Speech about Future Life Channing(Given on Easter Sunday, 1834 after the death of one of his friends)
We have been given a number of times in this Review, spontaneous
communications from the spirit Channing that does not contradict
his superiority of character and intelligence. Our readers will appreciate
below some passages of his texts when alive, using fragments of one of
his speeches, whose translation we owe to the kind support of one of our
subscribers. Considering that his name is not much known in France we
provide a short biography below as an introduction to his discourse.
William Ellery Channing was born in 1780 in Newport, Rhode-Island,
New York State. His grandfather, William Ellery, signed the famous declaration
of independence. Channing was educated at Harvard College,
to attend the medical school but his tastes and talents drove him towards
a religious career when in 1803 he became the minister of the Unitarian
Chapel of Boston. He then remained in that city where he professed the
Unitarian Doctrine, a protestant sect that counts on many followers
in England and in the USA, at the highest social echelons. He became known for his broad and liberal views and is counted as one of the most
prominent individuals in the US given his remarkable eloquence, his
many publications and his philosophical depth. A self-declared follower
of peace and progress he relentlessly preached against slavery and for that
he initiated such a fierce war against that institution, many liberals felt
his exceeding enthusiasm was harmful to his own popularity, sometimes
seemingly out of place. His name granted him authority among those
who fought slavery. He died in Boston at the age 62. He was replaced by
Gannet as leader of the Unitarians.
“To the great majority of people, heaven is almost always a world of
fantasy. It lacks substance. The idea of a world where the creatures
have no dense bodies, pure spirits covered by spiritual or ethereal
bodies seems fictitious to them. Something that cannot be seen or
touched does not seem real to them. That is sad but not surprising
for how can people, immersed in matter and its related interests,
not cultivating the acquisition of knowledge about the soul and its
capabilities, how can they understand a more elevated spiritual
life? To the crowds, someone that clearly and happily speaks about
future life and about the victory of the spirit against the corporeal
decomposition is a visionary dreamer. Such skepticism about
heaven and spiritual things is irrational and unphilosophical as
shameful.”
“And how irrational is the imagination that there aren’t other
worlds but this one and no other more elevated way of living than
ours! Who can doubt, after looking at the boundless Creation, that
there exist superior beings or see any irrationality in conceiving that
spirits do exist in a less circumscribed way, less bounded than here on
Earth, and that there is a spiritual world?”
“Those who have left us for another world must cherish an even more
profound interest for this one. Their links with the ones left behind
improve rather than dissolve. If the future state is a betterment of the
present one; if they must grow and expand in intelligence and love,
their memories, fundamental power of intelligence, must act upon
the past with an ever greater energy, and every lovely affection that
we enjoyed here must renew. The idea that this Earthly life would be
erased from the memory of the spirit would be the same as destroying
its utility; it would be the rupture of the link between the two worlds
and a subversion of responsibility, otherwise how could a forgotten
life be reached by punishment or reward? No. We must carry the present
with us, whatever the future may be, happy or unfortunate. It is
true that the good ones will build new and even stronger and more
sacred bonds; however, under the expanding influence of that better
world the heart will have a greater capacity to keep the previous
bonds while new ones are constructed. He will keep a kind memory
of his birthplace while enjoying a more mature and a happier life. If
I could imagine that those who have left this world are actually dead
for those who stay I would love them and honor them less. A man that
forgets those left behind seems deprived of the best feelings of our human
nature; and if the just in their new motherland were supposed to
forget their parents on Earth; if, approaching God, they were expected
to stop putting a good word for them, could we believe that such a
change was beneficial to them?”
“One could ask if those in heavens not only keep a cherished
memory of the ones left here on Earth but also that are aware of their
present and immediate condition. I have no reason to believe that
such awareness does not exist. We are used to thinking of heaven as
something far away from us, but there is no proof of that. Heaven is
the union, the society of spiritual beings. Can’t they populate the universe,
thus carrying heaven along with them everywhere? Is it likely
that those creatures are restricted, like us, by physical boundaries?
Milton said:
Millions of spiritual beings walk the Earth
Both when we wake and when we sleep.”
“A new sense, a new vision could show us that the spiritual world
surrounds us from all sides. But even if you suppose that heaven is far
away, there is no reason to believe that its inhabitants are not close
to us and we are visible to them. However, how do we understand
presence? Am I not present to those of you that I cannot reach with my
arm but who I can clearly see? Isn’t that in total agreement with our
knowledge about nature to suppose that those in heaven, regardless of
their dwellings, may have spiritual senses and organs through which
they can see at a distance as easily as we can see what is near us? Our
eyes can effortlessly see planets that are millions of miles away, and
with the help of Science we can even see the details of their surfaces.
We can even imagine a visual organ sensitive enough or an instrument
sufficiently powerful to allow for the detection of inhabitants
of those far away planets. Why then, those who have already entered
into a more elevated stage of their existences, covered by their spiritual
bodies, why wouldn’t they be able to contemplate our Earth as easily
as when it was their own dwelling?”
“That can be true and it is not an abuse to think so. It could be
abused. We don’t think of the dead as if they were contemplating us
with a partial Earthly love. They love us more than ever, but with
spiritual and renovated warmth. Their only wish is to see us worthy
of reuniting with them in their place of generosity and piety. Their
spiritual eyes penetrate our souls. If we were able to hear their voices
it would not be a declaration of personal attachment but a lively appeal
for better efforts on our side, to a firmer abnegation, to a broader
charity, to a humbler patience, to a more loving obedience to God’s
will. They breathe from the atmosphere of God’s benevolence and
their mission now is more important than it was here.”
