Spirit Teachings

Truth and Belief.

1. "What is Truth?"
2. Religion.
3. Spirit versus letter.
4. Fear, fanaticism and indifference.
5. Revelation.
6. Faith.
7. Opinion.
8. Doubt.
9. The Seeker.

"What is truth?"

"...the present is a time of hard and bitter conflict between us and our foes. We have told you that you feel the reflex of that struggle. It accompanies every great development of Divine Truth. It is, as it were, the darkness that precedes the dawn: the gloom which is the pre-requisite for growth: the period of trial wherein the earnest soul is purified, 'Your hour and the power of darkness,' said Jesus as He agonised in Gethsemane. It is so now: and it will not pass lightly. The cup must be drained.

"As each revelation of the Supreme grows old, it is overlaid by man's errors, and loaded with his inventions. It dies gradually, and loses its hold on men. Bit by bit human error is pared away, unable to stand the shock of criticism, and man's faith is shaken, and they ask with old Pilate--What is truth? Then comes the answer in the new birth of a higher revelation. The throes of its birth shake the world, and around its cradle the powers of the Spiritual world contend. Great is the dust and din of the contention.

"As the light dawns upon the world, and the clouds lift, the watchers, whose eyes are spiritually opened to discern the signs of the times, they who stand on the watch-towers to catch the first gleams, these are ready and welcome with joy the break of day. 'Joy comes in the morning.' 'Sorrow and sighing flee away.' The terrors of the night, "the powers of darkness," are past. But not for all. Full many there will always be for whom no ray of light is visible till the sun has gained his meridian and splendour. They slumber on, heedless of the light that is breaking on the world.

"Hence the days will never come to your world when all equally will know of the truth. There will always be many for whom it has no charms, for whom it would be fraught with danger to tread the upward paths of progress, and who prefer the beaten track worn by the feet of those who have trod it through the ages past. There will be such always, even as there will be souls who catch the foregleams that herald the dawn. So do not hope that the open vision will ever be the same to all. No such dream of equality is possible. Nor is it more desirable than possible. To some are given powers that can safely pry into mysteries which others must perforce avoid. These must be the leaders and guides among men. And those who are so called are they on whom lies the most solemn duty of personal preparation and earnest, life-long struggle with self, until it is dominated and subdued, and the free soul soars untrammelled. We have long since told you of this. See you heed it.

"Do not be discouraged that so much of what most believe as truth seems to you hollow and uncertain. It is so. There are divers degrees of truth. From the many-sided crystal gleams are shot off in many directions. And it is not every soul that can receive even one ray of unclouded. To few, very few, comes more than a stray glimpse, and even that is filtered through many a medium, until its clearness is all dimmed. It must needs be so. Hence the varied views of truth. Hence the divergent notions, the errors, the mistakes, the fallacies that pass current among you. Men think they see a momentary gleam. They grasp some view, enlarge on it, add to it, develop it, until the tiny light is quenched, and what was a ray of truth is distorted and destroyed. And so the truth is maligned, whereas it should be the imperfection of the intervening medium that is blamed.

"Or, to take another view. That which came as the answer to the yearnings of some aspiring soul is deemed to be of universal application. The truth was so beautiful, so ennobling, so pure and holy in its essence, that it must surely be so to all. And the jewel is dragged out from its casket, and prepared for open exhibition. The lily is plucked from its stem, and paraded before men. And it loses it purity; its vitality diminishes; it withers and dies; and he to whom it was so fair, so lovely, wonders to find that it loses its freshness in the heat and dust of the world's busy strife. He marvels that what was so pure and true to him in the heart's secluded temple should seem tame and out of place when advertised to the world. He learns, if he is wise, that the dew of Hermon is distilled in the silence and solitude of the heart; that the flower springs up in the gloom of night, and withers beneath the noon-day beams; that truth, the holiest and purest, comes direct from spirit to spirit, and may not be proclaimed on the world's house-top.

"Doubtless there are coarse views of truth, rude blocks which man has hewn, and which all may use alike. These are the foundation-stones which every builder must use. But the richest and purest gems must be preserved in the spirit-shrine, and be gazed upon in silence and alone. So when John the Seer told of the jewelled walls and pearly gates of the Heavenly City, he spoke of the outer truths which all must see; but in the inner temple he placed nor jewel nor purest ray of light, but only the Presence and the Glory of the Lord.

"Marvellous it is that you do not see this. That which to you is Divine Truth is only that atom, that speck of the whole unbroken circle which has been cast off in answer to your cry. You needed it, and it came. To you it is perfection; it is God. To another it would be incomprehensible, without a voice to answer to his cry, without any beauty that he should desire it. You cannot parade it if you would. It would die, and its hidden charm would make no convert. It is yours and yours alone, a special creation for a special want, an answer from the great Spirit to the yearning aspiration of your soul.

