DESCRIPTION

Published in 1854 | 290 pages | PDF reader required

EXTRACT FROM INTRODUCTION

The Records of communication with the high-born spirits of another sphere, now presented in the following pages, were made for the most part, without reference to the public. We took them down as worthy of preservation among our private records, and the thought never entered into our mind that they would be spread before the reading world, till we were called upon by our Spirit-monitors to know, whether we would confine such blessed intuitions of divine wisdom and love to our narrow circle, or give them forth to relieve and elevate a common Humanity. We were called to a sense of our responsibilities and privileges by being reminded that we were in danger of undervaluing those benign influences, intended to follow man from his cradle to his grave; that the knowledge of their enjoyment by any would serve to awaken our fellow-mortals to their just appreciation of most blessed privileges, and bring them to a sense of their gifts as men, inherited from their God, out of which so many have been cheated by false fears and unlicensed assumptions over their Spiritual Nature; that the most hallowed influences would every where accompany and surround these evidences of Spirit-influx, awakening desires, high and holy, that cannot be satisfied short of the great ultimate of universal good promised and found in the recognition of an eternal destiny: when each shall know that God is the Universal Parent—Man the Universal Brother, and an endless Union and Felicity the Universal End of all rational intelligences. We were fully satisfied, by the most graphic and enlightened evidences, that it was not to destroy or subvert any just conception of the good, useful, or beautiful in human organizations for mutual help; not to dim any exalted recognition of virtue, or virtuous conduct that makes the man and elevates him above the brutal tendencies of a misdirected fleshly nature; but to instil within the fermentations of his thought that which shall cause it to ascend in unison with every holy desire to be benefitted and to benefit others. We believe they will aid man, every man, rationally and charitably to regard the differences between man and man, and break down the despotic sway over human consciences, which has clouded and deadened their highest sense of right, and deprived many of recognising their true and common paternity in God. To beliefs that the recognition of the impress of God upon every heart, which Spirit-intercourse invariably invites, will breathe forth any thing but purity and preparative longings for the highest ends of virtuous devotion, is only to reveal, to the heart thus believing, its own traitorous enslavement to an authority that robs us of our highest aims in our estrangement from the fount of life immortal. Like seeks its like with unerring aim, and God recognised in the soul will only lead us to higher and purer knowledge of his purposes and ways. . ..