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It would be making a great mistake
to suppose that the course herein recommended to
(p. 328)
of the Slav populations of
The only visible means for
checking the further progress of this scheme lies in providing
(p. 329)
positive declaration on the part of
Of supreme value to
For
(p. 330)
among which its exile has been passed. It
shows that it finished once for all with the priest and his vicarious atonements
on the fatal tree of
Christendom has but to purge
itself of complicity in the crime of Caiaphas for it to be one in faith and
heart with
I have described the
English Christmas as
(p. 331)
exhibited in a country village. Do my readers
know the nature of the festival whereby the Moslems celebrate the birth of the
new year? The prohibition of Abraham’s intended sacrifice of Isaac
corresponds for them to our Nativity, – so intensely do they hate the conception
of a blood-loving deity. It is their most sacred day; while our most sacred day
is not a birth but a death, not a sacrifice prohibited, but a sacrifice
consummated. And so far as both faith and practice go, it is we and not they who
are the blasphemers and libellers of God; – we and not they who are the “inhuman
specimens of humanity.”
Hating cruelty and bloodshed,
except only in the case of those whom he despises and detests for their
sanguinary creed, the Moslem makes it a matter of religion to be kind to his
animal inferiors. That he classes his women among these is his misfortune rather
than his fault. Even we have taken woman up to our own spiritual level
theoretically only. He has not yet seen his way to do that. Nevertheless, he
does not kick or beat her. The very inferiority of the position of his women,
moreover, adds to his domestic troubles. For they are even more incompetent to
bring up their children aright than is the average British matron. Hence it has
come that the office of
(p. 332)
schoolmaster is held in such low repute that
a teacher is not allowed to give evidence in a court of justice. He must, they
conclude, either have been mad to undertake to teach children, or he must have
become mad in teaching them. Nevertheless, the Moslem has in the symbols of his
faith a sure prophecy of the future. For precisely as the symbol of the Cross
represents for us the union on equal terms of the two sexes in the Divine
Thought, so does the symbol of the Crescent and the Star represent that union
for Islam. For the Cross is Humanity, made “in the image of God, male and female,”
and, not impossibly, in the form at present observed by the entire universe of
phenomenal existence. And the Christian significance of the Cross – not the
crucifix, that is an orthodox degradation on behalf of vicarious atonement – is
that of the exaltation of humanity from the physical to the spiritual plane by
the perpetual sacrifice of its own lower to its own higher nature. While,
more-over, humanity is for us represented by the Cross, God who, as the triune
source of existence, at once produces, sustains, and renews all things, alike on
the fourfold plane of man’s physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual nature,
is represented by the Sun. In the
(p. 333)
symbolism of every religion that the world
has known, the Cross and the Sun have been the chief hieroglyphs. Every place of
worship that has been systematically designed, whether it be Jacob’s monument of
his dream of progeny, the Druid’s circle, the Hebrew tabernacle, the Pagan
temple, the Moslem mosque, or the Christian church, has contained – exhibited or
concealed – the idea of humanity and sex, of God and the sun, as corresponding
modes of the universal existence.
For all religions have alike been
based on the miracles of generation and regeneration, the birth of the body, and
the birth of the soul whereby the body is redeemed. And the meaning of the
symbolisms founded on sex, – which by those who fail to recognise the essential
purity and sanctity of all natural functions whatsoever is deemed obscene and
degrading, – is simply that inasmuch as symbols are intended to represent the
appeal through sense to spirit, it is necessary to borrow from among sensible
objects the symbols which indicate the corresponding spiritual subjects.
It is with a view to illustrate
the divine love in creation and redemption, that religion has consecrated the
mysteries of generation and regeneration. Hence it is that that Christian
(p. 334)
edifice is the most perfectly adapted to the
culture of Existence which most nearly represents the essential mysteries of
existence. In man, the microcosm, alone are all known elements of existence most
fully concentrated and combined. Hence the true church, like the true religion,
represents at once humanity and deity. Its ground plan is the Cross, “the image
of God, male and female.” At the sacred and central junction of the two
constituent beams is the altar, reared directly above a circular cave which
represents space, the earth, or the womb, while the altar itself is the scene of
the consecration and mingling of the representative elements of life, the bread
and wine. Above the altar rises the tower, dome, or steeple to indicate the rise
of Nature – sphinx-like – from earth to heaven, from man to God. Around this
spot, dedicated to the prime mysteries of vitality, physical and spiritual in
one, rise in the form of an oval thirteen tall columns, representing the
months of the moon, and the “grove” of Ashtoreth, and constituting with the
altar “the tree of life in the midst of the garden” of existence. And round the
whole sacred spot, as pillars of incense to the Creator, rise tall trees of
imperishable stone, exquisite with
(p. 335)
delicate tracery, while through many-coloured
windows stream the rays of the orb who, like its prototype God, is at once the
negation and the fulness of colour and triune source of all things. To the
rising of the sun as God’s own special emblem and agent, and as the masculine
and paternal energy by which the Church, as woman and mother of the spiritual
humanity, is vivified, the head of the edifice is directed. Thus does
Christianity exhibit itself as the religion at once Catholic and Pantheist,
inasmuch as while it represents Nature as proceeding from God, it represents
Nature as returning to God, and God as constituting existence as a “Person who
feels and knows.”