"This Truth will always be esoteric. It must be so; for only to the soul that is prepared can it be given. Its fragrance is too evanescent for daily common use. Its subtle perfume is shed only in the inner chamber of the spirit. Remember this; and remember too that violence is done to Truth by forcing it on unprepared minds, while harm, great and far-reaching, is done to those who cannot receive what is a revelation to you but not to them.

"Moreover, remember that the pursuit of Truth for its own sake as the altogether lovely and desirable end of life is the highest aim of spirit on your plane of being, higher than earth's ambitions, nobler than any work that man can do. We do not now take note of any of the vulgar aims that fill up human life. The struggles and ambitions that exercise mankind, born of vanity, nurtured in jealousy, and ending in disappointment--these are plain to view as Sodom apples. But there is a subtler temptation to more refined souls--that of doing good to their fellows and adding another stone to the cairn that the pioneers of the past have raised. To them comes the desire to proclaim in accents of enthusiasm some truth which has taken hold upon their lives. They are possessed with it; the fire burns within them, and they speak. It may be a noble word they utter, and, if it meets the needs of men, it is re- echoed and taken up by other souls like-minded, and developed till men are stirred and benefited by it. But it may be the reverse. The Truth, so true to one, is true to him alone, and his voice is the voice of one crying in the wilderness, a proclaimer of idle tales. He speaks in vain, and it had been well that he had saved his energies for the quest of Truth, and have learned more before he spake to men.

Trump II: "The Gate of the Sanctuary" "It is well to teach, but better still to learn: nor is it impossible to do both. Only remember that learning must precede teaching: and be sure that the truth is one that man needs. The student who dives deep into mysteries that enshrine Truth will not recklessly violate the seclusion in which alone she dwells at ease. He will tell of her beauties, and proclaim to those who have ears to hear the words of healing which his inner sense has caught from her lips: but there will always be to him a sacred reserve, a holy silence, an esoteric revelation too pure, too dear for utterance.

[In answer to some unimportant question it was written:--]

"Nay: you will be informed in time. We may not save you the exercise which is part of your discipline. Be content to walk in the path. It leads direct to truth; but you must tread it in care and pain. We have directed you to it because it is well for you to garner up the wisdom of the past, and to learn of those who are gone before you. We foresaw long ago that those who should faithfully pursue the study of the intercourse between our world and yours, would receive rude shocks from the follies and falsities that cluster round the subject in its most exoteric aspect. We looked with confidence for the time when these should force themselves into prominence, and we prepared for it. We would teach you that there are, and ever must be, two sides to this science, as there were in the mysteries of the ages past. Having passed the one, it is necessary that you penetrate the other.

"To this end you must learn who and what are those who do communicate with men. Not otherwise can you read aright the riddle that now perplexes you. You must know how and under what conditions truth can be had: and how error and deceit, and frivolity and folly may be warded off. All this man must know if he is safely to meddle with our world. And when he has learned this, or while he is learning it, he must see, too, that on himself depends most or all of the success. Let him crush self, purify his inmost spirit, driving out impurity as a plague, and elevating his aims to their highest possible; let him love Truth as his Deity, to which all else shall bow; let him follow it as his sole aim, careless whither the quest may lead him, and round him shall circle the Messengers of the Most High, and in his inmost soul he shall see light."

On Religion.

"We have something to say by the way of summing up what has already been spoken. You do not sufficiently grasp the fact that religion has a very scanty hold on the mass of mankind; nor do you understand the adaptability of what we say to the needs and aspirations of mankind. Or perhaps it is necessary that you be reminded of what you cannot see clearly in your present state, and in the midst of your present associations. You cannot see as we see the carelessness that has crept over men as to the future state. Those who have thought about their future condition have come to know that they can find out nothing about it except that the prevalent notions are vague, foolish, contradictory, and unsatisfying. Their reasoning faculties convince them that the Revelation of God which they are taught to believe to be of plenary inspiration, contains plain marks of human adulteration; that it will not stand the test of sifting such as is applied to works professedly of human origin; and that the priestly fiction that reason is no measure of revelation, that it must be left behind upon the threshold of inquiry, and give place to faith, is a cunningly-planned means of preventing man from discovering the errors and contradictions which throng the pages of that infallible guide which is forced upon him. Those who use the touchstone of reason discover them readily enough: those who do not, betake themselves to the refuge of faith, and become blind devotees, fanatical, bigoted, and irrational; conformed to a groove in which they have been educated, and from which they have not broken loose simply because they have not dared to think.

"It would be hard for man to devise a means of cramping the mind and dwarfing the spirit more complete than this persuading a man that he must not think about matters of religion. It is one which paralyses all freedom of thought, and renders it almost impossible for the soul to rise. The spirit is condemned to a hereditary religion, whether suited or not to its wants. It is absolutely without choice as to that which is the food of its real life. That which may have suited a far-off ancestor may be quite unsuited to a struggling spirit that lives in other times from those in which such ideas had force and vitality. And so the spirit's vital nourishment is made a question of birth and locality. It is a matter over which they can exercise no personal control, whether they are to be Christian, Mahommedan, or, as you say, heathen; whether their God is to be the Great Spirit of the Red Indian, or the fetish of the savage; whether his prophet be Christ, or Mahomet, or Confucius, in short, whether their notion of religion be that prevalent in east, west, north, or south; for in all quarters they have evolved for themselves a theology which they teach their children as of binding force, as supremely necessary for salvation.

