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... | If the laws of nature be general laws, as held by the materialists and others, then, to prove the identity of but one single spirit returning to us after death, is sufficient to demonstrate to every one of us now living that we also shall live after death. To prove incontrovertibly but one single case, is sufficient to overthrow all the arguments of the materialists against a future life, even by their own hypothesis. Thus, any new effort in this direction can never be a vain one, for they will not believe old stories of the same kind. | ||
It is not, however, only the materialists pure and simple who doubt the identity of spirits who come among us, but there are those nearer ourselves who profess to believe in anything rather than that spirits other than those in the flesh are present at ''seances'' or come to us in private. To borrow the words of a leading member of a particular phase of Theosophism: “Inasmuch,” he says, “as we, as spirits, know that we are present, but have no absolute proof that the spirits of the departed are present, the presumption is that our own spirits, known to be present, are the operators.” This authority adds that, “the medium is the chief operator.” This particular phase of Theosophy, we see, does not even take “elementals” or “elementaries” into account. | |||
Let me draw a comparison. If a person gifted with sight, whom I have formerly known, should meet me in the street while walking with a mutual friend, he would not want our mutual friend to act as medium, to nudge him and say, “This is Mr. So-and-So,” but he would know me by the use of his own eyes. This very obvious common-place remark seems quite as applicable to spirits out of the flesh who have formerly lived in the flesh, which I do not doubt, as to those in the flesh. | |||
Now, it had struck me that I could not get a much better test of the identity of a spirit, than by applying the above same rule to a spirit that I would to a man. Keeping in mind that, inasmuch as a person in the flesh who had never seen me before could not tell who I might be, unless prompted by another, such would be the case with a spirit out of the flesh; but that, on the contrary, if his identity had met me before, he ought no more to require either our mutual friend to hint to him who I was, or any other person, than a man in the flesh would. | |||
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