MR COLEMAN, in introducing Miss Hardinge, said that the evening would be occupied, as previously intimated, in answering Questions proposed by various Ladies and Gentlemen. These were numerous, and the Committee had endeavoured to blend those which were related to each other, but they were still too numerous to be answered on one evening. None of them had been seen by Miss Hardinge, whose Answers would therefore be wholly unpremeditated. For the satisfaction of all, he would ask some of the Ladies present to draw promiscuously four or five Questions.

 

The following Questions were then drawn in the manner suggested by Mr Coleman, and were answered in the order in which we present them:­

 

Question 1

 

ANIMALS have brains and nervous systems, and exhibit phenomena, mental, moral, and emotional, which seem to differ only in degree from those of human life: they think, they reason, and invent novel and ingenious methods of attaining their objects, of overcoming their difficulties and remedying evils; they also manifest, love, hatred, gratitude, revenge, joy, grief, jealousy, etc., and have also methods of communication with each other. In our superior human nature we regard these as manifestations of the spirit within us, acting through the machinery of the brain and nervous system, and we know that spirit to survive the death of our mortal part. What is it that produces these analogous, though inferior manifestations in the brute creation, and what becomes of it after their death?

 

Answer

 

THE first Question presented requires us to define the difference between instinct and reason. It has been claimed, and justly, that the higher order of animals have a nervous system, whilst even the lower orders, in some form or other, are provided with an apparatus for the diffusion of nervous sensibility, correspondential to a system, excepting such forms of life as the mollusca, or other rudimental creatures, up to the humble worm, which exhibits a chain of ganglions, terminating in the larger one called the brain. Ranging up from the lower order of animals to the highest, we find a gradual improvement in the complexity of the nervous system, which is the apparatus which thought traverses: it is the telegraphic wire upon which the life-lightnings play,

and without it the most magnificent and boundless scope of thought can never exhibit itself in matter. Consequently it is with especial reference to the nervous system, as a physical cause, that we must first attempt to answer your Question

 

We find that even the lowest orders of being exhibit a degree of instinct which is admirably appropriate to their condition. All the creatures of the dry land or of the water possess instincts adapted to their state: the reptile and the amphibious creature, fish and cold-blooded animals, generally are, if not fully provided with the same complex system of nerves as the mammalia, still organised with special arrangements for the generation of just the amount of vitality adapted to their state, and subservient to the instincts peculiar to that state. Yet the amount of instinct thus exhibited has never yet been classed as reason. It is, then, between the mammalia, as the highest order of animals, and man, that we must endeavour to draw the chief distinction between instinct and reason, and the question assumes a still more subtle form when we remember that the highest order of mammalia possesses a nervous system almost equal to that of man. In them, too, we find the heart, with its arterial and venous apparatus for the distribution of the circulating fluids, as elaborately developed as in the human form. We find that the brain, although it differs in quantity in different creatures, is almost as complex in its structure and convolutions as that of man: but we also find that the great column of the nervous system – the spine – with its ganglionic termination of the brain, is disposed differently in the animal to that of the man. In the animal it runs laterally with the ground, and the brain receives the galvanic power of the solar ray at an angle which varies considerably from the direct or perpendicular. Man, on the contrary, in his erect position, receives the first direct impetus from the solar ray in the action of a horizontal beam; hence, whatever force the power of light and heat can exercise upon receptive forms, have in this attitude full scope for their exhibition, and must form a line of demarcation between the play of nervous force in the human and in the mammalia thus differently stimulated. And the next evidence of difference in degree of nervous force exhibited in form, is found in the fact that no single form in creation is capable of exhibiting the same amount of intellectual power as man. Whilst the eagle’s wing can bear him upward to the sun, the power of man can transcend the eagle’s flight in the mechanical powers of mind displayed in the balloon. The mole can mine; the beaver build; the ant and bee manifest the united power of the geometrician and mathematician; the wasp’s and the tarantula’s nests are models of self-taught architecture: in short, throughout the whole range of natural history, every creature manifests a peculiarity of instinct which antedates human inventions, and emulates, in every form, the genius of man. But let it be remembered that these evidences of mental power are only exhibited in the lower creatures in one or two directions at a time. The animals which seem capable by training of enlarging the sphere of their faculties are very rare, and it is only in creatures which become the companions of, and are subject to, the intellect of man, that we realise the qualities set forth in your statement.

 

The instincts necessary to the preservation and perpetuation of species are manifest in all living creatures alike, for instance; the love that protects their young and associates gregariously in species and tribes. The manifestations of love, hatred, jealousy, revenge, prevision, and caution; all these are displayed in every species; but their exercise is limited within its species, and comprehends nothing outside of its own nature. All species realise others antagonistic to them; comprehend that which forms appropriate aliment, confine themselves within their own element, yet seem to

