Miscellaneous Teaching.
On the leading points of faith as held by Christians generally, quotations have been given to show sufficiently what the spirits teach, and the object they are trying to effect. But the reader will be interested to learn what they teach on some other points which incidentally appear in their communications.
Spiritualists object most strenuously to the idea of unconsciousness in death, or to the Bible declaration, “The dead know not anything.” But the spirits themselves teach this very thing. Thus Judge Edmunds, Vol. II, Appendix B, p. 524, quotes the confession of a spirit that he was totally unconscious for a time, he could not tell how long, and awoke to consciousness gradually; and that the state of unconsciousness differs with different persons, depending on circumstances. A. J. Davis admits that Professor Webster was eight days and a half unconscious.—“Death and the After Life,” pp. 18, 19.
Through Mrs. Conant, medium, in Banner of Light, June 3, 1865, we have this information: “It is said that some spirits require a thousand years to awake to consciousness. Is this true?—Yes, this is true.” In “Automatic Writing,” p. 93, the spirits teach the same thing to-day. If others deny such statements, it only shows that their testimony is contradictory and therefore unreliable.
Again, the Bible doctrine that the incorrigibly wicked must cease from conscious existence, is denounced by Spiritualists; but on this point the spirits confess also:—
“Ques.—Do I understand you to say that a diakka is one who believes in ultimate annihilation?
“Ans.—Only yesterday one said to a lady medium, signing himself ‘Swedenborg,’ this: ‘Whatsoever is, has been, will be, or may be, that I am, and private life is but the aggregative phantasms of thinking throblets rushing in their rising onward to the central heart of eternal death.’—“Diakka” p. 11.
“Q.—Does every human being continue life on higher planes?
“A.—Shall not all who are abortions die?”