Another writer in Light, a week earlier, could not understand how any one can deny the personal existence of the “Historical Christ!”
The Historical Christ! You might as well demand our belief in the historical Chronos—Time, in person—or the historical Ghost, in man or out of him. If the writer knew anything of the pre-Christian Spiritualism—anything of the true nature or even the meaning of the name—he would perceive the Historic Impossibility of the personal Christ. An “Historical Christ” is as much a nonentity as the historical Mrs. Harris. But, cui bono? I have no hope in these matters of any orthodox Christian Spiritualists. They have to learn the primary lesson, at last, that Historic Christianity was not founded on our facts until it had buried them! That it was the negation of Gnosticism, the antithesis of phenomenal Spiritualism. That it substituted faith for facts; a physical resurrection for a spiritual continuity, and a corporeal Christ for the trans-corporeal man.
The Christian Revelation leaves no room for modern Spiritualism, and they are logically, truly Christians who reject it! It recognises no other rising again except at the last day, and then only for the few who believed in Jesus (John vi. 40). The Christians have no other world but one at the end of this; no other spirits extant excepting their physical Christ and the devil.
People who will see nothing contradictory in direct opposites, no difference betwixt black and white, but rather the necessary duality of antiphonal truth, who can accept a misinterpretation of mythology for the Word of God, are of little account as witnesses for Spiritualism. They who tell a story about the whale swallowing Jonah are not likely to be credited when they come with another that looks very like Jonah swallowing the whale. Professed believers in the literal truth of the Gospel fables are of necessity “Suspects” as witnesses for abnormal and extraordinary facts.
Pointing to his antagonist on the platform, O’Connel once enquired of his audience, “Can ye believe a single word that a gentleman says who wears a waistcoat of that colour?” It was yellow, and they couldn’t.
What is the use of taking your “Bible oath” that this thing is true, if the Book you are sworn upon is a magazine of falsehoods already exploded or just going off?
Moreover, the Christian Priesthood has been preaching through all these centuries that the dead do not return; and the living have believed them.
Dr. Sprenger has calculated that nine million persons have been put to death as Witches, Wizards, or Mediums, since 1484, when Pope Innocent VIII. issued his Bull against Spiritualism and all its practices, which were considered to be the works of the devil.
Besides, if the Christian scheme of damnation be true, as assigned to the teaching of Jesus, no humane person should want to know that there is any hereafter.
Spiritualism can make no headway where it has to draw after it this dead weight of a tail.