When I read the New Testament with the knowledge which I have of
Spiritualism, I am left with a deep conviction that the teaching of
Christ was in many most important respects lost by the early Church,
and has not come down to us. All these allusions to a conquest over
death have, as it seems to me, little meaning in the present Christian
philosophy, whereas for those who have seen, however dimly, through the
veil, and touched, however slightly, the outstretched hands beyond,
death has indeed been conquered. When we read so many references to
the phenomena with which we are familiar, the levitations, the tongues
of fire, the rushing wind, the spiritual gifts, the working of wonders,
we feel that the central fact of all, the continuity of life and the
communication with the dead, was most certainly known. Our attention
is arrested by such a saying as: "Here he worked no wonders because
the people were wanting in faith." Is this not absolutely in
accordance with psychic law as we know it? Or when Christ, on being
touched by the sick woman, said: "Who has touched me? Much virtue has
passed out of me." Could He say more clearly what a healing medium
would say now, save that He would use the word "Power" instead of
"virtue"; or when we read: "Try the spirits whether they be of God," is
it not the very, advice which would now be given to a novice
approaching a seance? It is too large a question for me to do more
than indicate, but I believe that this subject, which the more rigid
Christian churches now attack so bitterly, is really the central
teaching of Christianity itself. To those who would read more upon
this line of thought, I strongly recommend Dr. Abraham Wallace's Jesus
of Nazareth, if this valuable little work is not out of print. He
demonstrates in it most convincingly that Christ's miracles were all
within the powers of psychic law as we now understand it, and were on
the exact lines of such law even in small details. Two examples have
already been given. Many are worked out in that pamphlet. One which
convinced me as a truth was the thesis that the story of the
materialization of the two prophets upon the mountain was
extraordinarily accurate when judged by psychic law. There is the fact
that Peter, James and John (who formed the psychic circle when the dead
was restored to life, and were presumably the most helpful of the
group) were taken. Then there is the choice of the high pure air of
the mountain, the drowsiness of the attendant mediums, the
transfiguring, the shining robes, the cloud, the words: "Let us make
three tabernacles," with its alternate reading: "Let us make three
booths or cabinets" (the ideal way of condensing power and producing
materializations)--all these make a very consistent theory of the
nature of the proceedings. For the rest, the list of gifts which St.
Paul gives as being necessary for the Christian Disciple, is simply the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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