comprehend the creatures on whom they can prey or consociate with; but none of the lower kingdom manifest evidence of an intellect outside of their own limited and defined form. Thus the building beaver, the geometrical ant, the weaving spider, and the hunting buffalo, are wonderfully instructive only in the direction of that one peculiar attribute which their form implies. The keen scent of the hound, the wonderful instincts of the migrating bird and of the hybernating animal, and even the prophetic power which teaches these creatures to lay up stores against the approaching seasons of scarcity - all this which looks so very like the action of calculating reason, when analytically considered, resolves itself at last into a necessity which grows out of the anatomy of all these creatures, and without now entering into detail, I affirm that each one is not only peculiarly adapted for the manifestation of the instinct it displays, but is as much compelled to exercise that instinct as the necessity of its form, as the flower must needs give off peculiar fragrance, and fruits or roots their quality or essence. It is far otherwise in the organism of man: this is mobile in every conceivable direction. Could the span of human life and strength, extend to the physical exertion, the foot of man is capable of compassing the earth; while the power of intellect enables him to traverse it by mechanical means without the waste of time and strength either on land or air or ocean. The wild beast of the forest is unfitted for the habitations of rock. The savage tenants of the cave subsist not in the field or pasture in the meadow. Each creature is fitted only for the soil and scene in which it is found, nor has any individual of a species, instincts which direct it to enter upon any other element, scene, or sphere of action than its own. But how various and infinitely subtle are the instincts whose assemblage we call reason in man! The throbbing pulse, like the wonderful indicator of the steam-engine, records the quantity and energetic action of the fires of life. Each organ works a telegraphic chain of nerves which informs the brain how much fatigue or effort man may make - how much emotion mind can well endure. The beast may feel all passions you describe, as love or hate or jealousy, or any of those feelings called emotions, yet is unable by any telegraph between the heart and the brain to determine how far its power must be controlled by judgment, intellect, or reason. It ever acts in the peculiar direction of its passions, and knows no hindrance to their play but physical exhaustion. Throughout the whole range of the human organism there is an adaptability to every circumstance; while the reason of man knits up into one, all the fragments of intellectual power that are manifest in every other creature. Thus man is a spinner, weaver, builder, engineer, and navigator. With the mariner’s compass he is enabled to guide his course over the pathless wastes of ocean better than the migratory instincts of even the swallow or the martin: by his intellect he is enabled to calculate atmospheric changes, and to determine even centuries hence what shall be the physical aspects of nature, from what they now exhibit by the observation of the growth and formation of strata beneath his feet. There is not an element of mind, nor an atom of matter, but what is subject to man, and combined in his organism. There is not an element of mind or an atom of matter, but what is distributed amongst the animal creation, but only in diverse forms and scattered fragments; whilst therefore we find the parts of being divided in them, in man we behold them all combined as in creation’s microcosm.

 

Then arise the questions which I would fain elaborate more fully, were there not so many other subjects of interest to consider. What shall become of this sovereign spirit of man, the totality of all other spiritual entities? And what of the fragments which constitute the life and instinct of the animal creation? Ask the realm of nature how she deals with the perfect and imperfect, the parts and whole of being. There we find that

Question 2

 

Is the spirit, in its progress, incarnated more than once? Answer

 

THE Question first demands an explanation of the word “incarnate.” We find that its popular definition is the association of spirit with matter in the form of an animated being. Thus we may say that the spirit of the animal, the thought of which we have been speaking, is incarnate in its form. We presume that the question relates more especially to the incarnation of spirit in the human form? And to this we answer, as we ask, Does the eagle return to the egg? Does the oak return to the acorn? Do the sun’s rays return to its central heart of fire? Never. Whithersoever we turn our eyes, in search through the grand analogies of nature, we find that the universal genius of creation is progress. How, then, can we respond to the question that asks whether the spirit returns to the mould that shaped it? Whether the water of life returns to the pitcher broken at the fountain? Or motion to “the wheel broken at the cistern”? Believe it never! The purposes of material existence are all included in the growth and development of the spirit in a material mould. We believe that the Eternal Spirit shakes from his Divine hand the scintillations of life like star-dust and that these, precipitated in the mould of matter and associated with it, becoming incarnate spirits. But, oh! remember our claim, ever basing itself upon fundamental principles of being,

Question 3

 

CAN you give any explanation regard the suffering which the animal kingdom is called upon to endure, in connection with the physical well-being of man, and the purposes of science; as also concerning the perpetual warfare waging therein?

 

Answer

 

WE must first respond to that portion of the question which demands a reason for the suffering of the animal kingdom as it originates with man. We ask, why is suffering inflicted upon the animal kingdom by man? In the first place we find, that notwithstanding the supreme excellence and triumphant powers of the human soul, it still manifests its alliance with all lower existences in nature, and progresses through the realm of matter; thus there are inevitable analogies between the influences which act on the progression of matter, the development of soul, and the forms and instincts

of animals. Thus, in man is found the aggregated instincts of animals; and in animals the same effects of influence that act on man.

 

Destructiveness, the love of rule, the domination of the strong over the weak, are all outgrowths in the human mind from the types in the animal kingdom. In animals and men alike, such tendencies arise from an undue excess of the love of self. There are but two primeval ideas in the realm of moral nature: these are the love of self and the love of the neighbour. When either of these exists in excess, they are crime; in equilibrium, they are virtue. Until man realises the true and just balance, one or the other prevails; and hence originate all his faults and failings, and all his crimes. In the animal kingdom (which we believe to be in broken fragments, the exhibition of nature practising to develop man, exhibiting various fragments of intellect, and displaying in various degrees the instincts, which in their totality in man, is reason) - in the animal kingdom, instinct unrestrained by reason, constantly evidences a tendency to excess. In man, this excess is crime; in the animal, simply injurious instincts of nature.

