Death Merely a Transition is "Word" of Dead Boston Pastor

1921

While the experiences of Dr. Elliott and the Braintree business man have been advanced by British spiritists as valid physical proof of the existence of another world (involving a guardian angel and visions of the crucified Christ), psychic manifestations are still being reported in the United States as competent evidence.

In Boston, Mass., a series of lectures are being delivered by what is represented as the personalities of various men and women who have died, through the body of the Rev. F. A. Wiggin, pastor of Unity Church. The first of these lectures was given recently when Dr. George C. Lorimer, late pastor of Tremont Temple, who died in 1904, supposedly spoke.

There was nothing uncanny about this service. After congregational singing and a prayer, Rev. Mr. Wiggin stepped forward, closed his eyes and announced his text from the seventeenth verse of the seventh chapter of Corinthians — "As the Lord hath called every one so let him walk."

It was Rev. Dr. Lorimer who was now talking through Mr. Wiggin. As Dr. Wiggin lifted his head the whole gesture was undeniably reminiscent of Rev. Dr. Lorimer, according to those who knew that well known pastor.

But "Dr. Lorimer" made no reference to the unusual fact that he was addressing a Boston audience for the first time since he had died in 1904, nor that he found anything new and strange in the Boston of 1921, nor to the fact that the world had been through one of the greatest wars of all times. He "spoke" as he might have spoken in 1900, using such references and analogies in the application of his text and the development of his theme as were common at that time.

"Dr. Lorimer" did assure his hearers that death meant nothing except a sort of transition into another world, in which men continue the work of this world in much the same way as they had worked and lived here. And Christ was just as much of a force for good and just as much of a mystery there as here.

—Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette, Fort Wayne, Indiana, Jan. 1, 1922, section 4, page 2.

Comment: That's a very interesting statement right at the end, that after the transition into another world Christ is just as much a mystery there as here.