There have been great searchings, at various times, trying to discover the "origin of evil." Vast stores of uncanny legends, and tales of wonders have been handed down to us in explanation of this most baffling mystery.
The destructive force in nature had no "origin." Just as G.o.d, the Constructive Force, had none. It was, as G.o.d was. It is and always will be, while G.o.d and nature are.
It rides the whirlwind and the flood, and differentiates itself through the smallest minutia of the affairs of human life. It is the primeval element, the "pure cussedness" which has to be conquered, or adjusted in every human being. It essays to bar all progress; Ignorance and Superst.i.tion are its blinded handmaids. It exacts the fearful penalties of scornfully misunderstood efforts, if not ostracism and persecution, for the use of the diviner faculties. It is the spirit of unconquered ill. It is the genius of the utterly selfish will of man.
But it is when it allies itself with the intellect and will of man, and becomes the motive power, and thus expresses itself in concrete form, as is often the case, that our sympathies are touched and our sense of justice aroused, and we feel our lack of protection from the "powers and princ.i.p.alities of the air." Our only refuge is in growing to and experiencing a perfect at-one-ment with the eternal law of the opposing, the Constructive Force--G.o.d. There is no protection, no safety, but in the Divine Love and Wisdom.
VIBRATION.
There was no beginning; there can be no ending. There is a constant, undeviating process of changing and readjustment of all the forces of the universe. All is vibration. None of nature"s forces are at rest, at equilibrium. Build you a fine dwelling, and ere it is finished for your occupancy, the disintegrating forces will have made a raid upon the material of which it is constructed. Take notice of the signs of decomposition going on in everything around you--the acc.u.mulation of fluff in your rooms, in the innermost of your garments, along the seams. So also do the rocks and mountains yield themselves to dust, and so does all the planet reverberate with the resistless onward march of the law of progress, unfoldment, evolution from the lower to a higher form of expression.
Lands edging the seas and the inland waters, from their constant erosion, slip away and are lost. Continents disappear, undermined by earthquakes and similar convulsions of nature, and new lands arise from the bowels of some faraway ocean to keep the balance even.
LIFE.
From time immemorial the researches of men in the vain effort to discover and make known to the world the origin of life, of all life, on the planet earth and elsewhere, have been most anxiously considered.
These efforts of the inquiring minds of men have not been altogether fruitless of results; because through them has been made manifest the most marvelous of all the facts in nature, that "there is no death,"
that "what seems so is transition." It has also become known and understood of late years, that from the ephemera of life, of an hour or of a day up to the highest archangel, through all the intermediate grades of being, visible and invisible, there are no vacant s.p.a.ces.
Everywhere there is an overwhelming volume of life, actual though not conscious or individualized, until the higher ranges of human life become known and correlated. Comes the man with the scalpel. He dissects the human brain, and is disgusted at finding no clew to the secret cause and source of life. He never suspects, he does not conceive of the fact that there is in everyone, an immutable, invisible power--a spirit germ--nor would he believe in its potency if he knew it were true. Then there is the man with the retorts and the scales, and the "residues." He announces to the world that he can create life without any help from the "Great Spirit" people talk so much about.
There is also the man with the bottle full of water, with a handful of mud at the bottom. He is sure he can produce living organisms; might even set agoing a new race of beings, if he only had time, and a larger bottle! Back of every expression of life we know abides the source, the cause of all existence, so hid, so truly an integral part of life as never to yield a knowledge of itself either to the scalpel of the physicians or to the electrical battery of the explorer of mysteries.
Into this sphere can no man come. Herein can be no meddling of the human intellect.
Through this searching for the source, the cause of life, man has been brought face to face with law, with a force he can never understand or conquer, or adjust to the demands or suggestions of his will. From ancient expressions of intelligence have been handed down to us the name, the t.i.tle, G.o.d, as a concrete expression of this power that holds dominance over all created beings.
Another important revelation made to man is the fact that there is but one law, _per se_.
It is an established, consecutive, endless chain from the beginnings of human life here up to the absolute ultimate of the immortal soul. It proves the h.o.m.ogeneity of the whole human race; it declares the value of existence here, and explains the logical sequence of its continuance beyond this fragment of life into nature"s invisible realms.
What we shall do, each one of us, with our individual portion of life; how we shall work out our personal experiences, and to what end is another matter. There is our heredity which is, in every case, so mixed as to yield but little of the primal strain, and which gives to each one of us unknown possibilities, or undesired idiosyncracies to fight out and eradicate from the nature. The many failures to discover the mystery of life surely ought to prove to all experimenters the truth that spirit holds the only key to its endless mystery.