 

When we attempt to show why man inherently, as if by nature, appears desirous to inflict pain on the animal kingdom, we are painfully recalled from a consideration of the sufferings of these poor victims of our uncurbed vices, to pause on the pages of our daily journals, and there discover that man inflicts wanton acts of cruelty on a higher order of being than even the animal kingdom, and in this his hapless victims are the weak and helpless of his own race. What philosophy can show why the savage hand of violence is raised to strike a fellow creature? What sophistry can justify the haughty rule of the aristocrat over the poor and humble? Why does man trample beneath his very feet the meek sons of toil, or scorn the humble labourer? Why so often shrink, as if from a pestilence, from the ignorant, the criminal and ill­conditioned members of society, who, as cramped themselves by the chains of adverse fortune, claim from us protection, care, and teaching? All this is part of the same spirit that strikes the helpless animal, and abuses the lower creatures; and yet more problematical in view of man’s high nature is the fact, that the very weakness which should claim our pity seems to be the plea on which we make it a safety-valve for this our inevitable spirit of destruction, and tyranny, and wrong. In view of man’s relations to the lower kingdoms, and his inheritance of violence from alliance with the brute, we assume that passion in the beast is excess of self-love in the man. Self­preservation is the column around which group all the attributes which make us men and women. Without it we cannot maintain an existence. In the excess of this feeling, which, repressed, is virtue, self-love, I repeat, is crime; and its tendency degenerates in satisfaction of our angry passions by the sacrifice of those on whom we wreak them.

 

But your Question also enquires concerning the result of ill usage upon the animal kingdom. We may not hear the moan of the creatures we punish, there may be no voice to rebuke the cruel blow with which we strike the patient steed; there is no appeal in human tone, no word of reason to remonstrate against the wanton blow we strike the brutes, but if these speechless subjects of our wrath are dumb to our mortal ear, their every wrong is a prayer which their Maker answers, and that in results which are manifestly shewn in these creatures’ spiritual natures. The endurance by the strong animal of wrongs inflicted by weak man, proves in the first place the total absence of that consciousness whose highest function is the knowledge of self, of its own strength, and of its relations to the oppressor. The brute knows not its power, and

therefore not itself, and in this ignorance it is that it endures. Now, we have before stated that the spirit of the lower creatures maintains a continuous existence. In this place it is proper to add, that that existence is progressive, and that the sufferings which each creature endures are its means of progress. As we strike the iron at the forge we make it finer; as we burn or beat the gold we elaborate qualities in it that are never to be found in the unwrought metal. We call forth magnetic life from stones and metals as we strike or bruise them. The fragrance of the flower ascends beneath the foot that crushes it. And even so with the suffering spirits of the creatures subject to us; the tortures which we inflict correspond to the adversities which lessen man himself. There is not a moment in our lives more fraught with instruction than the hour of bitter failure, or the moments of life’s agony. ‘Tis then we first begin to know ourselves, to turn our eyes within and summon up around us all the remaining energies of soul to meet the emergency. ‘Tis then we come out of gladiatorial combats with life’s woes, and pains, and penalties, fully developed spirits. By analogy the same process is exhibited on the spirits of the lower creatures though we mark it not. Every blow and every cruel wrong inflicted on these creatures has a corresponding effect upon their spirits.

 

We do not say this to justify the offence of wronging them. “It needs must be that offences come; but woe unto those by whom the offence cometh.” Still there is a power of transmutation in the great crucible of divine mercy which brings out the thrice refined gold from the fire of suffering wheresoever it is inflicted; and therefore it is that in the divine philosophy of suffering we are reconciled to the processes by which endurance is forced even on helpless animals: independently of the wisdom that is manifest in the system of necessary destruction which one species exercises upon another, to the destruction of noxious creatures burdensome to the earth; independently of the fact that the foul and pestilential exhalations of the earth, that would otherwise fill our atmosphere, become incarnate in these noxious creatures, and that organic life is always superior to inorganic, and the destructiveness of one species aids the progression of another - besides all this, and the fact that through all these mutually related incidents in nature, earth and its inhabitants are evermore progressing, - ‘tis strange but significant of God’s creative wisdom to observe that destructiveness invariably prevails amongst the lowest forms of life, and its tendencies invariably diminish as we ascend to the higher grades of being. In the highest of all forms, the gentlest kindest natures become more and more manifest; and the more capacity for education exists, even in the animal kingdom, the more surely is it associated with that docile disposition which preys not upon other creatures. Thus, then, do we claim, that in the ascending scale of being, destructiveness is a gradually receding tendency. It would seem to begin as a fundamental law of life’s necessity, and ending, as all necessities of being end, in the fully unfolded intellect and noblest types of man - the highest reason of the highest man shall ultimately be so triumphant, that when man himself shall have learned self-government, and attained to a noble equilibrium between the love of self and the love of his neighbour, when his own superior intellect shall recognise the wrong of inflicting pain or unjust punishment on any living creature, his pure life magnetism shall go forth, and create a new earth, from the new heaven that is born within him. When man is himself a fully perfected being, and his atmosphere is radiant with his goodness, all earth will partake of his own controlling spirit life, and physical emanation. Destructiveness will cease - destructive creatures perish, the earth will become refined and purified, and the atmosphere be sublimated. The poisonous carbonic acid gas exhaled from man’s

Question 4

 

Can you throw any light upon the mystery of insanity and its purposes?

Answer

 

WE will respond to the first portion of the Question but must claim permission to change the phraseology of the last. We answer then by asking - What is sanity? Let us attempt to define that, e’er we speak of its opposite. We take all the various moral and intellectual functions of the human mind, and we find that they may be divided into five. The first of these is manifest in the earliest period of infantile existence in the form of a senuous nature. The tender new-born creature manifests the power of life and motion in its wailing cry of pain and unconscious appeal for sustenance. Each motion and each sound is urged by great nature’s primal law, the senuous care of self, or the yearning instincts of mere animal life and nature. With every day’s advancing stage of life, as the young child grows, it manifests its second element of being in its affectional nature. We perceive the little arms of the babe out-stretched to those that are ever kindest to it, we realise how readily the nurse or mother’s tender love is responded to by the youngest child amongst us. Truly then, the next manifestation of human nature in the scale of mind must be affection; the next is the moral element in man. The young child no sooner takes part with its companions in its daily sports or rudimentary education than it manifests a simple sense of justice. The child in its very play cannot be trampled upon by its companions, nor venture to inflict its petty tyrannies on others. Every group of children in their sports teaches a code of morals.

