Experimental investigation of the spirit manifestations, [electronic ...

138 MORAL INFLUENCE OF SPIRITUALISM.724. Much stress is laid upon free-will, but is will over free from thejoint control of reason and passion? What is will, if it be not the resultantof the conflict or co-operation of those ? It may be a question whether,without passions, a man would act at all ;but certainly he would actlike an idiot or baby, so far as his will should be entirely independent ofhis reason.725. It must be conceded, then, that the prodigious diversity betweenvirtue and vice is the consequence of contingencies, which are no moreunder the control of the individual aiTectcd than the colour of his hair orthe number of ciibitsin his stature.726. The great features of the spiritual religion are, as I understandthem, as follows :—Its foundation is laid in the belief of an all-good Deity,whose power is manifested to us by the immensity, profundity, sublimity,ingenuity, and adaptation of the means to the ends in the creation ascribedto the co-operation, if not origination, of his mind. The Bible of thespiritualist is the book of nature—the only one which by inward and outwardevidence can be ascribed to divine authorship.727. In this book we read, as matters of fact, that there is an infiniteseries of gradation in the rank of animals, as well as variety in their dispositionsand propensities. This may be seen, from the half-animal, halfvegetableknown as the polypus, up to man, there being gradations notonly of genera, but of species and varieties. Thus amid men there arevarious races, rising one above the other in development, from the Bushman,Hottentot, or lowest Negro, up to the most highly-developed race ofwhite men. But when we have passed through the gradation of the races,we have to enter upon that of individuals, who in the same race are bydiversity of organizationor education, or of both, made extremely- differentas to intellectual, moral, and scientific pre-eminence.728. It is difiicult for human reason to reconcile with impartiality thisimmense diversity in the lot of the creatures of God; but that such islaw of nature is self-evident : it is an intuitive truth. To reconcile it withthe all-goodness of God, we must suppose a limitation of power, and thatit has been beyond his power to put created beings more nearly upona level.But, as Seneca observes, all have raceived more than they had aclaim for. Some may think that the parable of the hiring of labourersfor a vineyard, conveys an idea like that of the Koman sage.729. These considerations being premised, it would seem that punishmentin the spirit world is only the carrying out of the same system, exceptingthat while the deficiencies or vices which have arisen in this worldbecome a punishment in the next, they also operate as the means of improvement,or, to use the language of that world, of ^^progression.'' Itmay be inferred that as in this world the power of the Deity, althoughcommensurate with the all but infinite universe in which we exist, was sorestricted by conditions as to induce that enormous diversity of position inthe