From no other have we been given, in an externalized, practical form, those great, eternal religious principles which must forever stand as the rule and guide of human souls. No ancient philosopher had evolved to a G.o.d-likeness that enabled him to go beyond a high stand-point of moral perfection, or to give to his disciples what was most needed by the world for its comforting in the acc.u.mulating, expanding experiences incident to earthly life.
Jesus, our Christ, the Christ of the religion named for him was the transmitter of heavenly truths. To him the world owes forever a debt for making known a knowledge of the fact of the continued existence of the individual being after physical death, and it was given to him to point out the way of life that can alone lead to eternal happiness and peace. He is our Teacher, our Leader above all others. We have nothing to do with the impossible, faked-up personality that the priests have so long exploited as the "blood Redeemer" of the world; it is to the inspired philanthropist, the greatly-loving man that we owe our allegiance. This will appear more and more as time goes on, and a lot of untruths will fade out and give place to great realities.
THE G.o.dS.
The pagan G.o.ds were innumerable and their distinctive attributes were understood. They well might be, as they were only deified men and women. The next unfoldment caused them to raise altars to "the unknown G.o.d." Then came Jesus, the Nazarene, who told them that the "unknown G.o.d" was their Heavenly Father, not of a chosen people only, but of all the human race. The new religion, inspired by Jesus--our Christ--and which was to bear his name, naturally brought with it all the superst.i.tions of the pagans, and these have been handed down through the ages, and accepted and believed as true.
The primitive conception of a G.o.d was of a being with qualities like their own, and as men delighted in rapine and every possible accompanying vice and crime, so they endowed their G.o.ds in like manner, fashioning beings to be feared and to whom must be given big offerings and sacrifices. So long as these were limited to beasts it was a good thing, because the priests who ate the flesh thus consecrated were sure of cheap meat for a long time thereafter. But when the "firstlings of the flock" failed to bring satisfactory responses to the demands of the suppliants, they began sacrificing human lives in the vain hope of allaying the anger and vengeance of the dissatisfied all-powerful G.o.ds, and beautiful young maidens were thrust into the fiery jaws of Moloch, or crushed in the coils of sacred serpents, or slain upon altars according to the special G.o.d whose propitiation was sought.
From all these inhuman practices to a recognition of a G.o.d of love and mercy was a step so long that even yet there remain in the teachings of religionists indications of similar ideas, wherein not only nature"s culminating efforts, but all the painful experiences of human beings are accepted and feared as expressions of the "wrath of G.o.d."
KNOWLEDGE OF OCCULT LAW.
The invitation of one of old to his followers, and fellow believers: "Come let us reason together," marks the dividing line between knowledge and superst.i.tion. The daring of the mind of man proves him to be, in very truth, "a child of G.o.d." No arcana of knowledge are too deeply hid in mystery to escape the prying of his curiosity, his longing for enlightenment, his long-sustained and vigorous efforts to surprise the hidden things of G.o.d and Nature. Livingston and Stanley wrought in the jungles of Africa, Audubon and Aga.s.siz in the fastnesses of tropical America. These in the material world, the world of effects. Gessner and Varley, Darwin and Spencer, together with a long list of other inspired minds, have given their best thoughts, devoted their n.o.blest energies to the explorations of the world of causes, the occult and invisible realms of pure principles in G.o.d and Nature. Back of all these there lies the richest bequest ever made to humanity in the discoveries and revelations of the most ancient "adepts," the fathers of mystical lore, in the light of modern discoveries and inventions, mystical no longer; but practical and full of earnest meaning in their adaptation and adjustment to the needs and wants of the citizens of the world today.
EVANESCENCE OF MERE BELIEFS.
Proclaim not mere beliefs today, and be not labelled and pigeon-holed and held to account on any special line of thought or action lest the individual soul be barred out from a conception and knowledge of some far grander truth. At best our view is narrow and contracted, else were we G.o.ds, and as we grow we discover our little, vaunted beliefs to be but as tiny shreds of color in G.o.d"s great mosaic, our song of triumph and discovery but as the buzzing of the insect to the chorals of the chanting hosts of heaven. So, then, an eternal negation is the safest att.i.tude of the unfolding soul. Mere beliefs, unproven by facts, are so many barriers set up for the soul to overleap and leave behind on its onward march.
THE FOUNT OF INSPIRATION FOR ALL.
"The righteous shall inherit the earth." Just so far as we are able to prove our rightness, the world--nay the whole universe of G.o.d--is ours.
Our Heavenly Father has never said: "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, upon the road to knowledge." Everything invites us; get wisdom, get understanding, and to thy knowledge add virtue are the recommendations from inspired sources, and to the soul that fears not, revelations upon every line stand invitingly open.
MAN VERSUS DEATH.