 

The next manifestation of life is the development of the intellect. Here the mind reaches out to select its favourite objects, or to pursue some special occupation, art, or science, or it displays itself in mediocrity, indifference, or incapacity for learning. And the last of the developments of mind that constitute the group which I have classified as five great elements of reason, is man’s spirituality, and this is manifest in the deep yearnings of religion, tendering to reverence, fear, awe, worship, aspiration; and finally to inspiration, which in its normal action on the human soul, is the voice of God inbreathed in the mind of man. In all these five departments - namely, the sensual, affectional, moral, intellectual, and spiritual elements of mind there are corresponding organs seated in the brain, each endowed with its separate and peculiar functions. The sensual part of man’s nature must be guided and regulated by

knowledge, or it degenerates into excess, which is crime; even so, must the moral and other tendencies in human nature be ruled. In fact, in every department there must be a power which rules the proclivities of mind arrayed at its tribunal: we call that power reason. It requires for its perfect exercise - first, the harmonious working of all the elements of mind; next, the knowledge to discriminate and judge amongst them. Reason comprehends and speculates; and judgment legislates and passes verdict on the faculities of mind; and hence we find that sanity is an equal development of all man’s mental faculties. Wherever one or other is deficient, there is insanity, or unsoundness. You may not recognise it, unless it manifests itself in some extreme; but I say that every crime and every proclivity to excess which is, indeed the essence of crime, is more or less insanity. Any tendencies which become dangerous to humanity are as much insanity as the passion known as frenzy. Excessive madness, or that which is recognised as such, and demands the restraint of physical force, is only the excessive plus or minus of some organ of the brain, resulting in inequality of balance between the various functions of the mind. So long as there is even a partial equilibrium amongst all the mental faculties, whilst the sensual nature is restrained by others - when the stern, strict sense of morality does not lead the mind into fanaticism; so long as the affections do not run riot, or the intellect absorbs the being to the exclusion of the rest, or the spiritual yearnings of the soul wrong not material duties; just so long as there is an equal balance amongst all these various tendencies, the result is mental health or sanity; but even the least disturbance of these mental forces - a predominance or lack of either element resulting in lack of balance amongst the whole - is, in its degree, insanity. Anatomy records that in many cases where insanity prevails, especially in such instances as appear traceable to cerebral excitement, there is often no evidence of anatomical change in the brain. The brains of lunatics, in post-mortem examinations, are not unfrequently found in a healthful state, although there is almost invariably discovered physical disorganisation in some other portion of the frame - especially of the great nervous centre, the spine. Insanity, too, is often promoted by a deterioration of some portions of the system apart from the brain, every part of the wonderful structure of humanity being so intimately connected, that any organic disturbance is calculated to produce the abnormal condition called insanity. I call insanity, then, the want of equilibrium in the entire system, which localises an injury, in want of balance amongst the various organs of the brain; for though this state may be produced by physical causes, these causes ultimately represent themselves, through the system, upon the mind, and therefore in the brain, as the throne-room of the sovereign mind, and the demon of insanity finds there its exhibition. Our question further adds, “What are its purposes?” In the divine economy there is but one purpose subserved by suffering, mental or physical, and this is - to teach us to know ourselves, to warn us to legislate among our faculties, and to guard well the noble structure of the physical form, which in disorganisation presses too rudely on the mind, and to avoid the dangerous excesses which, in mind, is crime, in matter, disease and death. In the economy of the human system you may trace all its defects, either from hereditary tendencies, accident, disease, or some disturbance in the nervous system.

 

I believe with Hahnemann, that there is a spiritual cause for all disease, and that when we can produce and equalise the perfect flow of life’s electric currents, there will be no disease, and in this state there can be no cerebral disturbance called insanity. The purpose - if we may conceive that God designs a special purpose in insanity - is only to be subserved by studying the human system, by considering carefully those

Question 5

 

WHAT do you understand to be the conditions necessary to admit of mediums being lifted in the air, and of the passage of spirits through material objects, if they can so pass?

 

Answer

 

THE condition for the elevation of any body from the ground is counter-attraction. All things are held in their place upon this earth by the power of gravitation; that is the one sole power that draws to the common centre the entire of the beings that remain upon the round moving world. Any power that can overcome the earth’s gravitation, whether it be the mechanical power that enables us to lift an object, or that which causes the loadstone to suspend a certain weight of iron, or any power corresponding to the power of the loadstone - any force, in fact, that will overcome the gravitation of the earth, can upheave the heaviest body from the earth.