CHURCHES MONEY MAKERS.
There is no detail of the ordinary human life of all who are in any way connected with the church, which has not been exploited for money.
There is no end to the myths and fables that have been put before the superst.i.tious and ignorant, and each and every one has its price; and every celebration draws its pay; and all for the glory of G.o.d, not at all for the help of man. The peasants and other laborers starve, and are overwhelmed by the riot of fatal disease.
As a money-making concern, it leaves nothing to be wished for--it is a great success.
There was no "beginning," there can be no "ending." Whatever appears ended in our experience is only in seeming, and in other shapes and in transformed relationships will appear again and again, a.s.serting "There is no death, what seems so is transition," change of elements and forces. There is but one law; one creative centre. One model for advanced individualized life in any world; in all worlds. The whole purpose and intent of all creation is simply to render all inert, unused matter into life. The universal Spirit pervades all things.
Mineral; vegetable; animal; human; angel; one unbroken chain, from the sod up to divine perfection, from the pigmy races we see here, on this small globe, up, forever upward and onward to the courts of the "sons of G.o.d"; to the spheres of the eternally immortal. Ignorant mortals a.s.sert from time to time, the day and the hour of the "End of the World," and foolishly prepare for the final destruction of this planet.
It is true, this earth is always coming to an end, and always rehabilitating itself with its own unused materials. Mountains slide down and fill up the valleys. The waters of the sea undermine and gnaw off big slices from the land; all, all is motion, vibration; nothing stands still. If it were possible for anything in the universe to stop, to break the everlasting chain, there would be no universe; there would be only chaos come again, and all the work of setting the planets a-spinning round and round their centres and apportioning the orbits of the stately suns, and their places in the precessions of their accompanying worlds; all would go for nothing, all would have to be begun again, and on the same lines exactly. There are no other; there is no other law, and the name of the law that holds all in imperishable harmony, is Love, just Love.
LIFE IN NATURE.
The microscope has revealed to us the life and habits of myriads of creatures of whose existence we had previously no knowledge. We had not even a suspicion that what to our unaided vision appeared inert elements held a rampant, mult.i.tudinous life, nowhere dead, but always surging and changing, ever replacing death and decay with a new life all its own. Nature"s luxuriance everywhere fills us with wonder and delight. The fragrant ferny depths of the forest, and the lush growth of the rank marsh-land, the immeasurable sands of the ocean-edge hiding in their mysterious sameness innumerable and beautiful sh.e.l.ls and corals, and the mountain top heaped up with boulders, or crumbling by nature"s processes into pebbly imponderance.
Life, swarming everywhere. Tiny leaflets giving succor and shelter to tinier animal life--its special fairy. Huge beasts couchant in majestic trees, guarding against invasions, with a fierce, jealous rage inherited from the gnomes and satyrs.
Deep sea depths untouched by lightnings, where the kraken makes his home; jolly dolphins disporting in the sunlight, responding to the cry of the hovering wild duck and gull. Human beings overcrowding in the oldest settled portions of the globe, until nature"s resources for their sustenance are wellnigh exhausted.
All these, and many more, might justly be enumerated to ill.u.s.trate the bountiful and inexhaustible resources of the great creative, reconstructive Power in the universe of matter.
Life, everywhere life, forcing out death and decay. Ever changing its form of expression. Reforming itself upon steadily advancing models.
All nature swinging in circles so wide and vast as to require centuries for their completion.
One of the most fascinating doctrines of the Swedish Seer is contained in the "law of correspondences." By it many things, seemingly irregular, "fall into line," and become parts of a great process of development. Following this method, the earnest, searching mind, looking through nature up to "Nature"s G.o.d," seeks to go beyond the confines of the mere animal, material existence, and come into sympathy with and get a knowledge of the world unseen, but often felt and recognized, spiritual life, filling all the s.p.a.ces which seem to the earth-dimmed senses dull and void. There is no death, no vacancy in this realm of nature, any more than in that other, more tangible one, the outgrowth and the necessity of this great storm-tossed planet. But all the expressions of life in this sphere are different from those to which our material senses are accustomed, and require the action of another, a finer, more spiritual set of faculties in order to comprehend them even partially which, at the best, is all we can hope to do while we remain denizens of and subject to the laws which control this world of material substance.
"Jacob"s dream" was not a dream only. It was a reality. From supernal heights "Ladders" are ever being dropped down to our earth, into our midst, upon which forms immortal and real "ascend and descend"
according to our need and our demand upon them for love and help.