In all the domain of organized being, it is only man, who, in his crude egotisms, and defiant resistance to nature"s laws, makes ado with death. The dainty denizen of the air, and the things that creep over the earth, the leviathan in his nature element, and his warmer-blooded brother whose pa.s.sage causes the earth to tremble beneath his tread, all the mult.i.tudinous expressions of the animal kingdom, that disport themselves in fur, or feather, in filament of scales, or covering of hair, each and all recognize the approach of their final experience on earth, and hie themselves to their appointed coverts, to keep their tryst with their old mother in utter privacy. How well she loves her children! She sheds over them her varied mantle of leaf, and piney bloom, or scented brake, and soothes them with softly falling rain, or tender dew, and woos their elements back into her bosom from which they sprang. All this is in consonance with nature"s arrangement for caring for her own. There is no such thing known among these as a vulgar display, or a flaunting of the deposed forces in the faces of the creatures left behind.
In man"s treatment of his kind, there is everywhere betokened his unfaith and fear. His undeveloped spirituality leaves him without even so much power to adjust himself to the divine order of progress, by way of the gates of death--rebirth--as have his humble progenitors, his representatives in the animal kingdom; and so he plants himself upon his fancied prerogatives, and turns his dulled senses away from the G.o.d-call: "Come up higher," and moans and raves, and howls his despair in sounds and terms indicative of his tribal, or racial environment and relationship.
A voice of love has sounded down throughout the ages in unmistakable terms to the children of men. "My father has many mansions, invisible to your seared, earthly vision, but beautifully furnished forth for all your needs; nor hath eye seen or ear of yours heard the wonderfulness of the great preparation He hath made to receive you into his kingdom."
And seer and sage have reiterated this in unmistakable language, and the enlightened of the older races have caught the straying tones of the vibrant air of the beyond, and have beheld the mirage of the homes of the blest, and have sought to impress the truth of the living reality of the beyond upon the inchoate brains of their fellows. But superst.i.tion rears its grizzled front alike in seats of learning, in the homes of the cultured, and in the hovels of the outcasts; in this sense, all the human family are of h.e.l.lish kin, and in a large percentage of them their whole lives are given over to their effort of resistance to the divine ordering which speaks ever to the soul of man in unmistakable terms of tender consideration, saying: "Thy poor days here are full of pain and sorrow, because of necessary crudities. So live that when thy summons comes to join the everlasting cavalcade which sweeps across the world, thou shalt apprehend thy high emprise, and go forth exultingly to claim thine own meed of further existence in spheres yet undiscovered to thy longing ken."
"Earth loses thy pattern forever and aye" that thou mayst be renewed and set up in the finer mould of thy most excellent Karma, which is thy hidden reality of character. Rejoice then, O mortal! in the beneficence of nature and of thy Parents, G.o.d, for surely it is well that they call a halt for thee and thine beside the river of death, and loosen thy burthens of pain and heart-breaking sorrow, and let loose from thy soul that raven, "Never more," which has preyed long upon thy soul and held thee in the grip of unspoken despair and anguish. This is of all demons the blackest and most subtle. In tones of love it has been proclaimed by the divine mind that nought is ever taken away that shall not be restored to thee. Not as thou, in thy small, limited way, wouldst hold it back from its own high place, and mission in the universe and bend it to thy purpose; but according to the wisdom of its Creator and thine, shalt thou see and know and claim all that belongs to thee, be it the inspiration of thy nature, unexpressed here amid the din and rush of this chaotic existence; or power to carry forth thy grandly bold designs in conjunction with nature"s illimitable chemistry; or to perfect within thy mind a knowledge of her laws; or to fold to thy bereaved heart thy lover, friend, or child, so lost to thee now in the great unexplored silences, that thou wilt not even try to see their way of life, but art ever persistent in saying they are dead.
Whatever thy soul shalt cherish as highest and best good to be longed for, that shall be given to thee, in its new and resurrected form, over which has pa.s.sed the chrism of the immortal and everlasting life. We need a new perception of that great law of the "survival of the fittest." Who are the "fit"? The nomadic tramp who yields no meed of use to his fellows? The willfully sin-sodden who poisons all his surrounding atmosphere with the noxious exhalations from his decaying organism? He who h.o.a.rds and locks away from his fellows his treasures of gold or precious knowledge, and he, who having in his hands the powers of wealth and influence, never deigns to stretch forth his hand to relieve the cruel stress of the needy or to protect the helpless, or to sustain and strengthen the weaker ones of earth?
Nay! The true "survival" is not here on this underdone sphere, but outside, beyond, above, in the realms of the spiritual where our burdens are loosed and the souls of men are set free, and true liberty is accorded to each and everyone to be, and to do, all that in him lies toward the upbuilding of the great sum of the soul life we call G.o.d.