 

Now, there is a power of magnetism, within that which is the strongest magnet in creation - namely, the human form, which, when the spirit is liberated from matter, and, by a knowledge of chemistry, is enabled so to compose the elements which emanate from a mediumistic body, together with those which are held in solution in atmospheric air, as to form a strong and powerful magnet, or loadstone, which can upheave substances in air. This phenomenon is but the result of the spirits’ and the mediums’ vital magnetism; or the act itself is but a result of that same force which upheaves in this, imponderable ether, the vast bulk of the mighty sun, and revolving satellites. All these are held in space by attraction and counter-attraction. The centripedal force which draws you to the centre of the earth is overcome by a centrifugal force, which sends lighter bodies from the earth. Now, between these two forces in operation, there is an inevitable inequality. There is in all things in nature a

lack of equilibrium which produces alternating movements between the forces of attraction and repulsion. To produce the phenomena of which you ask, we must overcome the attraction of earth’s gravitation, and thus we can upheave the mightiest bodies in space. Spirits are but experimenting in the present phase of spiritual phenomena; they are, like yourselves, learning the exhibition of the rudiments of the science of magnetism, and the very simplest of these is the power which enables them to form a magnet of mediumistic and atmospheric essences, and where they have a good battery in the person of the medium who must be highly negative to their positive force, it is one of the simplest of the phenomena of Spiritualism to upheave that negative body in the air.

 

Your Question concerning spirits passing through material obstacles involves another set of laws entirely. We must ask leave to enter a little more into detailed notice of the subject, and remind you that we requested the permission of this audience, some six weeks since, to deliver in this place a course of Lectures. We did not aim in this to produce mere oratorical effects, but to give through our medium’s best capacity the rudiments of a philosophy On that philosophy, time, study, and spiritual growth will add great superstructures, but it will not remove the basis. A portion of that philosophy related to the question, “What is Spirit?” And in rendering the answer, we stated that spirit lived in accordance with a set of laws in no respect analogous to those which govern matter; we urged that spirit transcends all the laws of matter, and that there is no law which rules or governs matter that belongs to a spiritual existence. One of the laws of matter which spirit transcends is that of time and space. We now ask leave to enter upon the question more in full. Time is the boundary of material movements only; there is no time in eternity, but there are periods occupied by certain changes of matter. The changes, for instance, between the sun and this earth, are effected in a certain period of eternity which we call time, and marked by night and day - seasons and years. We find that when material forms are moved in any direction, they require a period in eternity to effect the change. One of the attributes of matter is called impenetrability, but in reality this attribute does not exist; for though you may pierce the very hardest crystal, you still find spaces within it, and still no one atom of matter can occupy the space that is occupied by another atom. The boundary of material forms, then, is that which constitutes space.

 

But these are the laws of matter, not of spirit; for spirit occupies no space, and spirit lives not in time; and this I must illustrate by calling to your remembrance the late address on Hades: therein it was declared that the spirit outworks from itself its own light or darkness, and therefore makes its own night or day. Cold and heat are also outwrought from the morale of spiritual nature, and hence it is that disembodied souls reside in their own atmosphere, which to them is summer of winter, according to their nature; hence, all darkness, light, season, and time, is of the spirit’s creation. Periods in eternity are needed for spirits’ progress, but the extent or limit of that period is dependent on the spirit’s energy in working out its progress; hence the bitter season of spiritual cold and spiritual winter may be through countless ages, since it must endure until the frozen heart outworks the latent heat of a moral summer; and the period of summer is the already sunny soul of spiritual love and kindness, an ever lengthening never ending summer-day of eternity. So there is no time in the spirit world. And as the spirit has no density, no weight, and is lighter than all things in creation, so it occupies no space. Your physical bodies are heavier than the ether in which you move, than the water on which you sail, or than the mould on which you tread. Thus

Question 6

WILL you explain the law of faith as a practical principle of life?

Answer

 

WITH permission, we will materialise your Question. We claim that faith is knowledge. Wheresoever faith exists it is the spirit’s knowledge of that which is. True faith is in reality the soul’s perception of truth. It is often demanded as an act of volition, that the mind shall manifest faith; but you do not represent to that mind what are the antecedent facts which constitute the knowledge which ensures faith. There can be no faith within the human soul, which is not the result of a manifestation of some realised truth. Take, for example, the faith required by the Gracious Master for the performance of cures. It is represented even by the followers of Christ, that He could not in some places perform the cures He did in others, because of the lack of faith of those who appealed to Him for aid. It is claimed in sacred history that His greatest cures were performed upon those who asked not even for the touch of His healing hand, or the contact of His garments, but had a faith which perceived that the cure was with Him, and demanded alone His exercise of will. What was this faith? It was the knowledge that he could effect a cure. So a true faith existing in the human soul, is always a perception of a truth. It may not be an actual truth in nature, but it is a truth to the perception of that soul which feels its movement, and thus faith may exist in error as well as in truth. Faith is often what you call mere blind belief and is then founded upon fanaticism. Faith is often the tendril of the soul that outreaches to grasp some shadow which it mistakes for substance; but it is the perception of a fancied truth in the soul, which constitutes true faith. There are spiritual truths which illustrate faith far better than that which we have alluded to; for “faith is the substance of things unseen,” and such is main’s faith in immortality. Such in part is our confident trust in God, or even in the love of friends. Faith alone, it must be, that realises the protection of an all-wise heavenly Father; faith that believes God is our Father. Mark the faith of the poor ignorant savage who prays to the “Manitou” of whom no Bible gospel or creed has taught him. Remember man’s faith in the true and beautiful which enables him still to go on conquering the spirit of destructiveness of which we spoke in the earlier part of the evening, and still to do battle for the right even in the midst of all earth’s cruel blows levelled against his work. What is it but faith that carries us onward to the unseen realms of immortality - still striving for the prize we have not seen, the goal we have never known? Faith in God is the action of the grand divine Magnet Himself - the action of God in the universe who by faith is ever calling us upward to Him. I ask not for faith in aught which is not a truth to the individual whom I would convince. The objects I should lay before him whom I would convince, should seem to me to be some comprehensive truth. If the mind of my client cannot perceive this truth, I ask in vain for faith; for faith is like the reason and judgment of which I spoke in the definition of insanity: it is the culminating point of mind; the soul’s perception of what that soul believes to be the truth and nothing but the truth, hence faith is indeed the spiritual substance of things unseen, the knowledge of that which the spirit feels as truth.