"It is important that you ponder well this matter. The assumption that any one religion, which may command itself to any one race, in any portion of your globe, has a monopoly of Divine Truth, is a human fiction, born of man's vanity and pride. There is no such monopoly of truth in any system of theology which flourishes or has flourished among men. Each is, in its degree, imperfect; each has its points of truth adapted to the wants of those to whom it was given, or by whom it was evolved. Each has its errors: and none can be commended to those whose habits of thought and whose spiritual necessities are different, as being the spiritual food which God has given to man. It is but human frailty to fancy such a thing. Man likes to believe that he is the exclusive possessor of some germ of truth. We smile as we see him hugging himself in the delusion, congratulating himself on the fancied possession, and persuading himself that it is necessary for him to send missionaries far and wide, to bear his nostrum to other lands and other peoples, who do but laugh at his pretensions and deride his claims.

"It is, indeed, supremely marvellous to us that your wise men have been and are unable to see that the ray of truth which has shone even unto them, and which they have done their best to obscure, is but one out of many which have been shed by the Sun of Truth on your world. Divine Truth is too clear a light to be tolerated by human eyes. It must be tempered by an earthly medium, conveyed through a human vehicle, and darkened somewhat lest it blind the unaccustomed eye. Only when the body of earth is cast aside, and the spirit soars to higher planes, can it afford to dispense with the interposing medium which has dulled the brightness of the heavenly light.

"All races of men have had a beam of this light amongst them. They have received it as best they might, have fostered it or dimmed it according to their development, and have in the end adapted to their different wants that which they were able to receive. None has reason to vaunt itself in exclusive possession, or to make futile efforts to force on others its own view of truth. So long as your world has endured, so long has it been true that the Brahmin, the Mahommedan, the Jew, and the Christian, has had his peculiar light, which he has considered to be his special heritage from heaven.

"And, as if to make the fallacy more conspicuous, that Church which claims to itself an exclusive possession of Divine Truth, and deems it right to carry the lamp throughout all lands, is most conspicuous for its own manifold divisions. Christendom's divisions, the incoherent fragments into which the Church of Christ is rent, the frenzied bitterness with which each assails other for the pure love of God; these are the best answers to the foolish pretension that Christianity possesses a monopoly of Divine Truth....

"Theology! it is a byword even amongst you. You know how, in the ponderous volumes which contain the records of man's ignorance about his God, may be found the bitterest invective, the most unchristian bitterness, the most unblushing misrepresentation. Theology! it has been the excuse for quenching every holiest instinct, for turning the hand of the foeman against kindred and friends, for burning and torturing and rending the bodies of the saintliest of mankind, for exiling and ostracising those whom the world should have delighted to honour, for subverting man's best instincts and quenching his most natural affections. Aye, and it is still the arena in which man's basest passions vaunt themselves, stalking with head erect and brazen front over all that dares to separate itself from the stereotyped rule. "Avaunt! there is no room for reason where theology holds sway." It is still the cause for most that may make true men to blush, for in its stifling atmosphere free thought gasps, and man becomes an unreasoning puppet.

"To such base ends has man degraded the science which should teach him of his God."

The spirit versus the letter of the Law.

"Touching the matters on which you question, we remind you that we have many times said that we take the knowledge already existing in the mind, refine and spiritualise it, and build upon it as a foundation, only rejecting that which is noxious and untrue. We deal with old opinions as Jesus dealt with the Jewish law. He apparently abrogated the letter while He gave to the spirit a newer and nobler meaning. We do the same with the opinions and dogmas of modern Christianity as He did with the dicta of the Mosaic law, and the glosses of Pharisaical and Rabbinical orthodoxy. Even as He proclaimed the truth, true for all ages, that the letter might well be dispensed with, so that the spirit were retained; so do we, in words drawn from your own teachings, say to you that the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Rigid adherence to the strict letter of the law is quite compatible with--nay, usually leads to--neglect of the true spirit. The man who begins by observing scrupulously the minutiae of the ritual law ends by becoming the proud, arrogant, unlovely Pharisee, whose religion is swallowed up by his theology, and who yet can thank God that he is not like other men.

"It is against this insidious form of religion that we wage determined war. Better for each struggling spirit that it should grope unaided after its God, trusting in the end to find Him, though after many wanderings, than that it should be cramped and confined by the trammels of an earth-born orthodoxy, which prescribes the God, as well as the way to reach Him--that way being through a wicket of which it holds the only key--which cramps all natural aspirations, drowns all soaring thoughts, and condemns the free spirit to mere mechanical action without a particle of true spiritual religion in it. Better, we say, anything than this parody on spiritual religion....

