SECTION X
[I was not content, and took time to
consider what had been written. It was very contrary to any
opinions I then held, but I was conscious of an extremely powerful and
elevating influence
during the time the writing was going on. I wished to get rid of the
influence before I replied.
On the following day I had an
opportunity of resuming my argument. I objected to what had been said,
that such a creed would not be acknowledged as Christian by any member
of a Christian Church, that it was contradictory to the plain words of
the Bible; and that such views appeared even to be the subject of
special denunciation as those of Anti-Christ. Moreover, I suggested that
such vaguely beautiful views, as I admitted them to be, had a tendency to take the backbone out of
faith. It was replied:—]
Friend, you have opened points on which
we shall be glad to speak with you. As to our authority, we
have touched on that point before. We claim it to be devine, and we
await with confidence the acceptance of our mission when the times are
ripe for our teaching. That time must come after much steady
preparation, and we are quite prepared
to find that none can yet accept in full the teaching which we
promulgate, save the little band to whom it is given to precede in progressive knowledge the rest of their
fellows. We say that this does not strike us with surprise. For, think!
has it ever been that a fuller revelation has found acceptance among men
at once? The ignorant cry has always been raised against progress in knowledge that the
old is sufficient: that
it
has been proven and tried; whilst of the new, men say that they know
nothing save that it
is
new and contradictory of the old. It was the self-same cry
that assailed Jesus. Men who had laboriously elaborated the Mosaic
theology, which had served its time, and was to give place to a higher and more spiritual religion:
men who had drawn out the minutiae of this system until they had reduced it
to an aimless mass of ritual, a body without a spirit, aye, a corpse
without life: these cried out that this blasphemer (so they impiously called the
Saviour of man’s religion) would destroy the law and dishonour God.
The Scribes and Pharisees, the guardians of orthodox religion, were
unanimous in their
disbelief of Him and of His pretentions. It was they who raised the howl
which finally led the Great Teacher to the Cross. You know now that He
did not dishonour God: and that He did but demolish man’s glosses on
God’s revealed law in order that He
might refine and spiritualise its commands, and raise if from the dead
by infusing into it
spiritual life and power, by breathing into it vitality and giving it renewed vigour.
In place of the cold and cheerless letter of the law which prescribed
outward duty to a parent—a duty discharged without love, with scanty
dole grudgingly offered,—He taught the spirit of filial affection
springing from a loving heart, and offering the unbought and ungrudged
tribute of affection to earthly parents and to the Great Father. The
formalism of mere external conventionality He replaced by the free-will
offering of the heart.
Which was the truer, the nobler creed? Did the latter override the
former, or did it not
stand to it rather as the living man to the breathless corpse? Yet they who were content
to buy off from filial duty at the poor cost of a few paltry coins scornfully
given were they who finally crucified the Christ, as a man who taught a
new religion blashphemously subversive of the old. The scene at
Calvary was the fitting culmination to such a religion.
Again, when the followers of the Crucified stood forth to declare their
gospel to a world that cared not for it, and which was not prepared to
receive it, the charge against them perpetually was that they taught new
doctrine
which was subversive of the old faith. Men taxed their ingenuity to
discover horrible
accusations which they might charge upon them. They found nothing too
monstrous to be delivered by those who were eager to credit any
accusation of the new faith which “Everywhere was spoken against.” They
were lawless; yet so rigidly respectful to the established faith, and to
the “powers that be,” that no cause of blame could be discovered. They
were devourers of infants: they who were the
followers of the loving and gentle Jesus. Nothing
was too monstrous to be believed about them; even as men now
wish
to believe everything that can
discredit us and our mission.
SECTION X
Has it not been so ever since? It is the
story of all time that the new is spoken against and discredited in
religion, in science, in all with which man’s finite mind deals. It is
an essential quality of his intelligence that such should be the case. The familiar
commends itself: the new and strange is viewed with suspicion and
mistrust.
Hence it is not any legitimate cause for surprise that when we teach a
spiritualised Christianity we should at first be met with incredulity.
The time will come when all men will admit, as you do, the beauty of the
creed and recognise its divine origin.
It is not wonderful that our message should seem to contradict some human
utterances. Nay, that it should really controvert some details of the
teaching given through human minds more or less undeveloped in days long
past is to be expected. We have no desire to hide the plain fact that
there is much in some parts of the Bible which does not amalgamate with
our teaching, being, indeed, the admixture of human error which came
through the mind of
the chosen medium. We need not repeat on this head our previous argument
which is familiar to
you.
