Page:Science and Health.djvu/71

Rh Conservatism never was right, absolute Truth is all that is right, and absolute error is easier made right than a half-way position. Mediumship assigns to their dead a condition worse than blighted buds or mortal mildew, even a poor purgatory where one's chances for something narrow into nothing, or they must return to the old stand-points of matter.

“He is not dead but sleepeth.” Jesus knew Lazarus was in the dream of a midway condition when Truth wakened him; if we could do this, we might claim his spirituality. Until the imaginary connection between the so-called dead, named “spirits,” and those supposed to be living in matter is destroyed, mortal man is not dead, only changed, for the immortal is not gained, and belief can gather itself on the wrong side of the question, and continue the old conclusion of Life in matter; this, however, is far from the science of being. When Life is really gained outside of matter, it is understood, in which case the belief that Life was ever in the body is gone and cannot be resurrected; our friends thus advanced are Spirit, that never rose from dust and can no more return to, or commune with matter than a blossom can return to its bud.

The period required for the dream of Life in matter embracing pleasures and pains of personal sense to vanish, “no man knoweth, not the son but the Father.” It will be of longer or shorter duration according to the period of error, before the reality of being is understood and eternal Life won. What advantage then would it be to us, or the departed, to prolong this state, by prolonging the belief of Life in matter.

There is not as much evidence of intercommunion