 

MR COLEMAN proposed a vote of thanks to Miss Hardinge, which was unanimously carried.

MISS HARDINGE: Permit me to say a few words in reply. Although my inspiration must fail me as far as the power of oratory is concerned, it will at least be prompted by the sentiments of truth. You are doubtless aware, many of you, that I am of English birth, but you will also remember the words of the poet, that, “we live in heart-throbs, not in figures on the dial.” Therefore during my ten years’ residence in America, English though I am, I lived so very quick, and my heart-throbs in that great land of the West were so rapidly repeated, that I believe I have lived more than thrice-told the number of years in events in that country, consequently, when I returned, I felt far more like a stranger among you than one who had never trod your shores except in the facts of history or tradition. I had forgotten my country’s institutions and perhaps in some respects, many of my country’s customs. The best effort that I could make to serve the cause of Spiritualism I felt was due, for to me it is my life. I had been spiritually born in America since my departure from England, and I felt I never could make sacrifices enough for that which had brightened my way and been a lamp to my feet – an angel presence in all my wanderings; and these have been very far, sometimes amounting to thousands and thousands of miles in one single year, yet at every footfall the power of the spirit was about and with me. I went where the spirit voice bade me. I never took a step, nor fulfilled an engagement that was not sanctified by the voice of one whom men called “dead,” and I never passed from point to point where may path was not illuminated and made straight for me by those whom the world say “are not.” In obedience to the voice of this dear invisible host, I had determined to make my short visit to England (although it was necessarily one of business) one of spiritual effort also. You may remember, or you may have heard, that we have five millions of Spiritualists in America, and that our ranks are divided into societies which are recognised by the laws of the country. And as union is strength, so the existence of these societies enables the Spiritualists to extend their sphere of usefulness in many ways besides providing hospitable homes, arranging meetings, and focalising interests about their mediums, which places them very much in the position of priests, and sometimes as in my case, amongst the dear Americans almost as an idol in their midst, for truly their love was sometimes worship and there was and is a deep devotion in the ties that bind the people to their mediums, that fills our hearts with love and designates me as “their Emma,”they, as my “peculiar people.”

 

I have found their hearts, their arms, and homes ever open to receive me, and in all these they have enshrined me with so much tenderness, and with such a vast amount of that faith of which the spirits have been talking, that it seemed to me I had almost forgotten myself, my country, and that country’s very widely differing institutions. So when I came to England, where I find that Spiritualism stands upon another basis, and in the exceeding wisdom of the spirits has reached a different class of mind to those who constitute American’s millions, I was sad, disappointed, and perhaps impatient. It seemed to me that the long habits of my ministry in past days were closed against me. I had been accustomed frequently to visit the prisons, the dens of vice, the hospitals, and even the woeful battle-field; I had been called upon to labour for the poor, and take part in charitable movements, and every Sunday to sanctify Spiritualism by the blessed name of religion, and to perform two Sabbath services to “our people.” All this was so very dear to me, and gave me the feeling of leading a life of such exceeding usefulness, that here I felt almost lost; I thought I could do no good amongst you, and I longed for the Spring-time to come that would send me back to a life of very great labour, but withal of very great usefulness. I could not see in what

direction I could be of service here, for where I found an opening for giving spiritual lectures, it appeared to me to involve such a great amount of responsibility on my part, to which I was not accustomed, and such a heavy tax upon my own limited means, for which I had no provision, that I felt it was almost impossible thus for me to begin life afresh. Then it was, that - in obedience to the kind invitation of our good Chairman, who has been to me more like a father than a mere friend in this crisis - simply to please him, because I felt so very grateful to the ever-warm hand that had been stretched out to greet the stranger before he knew whether I was to be successful or not - simply, I say, in response to his kind invitation, I came amongst you for the first time. You remember the opening night of these meetings. With me my presence was an act of personal friendship, as I stated. Before I left this stand, I felt that the masses I had left behind me were compensated for in the quality of that which I that night addressed. I felt that I had stood within a noble circle of appreciative minds - minds which fully realised the truth and worth of Spiritualism in its higher and grander phases, as a prophesy of what is yet to come. I had spoken to the comfortless and sorrowful; I had lectured much to those who live so fast that they have no time to reflect upon the future, but only stoop to gather the flowers of the present hour. Here, however, I was speaking to the stern old British heart and brain, to that which digests philosophy and ultimates it in the slow and inevitable course of a progress that the ages cannot uproot. I felt all this realisation crowding upon me the first night I was amongst you; and then my home-sick longing for the dear land of the West became gradually appeased, and I felt it was a privilege to be amongst you; that although my usefulness to “spirits in prison” might scarcely be called into play here, I could gather strength from you, learn philosophy by intuition, and realise phases of spiritual life, which have often failed me when I alone was the giver and all about me were recipients. I have begun to change places amongst you, and realise an inspiration, for which I heartily and gratefully thank you all. Our ministrations have not been long together, but I have already learned to feel not as if you were “my people” - but my friends, my support, my counsellors, and that we are walking together up the steps of that mysterious temple, on whose threshold we are standing, and which, when we have purified ourselves and practised knowledge till we have made it deeds, we may hope to be permitted to enter. This is my relation to you.