Once this perception of the soul and even some slight degree of knowledge concerning the laws which hold over the destiny of each individual being becomes, through a familiarity with phenomena now everywhere common, understood and accepted, the entire life on this planet will be changed, elevated and happified. Fancy living day after day under the bondage of the fear and dread of what everyone knows to be as inevitable as is the experience of each, of physical dissolution; and yet mult.i.tudes of people do so live. It is debasing, and disenn.o.bling in every way. It robs the soul of all its natural dignity and sends it through the world orphaned, and mourning, where it might and should recognize its divine relationship, and rejoice in its unfolding powers; and so you who may be giving a moment to the reading of this brief testimony to the great truth of immortality, consider, and realize thy divine paternity and demand what is, and has always been thine own by right of interblending of thy own inner nature with that of thy soul"s origin, the heart of Him who hath made us.
The bond is eternal and indestructible. G.o.d in all humanity and we in Him, and the sooner we see this and yield ourselves in obedience, not like "dumb driven cattle" but as self-respecting, self-a.s.serting mortals--within the law of accord with the highest--the sooner shall we enter into that "Nirvana" which is "peace."
FEAR OF DEATH.
In the childhood of the race, the time of its exclusively animal life, it was necessary for its protection that there should exist in the slowly unfolding human mind a great, overwhelming terror of death. In fact at that time indifference to death would have involved the entire race of man in utter extinction. From that time have come down to us superst.i.tions and fears which, while acting still in the minds of the ignorant as a preservative of human life even under most terrible conditions, have at the same time shrouded countless numbers of good and useful lives with gloom, overshadowing them with a horror from which they could not escape. It has been less the actual fear of death, but of what might be in store for them after they should have pa.s.sed through this experience which is so inevitable to us all. Jesus prophesied of a time to come wherein death should lose its sting, and thus be swallowed up in the victory of the spirit over matter.
The enjoyment of this life demands that, right here and now, we should begin to know and understand how we are to establish our individual relationship to the invisible, the real world--the world of causes, the world of law--so as to bring to us a sufficient knowledge of the hidden mysteries of the future life to give us some certain grounds for faith in the unseen. This can only be accomplished by the development of our own occult powers, or by learning of the psychic experiences of others which serve to point the way to what we may come to know for ourselves.
It is all one, here, hereafter, anywhere. Caught in the web of life, there is no escape from its demands upon the individual soul.
Somewhere along the way it has to decide its own fate. Upward and onward, or down into the purlieus of the crude beginnings of things.
It is free to make its choice. It can pursue the hard and toilsome path of earning its right to eternal happiness, or it can flop around through all the h.e.l.ls of life unrelated to G.o.d, and resistant to the Christ.
It is the fear of death, of physical dissolution, that is to be individually conquered. This can only come as a result of a perception of spiritual law, and the unfoldment of the spiritual nature.
The fear of death, of what may lie beyond, has been nature"s safeguard against a universal stampede out of this life when the miseries of existence on this earthly plane become too dreadful to be borne; when the tortures of the soul in the tortured body drives out all reason and all philosophy, and the consciousness senses only the demand for surcease of agony. But when the "golden bowl" is broken--the silver cord of human life is severed--by suicide--nothing has been gained by a changed environment. There are the same responsibilities and soul needs, and the miseries and unsatisfied desires of their minds are exactly the same. Nothing has been gained, but much has been lost.
Brave, staunch souls one by one obey the call to march over the "border land" into nature"s invisible realms; they cannot help themselves, no one can. On they go, an endless caravan into the land of revelations, the place of reviews, where the utterly selfish are fetched up with a "round turn," and made to realize that a real G.o.dliness is the only thing that can "pa.s.s muster," that mere beliefs do not count, and only character tells. How swiftly, how inevitably their places are filled; nothing stops; prince or peasant, it is all one; the will of the G.o.ds--the guardians of this planet, is being fulfilled. Life here is just one link in the endless, unbreakable chain of individual existence.
Most fortunate is the soul that is started out to make the journey of life without being handicapped by some narrowing religious superst.i.tion or an intellectual bias that limits the mind, preventing all unfoldment of originality.
TEST OF CHARACTER.
Sooner or later everyone who has character enough to make any sort of a test worth while, has to have a regular bout with his "evil genius."
Christ said: "The devil hath desired thee that he may sift thee as wheat." The form which the test takes depends entirely upon the organization of the individual. But it is in every case the same thing. The thorough arousal of the latent powers of the nature, and the suffering which ensues from the results of its unbalanced actions, const.i.tute the discipline of this life. We can no more escape it, or subvert the action of this law of evolution than we can put a stop to any of the upheavals of nature. The volcano and the earthquake are but the expressions of power in the globe which we inhabit to throw off her old, and ascend through violent agitation to higher conditions. There is a natural correspondence in the experience of her inhabitants and that of our old, old mother!
Back of protoplasm, back of organic human form is the soul--a thought of G.o.d, a spark of divine, eternal life; imperishable, immutable as G.o.d himself.
CHARACTER FORMING.
All animals, the human creature included, are born blind and this physical condition of man absolutely typifies his life-long state, owing either to his environment, his heredity, or his false education.
The great ma.s.s of humanity come into the world unmarked by any specially-developed individuality. These are the legitimate prey of priests and teachers who have their place, or use in the evolution of the lower grades of life on this planet.