The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 13

The Inaugural Address

The Inaugural Address.

Assembled to consider subjects deemed important, we improve this opportunity to state our faith, purposes, and expectations. We denominate ourselves Spiritualists and the Friends of Progress.

We regard Spiritualism as a power that will lead us into fields which, if not wholly new, will quicken us to divine and useful lives, Ours is not merely a receptive state; we have learned both to wait and to labour. Each state has its place, each labour its time. The quiet shepherds received the glad tidings that the Christ was born, and they journeyed to the lowly manger to verify the message. Driven by the iron hand of persecution from Thessalonica, the apostles reached Berea, and it is recorded that the Bereans were more noble than the Thessalonians, because they "received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures to see if the things were so." We would imitate these noble souls, and

"Seek for truth where'er it may he found,

On Christian or on heathen ground."

If the Heathen, Hebrew, or Christian scriptures have within them important forms of thought, or seeds of unelaborated truth, we accept them with joy. It is our faith that a communication is opened with the spiritual worlds. Clear demonstrations have been afforded us that our fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, as well as Moses and Elias, live, and that they can and do commune with us. Their messages we much, value, affording us, as they do, satisfactory evidence of a future, immortal, and progressive life. Some of us have had serious doubts of an existence beyond the grave, and not a few have had fearful apprehensions that if they did live, they might be for ever tormented in flames unextinguishable. From those gloomy doubts and horrid fears we have been emancipated, and we now hold that God is our Father, man our brother, immortality our destiny. Besides, our hearts have been made glad by numerous assurances that the wonders recorded in the Jewish and Christian scriptures are not mere myths, but are narratives of sober, solid facts. And we now religiously believe that the sick men were healed, the blind made to see, the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, that prisons were opened and captives were liberated, that Joseph was warned in a dream to flee into Egypt with the young child and its mother, that Cornelius and Peter by spirit ministrations were brought together, and that through them light was given to the Gentiles, which before had shone only upon the Jews. We therefore commend the modern manifestations to all the world as being exceedingly useful in confirming us in the faith of many of the ancient revelations. Moreover, we have much reason to expect that many, and perhaps all the sacred gifts known to the ancient prophets, apostles, and early Christians, may be bestowed upon us; that we may also cast out devils, heal the sick, help the lame to walk, and, if we do not literally, yet spiritually, we hope to raise the dead. Spiritualists are the friends of perpetual progress, of impartial freedom, eternal justice, and universal peace; basing rights on capacity rather than on wealth, sex, clime, age, or complexion; seeking to abolish all vindictive punishments, substituting therefor reformatory institutions, they would teach the world that

"God loves the erring as a shepherd loves
The wandering sheep. No mother hates her child,
But, crusted o'er with evil, sin-defiled,
Cradles him in her bosom. All the world
May curse him, but it matters not to her,
She loves him better for his agonies.
God owns no power mightier than Himself,
God owns no power equal to Himself,
He never formed a soul He could not save."

Spiritualism has been much promoted by woman. Its best mediums have been of the finer, more sensitive, intuitional, and receptive sex. It will be the aim of intelligent Spiritualists to secure to her, in all the departments of life, the rights which she feels she can in love and wisdom use. On committees and councils she will hold important positions. "If we would know the political as well as the moral condition of a people," says De Tocqueville, "we must know the place which woman occupies. Where virtue reigns her influence is felt at every stage of man's existence. It awakens his earliest and tenderest emotions, and leaves upon his mind impressions which a long life cannot destroy." When Pythagoras passed into Italy to preach the supremacy of reason and the necessity of exercising control over the passions to secure true happiness, he selected woman as his fellow-worker in his glorious mission. His wife, his daughters, and fifteen noble females, accompanied him to Crotona, where he opened his schools. The success which attended his teaching and that of his noble coadjutors, in reforming the morals and the lives of the inhabitants of the principal towns of Greece, Sicily, and Italy, was looked upon as little less than miraculous. In ancient Rome woman held the highest position. The importance attached to the responses of the sybils, the sacredness with which the priestesses of Vesta were invested, and which placed them above the law, mark the importance attached to female organisation by that distinguished people. Nor was modern Rome less remarkable for the influences from time to time exercised by the female mind.

Lady Morgan has said, that while Constantine founded the empire of a church, in which he did not believe, upon the ruins of a religion to which he was superstitiously devoted, his mother Helena, with true feminine earnestness of purpose and intensity of affection, made use of her influence, her power, and her wealth, to give permanence to the teaching of Christianity, by founding temples exceeding in splendour, if not in beauty, those of Pagan worship, crowning all by the erection of the first church in the new capital of the world, dedicated to Divine Wisdom, clothed in a female form, and placed under the guardianship of Saint Sophia.

When Columbus had lost all hopes of obtaining further means to discover the New World, Isabella gave him her jewels. Joan of are saved France; and when all the men forsook the Son of God and fled, the devout women who had anointed and bathed his feet with their tears and wiped them with the hairs of their head, remained by his side, followed him to the Cross, and were earliest at the sepulchre.

That the human mind, heart, and conscience may with the greatest ease receive the highest moral, religious, social, and spiritual thoughts, education should be thorough, equal, and universal. To-day, in this great kingdom, there are millions who have never heard of Spiritualism, much less do they comprehend what is meant by rational liberty, useful conservatism, or intelligent progress. One of the first things that an enlightened Spiritualism will undertake, will be to open the best avenues to knowledge for the people. It will then have educated minds that it can address with hope of success. Millions in America are Spiritualists who would not have heard its glad notes had not the free common schools been opened to all the people. It is the lever by which the masses can and will be lifted up, in the Old as in the New World. A somewhat new class of persons are now in course of education called mediums. Some are healers of the sick, others are seers, not a few are teachers, and some are commissioned to travel from place to place and from nation to nation. Intelligent Spiritualists seek to aid this class of persons. They require tender care, education, food, garments, shelter. Whoever would build a home, or establish a school for the education and development of useful mediumistic persons, would deserve the gratitude of his kind, and would much assist in the promotion of our blessed work. The circulation of books, periodicals, tracts, the holding of circles, and the calling of meetings and conventions, all aid in the right direction. It is hoped that the phenomenalism of Spiritualism will yet take its place among the recognised facts of science with electricity and magnetism, and that it will be seen that man is a spiritual, as he is also a material being.