“You may then ask: if the dead are aware of the hardships that
afflict us, would it follow that there is suffering in that blessed life?
My answer is that I cannot see heaven but as a world of sympathies.
It seems to me that there isn’t anything that may attract their attention
better than the misery of their brothers. But if that sympathy may
yield sadness on one side, it is far from making them unhappy. In our
inferior word, a selfless compassion, together with the power of lessening
the suffering of others, is a guarantee of peace, frequently leading
to the purest pleasures. Free from our current diseases and enlightened
by a broader vision from the divine governance, such sympathy
will provide more joy to the virtues of those blessed beings, and as any
other source of perfection, it will increase their happiness. The friends
who leave us for that other world are not among strangers; they don’t
feel the loneliness of someone that has exchanged his homeland for an
unknown country. The kindest human words of friendship are not
even close to the scores of felicitation that await them at the entrance
of that world. There the spirit counts on safer ways of revealing oneself
than here. The newcomer feels surrounded by virtues and benevolence
and by that intimate feeling of sympathetic spirits around him,
and new bonds may be instantaneously created, stronger than those
cemented by years of worldly relationships. The most intimate affections
in our world are cold when compared to those among the spirits.
How do they communicate? Through which language and organs?
We don’t know that but we do know that as the spirit progresses it
becomes easier to them to transmit their thoughts.”
“It would be a mistake to believe that the inhabitants of heaven
are limited to the reciprocal communication of their ideas. Those
who reach that level enter into a new state of activity, of life and
endeavors. We may think of the future state as something so happy
that nobody will need help there, that there is no more need for any
effort and the good ones have nothing else to do but to enjoy. Truth
is, however, that any activity on Earth, even the most intense, is similar
to a child’s game when compared to the activity and the energy
developed in that more elevated life. And that is how it must be since
there is no more active principle than intelligence, beneficence, love
for the truth, desire of perfection, sympathy for the sufferings and devotion to the divine works that form the widening principles of
life beyond the grave. That is when the soul has total awareness of
its capabilities; that the infinite truth unfolds before our eyes; when
we understand that the universe is a boundless sphere of discoveries
to science, to goodness and worship. Those new interests of life,
which reduce the current ones to nothing, multiply forever. Hence,
one must not imagine heavens as a motionless community. I envision
it as a world of prodigious plans and efforts for its own betterment. I
consider that as a society which has to go through successive phases of
development, of virtues, power and knowledge, through the energy of
its own members.”
“The celestial genius is always active, exploring the great laws
of creation and the eternal principles of the spirit; unveiling beauty
in the order of the universe and discovering the means of advancement
for each soul. There are different degrees of intelligence, as with
us here, and the most advanced spirits find happiness and progress
enlightening the ones behind. The education that was initiated here
continues there and a more divine philosophy than the one we learn
here revealing its very essence to the spirit, stimulating his joyful efforts
towards his own betterment. Heaven has a connection with the
other worlds. Its inhabitants are God’s messengers in the whole creation.
They have great missions to accomplish and given the progress
of their endless existence, they may be entrusted with the care of other
worlds.”
This speech was given in 1834. In those days there was not a word about
manifestations of the spirits in North America. Hence, Channing did
not know them. He would otherwise have stated that at certain points he
only mentioned it as a hypothesis. Nevertheless, isn’t that remarkable that
this man had foreseen with such accuracy what would only be revealed a
few years later, since apart from a few exceptions, his description of future life is in perfect agreement with that revelation? The only missing point
is reincarnation and if carefully examined one can see that his speech is
close to that, as with the manifestations of the spirits that he remains quiet
about since he did not know them. In fact he admits the spiritual world
around us, among us, plentiful of solicitudes towards us, helping us to
advance. From there to the direct communications there is only a step. He
also states that in the celestial world there is no perpetual contemplation
but activity and progress; he admits the plurality of the corporeal worlds,
but more or less advanced; had he admitted that the spirits could continue
their progress in those worlds and we would have the reincarnation right
there. Without it the idea of progressive worlds cannot be reconciled with
that of the creation of the souls at the moment of birth of the bodies, unless
one can admit the creation of more or less perfect souls and then it is
necessary to justify God’s preference. Isn’t it more logical to admit that if
the souls of a given world are more advanced than those of another it is
because they have already lived on inferior worlds? The same may be said
about the inhabitants of Earth, comparing the savage to the most civilized
among themselves.
In any case isn’t such a description of life after the grave for its logical
deductions more accessible to the most vulgar intelligence and acceptable
by the sternest reason, and isn’t that a hundred times more adequate
to lead to conviction and trust in the future than the horrible and inadmissible
picture of the endless tortures borrowed from the Paganism
of Tartarus? Those who preach such beliefs cannot imagine the number
of disbelievers that they generate and the number of recruits sent to the
ranks of materialism.
Notice that Milton who was cited in the speech above has an opinion
similar to Channing’s about the invisible world in our environment that
is also the opinion of the modern spiritists. The fact is, that Milton, as
well as Channing and many other notables, were spiritists out of pure
intuition. That is why we tirelessly repeat that Spiritism is not a modern
invention. It has occurred at all times because there were souls at all times
and the masses have always believed in the soul. Therefore we can find fragments of this idea in a large number of old as well as modern texts, sacred
and profane. Such intuition of the spiritist ideas is so general that we
daily see lots of people who are not at all surprised when they hear about
them for the first time. All that was missing was a formula for their belief.