Revelation, as contained in your Bible, includes many progressive
developments of the knowledge of God which are in themselves irreconcilable
in minute detail. And, moreover, it contains much
admixture of human error which has filtered in through the medium. You
can only arrive at truth by judging of the general drift. Private
opinions selected without reference to the body of teaching are but the
sentiments of the individual, valuable as
showing his mind, but not in any way binding as of faith. To imagine
that an opinion uttered many centuries ago is of binding force eternally is mere folly. Indeed, all
such opinions are contradictory in themselves, and are
contradicted by other and opposite opinions contained within the same
volume. No doubt it
was a current belief, at the time when many of the writers of books in the Bible
composed the treatises which you call inspired, that Jesus was
God,
and harsh denunciations are made
against any who should deny the dogma. No doubt also that the same men
believed also that He would, in mysterious manner, return in the clouds
to judge the world, and that
before their generation shoud die.
They were mistaken in both beliefs, and
over one at least more than 1800 years have rolled and still the return is
unaccomplished. So we might push the argument were it necessary.
What we wish to impress on you is this: You must judge the Revelations of
God by the light which is given you: in the mass, not by the dicta of
its preachers: by the spirit and general tendency,
not by the strict phraseology. You must judge of us and our teaching,
not by conformity to any statement made by any men at any special time;
but by the general fitness and adaptability of our creed to your wants,
to your relations with God, and to the progress of your spirit.
What, then, is the outcome of our
teaching? How far does it square with right reason? How
does it teach you of God? How does it help your spirit?
You have been taught in the creeds of the orthodox churches to believe in
a God who was propitiated by the sacrifice of His Son, so far as to allow
a favoured few of His children to be admitted to an
imagined heaven, where for ever and for evermore, with monotonous persistence,
their occupation should be the singing His praise. The rest of the race, unable to
gain admission to this heaven, were consigned to a hell of indescribable
torment, perpetual, endless, and intolerable.
These miserable ones failed of bliss, some of them because they had not
faith; and others, because they had evil surroundings by which they were
degraded. And others fell, being assailed with fierce temptations, by
which they were led away and seduced to sin. And others were incarned in debasing
and sensual bodies, and were overcome of ungoverned passions. And others could
not understand what was wanted from them, though they tried, and would
fain have done what they could. And others had intellectual inability to
accept certain
dogmatic propositions which they had been taught to believe essential to
their salvation. And others had not, when bodily existence ceased,
assented to certain statements which were able to secure them the entry
into the heaven we have described. And so they perished everlastingly;
and on their endless torments, from a height of serene and secure, the
blessed who
SECTION X
have gained their bliss through a faith
in certain dogmatic assertions, though many of them had been men of
grievous and degraded lives, look with the satisfaction of undisturbed
and changeless
repose.
A life of gross sensuality, or of sloth, or of offence against all law,
you are taught, is remediable by and act of faith. The grossest and most
sensual ruffian may, by a cry on his deathbed, find himselft
instantaneously fitted for admission into the immediate presence of the
God whom he has all his life blasphemed. He, the impure, base, degraded,
earthy spirit admitted to association with the refined, the noble, the
pure, the holy, in the immediate
presence of the stainless perfection of the all-pure God!
And yet the half is not told, but enough by way of contrast. We tell you
nothing of such a God—a God of whom reason cannot think without a shudder,
and from whom the fatherly instinct must shrink in disgust. Of this God
of Love, who shows His love in such a fashion, we know nothing. He is of
man’s fashioning, unknown to us. We pause not to expose the miserable
pretence that such a human idol can ever have been aught but the figment
of a
barbarous mind. We do but ask you to wonder with us at the presumptuous
ignorance and folly which has dared to paint such a caricature of the pure and holy God.
Surely, friend, man must have been in a degraded spiritual condition ere
he could have pictured such a Deity. Surely, too, they who in this age
have not shrunk from such a creation must have sore need of a Gospel such as that we
preach.
The God whom we know and whom we declare to you is in very truth a God of
Love—a God whose acts do not belie His name, but whose love is boundless, and
His pity unceasing to all. He knows no partiality for any, but
deals out unwavering justice to all. Between Him and you are ranks of
ministering spirits, the bearers of His loving message, the revealers from time to time of His
will to man. By His spirit-messengers the train of ministering
mercy is never suffered to fail. This is our God, manifested by His
works, and operating through the agency of His ministering angels.