 

Now I am about to enter upon another experiment, but one which I contemplated from the stand-point of my American experience, rather than my knowledge of this country. I thought it was but to present myself to the public as of old, and I should certainly be received at least with candour, and be enabled to present myself in most of my arrangements as I had done in America. In this, however, I have been grievously deceived. I find that in this great Babylon of London there is so much preliminary effort required and such a vast amount of responsibility to be undertaken, that I have already shrunk back again and again from the effort I contemplated; and nothing but the strength and confidence which your outstretched hands have given me could induce me to go on even for one lecture on my own account. It is already now determined that that lecture shall be given. It is an experiment, perhaps too rashly entered into in view of its financial arrangements which are overwhelming; nevertheless it has been, like all other movements of mine, the word of the spirits. It has been given to me months and months ago to present to you a picture of the land I have traversed. I have no fear of my undertaking as far as that success, which in spirit­land is motive, rather than human results, is concerned. I have acted from the motives of the deepest gratitude to those who have sent me forth and guarded me with a wall

Question 1

 

CAN you assist us to comprehend the statement of Swedenborg, that in the spiritual world are neither time nor space, with reference to the accounts which he gives of its scenery, history, institutions, and occupations?

 

Answer

 

THESE questions, as we view them, may be resolved into one, for we deem that the main point to be considered is the question concerning time and space. The occupations of the spirit-world, as detailed by the Swedish seer, would necessarily involve the idea, both of time for their performance, and of space for what is represented to his vision, as the scenery of the spirit-world. We must first recur to some of the positions assumed when last we met, and again attempt to define time and space as they are familiar to yourselves. Time on earth is nothing but a succession of periods, during which certain changes in matter are taking place. The chief divisions of time known to you upon this planet, are necessarily regulated by its movements, with reference to other bodies in space. The chief of these movements are the revolution of the planet upon its axis, and its annual revolution round the sun. The first movement, namely, the revolution of the planet on its axis, necessarily involves the relations which the sun and the earth occupy towards each other. In a former address I presumed to offer my hypothesis concerning the origin of light, and claimed that it was the result of a galvanic action which takes place between the atmosphere of the sun and that of the earth - that the result of the attrition of the atoms (for material atoms they are which compose the atmospheres of these two bodies in space) produces a change which first elaborates heat, and next luminosity, or such a change in the atoms as causes them to give off the quality called light. I think the production of light is mainly due to the energetic action which goes on between the solar fluid and the emanations or vapours of the earth, and that their galvanic action upon each other is the cause both of heat and light. Nay even more, I think it will be ultimately shewn in chemistry, that it is this action which produces the abundance of nitrogen, of which so large a part exists in combination with oxygen in atmospheric air; hence that the presence of nitrogen and the quality (peculiar to atmosphere in a state of action)

called light, are both due to galvanism effected between the sun and that part of the earth’s surface exposed to the sun’s immediate influence - hence light is the state which exists in atmosphere when the sun’s rays are acting upon a certain portion of the earth. Darkness or absence of light is the result when that action is no longer going on; hence, the division of the periods when the sun and earth are related to each other into days and nights, marked by the alternations of light and darkness; hence also, time is but a definition of the periods of change which the sun and the earth sustain towards each other, and such periods as defining more accurately those changes, are divided into hours, and these again into minutes and seconds. Again, the changes which take place between the sun and the earth, produced by the inclination of the earth’s axis, and requiring to effect them longer periods than days and nights, are called seasons, whilst the annual revolution of the earth around the sun is termed a year.

 

Now, we will shew you how purely special, and peculiar only to the relations sustained between bodies in space like the sun and the earth, are those subdivisions of period called time. Take for example the subdivisions of time even upon your own planet, in the difference between the equatorial and the arctic regions. In the latter you find that the day, instead of being something over 24 hours is little less than six months and the night rather over the same period. When discovery arrives at that point for which John Franklin and his western martyrs have laid down their mortal lives in the bitterest form of death ever endured by man; when you arrive at that point to which the finger of inspiration is still directing man, the actual polar point of the earth (not alone its magnetic pole) night and day will cease altogether. In the vast area of ether, where the free and unshadowed beams of the sun, produced as I have claimed by its galvanic action with the earth, shall pour forth without intervention or remission by any of the changes which operate only in sections alternately exposed to, and turned from the sun, then and there even upon this earth you will perceive that there is literally neither night nor day, and hence no time. Thus, except in certain portions even of this planet time does not exist except as a mere technical arrangement by which you mark the various changes which material bodies are ever undergoing, you might as well attempt to claim that time exists because there must be certain periods for the growth and development of mineral forms, for the precipitation of the atoms of matter into metallic veins, or into the growth of trees, or the blossoming of flowers. Periods are required to effect all these changes; periods are occupied in every change incident to the growth and decay of material forms, but as these periods vary with the peculiarities of every form and substance, so they cannot constitute arbitrary and fixed divisions of time in eternity. Were it possible, however, to classify periods, thus infinitely varied, into time upon this planet, such an arrangement could not subsist in any other body in space. For instance, the revolution of the satellite Mercury around the sun, would give it equivalent to a year and 87 of our days; that of Venus 224 of earth’s days, and as every other known body in space exhibits varieties equally marked in proportion to distances, weight, velocity, and other incidental causes, the periods which mark time upon one planet would be totally inapplicable to all others. Hence if time depends upon the movements of material bodies and is only regulated by these, and these are as I have shown, infinitely various, it is evident that no arbitrary division of eternity into fixed periods called time exists. Precisely the same definitions apply to space which is simply the ether in which material forms effect their changes, but which though boundless, is so filled with life and being, ranging

from the infinitely little to the infinitely large, that it is impossible to conceive of any unoccupied portion of the boundlessness we call Infinity.

