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March 30th, 1916
Received: by James Padgett.
Washington D.C.
I am here, Samuel.
I desire to continue my message
on the subject of the continuous life of a man after the death of
the body, as shown by the manifestations of nature.
As I was saying, the apparent death and resuscitation of things
of the vegetable kingdom, do not furnish any argument that man will
continue to live after the death of the physical body. Now I know
it is difficult to understand what there can be in the manifestations
of nature to prove such persistent life, and that the people for
whose benefit I am writing this will not be willing to use evidence
of things of a spiritual nature to prove this continuous life, and
hence, I will confine myself to matters material.
Well, in the first place, there is no such thing as the death of
anything in all the material universe of God. Every primal element
has life in it, even though that life may not be apparent to the
consciousness of men, but it is a fact. Every atom or electron,
as the scientists term these particles of matter that are reduced
to their infinitesimal proportions, is pregnant with life; and the
very apparent decay of material substances is nothing more nor less
than the results of the operation of the life that they contain,
working out the changes of form or expression.
If the scientists will investigate and analyze the constituents
of particles of all matter, notwithstanding that they appear to
be devoid of the life principle, he will find that life, in some
of its expressions, is contained in these particles, and that there
is nothing in the material things of nature that is completely inert.
There is no such thing as inertia - it only appears to exist; and
while it may not be apparent to the natural eye that everything
in the material has life within itself, and as a result therefrom,
there is force and motion, yet such is the fact.
This life principle permeates everything - applies to and forms
a part of everything that has the appearance of natural existence.
The grain of sand on the seashore or the dust of the decayed tree
has within it life, and this life is no more nonexistent or absent
from these material things, than are the elements that compose this
visible form of matter ever lost or without existence. It is true
that these elements change their forms and their compositions, yet
they never cease to exist, or become nothing. Nothing means a void,
and in God's creation there is no void. Everything is of substance
and there are no vacancies unfilled.
And hence, as life is the foundation principle of existence and
life exists everywhere, and there being no void in nature, life
permeates everything, whether visible to the mortal eye or senses
or not.
When that which is material decays or disintegrates, it does not
do so as the result of the absence of life, but as the result of
the operation of this principle of life upon the material in such
a way as to cause the separation of its elements, and their change
into new forms and appearances.
I know it is said that the workings of the elements; that is fire
and water and air and chemicals known and unknown, cause the disintegration
or even the disappearance of things material, but this is not strictly
true, for these elements do not affect these things themselves,
as a primary result of their workings, but what they affect is the
life within these materials, and as that life lessens or changes,
the materials of which that life is a part disintegrate or dissolve,
as is sometimes said, into thin air; and never does any part of
the material substance, no matter how minute it may come to be,
die - that is, in the sense of losing life.
Life is a thing of such delicate nature, and is so susceptible
to a division or reduction to a smallness almost to infinity, that
no substance can become so small that life is not a part of it and
the vital principle of its existence.
As is known, the solid rock may be reduced not only to dust but
to a liquid and then to a vapor and then to a gas and then to that
that is not sensitive to the consciousness of men, and yet the life
principle exists in all these forms of that material rock; and that
which ultimates (finally goes) into apparent nothingness, contains
life just as does the original rock, or any of its subsequent forms
in the process of reduction to seeming extinction.
The materialist accepts these phenomena as true, and blindly and
with full assurance announces that nothing in creation is ever lost
or annihilated. This being true, why is not the conclusion logical
that the apparently inanimate rock or the animal without reasoning
powers or the man with the reasonable faculties, is never annihilated
or lost; or in other words, never dies the death that results in
nothingness!
But they say, while this may be true, yet the materials which form
these various aspects of existence do not necessarily or probably
come together again and reform the identical being that once appeared
as an existing thing and then dissolved into the elements that composed
the thing; and hence, while the elements in some form may continue
to live forever, yet that form in which they once existed will not
again appear. I know that this is a reasonable conclusion and one
in accord with the demonstrations of science, and is applicable
to the merely physical man just as to any other manifestations of
the material things of nature.
But even these materialists admit that in the case of man, there
is something in his formation and essential being that is more than
or in addition to the merely physical portions of him, and while
they may say that this something is wholly of a material nature,
yet they admit that it is of a material different and distinct from
the material that forms the visible physical body.
