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HPB-SB-8-307: Difference between revisions
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{{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |The Religion of Spiritualism|8-307.1}} | {{Style P-HPB SB. Title continued |The Religion of Spiritualism|8-307.1}} | ||
... | {{Style P-No indent|begotten Son,” although such Hebrew and Greek records are authorised to be read in Latin and English by the representatives of kingcraft and pricstaraft as the “''only''”'' ''correct requirements of Divine Law, belief or disbelief in which ensures deathless reward or punishment. Besides, are we to be told by so excellent a brother as Dr. George Wyld that St. Erancis, Pascal, Fenelon, Maurice, Tennyson, Martineau, Robertson, Swedenborg, Savonarola, St. Teresa, and “hundreds of others” are all equally, or “truly and profoundly Christian?”'' If ''so, then I affirm that Christianity may signify anything or nothing, in orthodoxy and heterodoxy; in short, everything! Yes; as the learned and worthy (“that once familiar name”) Dr. Carter Blake dearly loves definitions, I assert, with sincere respect for himself personally, that his “eight words and phrases” may all and singular be accurately defined as pertaining to a Protean Christian, who is earnestly, but not without prejudice of bigotry, devoted to his special form of versatile Christianity, albeit readily changing its different shapes from generation to generation, as well as its utilitarian influence on politics, theology, and morals. Surely, sir, your valuable journal has done some-what better for us, its readers and subscribers, than merely giving one a weekly supply of “doctrines of abomination,” “John King chaff,” “imbecile namby-pamby verbiage,” together with a full and correct account of “angels from the seventh heavens thrust out of dark cabinets in bundles of muslin, amid the sobs of weeping women.” In the names of all the gods and goddesses at once, “for shame!” Is there any distinction in logic and metaphysics, between analogy and induction? Supposing the highest principles of human knowledge to be the result of the older light of ancient Spiritualism, would this in any way affect the validity or limit the application of those principles when seen in the newer and brighter light of modern Spiritualism? Can we alter the natural agency or principles of causality, and the very meaning of experience according to Pagan and Jewish or Christian names? What of Goethe, Humboldt, Voltaire, Laplace, and the rest? “Public Spiritualism is chiefly darkness,” we are assured by Dr. Wyld this day. Nevertheless, I protest that having been chairman again and again for some of the best mediums in Europe and America, of either sex, whose prose and verse have been applauded to the echo by thousands of intelligent, well-educated persons in each assembly, I have never heard a single utterance, sentence, or theological opinion that was not strictly in harmony with the teaching attributed to Peter in a trance or out of it. “He that worketh righteousness is accepted by God in every nation under heaven” (Griesbach). Spiritualism, therefore, in the sense of observed natural truth, is its ''own ''scientific and philosophical justification, even whether man’s conception of Deity be true or false; and in despite of religious mythology, or the dreams, the reveries, the illusions of dogmatic Christians, and all the diverse ''niceteria ''of emotional, inharmonious, yet ceromatic religionists, it is the highest achievement of modern progress throughout the world, the most splendid triumph in the history of moral and mental sciences, the only soul-satisfying and sweetly harmonious of all the many systems of nature, or plans of Divine government hitherto evolved in the religion of being good or doing good now and for ever.}} | ||
{{Style P-Signature in capitals|William Hitchman, M.D.}} | |||
Liverpool, July 18th, 1879. | |||
{{HPB-SB-item | {{HPB-SB-item | ||
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| item = 2 | | item = 2 | ||
| type = correspondence | | type = correspondence | ||
| status = | | status = proofread | ||
| continues = 307 | | continues = 307 | ||
| author = William Hitchman, M.D. | | author = William Hitchman, M.D. | ||
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| subtitle = | | subtitle = | ||
| untitled = | | untitled = | ||
| source title = Spiritualist | | source title = London Spiritualist | ||
| source details = 1 | | source details = No. 362, August 1, 1879, pp. 57-8 | ||
| publication date = 1879-08-01 | | publication date = 1879-08-01 | ||
| original date = | | original date = 1879-07-18 | ||
| notes = | | notes = | ||
| categories = | | categories = | ||
}} | }} | ||
... | {{Style S-Small capitals|Sir}},—Having lectured on the above subject at home or abroad for many years, I am not unnaturally interested in the discussion now proceeding with reference to the able papers of your talented contributor, Madame de Steiger, with whose views from ''Our House Built on the Rock, ''p. 28, I have much sympathy of heart, and true communism of soul. If religion be understood as embracing ''any ''system or mode of faith and worship-involving spirituality of fife and purity of character, then I submit that, as a matter of fact, “the purposes of Christianity,” as a form of religious mythology, have failed (Matt. xix. 12, 21), ending in self-aggrandizement rather than self-sacrifice; whereas practical piety, the recognition of love, duty, obedience to order, the whole relation of man toward man, truth, justice, temperance, benevolence, friendship, humility, spiritual and bodily chastity, angelic communion, in a word godliness, are being devoutly illustrated in England and Germany by men and women of genius and culture who have ceased to accept a body of truths and falsehoods as the infallible revelations of a Supreme Being, or “His only {{Style S-HPB SB. Continues on|8-307}} | ||
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<gallery widths=300px heights=300px> | |||
london_spiritualist_n.362_1879-08-01.pdf|page=11|London Spiritualist, No. 362, August 1, 1879, pp. 57-8 | |||
</gallery> | |||