 

It is argued that no one atom of matter can fill the place occupied by another atom, hence that there must be space to bound matter. I answer that the ultimate molecule of matter called “an atom,” has never yet been discovered, nor the last point of divisibility attained. Even in the most seemingly impenetrable crystal, there are spaces filled up with gas and sublimated fluids, and in the rarest gas are spaces occupied by ether, and ether is filled with electricity or magnetism. So, as all the realm of nature known to man is charged with matter in varying degrees of rarity, we have no evidence whatever to show that such a condition as space exists at all. Assuming, however, that we might define space by the magnitude of bodies, and the room which they occupy, our definitions are as various as those which apply to time. For as all bodies vary in size, and in every substance various others combine; it would be impossible to define the exact amount of room occupied by anything. For instance, water may receive in addition other fluids, and even soluble solids, as sugar or salt, without in the least changing the bulk of the whole. Size is indefinite, and matter all pervasive throughout infinity, hence there is no rule by which to define space, even in material forms.

 

Thus the only true definitions which can be given of “time and space,” are those of being periods and places which are occupied in eternity and infinity to effect changes in material forms.

 

We now turn to a consideration of the division of places and periods in the spirit world, and we ask how they correspond. I believe that I shall be understood by those who have realised the moral transmutation of spirits in the phenomena of death, the power which it exercises as a dominant and supreme principle in being, which the laws of matter cannot touch - I shall be understood by believers in such opinions, when I say that spirit is unhindered by, and supreme over all the laws of time and space as applied to changes in matter. The laws of matter do not even analogically define those which bind spirit. Spirit is a separate existence, an entity of itself. It is at once the cause and the ultimate of being. No laws of matter, nor even of magnetism, apply to spirit. It may be that we shall never step behind the sublime mystery of the “I am” within us to comprehend ourselves; but we do know enough of the revelations that are now patent amongst us and which have been brought so tangibly to the spirit­circle as an open volume for our investigation, to realise that the spirit is independent both of time and space. And this is shewn first in the fact that there is a moral transmutation in death, by which the deeds done in the body, the motives engraved upon the soul, and the habitudes of thought, which have at last become the custom and finally the character of the soul - that all this determines the external surroundings of the inhabitants of spirit-land. If there is light within, the soul is its own source of light, and from that, as a central sun, go forth the irradiations of luminosity, that reveal, as in physical sunshine, or the splendours of an incomparable day, the grand and most glorious arcana of the nature of spirit-land. Spirit not alone gravitates to the place to which it belongs, but it carries with it the scenery and characteristics of the place itself. We might recur again and again to the deeply philosophic, yet ill understood, assurance of the Master, that “The kingdom of heaven is not to be found by observation - “Lo, here! Lo, there! - but that it is within us.” Even so are all the states in which the soul dwells. They are in fact gradations and conditions of

mentality, represented in corresponding conditions of the soul’s external life, and ranging from the highest state of illumination, to the lowest of darkness. And thus that which we have loved on earth, that on which we have poured out our human magnetism, and chained our affections to, becomes actually represented in the scenery and surroundings of the spirit-world. There in the illimitable realm where time ceases and space is not, the spirit is chained and fettered to the point of its own peculiar attraction, and its memories and its loves are all externalised in representative scenery. These do not occupy space according to the boundaries which define matter. Spirit and spirit-land are so fine, and infinitely pervasive, that this very chamber is even now full of the scenery, surroundings, and inhabitants of spirit-land.

 

In the chemical decomposition of death, spirit quits the form it occupied, yet all the attributes of matter will be found in their integrity with the form which was the man, but which, destitute of spirit is man no more. Weigh the lifeless corpse, and nothing seems to be wanting - nothing there is lost, nothing at least that lived in what you call time, or occupied what man terms space. By this alone we find that the true man - the invisible, the spirit that has fled - has neither weight nor density, impenetrability nor divisibility, nay, nor any of the attributes of matter; but is like thought, free to come and go, and realises none of the boundaries of time, nor the obstacles of space. There are no periods of darkness or of light with the spirit, except those moral states which continue only in proportion to its own growth and development. So long as the spirit wills by its affection, or by the force of habits acquired on earth, to remain in a condition of moral darkness, the scenery and surroundings of the soul correspond thereunto. So long as the spirit is radiant with light within, yet full of aspiration for higher and better spheres its periods of residence in each, will only be determined by its fitness for progressive changes, so that time in the spheres is only known by transitions from one glory to another, and by the soul’s changes through varied spheres and different scenes. You ask how such vague and unsatisfactory ideas, (for such they seem in comparison with the laws of matter, and in consequence of your views of time and space,) are reconcilable with many of the statements of the spirit­circle that there are houses, scenes, landscapes, and even occupations in the spirit­world analogous to yours? I answer, there are all these in the spheres of earth-bound souls. The habits, thoughts and affections of the spirit, if they are still earth-centred, will reflect on all around the spirit its own peculiar aspirations, and urge the soul to run in the grooves of its earthly occupations, but only so long as that soul loves the things of earth and aspires to nothing higher: when the spirit yearns for higher spheres, its aspirations are its means of progress, and in these higher spheres, the earth scenes cease to be. Again, the arbitrary distinctions which govern matter do not apply to the spirit, for it penetrates all space and all obstacles which make up forms in space. There is nothing so fine or sublimated in matter as to afford an analogical description of spiritual substance. No material bodies, nor the laws that govern their movements, represent the nature and laws even of magnetism. How the