I do not speak of the soul or spiritual part of man, but of the
intellect and of the five senses and of the reasoning powers, all
which, of course, includes the memory. That part of man that embraces
these things, the materialists must admit, is distinct and different
from the mere body, and, even though it were here to be conceded
that they are material, yet no man has ever seen them or felt them
or in any way perceived their existence as he has that which he
knows to be of the material. He has seen and heard and known the
effects of the existence of these invisible material qualities,
as he may call them, but has never demonstrated that they died when
the physical body died. The furthest that he can go in this direction
is that they disappeared and became lost to his consciousness; but
that they disintegrated or dissolved or were reduced to a gaseous
substance or thin air, in which he has seen the visible physical
body disappear, he cannot affirm. The limit of his knowledge is
that with the death of the physical body, this other, as he terms
it, material part of man disappears and never again reappears to
his physical senses.
As I say, he has never observed and has no knowledge of any disintegration
of these invisible material parts of man into any primary elements
or atoms or electrons, as he applies such terminology to the physical
body, and hence he is not justified in concluding that any such
results to this invisible material follows the death and dissolving
of the flesh and blood and bones of man. To so conclude is more
of a speculation than to hold that the invisible material did not
dissolve into forms more invisible, if such an expression can be
used.
As I have said, life is in all things, visible and invisible, and
there is no vacuum in nature. While man is living it is demonstrated
that life is in this invisible part of man, and more abundantly
than in the merely visible body; and as life continues after death
in the elements of this latter body, why cannot we declare that
after death life continues in the invisible part of man? Nothing
is ever lost or annihilated, and hence these parts of man cannot
be annihilated, and existing they must contain life.
Has the materialist ever been able to demonstrate to his own satisfaction
even, that this invisible part of man, which he says is material,
ceases to live? He cannot say that the elements of the physical
body, no matter what form they may assume, cease to live, but on
the contrary affirmatively asserts that they are never annihilated
and continue to exist; and as life is necessary to existence they
must continue to have life.
So according to their own arguments and demonstrations and ultimate
claims, the death of the physical body does not destroy the elements
which compose that body but only the form in which these elements
were combined. Then from this the most that they can claim as to
the invisible material part of man is, that while the material which
composed this part is not dead or annihilated, yet their formation
may be disintegrated or changed; and hence the identity of the man,
as to this portion of him, no longer exists. But this conclusion
does not follow as a logical sequence, and the materialist has nothing
upon which to base this conclusion, except that he has seen and
knows that when the visible body dies it disintegrates and ultimately
disappears.
He has never seen the disintegration of this invisible part of
man, though he has seen its manifestations decay and even destroyed;
but the cause of this is shown to be some decadence or disorganization
of some part of the visible body through which the invisible manifested.
These materialists have knowledge of the facts that men have been
deprived of their arms or legs or other parts of the body, and yet
the invisible parts remained perfect, performing their functions.
Also it is true, that men have received injury to their physical
organs of sight or hearing, and, as a consequence the invisible
organs of sight or hearing did not function, but that fact constitutes
no proof that they were dead or had ceased to preserve the form
they had before the physical organs were impaired; for when the
defects of the physical organs were removed and these organs again
came into condition to do their functioning, the invisible faculties
of sight and hearing manifested their existence again just as they
had existed before the physical organs were impaired. And so many
similar instances might be referred to, to show that death or destruction
of any or many parts of the visible body does not destroy or disseminate
into its elements the invisible material part of man.
And besides, let the materialists consider the great difference
in the powers and objects of the creation of these visible and invisible
parts of man, and they will realize that the purely physical is
wholly subordinated and used merely to enable the invisible parts
to manifest themselves, and show that the real man is the invisible
part, and that man can lose part of his physical vestment, and yet
exist and perform his functions and exercise his powers.
I have thus tried to show that no argument can be drawn from any
analogy between the vegetable things of nature, dying and coming
to life again, and man's dying. Yet neither can any argument be
drawn from the fact that the visible body of man dies and goes into
its elements never to be resuscitated again as the same body, to
show that the invisible body of man dies and is dissolved into its
elements, and that man ceases to be the individual that he was before
the death of the physical body.
I may not have made my message as plain and convincing as I would
desire, but in discussions of this kind it is difficult to transmit
the various shades of thought through the medium of a mortal. I
thank you for your courtesy and will stop now. So with all my love
and the blessings of the Father, I will say good night.
Your brother in Christ,
Samuel
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