< Test Conditions Demanded (continued from page 1-64) >
ness. If the new philosophy is true, its mission to the race is of a beneficent character, and it will not do for us to be indifferent as to results. I mean by this to say, that he is no friend of his fellow-man, who says he don’t care whether the teachings of Spiritualism are believed or not; that he does not desire to convince skeptics, for the mission of truth is, to help on the race to better things. And if Spiritualists allow themselves to be duped by charlatans, — if they encourage spurious mediums, and commend them as genuine, their ultimate exposure very naturally tends to the undoing and nullification of all that has been wrought out by genuine phenomena.
For my own part, I solemnly believe that natural law should be considered inviolable in its mode of operation until the contrary is fully proven. When one says, “I can reverse the order of nature, or cause it to be reversed,” we should give the Law of Nature, or what experience has taught us to be the Law of Nature, the benefit of the doubt. When one assures us that he can suspend the laws of gravity and cause chairs and tables to float in the atmosphere, we are under no obligation to believe him, no matter what his reputation for sound judgment and truth. Therefore I think Mr. Olcott is quite right when he assumes that every medium should be looked upon with suspicion until he proves conclusively his mediumship. The medium, be it understood, is not on trial, but natural law, which we are to believe uniform in its operations until it is proved otherwise. The law we hold to be uniform, that is to say, “innocent,” and the medium “guilty.” If there are invisible intelligences who can control material forces, and reverse the material order of things, the medium must be able to show that the phenomena are not produced by him, that he is simply what he pretends to be, the medium and nothing more.
After having given no inconsiderable amount of time and money to the solving of this great question of the spirit’s return, and being fully convinced that the new philosophy is true, I am fully persuaded that Spiritualism has everything to gain and nothing to lose by demanding that every professed medium shall be thoroughly and repeatedly tested. And I would go further and insist upon it, that where any genuine medium is delected in supplementing his mediumistic powers by a resort to legerdemain, or trickery, he should be at once exposed and all confidence withdrawn from him. If this course is pursued we shall soon have a class of mediums in whom we can place the fullest confidence, and through whom the Invisible powers will manifest themselves to the world at large in a most convincing manner.
Re-incarnation; Occultism
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<Untitled> (“Startling Facts in Modern Spiritualism” is the title)
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Editor's notes