phrenology; with
the fact of clairvoyance piercing thro'ugh the outward form, and
beholding there the secret of disease, and diagnosing character
through disease; with the fact that an electrical magnetic
battery is a revelation of character through a diagnosis of the
cranium, determining by its susceptibility not only the diseased
form but the poisoned mind as w ell; with all these revelations
brought to light by even our imperfect investigations of tho
spirit-circle, 1 say that wc have this day the dawning of a
science of mind, and are beginning to discover that mind,
character, intellect, and all the faculties, moral and intellectual, of
the soul are under the dominion of law, and that there is a cause
for them all, as there is an effect for them all ip the hereafter.
W ith all these revelations wo are at last commencing to obey
tho charge. “ Know thyself;”— wc arc at last beginning to
reduce our Knowledge to a practice here, and air Influence upon
our destiny hereafter. W e know now that there are differences
of spheres and progressive states for the soul; we may look
over the mass of mankind, and almost begin to determine what
will be the condition of cvciy soul wc behold in the spheres
 12
hereafter by what they are to-day. The mystery of evil, too
is solved by the dawning of this science of mind. The justice
of God is vindicated by it; for when we go down to the dens of
crime and contemplate the underground stratas of life, beholding
the poor deformed and degraded objects in whom the spark of
Divinity is scarcely visible, but still realize that there is a life as
glorious for them as the highest and the noblest amongst our­
selves— that there is not hope, but assurance, certainty, and con­
fidence of world upon world, and sphere after sphere of progress
for them as for us— when we see the- angel’s hand stretched out
above them, and realize that for them as for all, are the grand
developments and noble unfoldings of mind that ourselves have
profited by— comprehending as we do all this, in the midst of
sorrow, and trespass, and disgrace, we may truly say, “ H e
doeth all things w ell.”
And shall they come to us now, and tell us, that perchance,
instead of progress in the spheres of the hereafter, we must
retrograde, to be bom in this weary earth again ? that the souls
we fondly hoped were speeding up the steps of time in eternal
progress, are lost to us, and returned to do penance in some
mortal form again, while the precious tics of family and kindred
all arc lost and broken? Shall they tell us, that after leaving
this sphere of sorrow and tribulation, and groping our way in
blindness, suffering, and sorrow, through earth’s bitter pilgrimage,
we may not rest nor labour on in hope, in a better and a brighter
land, but must come back here to a cold and sinful material form
again—the precious tics of kindred all unheeded or rent, and
torn asunder, and all because God’s providence is not enough for
them beyond the grave ? There is no room in space for them to
progress, no angelic ladder with another round for them to step
upon, except in return to earth. In all the vast rolling worlds,
suns, satellites, and glittering systems— in the shining roads,
full of bright star-dust, vast walls, piled up with worlds reaching
to the throne of God Ilim scif—shall they tell us that there is not
room enough in all of these, for our souls to progress, and grow
pure, and good, and great through, without returning to this
little dew-drop earth, and groping once more in blindness through
the veil of matter which spirit has rent in twain ?
Away, away with such wild fantasies! T hey are the destruc­
tion of hope, the blight of the soul, and a pernicious poison, that
is being poured over our bright and beautiful revelation. I call
upon you, Spiritualists, though yourselves may not have drunk
of this poisoned cup, to note that it is now being presented to
human lips. And yet you thinkers, who have realized the fact
of eternal law throughout the realm of nature, and now perceive
it in the realm of mind, must know there is a standard of truth
 13
for the soul as well as for the testing of atoms, must know there
is a standard of true knowledge for the mind, and eternal laws
for the soul and its testing, which cannot change with merely
theoretical opinions.
T o save yourselves from these, accept of no authority then,
hut that of principles. Accept of no standard of belief, no doctrine
or teaching that is not in harmony with the divine truths of law
and principles. -You will find this authority of truth as manifest
in mmd as in matter. You will find these principles as plainly
proven for the soul as for the body. I have already pointed to
the fact that we are at the dawn of the science of mmd. I do
not propose to lay down for you what that science is, but in the
conduct of your spirit-circles, in the phenomena of life and
magnetism which they reveal to you, you cannot fail to find the
laws which regulate the changing spheres and eternal progress
ofth o spirit as clearly marked as chemistry and science teach the
history of atoms. The time is now at hand when you Spiritualists
will be questioned of your doctrine, you will be asked u W hat
is your faith? W hat do you teach, and wherefore have the
spirits com e?” And if dancing-tables and vibrating floors are
all the results of the great outpouring of the spirit you may well
bo asked what then is the use ot 'Spiritualism? You must
answer to the world what you have learned of spiritual truth
beyond the mere belief in the phenomenal exhibition of the
power of spirit to act on matter. What answer will you render ?