It is to be home in mind that this is a convention of Spiritualists and Progressionists. We study the past with profit, contemplate the future with hope. Our hearts having been much comforted and made glad by the modem revelations. We would do what we can to assist and educate others. We therefore have called this Convention, and invited such as would to come and hear, inquire and reason with us; and to the absent we send this our testimony. We desire to say with Alexander Pope—

"If I am right, Thy grace impart
Still in the right to stay;
If I am wrong, O teach my heart
To find the better way."

While we are mindful of the new light which has come to us from above, we wish not to overlook the things which pertain to this present life. Our Convention is open to all who are seekers for truth, and in these investigations each is privileged to use such instrumentalities as are at his or her command; and we trust it may be felt to have been good that we have met together, formed acquaintances, and interchanged opinions and feelings. It would be desirable that some efforts be made to form a simple, easy working organisation, that annually, or oftener, the Spiritualists and Progressionists of Great Britain might assemble, as does the British Social Science Association, to consider the various questions in which they might be specially interested. We noticed with sorrow last year that the justly honoured president of that useful body (Lord Brougham) took occasion to speak with some feeling against Spiritualism. We trust the time will come when we shall have a fair and candid hearing in that and similar bodies. In the future, when more advanced in wisdom and knowledge than now, the Spiritualists of this and other nations may form powerful organisations, after the pattern of the societary heavens, which shall develop and foster an equitable and beneficent commerce, build a broad, rational, and progressive church, establish schools and colleges, and construct a divine and, ever-unfolding government, the laws of which shall be in harmony with pure love, its "officers peace, its walls salvation, and its gates praise." At this moment our thoughts are not generally welcomed by the Church. We trust she will yet see, that her everlasting salvation rests upon the revealed fact of the reappearing. of the Head of the Church, and on it is based the hope that as he lives, so shall his followers live also. And we trust the intelligent and earnest secularist will see, that without the essential elements of our faith and hope, he cannot move the world to noble deeds, or inspire to a useful life.

This Convention has no fixed, settled creed; feeling, however, that in some particulars its members are agreed, with all due respect to the opinions of others, the following is presented for consideration, with the thought that it may hereafter, in whole or in part, be adopted:—

Declaration of Opinions, Facts and Purposes.

I. That the source of all wisdom, power, and goodness is God, in whom are all the elements of paternal and maternal love, which elements perpetually flow to all creatures, through all things and all dispensations.
II. That there are spiritual worlds in which living intelligences dwell, some or all of whom have inhabited mortal bodies in this or some material sphere.
III. That some of those spiritual beings have communed with us in the past, and do continue to commune with us in the present, for purposes of a useful, beneficent, and broadly redemptive character.
IV. That this communion has given us a firmer and more intelligent faith in the realities of the immortal life than we had before enjoyed, has comforted us in our numerous afflictions, labours, and trials, and has rendered us more mindful and considerate of our kind everywhere.
V. That through the aid of these modern manifestations and communings, there has been generated an earnest and interior desire, so to live, that when the summons comes to leave this mortal form, we may be ready to depart in peace with man, having hope of an immortal and ever unfolding life.
VI. That with a view to a more speedy extension of our faith, we hold this Convention, and recommend the holding of similar assemblages in other places, also the distribution of useful publications, the encouragement and support of able teachers, lecturers, and mediums; and we shall rejoice to co-operate with all who share these convictions in promulgating them throughout this land.
VII. We also earnestly invite the co-operation of all persons in practical efforts for the moral, social, religious, and spiritual elevation of our race, without prescribing any limit of thought or opinion to others; for believing in progress, and hoping to grow in wisdom and knowledge ourselves, we make no pledges that our opinions will be to-morrow precisely what they are to-day; and it is our conviction, that the spiritual beings who commune with us, will give us a better understanding of the law of development, and that they too are becoming wiser and better from age to age.

In conclusion it may be added, that as means are at its disposal, the association will find great pleasure in sending out missionaries, in developing and sustaining useful mediums, issuing publications, calling conventions, building halls and chapels, and engaging in such other labour as may aid in the reformation of the vicious, to the enlightening of the benighted, to the comfort of the sorrowing, tending to the complete redemption of the human race, preparing the way for Him who said, "Let not your hearts be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. I go to prepare a place for you, and I will come again, and will receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also."

Mr Spear having concluded speaking, the Convention went into a consideration of the principles embodied in the foregoing address and declaration. At a subsequent session it was discussed whether the Convention should adopt a series of resolutions, or "declaration of opinions and purposes," the same or similar to those read by Mr Spear, when it was recommended that they should be printed in the Report, in connection with his address, as a guide to inquirers, emanating from Mr Spear as an individual spiritualist; but that it would not be expedient to publish any such declaration purporting to come from the Convention, as a basis of belief adopted by all. In such a form it might be regarded as a fixed or settled creed, and trammel some minds with obligations to it, thereby retarding freedom of thought and individual search for truth.

The Convention then adjourned till the afternoon, when it was arranged that Dr M'Leod would open the proceedings by reading a paper.