My Spiritual Journey.
in the late 1870’s….
All great truths begin as blasphemies. George Bernard Shaw.
At the time that Allan Kardec was investigating events in France, England had their own psychic phenomena. Here D.D. Home was in full flight. Reputedly the most amazing medium to have ever lived, he was born in Edinburgh in 1833, but initially brought up in Connecticut, U.S.A. and returned to England in 1855. He was reputedly able to levitate bodies, and was never apparently found to have falsified a psychic event.
A pastor of the Anglican Church, the Reverend William Moses Stainton was born in 1839. He graduated from Oxford in 1863, but had very poor health which was to trouble him all his life. Because of this he took up a curacy at Maughold on the Isle of Man. In 1868, in spite of the outrage of his congregation who were very fond of him, he took up a post in Douglas, Isle of Man. In 1870 he took up a position as English Master at University College School, London. He had for a time stayed with Dr & Mrs Speer in London, and was a close friend and confidant of Dr Speer. He undertook an investigation of spiritism on behalf of Mrs Speer which gained momentum from 1872 on, and discovered that he had psychic abilities.
A particularly beautiful set of messages were given to the Rev Stainton Moses, and have been published as Spirit Teachings. He found it very hard to reject the Anglican theology that he had studied and practised for so many years. These spirit messages are mostly focussed on trying to prove to him that there are new truths to learn. Given the extent of his powers of mediumship, it seems surprising to the outside observer how much proof he required. The Rev Stainton Moses returns many years later after his death to explain that the spirits who guided him did so to the best of their ability, but unfortunately lacked any knowledge of the Divine Love - the fundamental theme of the messages of the early and late 20th century. It appears that they were highly developed spirits within the spirit spheres, but were not of the Celestial spheres. But more of that later. It is however a salutary message that well-meaning spirits can deceive, simply because they lack the knowledge. This is doubtless the cause of many channelled errors.