W hen you reflect upon what that outpouring has been on some
amongst you, when ytm remember how the scales have fallen
from your eyds, how your house of motfrning and bereavement
has been filled by the presence of returning spirits purified and
holy, how the lonely heart has been cheered by love’s precious
message, when you remember what a glorious unfolding of life
beyond the grave Spiritualism has been to you who have truly
realized it, how much are you bound to give that light to others
which yourselves have received so fully. Oh, widow I when you
walk the streets once so desolate and lonely, and remember that
again your loved companion is*byyour side, no more a suffering
sinful mortal but an angel n ow ;— Oh, mother 1 when you realize
that ever by your side is th^' precious child you mourned as
lost, lost to you for ever;—you may be old, and poor, and
comfortless, but though all human kind forsake you, angels are
about your footsteps— angels bright and holy.
W ith such a view of a bright and angelic world guarding
and permeating earth— with such a realization of spiritual sur­
roundings, hovering around our faltering way, and guiding our
failing footsteps, what matters all that man can do against us?
W hy friends, we arc standing with the Jewish boy of old, before
I
I
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the mountain, blazing 'frith the horsemen, and the chariots of
God’s guardian hosts of spirits! I f this knowledge is comfort,
strength, and consolation to yourselves, then it belongs to you
to give again to all who need that strength;— to keep it pure
from vain and idle theories, to base it on the corner-stone of truth,
revealed to us in law, and facts, and science, and to proclaim it
through the land without fear or favour. Proclaim it with the
clarion voice of truth in your halls of legislature, and make it a
living fact for those who rule the people, for those who hold the
lives and liberties of thousands in their grasp, who legislate for
the poor, the ignorant, and darkened; and either by neglect or
false legislation keep them in darkness and crowd them into sin.
There are thousands and thousands of victims disappearing from
out of this city, driven into untimely judgment by the wrongs of
bad legislation; tell their rulers that they wait for them in the land
where right, not law, or power must rule. Tell them this, nor
let them think to escape the deeds that follow them through
priestly mediation, or ceremonial rites. Tell them this, nor let
them hope to put off the day of just and inevitable retribution,
by coming back again to earth to undo its mistakes, and repair
its past short-comings, through incarnations, doubtful chances of
living better lives, or perhaps, beneath the ever-present attrac­
tions of matter, sinking yet still lower.
Heed the poet’s warning, and 11lay not such flattering unction
to your souls. God returns not ever on His footsteps,— nature
never repeats herself; but God and nature, law and life, and all
things thereto belonging, move to the eternal burden of crea­
tion’s day— ,l Onward, for ever onward!”
Glorious as is the light which Spiritualism brings to the
mourner, fearful as is the voice of warning with which it awakes
the evil-doer from his slumber of irresponsible annihilation;
better it had never come at all, to give men our human faith in
immortality, if it is to be masked by the hideous pall ofj that
doctrine which admits of a sinful life, not only scattering its
poison through one baneful career of mortal sin, but permits
the rc-incarnation of earth’s monsters, until long ages may be
too short for the burdened earth to endure the horror of the ever-
returning load of guilt, until it consumes itself, and purifies
itself at earth’s expense, in successive re-incarnations.
Better that Spiritualism had not assured mankind of immor­
tality on the faith of undoubted science than that the holy, just,
and pure who have borne the bitter drops o f mortal suffering
should go hence, assume their crown of glorious immortality to find
it tom from martyred brows, and themselves thrust back to rc-act
their goodness on the insatiate earth that craves for them back
again. Arc there not demons enough in one generation, but we
 I
15
must keep on sending them back through succeeding ones?
Can we not manufacture crime enough in one life, but we must
spin it out to the length of many ? Or is there no other place in
illimitable space for the soul to progress in but this little floating
dew-drop in immensity— this one poor burdened earth of ours ? -
Is goodness so scarce in God’s angelic hierarchies of worlds, and
suns, and systems, that one bright soul must endure its dismal
round of re-incarnated pilgrimages, and stretch out its solitary
excellencies through successive ages? Or are GSd’s ways so
narrow that He can find no other means to instruct H is creatures
than by returning age on age the self-same soul to be bom
again in matter? Is the hope o f the mother instructed by
blessed Spiritualism that she shall meet her loved and lost one
i@ Paradise a myth, and when she would clasp her precious child
to her maternal heart in spirit-land, must she be told her dearer
one than self has gone back to earth— the earth that she left
with anguish— to be some other mother’s child in a dismal
re-incarnation ? Oh, foul and baseless doctrine ! unsustained by
facts, or love, or reason, nature’s harmonious law of progress,
sense, fack or justice I
Believing that Spiritualism is a science, that as a science it
will grow, and demonstrate all truth to man, as man is fitted to
receive it, I have no fear that this pernicious theory will long
survive our facts— iii a word, I hope everything from Spiritual­
ism ; I expect everything for the race from Spiritualism; I only
put home to'yourselves, Spiritualists, the earnest charge that
you shall think out this subject deeply for yourselves, and analyze
it to its very foundation. In doing so start with the proposition,
“ W hat is Truth?” Resolve that Truthris, “ that which is.”.
Determine that all things shall be tried by that standard—
Truth— that in right and wrong you will abide by it, and it
alone; that by its standard all things shall be tried, and you
will accept of no oth of Authority than that of Truth. I sec a
Coining Alan whose prcscnco is foreshadowing amongst you.
