Modern Religious Cults and MovementsTheosophy / New ThoughtScholarly ReconstructionEnglishShareModern Religious Cults and Movements 20Project Gutenberg #19051 - EnglishMoreVersion - 1 availableProject Gutenberg #19051LanguageEnglishEspañol‹Modern Religious Cults and Movements 2Modern Religious Cults and Movements 3Modern Religious Cults and Movements 4Modern Religious Cults and Movements 5Modern Religious Cults and Movements 6Modern Religious Cults and Movements 7Modern Religious Cults and Movements 8Modern Religious Cults and Movements 9Modern Religious Cults and Movements 10Modern Religious Cults and Movements 11Modern Religious Cults and Movements 12Modern Religious Cults and Movements 13Modern Religious Cults and Movements 15Modern Religious Cults and Movements 16Modern Religious Cults and Movements 17Modern Religious Cults and Movements 19Modern Religious Cults and Movements 20Modern Religious Cults and Movements 21Modern Religious Cults and Movements 23Modern Religious Cults and Movements 24Modern Religious Cults and Movements 25Modern Religious Cults and Movements 27Modern Religious Cults and Movements 28Modern Religious Cults and Movements 29Modern Religious Cults and Movements 30Modern Religious Cults and Movements 31Modern Religious Cults and Movements 32Modern Religious Cults and Movements 33Modern Religious Cults and Movements 34Modern Religious Cults and Movements 35Modern Religious Cults and Movements 36Modern Religious Cults and Movements 37Modern Religious Cults and Movements 38Modern Religious Cults and Movements 39›SpiritualismModern Religious Cults and Movements 20ListenPlay this chapter in spoken English.Save chapterListen to chapter1Practically all the newer cults are quests in one general direction but down more or less specific roads. Christian Science and New Thought are endeavours after health and well-being and the endeavour also to reconcile the more shadowed experiences of life with the love and goodness of God. Theosophy and kindred cults are quests for illumination and spiritual deliverance along other than the accepted lines of Christian "redemption." Spiritualism is practically the quest for the demonstration of immortality through such physical phenomena as prove, at least to those who are persuaded by them, the survival of discarnate personality. 2All these movements involve in varying degrees the abnormal or the supernormal. They imply generally another environment for personality than the environment which the ordered world of science supplies, and other laws than the laws of which it takes account. They are one in affirming the mastery of the psychical over the physical. They either affirm or imply faculties which do not depend upon the senses for their material; they suggest a range of personality which, if the facts which they supply are sound, demands a very considerable recasting of our accepted beliefs about ourselves. 3Christian Science and New Thought confine themselves largely to the present term of life, though Christian Science affirms strongly enough that death is an error of the mortal mind. New Thought places a shifting emphasis upon immortality. Spiritualism centers wholly upon the phenomena of the discarnate life, upon the power of the discarnate to communicate with us and upon our power to receive and interpret their communications. 4Spiritualism, or Spiritism, the name its adherents prefer, is, however, by no means so simple as this definition of it. It may be anything from the credulity which accepts without question or analysis the trick of a medium, to the profound speculation of Meyer or Hyslop or the new adventures in psychology of Emile Boirac and his French associates. It may be a cult, a philosophy or an inquiry; it may organize itself in forms of worship and separate itself entirely from the churches. It may reinforce the faith of those who remain in their old communions. Spiritism has a long line of descent. The belief that the spirit may leave the body and maintain a continued existence is very old. Mr. Herbert Spencer finds the genesis of this belief in dreams. Since primitive men believed themselves able, in their dreams, to wander about while the body remained immobile and since in their dreams they met and spoke with their dead, they conceived an immaterial existence. The spirit of a dead man, having left the body, would still go on about its business. They, therefore, set out food and drink upon his grave and sacrificed his dogs, his horses or his wives to serve him in his disembodied state. All this is familiar enough and perhaps the whole matter began as Mr. Spencer suggested, though it by no means ends there. 5The animism which grew out of this belief characterizes a vast deal of early religion, penetrates a vast deal of early thinking. Primitive man lived in a world constantly under the control of either friendly or hostile spirits and the really massive result of this faith of his is registered in regions as remote as the capricious genders of French nouns and the majestic strophes of the Hebrew Psalms, for the genders are the shadowy survivals of a time when all things had their spirits, male or female, and the Psalms voice the faith for which thunder was the voice of God and the hail was stored in His armoury. It would take us far beyond the scope of our present inquiry to follow down this line in all its suggestive ramifications. Animism, medieval witchcraft and the confused phenomena of knocks, rappings and the breaking and throwing about of furniture and the like reported in all civilized countries for the past two or three centuries, supply the general background for modern Spiritualism. (The whole subject is fully treated in the first and second chapters of Podmore.) 6Modern Spiritualism does not, however, claim for itself so ancient an ancestry. In 1848 mysterious knockings were heard in the family of John ‹Previous chapterModern Religious Cults and Movements 19Next chapterModern Religious Cults and Movements 21›Similar passagesBy tradition and source labelFind similarCompare selectedCompare with similarAsk Deep ThoughtSelect passages to search for parallels.Tap any verse to select it, then compare selected passages or ask Deep Thought. Public domain in the USA