“Is there anything definite about death in the Bible? I believe there is. I think if you follow me, you will find there are six things revealed to us about life after death. The first is that the man is the same man. Instead of death being the end of him, he is exactly the same five minutes after death as five minutes before death, except having gone through one more experience in life. In the second place the character grows after death; there is progress. As it grows in life so it grows after death. A third thing is, we have memory. ‘Son, remember’, that is what was said to Dives in the other world. Memory for places and people. We shall remember everything after death. And with memory there will be recognition; we shall know one another. Husband and wife, parents and children. Sixthly, we still take great interest in the world we have left”.
The good Bishop gets all this out of the Bible, and quite rightly. We hope no heresy-hunter will accuse him of “selecting” his texts and ignoring the hell-fire ones.
So far as earth-language can go, the foregoing represents the probable truth regarding the after life. If we inquire for details, we shall get nothing very satisfactory. If we ask a spirit concerning what he does—how he occupies himself—he will either say he “cannot explain so that you will understand” or will tell about living in houses, going to lectures, teaching children, and the like. All this is obviously symbolical. Any communications that a discarnate entity can send must, to be intelligible to us, be in human earth-language; and this language is based on sense-experience. After death, experience is different, for we no longer have the same bodily senses—eyes, ears, etc.: consequently no explanation of the nature of spiritual existence can be more than approximately true; yet such expressions as living in houses, going to lectures, and the like, may be as near the truth as earth-language can get. If a bird tried to describe air-life to a fish, the best it could do would be to say it is something like water-life, but there is more light, more ease of movement, more detail, more things of interest and beauty. Of the wonders of sound—skylark’s song, human choruses, instrumental symphonies—no idea could be conveyed to the fish. Probably our friends in the next stage of existence have, in addition to the experiences which they can partly describe, other experiences of which they can give us absolutely no idea. They have been promoted. Their interests and activities have become wider, their joys greater. Yet they are the “same” souls, as the butterfly is the “same” as the chrysalis from which it has arisen. But to know exactly what it feels like to be a butterfly, the caterpillar and chrysalis have to wait Nature’s time. So must we.
[1] Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. xvii, pp. 181-3.
PSYCHICAL RESEARCH: ITS METHOD,
EVIDENCE, AND TENDENCY.
Spiritualism and Psychical Research are to the fore just now, and there is much newspaper and vocal discussion, based for the most part on ignorance, particularly as regards the violent attackers of these things. It is desirable that exact knowledge of the subject should become more general, and in a recent volume I have tried to review the whole subject impartially.[2]
But there are many who in these stressful days have no time for even one volume on this kind of thing, and for them, or such of them as may read this, I have tried in the present article to give an idea of what psychical research is, on the spiritualistic side, omitting the medical side which concerns itself with suggestive therapeutics. The article was first written as a paper which was read before a society of clergy in Bradford, whose request for it was a significant and pleasing indication that ministers are aware of the importance of the subject. They are realising that psychical research is a powerful support to religious faith, and that its results provide comfort for the bereaved. We live in a scientific age, and the sorrowing heart asks for more than a text and an assurance that it is God’s will and all for the best; it asks whether it is a fact that the departed one still lives and knows and loves, whether it is well with him, and whether there will be reunion “over there”. Psychical research enables us to answer these questions in the affirmative. Science is now backing up religion, and is providing ministers with by far the best weapon against materialism and so-called rationalism. It meets these negative ’isms on their own ground, and does not need to take cover under intuition or personal religious experience, which are convincing only to the experient. I am not belittling these; I am only saying that the phenomenal evidence is more potent for the scientific type of mind, and that a knowledge of this evidence is useful to those who are defending religion.