You may call him by the name of the righteous Nazareno if
you w ill; and so long as that name can realize to your mind
the truths He ta u g h tso long as it presents the gracious figure of
Him who, in H is-dying moments, pleaded for H is very mur­
derers, so long as 1^ gives to your viow the perception of all tho
holy all-conquering truths that arc knit up in the glorious sole
commandment, “ Love,” why, worship Him, if ye needs must
worship any but your God? Worship Him, not for H is name,
or the book wherein it is written, but worship Him for the very
truth’s sak e; because H e spoke and lived and taught the self­
same truths which God in nature teaches, and immortality and
heaven demands, and nature sanctions. And let all nations
 1G
bend before your Teacher; for teaches H e not hr the authority
of truth? *
Meantime, remember that it is not in the name that your faith
can save y o u ; it is not in the fabled evil serpent that your sins
can find excuse, nor in the name alone of Christ that they can find
atonement. Your spirit friends are already in the judgment of
their earthly lives. A s they are, so will you be— can you doubt
them? You have trusted and known them in life: trust and
know them still; but if they do no more for you than enable you
to realize the consciousness of their presence—if they do no more
for you than reform your opinions concerning the mere pheno­
mena of spirit action upon matter, you are no true Spiritualist;
you are no power to the world; you will be no benefit to it; you
are not the torch-bearers of Him who sent the spirits. W hen
they questioned Jesus of the destiny of others, H e answered them
saying, u W hat is that to thee ? Follow thou me.” It was not
the following of the man, nor of the risen spirit, nor of the Master
that H e demanded th en ; it was the, following o f H is teachings, the
following of His principles. Have men followed these ? I f not,
does not Spiritualism come, in its purity, its warning tone ana
voice of sweet encouragement, to lead us back to those principles,
too often sacrificed in idle worship of the name of Him who
taught them? Let no idle promises of extenuation for the value
o f a name tempt you to close your ears against this solemn charge.
L et no fantastic hope of atoning for a misspent life by a farther
re-incarnation induce you to evade the stem command to let all
else be naught to you, but follow the spirit of the highest truth
you know, whether this be incarnate in the form of Vishnu,
Christ, or Buddha; or be the voice of God in all and each that
speaks of love and purity and truth and beauty.
A s for this vague and baseless theory of man’s re-incarnation,
I conclude as I commenced, by warning you, that of all the'
eccentric forms in which the human spirit has sought to approach
its God and solve its destiny in systems of religion, this is at
once the most wild, unfounded ana untrue to reason, sense, and
justice. It has arisen, too, in human fantasy, and is a mere side
issue, arising only when men step aside from the authority of
truth, and rush off into the theories and vagaries of strange and
fantastic doctrines.
W e search through the realm of nature in vain to find
evidence of retrogression; we search in the realm of chemistry,
and it will assure you that even the insensate atoms progress.
There is a spirit of progress in every drop of w ater: leave it in
its mobile state, it is nothing but a drop of water; vaporize it
into steam, and in its progress it becomes a mighty force ; and
the lightnings that flash destruction before our cyc3, that rend
 17 •
the-rocks, and destroy the noble works of art, in their progress
through mechanical laws become one of the greatest and most
useful elements of science. And so o f every single atom in
creation. Progress is the genius of being. W here do these
Ee-incarnatiomsta find their doctrine ? Where in the whole realm
of nature do those who plead for the return of the risen spirit to
the atoms o f dust which it has left, find their evidence ? N ot in
science, not in God’s laws, not in God’s realm of nature, not in
God’s law of love, not in God’s own witness of the soul’s immor­
tality, which is for ever and for ever self-conscious, and whose
identity you cannot touch. This doctrine that is now becoming
patent amongst mere Spiritists (in the attempt to explain some
problem yet unsolved), is put forth in the mere desire to enunciate
Theories and set up human authorities; but Spiritualists acceptdt
only as a stimulus to enquire for the authority of truth, and bend
before that shrine, ignoring all doctrines else.
I have taxed you overlong, and I conclude with once more
urging upon each a yet deeper search for trutl). In this age,
above all others, the restless inquisition is going on into the realm
o f truth in morals, science, religion, politics, and governments.
A il things are being broughtto judgment. You, Spiritualists, who
are entrusted with the noblest and grandest truth of the age— you
who have been favoured with the brightest aud noblest revelation
of comfort, hope, and certainty that ever was granted to man—•
who are permitted to be pioneers of the grand science of mind—
I would pjk each one of you to go hence from this place and,
whether y e be accepters or rejecters of the name of Christ as
God H im self incarnate in the form of flesh—none can be here
with reason, sense, and goodness, who honour not that name as
the highest mark of pure and true example at which humanity
can aim,— in the name, then, of that teaching, in the name of that
Divine instruction, whoso duty both to God and man was con­
densed in the one word, Xl Love,” heed naught o f human teaching
or.human revelation that silences the voice of that spirit of truth
that in the midst of.theory, diverse opinions, and fantastic doctrines,
ever cries, “ W hat is that to thee? Follow thou Me I”

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