A suffering, sinning, and dying condition such as must ever remain while the belief of Soul in body and Intelligence in man or matter remains, cannot be preferable to the sinless joy and perfect harmony that a recognition of Life, as Spirit, possessing all beauty and good, without a single demand pleasure, or pain of body confers; why so many called “spiritualists” are very gross materialists is because they make personality Spirit and the only conscious existence, and rejecting a personal God, make a God of persons, which is equally fatal to the science of being; persons called “spirits,” instead of Principle that is Spirit and Truth, are their trust, while a belief in “spirits” belongs to the darker ages, and is demonology. There is but one Spirit, viz., God, Truth; in other words, Wisdom, Life, and Love; and nothing is real but what is good or the idea of goodness; evil has neither identity nor individuality, having no Principle.
Charles Sumner was a great man, because of hisunswerving adherence to right; he had, more than others, the true idea, and less than others, the beliefs of man. His professions were few, his acts colossal, his might was mind; not person but Principle, not man but God.
Science never caused a retrograde step in being, or a return to positions outgrown, or that Truth has destroyed. To admit the so-called dead and living commune together, is to decide the unfitness of both for their separate positions, and that a mistake occurs when a man dies to sense or lives to Soul. Any supposed midway between Life outside of matter, or in it, is a myth. We should either see the so-called dead, materially, or they should be advanced beyond our sight.
