Show THE IMTOETAL PART A Belief in the Theory of Spiritualism Spirit-ualism Expressed by Rev John P Newman The sermon preached by the Rev Dr J P Newman at the Madison Avenue Congregational Church last Sunday has excited considerable comment His subject was Do the Dead Return the sermon being one of a series on the immortality of the soul He took the position that the spirits of the dead inhabit an invisible invisi-ble world and that communications are received from them Dr Newman New-man in conversation yesterday with I a Tribune renorter said There has been a belief in spirits among nearly all nations and that there is an intermediate state has been almost universally believed In Bible times the two worlds met There was communication between them as there is now between New York and Londonnot so frequently fre-quently of course If spirits exist the question comes as to what forms they have In the first place I say that where there have been appearances appear-ances the spirits have been in human hu-man form It is a physiological fact that the human soul is coextensive coexten-sive with the nervous system If you take away everything from the body but the nervous tissues you still have left the human form Death is the evolution of the soul out of this system of the human bodyDo Do you believe in a communication communica-tion with departed spirits Nothing is more clearly taught in the Bible Not less than five persons per-sons are recorded there as having returned Christ had preexistence preexist-ence During the three days intervening inter-vening between his death and resurrection re-surrection his spirit is represented as absent from the body First He visited Paradise for He told the I thief on the cross that He would i meet him there the day of his death Then He went to Gal enna for He preached to the spirits who afoie time were disobedient The scriptural scrip-tural record is in I Peter iii 19 There is no doubt some accepted His teaching This is presupposed by the fact of His preaching to them He then returned to the earth and is to return again e jWas Christ in the flesh or the spirit in your opinion after the resurrection re-surrection He took up His body again but it underwent a transformation before be-fore His ascension Then there are the cases of Samuel Moses and Elijah Moses represented the disembodied dis-embodied snirits and returned after an absence of 1500 years Elijah repiesenting the embodied spirits he was translated you know returned re-turned after 1000 years What was their mission t They were evidently a committee commit-tee of two sent from the spirit world to inquire of Christ whether he felt himself competent to make their heaven permanent by his death on the cross They were familiar with this world they knew where Christ was what mountain top he was on praying they knew that he was to die in Terusalema future event Did you make use of Pauls casein case-in your argument Yes that is another example Under the law of leyitatiou he was caught up to the third heaven and heard as he said things not lawful Ijr him to utter He came back and lived twenty years after this event It was to him the inspiration inspira-tion of his ministry and enabled him to endure martyrdom He is the only man that ever longed for death He knew all about it He had been there What do you think of Sweden bores theories There can be no doubt that he is correct in his assertions that the spirits of his friends came to him and communicated him There are many cases wherd there seems to be this communication of spirits When the father of the eloquent Buckminster was dying in New Hampshire he suddenly exclaimed My son is dead His son aid die at that very moment in Boston I buried a precious woman a few years ago Her only son was in Iowa While plowing in a field he suddenly sudden-ly stopped and said his mother was dead The young mans father who is a mathematician made a calculation calcula-tion and found that the death and the impression received by the son were coincident in point of time to the moment How did you get this evidence r From the father and son Iknow them both well In what way do you account for the transmission of such mtfilli gence The mothers spirit may have communicated it to him I have had several remarkable instances of a similar character to those I have cited in my own life Do you believe In verbal messages mes-sages from the spirit world as well as spirit impression Stepping away from necromancy and things of that sort there are persons I believe who are messengers messen-gers of the spirit world By what means do they come in possession of this power Faith is a condition These per sons yield themselves to the influence influ-ence Others through them by consenting con-senting and expressing faith may receive communications Is moral character a condition JBadT spirits may communicate through bad persons Do you believe in the theory that the spirits of the dead are familiar with the condition and acts of the living Just as the angels rejoice over a repentant sinner our dead friends are familiar with our condition and are our companions A great army of evil spirits are the companions of the wicked While it is lieauti ful to celebrate All Souls day in praying for the dead it is a wonder to one that nothing is said of the dead praying for us which is a great Bible truth Itis stated in Revelations that the prayers of the saints are as precious incense ascending from golden censers Is it not usual for a clergyman to declare his belief in the communication commu-nication of spirits It is exceptional for one of us to take up the subject and treat it log ically and philosophically Many of the clergymen speak of the existence exist-ence of spirits in a sentimental way and for the rhetorical effect May they not do this and yet not believe in spiritualistic doctrines They do wrong if they do How long have you entertained your theories on this subject For twenty yearsNew York 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