And you yourselves, what of you? Are ye immortal souls, who by a cry, a
word, by and act of faith in an unintelligible and monstrous creed can
purchase a heaven of inactivity, and avoid a hell of material torment?
Verily, nay. Ye are spirits placed for a while in a garb of flesh to get
training for an
advanced spirit-life, where the seeds sown in the past bear their fruit, and the spirit
reaps the crop which it has prepared. No fabled dreamy heaven of
eternal inactivity awaits you, but a sphere of progressive usefulness
and growth to
higher perfection..
Immutable laws govern the results of deeds. Deeds of good advance the
spirit, whilst deeds of evil degrade and retard it. Happiness is found in
progress and in gradual assimilation to the Godlike and the perfect. The
spirit of divine love animates the acts, and in mutual blessing the
spirits find their happiness. For them there is no craving for sluggish
idleness; no cessation of desire for progressive advancement in
knowledge. Human passions and
human needs and wishes are gone with the body, and the spirit lives a
spirit life of purity, progress, and love. Such is heaven.
We know of no hell save that within the soul: a hell which is fed by the
flame of unpurified and untamed lust and passion, which is kept alive by
remorse and agony of sorrow: which is fraught with the pangs that spring
unbidden from the results of past misdeeds; and from which the only
escape lies in retracing the steps and in cultivating the qualities which shall bear fruit in
love and knowledge of God.
Of punishment we know indeed, but it is not the vindictive lash of an
angry God, but the natural outcome of conscious sin, remediable by
repentance and atonement and reparation personally wrought out in pain
and shame,
not by coward cries for mercy, and by feigned assent to statements which
ought to create a
shudder.
Happiness we know is in store for all who will strive for it by a
consistent course of life and conduct commendable to reason and
spiritual in practice. Happiness is the outcome of right reason, as
surely as misery is
the result of conscious violation of reasonable laws, whether corporeal
or spiritual.
SECTION X
Of the distant ages of the hereafter we
say nothing, for we know nothing. But of the present we say that life is
governed, with you and with us equally, by laws which you may discover,
and which, if you obey them, will lead to happiness and content, as surely as
they will reduce you to misery and remorse if you
wilfully violate them.
We need not specify at length now the creed we teach as it affects man in
his relation to God, to his fellows, and to himself. You know its main
features. One day you shall know it more fully. Sufficient has now been
said to point the contrast, and to reply to our question: Whether such a
view as this be not pure, divine, ennobling, the natural complement of that which Jesus
Himself preached?
Is it less definite, more vague than the orthodox? It may be less minute
in details which are repulsive, but it breathes a nobler and purer
atmosphere; it teaches a higher, holier religion; it preaches a diviner
God. It is not
vaguer, not less definite. But even were it so, it deals with subjects
into which the reverent mind will not curiously pry. It throws a veil over the unknown, and
refuses to substitute speculation for knowledge, or to apply the cruder
human notions to the very nature and attributes of the Supreme.
If it be vagueness to veil the curious eye before the footstool of the
divine and incomprehensible, then are we vague in our knowledge and
indistinct in our teaching. But if it be the part of the wise to dwell
only on the known and the comprehensible; to act rather than speculate; to
do rather than to believe, then is our belief dictated by wisdom. conformable to right reason, and inspired
by God Himself.
It will bear the test of rational sifting and experiment. It will
endure, and inspire the myriad souls in distant ages when those who cavil at its
teachings and insult its authors shall be working out in sorrow and
remorse the consequences of their folly and sin. It will have conducted
countless myriads of pure spirits, who have progressed in its faith, to
happiness and advancement, when that which it is destined to spiritualise
shall have shared the fate of the mouldering body from which the spirit is withdrawn. It will live
and bless its votaries in spite of the foolish ignorance which would charge its
divine precepts on a devil, and anathematise its votaries as the children
of darkness.
+ IMPERATOR.
That seems to me rational and beautiful. And I think you meet the charge
of vagueness. But I fancy most people would say that you do practically
upset popular Christianity. I should like to have from you some ideas on
the general outcome of Spiritualism, more especially as it affects the
undeveloped, whether incarnated or not.
We will speak to you of this in due
course. But not yet. Ponder what has been said before you seek for further
messages. May the Supreme enable us to guide you aright!
+IMPERATOR.
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