"(The) fearless thinking out of the way to God by those who are enabled to attempt it, will infallibly lead to what we unceasingly proclaim, a spiritual, refined, and elevated religion, in place of a literal, dogmatic interpretation of the words of your sacred records. For all utterances of spirits through man have a spiritual interpretation as well as a material one which meets the eye. And it is this spiritual interpretation which is entirely missed by a materialistic age. Man has gradually built around the teachings of Jesus a wall of deduction, and speculation, and material comment, similar to that with which the Pharisee had surrounded the Mosaic law. The tendency has increasingly been to do this in proportion as man has lost sight of the spiritual world. And so it has come to pass that we find hard, cold materialism deduced from teachings which were intended to breathe spirituality, and to do away with sensuous ritual.

"'It is our task to do for Christianity what Jesus did for Judaism. We would take the old forms and spiritualise their meaning, and infuse into them new life. Resurrection rather than abolition is what we desire. We say again that we do not abolish one jot or one title of the teaching which the Christ gave to the world. We do but wipe away man's material glosses, and show you the hidden spiritual meaning which he has missed. We strive to raise you in your daily life more and more from the dominion of the body, and to show you more and more of the mystic symbolism with which spirit life is permeated. They take but a shallow view of our teaching who pin themselves to the letter. We would raise you from the life of the body to that which shall be to you the fit approach to the state disembodied. There is but a glimpse possible as yet; but the time will come when you will be able to see, as we cannot explain to you in your present state, the true dignity of man's higher life even on the earth sphere, and the hidden mysteries with which that life is teeming.

"Before you can reach so far you must be content to learn that there is a spiritual meaning underlying everything; that your Bible is full of it; man's interpretations, and definitions, and glosses being but the material husk which enshrines the kernel of divine truth. Were we to throw away this husk the tender kernel would wither and die. So we content ourselves with pointing out, as you can bear and understand, the living verity which underlies the external fact with which you are familiar.

"This was the mission of the Christ. He claimed for Himself that fulfillment of the law, not its abolition or abrogation, was His intent. He pointed out the truth which was at the root of the Mosaic commandment. He stripped off the rags of Pharisaical ritual, the glosses of Rabbinical speculation, and laid bare the divine truth that was beneath all, the grand principles divinely inspired which man had well-nigh buried. He was not only a religious but a social reformer; and the grand business of His life was to elevate the people, spirit and body, to expose pretenders, and to strip off the mask of hypocrisy; to take the foot of the despot from the neck of the struggling slave, and to make man free by virtue of that truth which He came from God to declare. 'Ye shall know the truth,' He told His followers, 'and the truth shall make you free: and ye shall be free indeed.'...

"We continue to preach that same evangel. By commission from the same God, by authority and inspiration from the same source, do we come now as apostles of this heaven-sent gospel. We declare truths the same as Jesus taught. We preach His gospel, purified from the glosses and misinterpretations which man has gathered around it. We would spiritualise that which man has hidden under the heap of materialism.

"We would bring forth the spirit-truth from the grave in which man has buried it, and would tell to the listening souls of men that it lives still; the simple, yet grand truth of man's progressive destiny, of God's unceasing care, of Spirit's unslumbering watch over incarned souls.

"The burdens that a dogmatic priesthood has bound upon men's backs, we fling them to the winds; the dogmas which have hampered the soul, and dragged down its aspirations, we tear them asunder, and bid the soul go free. Our mission is the continuation of that old teaching which man has so strangely altered; its source identical; its course parallel; its end the same."

The fearful, the fanatical and the indifferent towards religion.

"Some there are, and they not the noblest of your race, for whom it is essential that deep subjects of religion should be thought out ready to their hand. For them free spiritual thought would mean doubt, indecision, despair, death. "Traveler Above the Sea of Clouds" by Caspar David Friedrich They cannot climb the giddy heights where man must gaze into hidden mysteries, and face the unclouded radiance of the Sun of Truth. Not for them the pinnacles which overhang precipices deep down in which lie hid the Eternal Verities. They cannot gaze lest they fall: they cannot endure the ordeal: they must fall back on safer and more beaten paths, where others have walked before, even though the way be tortuous and uncertain. They must be hemmed in between high walls over which they dare not look. They must walk warily, picking their way step by step, and avoiding all inequalities, lest they stumble and fall. And so they fall back on the prescribed dogmas of unyielding orthodoxy. So it has been decided by the wisdom of the Church is the answer of their priests. Doubt is ruin; thought only ends in bewilderment; faith is the only safety. Believe and be saved. Believe not, and be damned. They are not able to receive these things. How should they? They have not yet grasped the fragments of truth that lie on the very threshold of knowledge. How, then, should they enter in and dwell in the penetralia where truth is enshrined in fulness?

