Legend
< Address by Mr. W.Y. Colville (continued from page 7-297) >
never really absent from it. The body is frequently unconscious, the soul never.
Q. 4.—Can any of the most expert mediums explain by the help of some exalted spirit why, in this world, one is born with a silver spoon in his mouth, while the other cannot get even the milk at the breast of his mother, exhausted and dying of starvation? Why one is happy all his life, while the other is most miserable, labouring under some loathsome and incurable disease from his childhood? Why one is in the enjoyment of bright intellect and keen moral perceptions, while the other is a blockhead and incorrigibly wicked and immoral? A difference calculated to facilitate the future progress and happiness of the one, whilst in the case of the other to retard it through suffering and misery?
A,—All souls born into the world are the offspring of angels, but not all in the same degree. One soul may require one sort of discipline, undone another, according to its capabilities and the purpose for which Providence has designed it. There is often more compensation in this life than appears at first sight. Outwardly, there may be great inequality of circumstances; but these often become adjusted to the inner requirements, and a certain harmony is established between them. By this means the distribution of happiness becomes equalised; that which is a pleasure at one period of a man’s development may be pain at another; and that which is necessary to the nature of one is a superfluity to another.
Q. 5.—Why do the wicked, the vile, the merciless, and the selfish flourish in this world; that is, they are blessed with all the happiness that this world can possibly afford to them in their respective spheres of life, such as health, riches, honour, &c., while the meek, the honest, the virtuous, and the kind-hearted suffer from ill-health, pinching poverty, and contempt from the men around them? Even the most piously disposed persons can hardly discern the justice of God in such an anomalous dispensation.
A.—If it were not for the reality of the spirit-world all this would appear very hard. In that world every trouble suffered here will receive its recompense. Compensation is one of the great truths taught us in conjunction with the doctrine of an after-life. If here you have sorrow and tribulation, there you will have “the fullness of joy;” and, in the same way, if here you are rich and happy in the midst of sin, there you will be poor and desolate.
Q. 6.—Progression is said to be the great law of the universe. This I fully admit. But retrogression is as much a law discernible in the universe as progression. Minerals rise into vegetables, vegetables into animals, and animals at last rise into human organisations. But the bodies thus progressed and developed sink down again into the earthly, and last into elementary matter. Why should not developed spirits in like manner retrograde and sink down to the lowest types of existence in proportion to their lowness and depravity?
A.—We should say that there is no such thing as positive retrogression. Man is immortal by reason of his individuality. He cannot die. Animals, because they have no conscious j individual life, are not immortal. By degrees the bad elements will be refined away, the coarser forms will pass from the earth as the first types of every form of life have done, and will always continue to do. But man will progress infinitely, here and hereafter. Among a race of men yet to be born on earth there will be no death. The physical body will gradually become more and more spiritualised, until men’s ears will be able at all times to hear the Lord “walking in his garden,” the world, “in the cool of the day.” Death, as we understand the word, will be no more, for it will only be the painless passing from one world or state into another, as from this room to the next.
Q. 7.—In the many and various communications said to have come forth from the spirit worlds or spheres, how is it that the communicators are invariably found to be the inhabitants of Europe or America, or the celebrated writers and philosophers of those countries exclusively, who once flourished in the communities to which those communications are especially addressed, and not persons of equal mental capacity and of equally pure morals and piety, but belonging to other nations? Nay, there does not appear a single allusion made in all those communications to any such personages of other nationalities except, perhaps, to Mohammed, who is so well known to the Christians, and that very cursorily. It is alleged that in the spiritual communities beings of equal morals, whether high or low, and equal mental capacity, are all found congregated together (which exists even on earth), and, therefore, it is a great mystery to me that there should be no such congregations or communities of various other nationalities in the spiritual worlds and in heaven. How can this be explained?
A.—A medium will usually attract around him spirits of the same nationality as his own, because there is a bond of sympathy between them, and because they find in his brain the words and forms of speech they were themselves conversant with on earth. The generality of your mediums are English or American; therefore, the spirits speaking through them are English or Americans. If you had a French medium you would get French spirits; in Italy, with Italian mediums, Italian would be spoken. For re- member that the highest and most learned spirits rarely take direct control of a medium; and a spirit is naturally attracted to one possessing the same characteristics as himself, and speaking the same language.
Q. 8.—How is it that while the modern spirit manifestations so clearly establish and unfold to our view and reflection the future destiny and progress of man, and somewhat too particularly the fact that the departed and the departing human beings from this little globe of ours actually supply the existence in the spirit world, they, the. spirits, who make such communications, seem to be studiously silent concerning a fact still more important and full of interest for us to know, viz., the nature, forms, and future destiny of the beings who people the innumerable other globes and worlds which we see shining around us all the night long? If there be some clear and full Spiritualistic communications made in respect to those beings, I shall be happy to know in what books they are to be found?
A.—(Change of gesture and manner of articulation were here distinctly observed in the medium.) Undoubtedly; although the spirits that manifest at your circles are those who have once inhabited your planet, attracted hither by a link of sympathy, there are spirits who could tell you of other forms of life existing in various other planets; but you must wait until you have met with some of these spirits to obtain full particulars of life in the interstellar spheres. We may, however, tell you, in a few words, the present intellectual state of one or two of the principal planets. In Mercury, for instance, we find a much lower order of development than that which now exists on your earth. The inhabitants of Venus excel in poetry and art, and all that appeals to the sentimental part of man’s nature. The sons of Mars, on the contrary, are celebrated for their physical strength and prowess rather than for their brain-power; the inhabitants of Jupiter are the most advanced, mentally and morally, of any of the planets. I know of no books inspired by spirits on this subject to refer you to; but if you will form circles for the express purpose of entering into communication with the denizens of other worlds, you will soon have no cause to complain of lack of information.
Q. 9.—It is an inexplicable mystery to me, as appears from the works of Judge Edmonds, that while the spirits from the higher spheres could convey the spirit of a person, in his or her vision, to some millions and millions of miles distance to show it the cosmogonic process of the creation and formation of a planet or star, they could not take the same to see what the Emperor of China was doing in his palace at Pekin, or the Viceroy of India in Calcutta. This and similar other exploits they could perform with infinitely more ease than the other, and yet there is not a single instance I recollect of any of the higher spirits having done so. How is this inconsistency to be accounted for?
A.—It is entirely a question of conditions, and perhaps those requisite were not afforded by the Emperor of China or the Viceroy of India. The spirit of the medium travels under guidance, and distance becomes as nothing. Spiritual distance is measured by sympathy not by miles. Two men in the same room may be immeasurably further apart than two others situated at opposite ends of the universe; and this is true of spirits as of men.
Q. 10.—I cannot yet understand that amongst a host of <... continues on page 7-299 >