{ title: 'The sunflower. (Lily Dale, N.Y.) 1898-19??, March 15, 1900, Page 1, Image 1', download_links: [ { link: 'http://www.loc.gov/rss/ndnp/ndnp.xml', label: 'application/rss+xml', meta: 'News about NYS Historic Newspapers - RSS Feed', }, { link: '/lccn/np00180001/1900-03-15/ed-1/seq-1/png/', label: 'image/png', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/np00180001/1900-03-15/ed-1/seq-1.pdf', label: 'application/pdf', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/np00180001/1900-03-15/ed-1/seq-1/ocr.xml', label: 'application/xml', meta: '', }, { link: '/lccn/np00180001/1900-03-15/ed-1/seq-1/ocr.txt', label: 'text/plain', meta: '', }, ] }
Image provided by: Marion H. Skidmore Library
SpiritualismTheosoph y Higher Criticism PsychiccienceAstrologyPalmistr S yHypnotism VOLUME 4. Som e c a l l i t E v o lution , A n d O th e r s c a l l i t G o d ,^ A firemist and a planet, A crystal and a cell; A jelly fish* and saurian, And caves where the cave men dwell. Then a sense of law and beauty, And a face turned from the clod, Some call it evolution, And others call it God. Like tides on a crescent sea-beach, When the moon i s new and thin, ^Into our hearts high yearnings Come welling and surging in com e frofti the mystic ocean, Whose rim no foot has trod, Some of us call it longing, And others Call it God. A haze on the far horizon,' The infinite tender sky, The ripe, rich tint of the cornfields, A n d the wild goose sailing high; And all over upland and lowland The charm o f the golden rod, Some,of us call it autumn, Apd others call it God. A picket frozeruon duty, A mother starved for her brood, Socrates drinking the hemlock, A Jesus on the rood; Ana millions who humble and nameless The straight hard pathway trod, Some call it consecration, And others call it God. A soul struggling up to the sunlight tip from the mire and the clay, wars and jungW , - And sometimes learning to pray, And sometinfes a king with a scepter, And sometimes a slave with a hod— Some people call it Karma, And others call it God. Glimmering waters and breakers, For on the horizon’s rim, White sails and sea-gulls glinting, Aw a y ’till the sight* g row s dim; And shells, spirit painted with glory, Where sea-weeds beckon and nod, Some people call it ocean, And others call it God. Cathedrals and domes uplifting. And spires pointing up the sun, I mages, altars and arches, where kneeling and penance are done, from organs, grand anthems are swell-ing, Where the poor and the needy still plod, some call it superstition, While others call it God. garth redeemed and made glorious, Lighted by heaven within; and angels brought face to face, W ith never a thought of sin— Lion and lamb together lie In the flowers that sweeten the sod, Some of us call it brotherhood, And others call it God. D r . G eo . W. C a r e y . ORTHODOX MINISTERS AND THEIR WORK. BY \THE NATURALIST.*’ ♦ I Believe that the influence o f the minis- ters, is in a general sense for good. They teach a narrow religion with a great deal of nonsense in it. They be lieve that the Sabbath should be not a day o f rest and recreation, but a day of sprayer, penitence and gloom. Some of them swallow and teach the truth of all the ridiculous incidents in the New and Old Testaments—the vague imaginings of semi-crazed Hebrews, or the work of the professional humorists of the time* | They almost stand solidly for the as sertion that Jonah abode for some time in the belly of a great fish; that the sun stood still at the command of Joshua; LILY DALE, N. Y., MARCH 15, 1900. MRS* LO R A H O L T O N . that the Israelites were fed in the desert by food from heaven; that the Red Sea parted to let them through dryshod; that the ass really did speak; although they differ to whether it was the ass being rode or the one doing the riding; that Joseph really did refuse to gratify the Lady Potiphar; that Eve held converse with a snake; that Sodom and Gomor- rah were destroyed by a rain o f fire be cause they were wicked; that Lot’s wife was turned into a pillar of salt because she got too fresh—all of the things of mystery, myth and obscenity with which a great book is disfigured. They advo cate hymns understanding well the effect o f music upon -the passions and its ten dency to assist in the production of hys teria, they employ it lavishly in “con verting” hearers and causing them to make monkeys of themselves. Still their influence is for good. They lead some men and women from the ways o f healthfulness. They prove to many, who think themselves perfect, that they need cleansing almost as much as their unfortunate brothers and sisters of the jails and the streets. Their “conversions,” made by emotional natures on religious things, seldom last long, but while they last they have a tendency to decrease crime. This much may be said for them, what ever may be truly said against the inso lent familiarity with which they approach the Deity, the almost impiousness of some of their loosely worded invocations. Some are more popular than others be cause there is more of them; such was Moody, he bulked big. Yet the holy beauty of religion w a s a blank to him. He needed noise and he made it. His life w a s one of constant labor. He wore as good clothes as a Talinage or a Frances Murphy; ate as good food and slept in high-priced palace, cars or steamer berths when on his long travels; such men work bard for these comforts and are entitled to them. M o o d y 's death caused a dis tinct gap in evangelistic work and his wife received bushels of condoling tele grams. ’Tis strange, yet true; the press did not honor Moody with by one-fourth the space they gave to our friend Rob't G. Ingersoil. If you are not a subscriber Send 10 Cents in Silver A n d rece iv e The Sunflower THREE MONTHS. n n JJU n t i n DO THE LIVING Hear From The Dead. Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. I T ’S a n a w fu pity, when a word would mean so much, that it’s no’ permit ted, though it were but to keep a heart from breaking, now and then. This wail, floated from some chaos whence the outcries o f human bereave ment arise and haunt us, has echoed about me since 1 was asked to contribute to this discussion. Is it “not permitted?'* A thousand readers of this paragraph—it were safe to number them by tens of thousands— would be swift to say “it is permitted, for we ourselves have heard it.” W e believe it* when you prove it, retort the sceptics of the subject. And these are a vast multi tude. To answer a question like this in a thousand words is like disposing o f the doctrine of evolution in a paragraph. It calls for twenty thousand or none at all. From the amoeba to man is a long stride but the patience o f science has been as long. ‘From man to spirit is a large step as far as that of the Angel in the Apoc alypse who “ set his right foot upon the sea and his left foot on the earth.” What scientist of the soul will span the vast and thrilling distance? The great difficulty in deciding whether the dead and the living can communicate lies partly in the unclassified condition of the facts, but more in the unclarified con dition of the conclusions which have been drawn from them. Psychical research has done the subject a great and faithful service, but it has not yet found its Dar win. From the descent to the destiny of man is the natural step. We need text books o f psychical phenomena which might become to the higher investigation what “The Descent of M a n ” and “The Origin of Species,” have been to the lower science. There are new heaverfs as well as a new earth. The higher fact demands the higher evidence. A certain attitude of spirit to wart 1 mystery may be as neces sary as a judicial attitude of mind. One of the most interesting things about the whole matter, as modern thought has handled it, is that some of its conscientious students have actually developed a spirit ual attitude, and seem to have done so as a result of having studied the subject. NUmBER 2 5 . It is a fact, whose significance we have not begun to understand, that several eminent scientists and scholars in this country and Great Britain have definitely evolved from their investagition into the phenomena o f wonders a faith in spirit ual existence, and have definitely acknowl edged this evolution. In tw o or three cases this has gone so fair that a great scientific master has not even shied at the word Spiritualist—a term which, for reasons that we need not dwell\ on here, has few attractions for most instructed minds. But neither psychical research or spirit ualism, neither scholars nor dreamers, have yet brought the great mass of “ won der tales” which lies piled from the bound aries of human woe to the gates of mystery into an available or helpful form. In their present incoherence they confuse as much as. they comfort. If I am to answer the personal question I, for one, have no troublesome doubts whether the dead ever communicate with the living. I certainly believe that they do that they always have, and that they always .will, until the walls between life and death are demolished. Bui I do not hold this as a demonstable belief. It is not mathematical like astronomy, nor in the nature of the evidence can it be pal pable, like chemistry. If held at all, it i,a to be held candidly on a plane above mathematics and ; beyond' physics. It must be held on somewhat the sam e grounds as those on which a Christian believes in prayer - by a higher evidence, by a finer philosophy ’ than that which governs the observatory or the laboratory; between such a belief and certain forms of difference from it there can be no com mon ground. It was suggested some years ago by an observant wit that, in view o f the trend o f materialism—at that time more fashionable than it i s now— mourners hearafter be given front seats at geological lectures and the most deep ly bereaved provided with chip-hammers wherewith to collect specimens. Admit that the science of the soul is yet in its infancy. W h y . not approach the study of it w ith as much attention, fairness and patience as w e would offer to a dissecting-room? Death is mystery but it is not magic. There is a sane foot ing to be found between giving one’s self over, soul and body, to sorcery—and a systematic neglect of the most tremend ous subject which can lay claim to human attention. “ H o w can God bear the suffering of this earth?” said ;■ Dr. Holmes once, with streaming tears. “ The great hum of its misery is forever spinning in His eves!” Ffrom the defeated battle-field o f beaten lives the moan of bereaved love “contin ually does cry to heaven.” Somewhere in the prismatic mist between faith and reason there must be something more than endurance and resignation possible to a broken heart. A stranger, writing to me out o f the depths of a profound sorrow, related a beautiful and touching dream in which she had found comfort. Her dead father, whom she dearly loved, met her so she thought, in a strange place, and express ed at the meeting a joy as impetuous as her own. “ Oh, father!” she began to say “ since I saw yon 1 have suffered so”— Immedediately at the word “suffer” the father turned his face aw a y and his at tention suddenly left her. When she chang ed the subject it returned at once. At the word “suffering” again it left her. In a short time she discovered that, while to all other topics he was joyously alert to the themes of pain and grief the happy spirit was apparently entirely deaf. The greatest obstacle, theoretically speaking, to a belief that the dead are