"Some there are who are not merely unable, but unwilling, to receive or entertain anything which militates against that ancient and received theology which they have learned to consider as the embodiment of Divine truth. It has sufficed the needs of the saints of Christendom. It has cheered the martyr at the stake, and consoled the dying saint in ages long gone by even as now. It was their fathers' creed. It was the gospel of salvation which they learned from a mother's lips. It is that which they have received as the deposit of the truth, and which they are determined to teach their children, that they in turn may hand on the truth whole and undefiled. And so a feeling of heroic determination comes over them that they will not even touch that which seems to contravene this faith of theirs, consecrated to them by so many associations, and endeared by so many memories. They are, as they fancy, defenders of the faith: and all a martyr's zeal burns within them. They cannot be reached by any influence that we can bring to bear. Nor would we willingly interfere with so comfortable a faith. Were we to make the attempt, we should need to upset from the very foundations the edifice they have reared. We should need to make war on this faith which they love so well, and hew it down with merciless axe. Their Immutable God and their stereotyped religion, changeless and unchangeable, we should need to attack, and show that though God changes not, yet the mind of man does, and that what was sufficient for the past may be, and often is, quite inadequate for the future. We must show them--what they could never see--the progressive march of revelation, the gradual enlightenment of man in proportion to the freedom of his thought and the enormous mass of purely human fiction which they have dignified by the title of Divine Revelation. The task would be vain: and we are not so foolish as to attempt it. They must gain their knowledge in another sphere of being.

"Some, again, have never thought about the matter at all. They have a sort of conventional idea about the external profession of religion, because they cannot get on well socially without it. But it is of the slenderest make, and will go into very small compass when not in use. It is indeed but the outside covering, which is not intended for anything but show. So long as it looks well from a distance, it serves the purpose for which they use it. These and such as these are our bitterest opponents. To force them to think about religion is most irksome and annoying to them. The subject is distasteful, tolerated only in its lightest form from sheer necessity. It is the business of priests to settle what is right, they take as much as is necessary on trust. To force them not only to see the flaws in the old faith, but to admire the excellences in the new, is a double aggravation, involving double trouble. They will have none of it. They cling to the past, and live in it. They are well as they are. Progress they hate. Freedom they know nothing of save in that conventional sense in which it approaches very near to slavery. Free thought to them means scepticism, doubt, atheism, and these all are not respectable. They are social blunders. Progress means something which politically and religiously is horrible to them. They not only shrink from it, but they view it with loathing and contempt. The good old times enshrine their ideal; and in the good old times such things were never heard of. Hence they are manifestly wicked, and to be avoided.

"It is, no doubt plain to you that we have no dealings with these three classes, and with the myriads who lie in between them, enclosed within the poles of inability and unwillingness, or positive aversion. Hereafter you will learn that it does not rest with us to choose in the matter. We cannot reach them even if we would."

On Revelation.

"Revelation is from God: and that which He has revealed at one time cannot contradict that which He has revealed at another, seeing that each is, in its kind, a revealing of truth, but of truth revealed in proportion to man's necessities, and in accordance with his capacities. That which seems contradictory is not in the Word of God, but in the mind of man. Man was not content with the simple message. He has adulterated it with his glosses, overlaid it with his deductions and speculations. And so, as years go by, it comes to pass that what came from God is in no sense what it was. It has become contradictory, impure, and earthy. When a further revelation comes, instead of fitting it reasonably, it becomes necessary to clear away much of the superstition that has been built on the old foundations; and the work of destruction must precede the work of addition. The revelations are not contradictory; but it is necessary to destroy man's rubbish before God's truth can be revealed. Man must judge according to the light of reason that is in him. That is the ultimate standard, and the progressive soul will receive what the ignorant or prejudiced will reject. God's truth is forced on none. So for a time, during the previous processes, this must be a special revelation to a special people. It has ever been so. Did Moses obtain universal acceptance even amongst his own people? Did any of the seers? Did Jesus even? Did Paul? Did any reformer in any age, amongst any people? He offers, and they who are prepared receive the message. The ignorant and unfit reject it. It must be so; and the dissensions and differences which you deplore are but for the sifting of the false from the true. They spring from unworthy causes, and are impelled by malignant spirits. You must expect annoyance, too, from the banded powers of evil. But cast your eyes beyond the present. Look to the far future, and be of good courage."

Then revelation is more from within--subjective?

"The internal craving is correspondent to the external revelation: we have said before that man cannot receive more than he is prepared for. He is gradually led by spirit-guidance to a higher plane of knowledge, and then, when the need is felt, advanced and progressive information is given to him. Those of you who have questioned whether man does not evolve for himself a theoretic or speculative system which comes entirely from within, are not informed as to the operations of the Divine messengers. At the very outset of our information to you we explained that man was only the vehicle of spirit-guidance. What he wrongly imagines to be the evolution of his own mind is in reality the outcome of spirit-teaching which acts through him. Some of your greater minds have wandered near the truth when they have so speculated. Did they but know enough of spirit-teaching to be aware of the influence that acts upon them, they would be far nearer the truth than those who have fancied that their Bible contains a complete and infallible Revelation, to which nothing will ever be added, and from which no scrap may ever be removed as useless. It is not necessary for practical purposes in your life on earth to speculate on the exact correlation between man's mental action and God's revelation. You may easily bewilder yourself by vain attempts to separate the inseparable and to define the indefinable. Sufficient that we tell you that spirit- preparation precedes your knowledge, and enables the progressive mind to evolve for itself higher views of truth, those very views being not the less the very voice of the messenger of truth. And so revelation is correlative with man's needs."

