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

82 INTRODUCTION.diabolical ? It has been said that the devil is a necessary agent in God'sprovidence. How necessary, if God be omnipotent ?103. Does not the necessity of employing a bad agent involve inabilityto create a good agent ?104. The evils which exist in the creation may, to a great extent, beexplained by an inevitable limitation of power.Thus, probabl}', there couldbe no virtue were there no vice ; no pleasure, were there no pain. Ecstasymight become painful by unlimited endurance.105. AVithout appetites and passions, an animal would be reduced tothe state of a vegetable, which lives without perception.106. The language held by certain sectarians on such subjects, seems tome often contradictory of the idea they strive to enforce. Thus theyrepresent that our sorrows and our pangs are intended for our amendment,or designed to prevent some greater evil here or hereafter; but what canjustify a painful remedj^, if there be power to adopt one which, whileequally efficacious, would be painless ?107. God is, on one side, represented as the cause of all the circumstancesunder which we exist;yet, on the other, is under the necessity ofafflicting us in order to remove or to remedy them ! If possessing bothability and disposition to reform us without causing us to sujffer, couldsuffering be inflicted consistently with all goodness ?108. Of a most excellent Roman Catholic I inquired whether it wasnot held by their church that a belief in their tenets was necessary to salvation? The reply was in the affirmative. And yet, said I, of all whodo believe, only those can be saved who do their Master's will,—who addgood works to an orthodox creed ? The reply was again affirmative. Ofall mankind, then, there is but a very small number, comparatively, whoare not, according to the creed in question, to go to hell? Again I receivedan affirmative reply. I would then (I rejoined) when I die, rathergo into an eternal sleep, than awake in heaven to find so many of my fellow-creaturesin endless misery, the mere knowledge of which would makeheaven itself a hell to a good-hearted angel.109. Another species of objection to the existence of spirits is, thatalthough movements of bodies are admitted to take place without any perceptibleor conceivable mortal agency, the existence of spirits as the causeis to be disbelieved, because the observers have not been successful in gettingrepliessuch as they think would have been given were spirits the source.110. Thus a very distinguished physician. Dr. Bell, has alleged thatnothing has in his investigations been communicated which was not previouslyin the mind of one or more mortals present. This is one of theinstances in which the assailant of Spiritualism founds his argument in hiserror. It is an argument which has no other basis than inaccurate information,because I am enabled to disprove the truth of the conclusion on whichthe inference is founded.