Glimpses Of The Next State.Pdf - Spiritualists' National Union

204long period of initiation He chose twelve men of psychic temperament, mostly ignorant,consequently passive, and went about teaching. When the conditions were favourable— this isdistinctly told us—he was able to perform supernormal acts — to raise the apparently dead, to healthe sick, to give sight to the blind, and to cast out evil spirits from those who were obsessed. On onesupreme occasion he is said—and this is the best authenticated narrative in his life—to have takenup into a mountain his three best mediums, and to have held what we should now call amaterialisation seance, when two eminent sensitives of a long-past age appeared. After his death heappeared in materialised form on a few occasions to those whom he judged worthy of themanifestation; and eventually he was levitated and disappeared from view, never to return inbodily form. We are not bound to believe that he ever resuscitated a corpse which had lain in thegrave three days, as the incident of the raising of Lazarus is not mentioned in the synoptic Gospels.Doubtless, the biography of this great and holy spirit is impregnated with various legends ofdoubtful authenticity; the broad facts—those, at least, mentioned in all three synoptic Gospels—bear the impress of truth. Our fainter and more limited experiences warrant us in giving themcredit. But though, probably, the most lofty spirit who ever lived upon the earth, Jesus Christ wasnot the only great teacher of historic times. The Welsh bard, Sir Lewis Morris, writesOthers were before Christ had come. 0 dear dead Teacher,whose wordLong before the sweet voice on the Hill, younghearts had quickened and stirred;Who spak’st of the soul and the life; with limbschilled by the rising death,Yielding up to thy faith, with a smile, the last gasp ofthy earthly breath;And thou, oh golden-mouthed sage, who, with brillianceof thought as of tongue,Didst sing of the Commonwealth fair, the noblest ofethics unsung;In whose pages thy Master’s words shine forth,sublime and refinedIn the music of perfect language, inspired by afaithful mind;And ye, Seers of Israel and doctors, whose breath wasbreathed forth to moveThe dry dead bones of the Law with the life of a larger love ;—Or thou, great Saint of the East, in whose footstepsthe millions have trod,Till from life, like an innocent dream, they pass’d andwere lost in God:—And thou, quaint teacher of old, whose dead words,though all life be gone,Through the peaceful Atheist realms keep the millionslabouring on;Shall I hold that ye, as the rest, spake no echo ofthings divine,That no gleam of a clouded sun through the mists ofyour teaching may. shine?Nay; such thoughts were to doubt of God. Yet