"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 blasphemously 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.

"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."

On Faith.

"We know nothing of the potency of blind faith or credulity. We know, indeed, the value of a trustful, receptive spirit, free from the littleness of perpetual suspicion. Such is God-like, and draws down angel guidance. But we abjure and denounce that most destructive doctrine that faith, belief, assent to dogmatic statements, have power to erase the traces of transgression; that an earth lifetime of vice and sloth and sin can we wiped away, and the spirit stand purified by a blind acceptance of a belief, of an idea, of a fancy, of a creed. Such teaching has debased more souls than anything else to which we can point."

"You are mistaken in supposing your faith to be as strong as it will be. When enlarged and purified it will be a vastly different power from that cold, calculating, nerveless assent which you now call Faith. The faith you now possess would pale and fade away before real obstacles. It has no hold upon your mind, is no factor in your life. In one way it would be strengthened by opposition, but a severe spiritual attack from the adversaries would well-nigh extinguish it. Faith to be real must be outside the limits of caution, and be fired by something more potent and effective than calculating prudence, or logical deduction, or judicial impartiality. It must be the fire that burns within, the mainspring that regulates the life, the overmastering force that will not be at rest. This is that faith that Jesus spoke of when He said of it that it was able to move mountains. This is that which braves death and torture, braces up the feeble knees for long and hard endurance, and conducts its possessor safe at last through any perils that may assail him to the goal where faith finds its reward in fruition.

"Of this you know nothing. Yours is not Faith, but only logical assent; not spontaneous living faith, but hard-wrung intellectual assent weighted always with a mental reservation. That which you have would move no mountain, though it might suffice to select a safe way round it. It would be powerless to animate and stir the spirit, though it would be fitted to estimate evidence and weigh possibilities. It would suffice for purposes of intellectual defence, but it is not the faith that springs unceasing in the innermost soul, and becomes, by virtue of its power, an overmastering leader, a mainspring of action, of high and holy purpose, at which the world may sneer, and the wise may scoff, but which is the central spring of all that is best and noblest in man's life.

"Of this you know nothing. But, mark us, the time will come when you will marvel how you could have ever dignified this calculating caution by the name of faith, or have dreamed that to its hesitating knock can ever be unbarred the portals of Divine truth. You must wait, and when the time comes you will not set up that pale marble statue in place of what should be a living body, instinct with conviction, and energised by the loftiest purpose. You have no faith.

You have a way of putting things, which, however true, is slightly discomfiting. However, since "Faith is the gift of God," I can't see how I am to blame. I am as I was made.

"Nay, friend, but you are what you have made yourself through a life which has been moulded both from within and from without. You are what external circumstances, and internal predilections, and spirit-guidance have made you. You misunderstand. We did but rebuke you for your vaunting that as faith which has no claim to the name. Be content. You are on the road to higher knowledge of a nobler truth. Withdraw (so far as may be) from the external, and cultivate the interior and spiritual. Cease not to pray for faith, that what you well call 'the gift of God' may be poured into your spirit, and energise through it to a higher knowledge. You retard us by your very anxiety."

On Opinion.

"You cannot see, as we see, the almost utter worthlessness of what you call opinion. You cannot know, while yet the eye is veiled, how the veil is rent by the dissolution of the spirit from the earth-body; how the speculations that have seemed so all-important are seen to be but idle, baseless fancies; while the germ of truth that has underlain the theological creeds is found to be very similar in essence, albeit of divers degrees of development.

"Ah, friend! religion is not so abstruse a problem as man has made it. It is comprised within narrow limits for the intelligence that is domiciled on earth. And the theological speculations, the dogmatic definitions with which man has overlaid the revelation of God, serve but to perplex and bewilder, and to involve the spirit struggling up to light in the mists and fogs of ignorance and superstition. The groping after truth which has been characteristic of the progressive spirit in every age has been but the same story, different, indeed, in detail, but identical in issue. As with the blinded eye of sense, so with the spirit that gropes blindly to the light. The mazes of superstition bewilder it; the mists of human ignorance close around it. It staggers and wanders on its devious way, now here, now there, now cast down to earth and trodden under foot by the adversaries, but rising anon, and with outstretched arms struggling onwards still. Those wanderings seem to you similar, and when confined within the limits of a single sect they are indeed alike, but to spirit gaze they have very many points of difference. The struggling spirits who in all ages have been groping their way through the maze of human opinion to the fount of light have pushed their way through tortuous paths which bear only a superficial similarity. To us the theological opinions which have charactised certain sets of men called churches are not so identical as you think. We see the inner points of divergence; and we know that no two spirits yet created were precisely identical views of the unknown ever presented. They have framed for themselves ideas more or less like those of other spirits, but never identical with them.

