accordant, because the very pretension of revelation is that it's a
descent, an absolute coming down, of truth, a humiliation of it
from its own elevated and habitual plane to a lower one.
Admit therefore that the facts of "spiritualism" are all true;
admit that persons really deceased have been communicating with you
about the state of Europe, the approaching crisis and the persons
known to us whom you name; in that case I should insist that, to
possess the slightest spiritual interest, their revelation should
be re-translated into the spiritual tongue by correspondences;
because as to any spirit knowing or caring to know those persons,
or being bothered about any crisis of ours, that is to me simply
incredible. Such matters have in each case doubtless some spiritual
or substantial counterpart answering in every particular to its
superficial features; and Wilkinson and Emerson, for instance, with
the others, are of course shadows of some greater or less spiritual
quantities. But I'll be hanged if there's the slightest _sensible_
accord between the substance and the semblance on either hand. Your
spirits, no doubt, give you the very communications you report to
me; only Wilkinson spiritually interpreted and Emerson spiritually
interpreted mean things so very different from our two friends of
those denominations that if our spiritual eye were for a moment
open to discern the difference I think it highly probable--I'm sure
it is infinitely possible--we should renounce their acquaintance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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