The star and Newark advertiser., 1908-04-06
SAYS CURTAIN OF
SPIRIT WORLD MAY
Be RUNG Up SOON
New Way of Looking at Ghosts
Presented by Orange
Preacher.
ON EVE OF DISCOVERIES
AS TO psychic FORCES
The Rev. Adolph Roeder Thinks
ScOffers May Soon Modify
Their Ideas.

An address on 1.-THE New Psychism,"
dealing with three ways of looking at
the subject of communication with the
so-called spiritual world, was given by
the Rev. Adolph Roeder at the New
Church, Orange, yesterday. Said he in
part:
I'm general it will be evident that
there are three possibilities of attitude
toward this question. One is that OF
denial, and of the assertion that there
is no such world as that commonly
termed spiritual world, and that con-
sequently there can be no message
from there. The other is, that there Is
q spiritual world, and that, given the
facilities, there can be communication
with that world. And the third is, that
while there is, or may be spiritual
world, communication with it, that is,
conscious and cognizable communica-
tion with it is not feasible.
1.-THE reasoning mind, while 1t may
incline toward the first, finds no per-
manent satisfaction in it. This way
of saying that such and such thing
is impossible or does not exist is con-
fusing the eternal verify of things
with their temporal semblance. For a
century ago men would have laughed
at the things as wild dreams which to-
day are everyday conveniences. Try to
think how you would have explained
the telephone to man a century ago.
"Neither is it wise to assert the ex-
istence of a spiritual life and phe-
nomenalize it, to make 1t look and act
and seem like this world, for if spir-
itual it be, it must needs be composed
of spiritual things, and spiritual things
are such things as love, wisdom, JUS
tice, mercy, tenderness, loyalty, grace,
insight, reason--in fact, it must needs
be mental world.
but the second attitude involves the
third, and that is the tremendous slg-
nificance and import of the mes
sages' received and of the man
ner- of their reception, for we are
lowering on the borderland of a
series of forces, presumably higher
natural forces, which will open out in
finite possibilities of intellectual effort
and of practical activity. Already the
discoveries of science from the Roent-
gen ray to radio-activity are shaking
the foundations of old-style scientific
deduction and, added to that, there are
opening out rich fields of discovery
in the realm of multiple personality
which will undoubtedly lead to as inn
portant sequences as did the fact that
Franklin discovered that the electricity
in his Leyden jar and that in the cloud
were one and the same kind of cleo
tricity. So the discovery which Sir Oil
Yer Lodge will presently make, namely,
that the message he has received may
not be a message from Mr.. Meyers, but
that it is message from one of the
mysterious subconscious Sir Oliver
Lodges will, while it loses the keen edge
of satisfaction as to intercommunica-
ton of the two worlds, gain enormous
ly by interpreting a few human phe-
nomena on earth, the Interpretation OF
which intelligent and earnest men and
women on earth will be as glad to have
as they might have been to know
whether a departed spirit in heaven
is happy, or whether he is progressing,
or whether he is standing still"