We are continually overshadowed by this supermundane existence. Its influences are both positive and negative, good and evil. It has powers adapted to every issue of human experience; because it is the outgrowth, the fruitage of human life. Its roots are planted in this earth. Its topmost branches wave in the sunlight which flows from the "Throne of G.o.d." It is G.o.d. Not a separate and distinct being; but an intelligent principle of love abounding in everything; expressing itself through everything. Knowing no "high" or "low." Seeing no difference between the "just and the unjust"; showering down upon all alike, benisons of wisdom, and peace and good will.
Gathering all together in one embrace; the whole race of man, one undivided family. Its divine "Trinity" is Evolution, Progress, Liberty. Many minds reject this a.s.sumption of facts, because of the necessity which a recognition of them would involve for a readjustment of mental processes, and religious beliefs affecting their daily experience.
HEAVEN.
Millions of enfranchised souls pa.s.s from earth life and find the spirit world--the "Summerland"--a Heaven, and stay therein for vast lengths of time. The change from this life of toil, and misery to an existence of rest from all pain and sorrow of earthly existence is really Heaven enough for the average human mind. A place of beautiful surroundings, where everything necessary for their comfort is furnished them, without money and without price and, best of all, where they no longer fear being grabbed up and punished by the devil for their sins of ignorance committed when in the body. It is not possible for us, plunged, as we all are, into the vortex of this difficult existence, to realize what all this means to the world-weary. If one shall halt by the way, or fall aside from the great unending procession nothing stops. The terrible, tumultuous waves of humanity roll on, and the lost are not missed or mourned for, save by the few that were responsible for their coming, or for the awful lack of help and tendance that made them failures in the battle of life.
The great army of the commonplace, the neither positively good nor the very bad, is the largest cla.s.s of all humanity. The most pestiferous and difficult to adjust to the law of progress and advancement. Hold one of them out of h.e.l.l by the hair of the head, and when he is let go he only drops further in, and nothing teaches him but the "slings and arrows" of misfortune, and every dreadful experience that can be handed out to him. Much of this almost universally deplorable condition--it may be the whole of it--has been induced by false, unreasonable religious teachings. The human mind needs every inducement to effort to overcome its natural inertia instead of being put to sleep by promises of being exempt from all responsibility connected with its final redemption.
NATURE SPIRITS.
The "dwellers at the threshold" are the individualized ent.i.ties of the elements of nature. Air, fire, earth depths, and seas. These belong to the domain of nature, pure and simple, and are met and controlled by the affinities of the chemicals of the material, physical organization of the individual. The most potent of these leading in the degree of material success to be achieved in dealing with material life.
Money getting in the mines, earth depths. All manufactories that require raging and continuous flame; ships to sail, and conquer water spirits; electrical and etherial forces that move in the air currents.
These are the soulless, irresponsible "goblins" and "gnomes," "Fire spirits" and "_ignes fatui_" of the nether world. All human beings who progress at all have to deal with one or more of these forces.
Beginning in blind ignorance, through struggle, the mortal will is developed and the mere animal man has set his foot upon a low rung of the ladder of the ascending series. Next, man has to deal with the primal races. The "Missing link" which will never be found save at the "threshold" where it combines its forces with those of man"s other natural enemies, and keeps jealous watch and ward at every point of egress of the soul which seeks to enlarge its domain. Finally the will of man, with its long heredity of war with these potentialities, "at enmity with G.o.d," resisting the divine; even as these have striven to hold him in a perpetual slavery, is in its last struggle. The vast aggregation of human will, set free from the clog of the flesh, knowing nothing of the divine, seeing no guiding light, combines its forces, and commingles its powers with whatever its endless tentacles can reach. These are the powers and princ.i.p.alities of the air. These are the demons, "bad spirits," "devils" and "familiars" of the literature of the ages, and the presiding geniuses of many a phenomenon resulting from modern research into the mysteries of nature. As their intelligence exceeds that of the underlying grades, so just in that degree is their power increased, and used, to block the gateway that opens upon the path. Their abodes lie in outer darkness, or are illumined only by flashes of fict.i.tious, and evanescent light from the expiring embers of earthly exhalations, and the phosph.o.r.escent gleams of decaying forms. The soul that has received an illumination from the Divine has in its keeping a talisman of power, yet none can escape these watchful ones.
"Here eyes do regard you in eternity"s stillness." "Choose well; your choice is brief, but yet endless." The winged fiend, the "Appolyon,"
must be met and settled with at every turn of the way that leads to the kingdom which the Christ came to establish, and whose best name is "peace." In this grade, love finds no home, but its great prototype, the l.u.s.t of the flesh, stealing ever the livery of heaven, lures on tender souls to their sad undoing.