"It is only when the veil is removed that the fog lifts; the speculations die with the body of earth, the opinions shift aside, and the purged eye sees what it has dimly pictured, and corrects by the quickened senses the impressions of earth. Then it sees how the germ of truth is at the base, helped in some to progress by a receptive mind and a clearer spiritual vision; hampered and clogged in others by a cramped intelligence and a debased earth-body. But in all cases of yearning souls thirsting for true knowledge of God and of their destiny, the opinions of earth rapidly fade, and the spirit sees how baseless and unreal they were. It is only when there is no desire for truth that error is permanent.

"So you see, friend, that truth is the exclusive heritage of no man, of no sect. It may and does underlie the philosophy of Athenodorus, as he yearned after the refining of the spirit and the subjection of the flesh in ancient Rome. It was as really existent in the groping after union with his Master which enabled Hippolytus to endure the loss of earthly existence in sure anticipation of a real life, even though he only dimly saw its characteristics. The self-same seeking after truth elevated and ennobled Plotinus, and raised him, even in earth-life, above and beyond the earth-sphere. It dwelt in the breast of Algazzali, in spite of the errors by which it was dimmed. It--the same blessed germ of Divine truth--lightened the speculations of Alessandro Achillini, and gave force and reality to the burning words which fell from his lips. The same pure jewel shines now in one and all of them. It is the common heritage which enables them to be banded together in a common work and for a common end--the purifying of that deposit of the truth which man has from his God, and the ennobling and elevating of man's destiny by the outpouring of more spiritual views of God and of the destiny of spirit.

"To them their earth-opinions are of little moment now. They have vanished long ago, and have left behind them no trace of the prejudice which clouded the soul on earth and hampered its progress. They have died and are buried, and over their grave no tear of sorrow is dropped. No resurrection awaits th7em: they are forever done with: but the jewel which they once enshrined shines with ever-increasing lustre, and is imperishable and eternal. In its illuminating influences, in the aspirations which its presence inspires, lies the mysterious bond of sympathy which is powerful to unite in one work spirits who, in earth-life, were so apparently divergent in opinion.

"This may serve to suggest for your consideration reasons why it may not be so strange as it now seems to you, that we should be now banded together for a common object, consecrated to a common work by one earnest desire to spread abroad the knowledge of a higher and purer religion, through an instrument chosen by us for special indications of fitness, of which we are the best judges."

On doubt.

"Friend, it is to us a source of pleasure that we have so far stirred your mind as to draw from you so earnest and rational a series of questions as these. Believe us, so far at least as this, that no frame of mind is more pleasing to the Supreme than that which seeks earnestly and intelligently for truth; refusing mere dogmatic statements from whatever source they come; weighing all in the balance of right reason, and prepared honestly to accept the result. Far from wishing to quarrel with such a temper, we hail it as the evidence of a receptive and honest mind, which will not resign a former belief without substantial reason, but which, yet, is willing to learn new views of truth so they be authenticated by reasonable internal and external evidence. Such doubts and difficulties are worth far more to us than the credulous frame of mind which gulps down indiscriminately all that comes under specious color; far, far more than that stagnant temper which no storm can stir, whose glassy surface no breeze can ruffle, and on whose impassive, uninterested content no word of spirit warning can make any impression."

".... Doubt is sin in none. Intellectual inability to accept certain statements is not matter for blame. But refusal to weigh evidence fairly, and inclination to set up a personal standard of evidence which is fictitious and selfish, may end in grievous consequences, and this is the ground of our complaint. We respect your doubts, and shall rejoice with you when they are removed. But we blame and censure the attitude which makes it well-nigh impossible for us to remove them; which fences you in as with an icy barrier beyond which we cannot pass; which degrades a candid and progressive soul to a state of isolation and retrogression, and binds the spirit to the dark regions of the nether earth. Such temper of mind is the baleful result of evil influence, and, if it be not checked, it may become a permanent bar to progress."

The Seeker.

"None anxiously look who do not find in the end, though they may have long to wait--yes, even till they reach a higher sphere of being. God tries all: and to those only who are fitted is advanced knowledge granted. The preparation must be complete before the step is gained. This is an unalterable law. Fitness precedes progression. Patience is required."

"Be prepared for trouble: it will assuredly come. It is necessary that afflictions come. Jesus knew and taught that. It is necessary for the training of the soul. It is as necessary as physical discipline for the body. No deep knowledge is to be had without it. None is permitted to scale the glorious heights but after discipline of sorrow. The key of knowledge is in spirit-hands, and none may wrest it to himself but the earnest soul which is disciplined by trial. Bear that in mind.

"Ease and luxury are the pleasant paths in which the soul lingers and dreams away the summer day. Self-denial, self-sacrifice, self- discipline are the upward tracks, thorn-vexed and rocky, which lead to the heights of knowledge and power. Study the life of Jesus and be wise."

"We strive to inculcate on all that the way to know God is open and free, and that the man who prefers stagnation to progress is violating one of the first conditions of his being. We say that man has no right to close the road to God, and to lock up the wicket, compelling all to pass through his door. We say again that rigid orthodoxy, dogmatic faith prescribed in human words, inflexible lines within which he who walks not is therefore lost--these are human figments, bonds of man's making to tie down aspiring souls, and pin them to earth. Better, we reiterate, for each struggling spirit to wander forth with no guide but its appointed angel, to pray for itself, to think for itself, to work for itself till the day-dawn of truth rise upon it, than that it should surrender its freedom and accept its religion at the dictation of any. Far, far better that the wanderings should be tortuous and long drawn out, and the creed scant and little satisfying; better that the cold winds should brace it, and the storms of heaven beat upon it, than that it should be cramped within the narrow, choking, airless avenue of human dogmatism, gasping for breath, crying for bread, and fed only with the stones of an ancient creed, the fossilised imaginings of human ignorance. Better, far better, that the shallowest and crudest notions of the Great Father should come to His child direct from spirit to spirit, the Divine inbreathing of Divine truth, than that he should consent to receive the most elaborate theology which fits and suits him not, and dream on in drowsy carelessness through the probation life, only to awake to a bitter consciousness of the falsity of that which he has so heedlessly accepted. Honesty and fearlessness in the search after truth are the first prerequisites for finding it. Without these no spirit soars. With these none fail of progress."

"We earnestly encourage you to prayerfulness and steadfastness, together with patient watching. Be not diverted from the purpose for which we labour. Meditate long and frequently on the sacred message which God now sends to earth. Strive to throw aside obstacles and bars to progress. We would not have you neglect your daily work. The time will come when we shall be able to use you more frequently. That time is not yet come. It is necessary that you go through this additional trial and preparation; meantime, dear friend, remember that you need training, even as by fire...you must endeavour to rise above the plane of earth to the higher spheres, where the higher spirits dwell. This is our Easter message to you. Awake and arise from the dead. Cast aside the gross cares of your lower world. Throw off the material bonds that bind and clog your spirit. Rise from dead matter to living spirit; from earthly care to spiritual love; from earth to heaven. Emancipate your spirit from earthly cares which are earth-born and unspiritual. Cast aside the material and the physical which have been the necessary aids to your progress, and rise from engrossing interest in the worldly to a due appreciation of Spiritual Truth. As the Master said to His friends,'Be in the world, but not of the world.' So shall those words of your Sacred Records be fulfilled in you: 'Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.' "

You speak as if I wasted time on worldly things.

"No; we have said that it must needs be that your earthly work must be accomplished even at the risk of preventing the education of your spirit. But we would have you to devote your care to higher spiritual teaching, and to leave the lower planes of objective evidence, which should no longer be required. We would have you to progress. And what we say to you we say to all."

"The flesh must be subdued to the spirit before the aspirant can gain truth. The aspirant to true spiritual knowledge must be pure in all things, brave in spirit as well as body, single-minded in the search for truth, and self-contained. Purity, simplicity, singleness of purpose, and love of progress and truth; these conduct the aspirant to the domain of spiritual knowledge. But, for the impure, whose sensual nature dominates the spiritual; the selfish, who would use the knowledge for base ends; for these there is in the pursuit danger deep and real.

"Many unstable minds are attracted to the mysterious. They fancy they would like to penetrate the veil from mere curiosity. They are vain, and would fain have power and knowledge which others have not; and so they seek to pry. To such is danger. To the truth-seeker there is none."

"Short of absolute evil, much ground for assault is given by an ill-regulated, disordered mind, by minds unhinged and unbalanced. Avoid all such. They are frequently the ready agents of spirit influence, but of undeveloped and unwelcome guides. Beware of immoderate, unreasoning, excited frames of mind."

"In calmness, in earnestness, in prayerfulness, and with a body peaceful, healthy and unexcited, seek for a message with us."

"Be not too eager. If anything seems new and strange to you, do not therefore reject it. Estimate it according to your light, and, if need be, put it aside to wait for further enlightenment. To the honest and true heart all else will come in God's time. In the end you will arrive at a plane of knowledge, when much that now seems so new and strange will be revealed and explained. Only keep before you the fact that there is much that is new and true of which you now know nothing; many fresh truths to be learned; many old errors to be dissipated. Wait and pray."

"It is well that you recognise your own ignorance. It is the first step to progress. You are but now standing in the outmost court, far away from the temple of truth. You must walk round and round, until you know the outer precincts, before you can penetrate the inner courts; and long and laborious efforts must precede and fit you for eventual entrance within the temple. Be content. Wait and pray, and keep yourself in silence and patient watching."

"The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger" by Michael Whelan

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