No other than this is implied in
the Crescent and Star of Islam. In the Crescent is at once the moon, the woman,
the mother earth, and Nature at large. And the Star to which she aspires is the
fertilising and redeeming sun and centre of existence, even God. By his
conjunction of these emblems as symbols of his faith, the Moslem means all that
has been set forth of the Cross on both planes of existence, the physical and
the spiritual. For he means the essential unity and identity of man and woman,
of deity and humanity, of God and Nature. He means also the redemption
(p. 336)
of humanity and of the world through the
perfect offspring born of the perfect conjunction of the perfect halves of
humanity, when all shall be Islam, and the will of God recognised as the
supreme law of Existence. And if it be inquired what there is between these two
religions of Islam and Christ and these two races of Aryan and Semite, light and
dark, male and female, that they should hate and devour one another, the only
reply is, Nothing, nothing more than there is between man and woman that they
should hate and devour one another; nothing save that blasphemous devil, the
Antichrist Orthodoxy, with its doctrine of vicarious atonement – the doctrine
pleaded by Caiaphas on behalf of the murder of Christ – that doctrine pleaded by
the flesh-eater, the sportsman, and the vivisector on behalf of the murder and
torture of animals – that doctrine pleaded also by the sacerdotal and other
orthodoxies of England on behalf of the destruction of Turkey, and the
degradation of the fair Aryan race from being a “strong son of God” – a sun to
redeem the dark places of the earth, to vivify “the daughters of men” with new
spiritual life, and to be indeed a guiding star to the Crescent of Islam, – into
becoming the avenger and destroyer of the other half of its humanity.
(p. 337)
Surely it must be because “he knoweth that he
hath but a short time,” that the “old serpent that has so long deceived the
whole world” – even the Antichrist Orthodoxy – ventures thus desperately and
transparently to incite
And now let me similarly indicate
to that other form of the dragon of orthodoxy, Materialistic Science, the true
nature of the work it is blindly accomplishing. Precisely as all other and prior
worships of Existence had for their end and aim the reconciliation of humanity
with deity, by the demonstration of the fact of man’s substantial identity with
God – a demonstration including the exaltation with man of all that appertains
to and enters into man’s existence, as the present movement on behalf of women
and animals shows – so has the scientific culture of Existence on a plane purely
physical, for its object the heightening of the consciousness of the material
world by making even its metals and minerals and the mechanical forces of Nature
partakers of and ministers to the development of man’s spiritual consciousness,
with a view to the demonstration of’ the substantial identity of all existence
what-soever, and thereby to the exhibition, as necessary
(p. 338)
and self-evident, of the truth of the
declaration, “Thine incorruptible spirit is in all things.”
Every step made by science towards
an explanation of the method of Nature, serves to confirm the truths intuitively
discerned ages ago. The vortex-ring, and the hollow tube or germ-cell, as
constituting the method and basis of vitality, enter into very ancient
conceptions of the nature of man and the universe. For macrocosm and microcosm
were alike regarded as formed like hollow tubes through which might stream the
divine energy, vitalising and illuming all as it flowed, save only in so far as
it was obstructed by the wilfulness of the self-conscious instrument. The whole
universe was conceived of as a hollow tube, having, after the fashion of man,
legs with which to march on its appointed path; arras with which to execute its
appointed task; a head and a heart for thinking and feeling; an alimentary canal
for its nourishment; aye, and an excretory canal whence it discharged such
matters as by their inability to partake of the higher vitalisation, were deemed
refuse, and were accordingly cast out. But the Pantheists of old did not, like
our sham Christian theologians, insist that aught in the divine economy was
refuse for ever. They did not divorce
(p. 339)
knowledge from love, and represent the divine
compassion as inadequate for the redemption even of the lowest forms of
consciousness. For them refuse meant but something whose time was not yet come,
and which had therefore to be cast out once more on the field of existence, in
order that through yet further processes it might at length be converted into
good wholesome material.
Even now is Science doing with
this globe of ours precisely that which, it was held by the ancients, was done
both with macrocosm and microcosm by spiritual agencies. For what is the end of
all that Science is doing in covering the earth with a sensitive network of
electric nerves, in bridging land and sea with arteries for the currents of
humanity, and in otherwise ministering to the heightening of the consciousness
of the whole earth and its family, but converting into a complex and highly
vitalised organism that which previously was but a mass in a low state of
diffused consciousness? To describe the working of man on the earth as that of a
spirit in a higher degree of vitalisation working to exalt the consciousness of
a spirit which is in a lower degree of vitalisation, is surely a far more
accurate way of describing the fact than to regard man or material, or both, as
dead, unconscious, and devoid
(p. 340)
of substantial identity. So far as my
experience goes, it needs but to get away from the Babel of the outer life, with
an organism purified so as to allow the divine energy to flow through it
unobstructed by substances my system is unable properly to vitalise, to see with
absolute vision that, even while vaunting itself materialist and atheist, and
denying the life and consciousness of all that exists, orthodox science is
itself an unconscious minister of the great Worker, and that its votaries all
are but spirits themselves, and working upon masses of consciousness of a lower
grade only than their own; and that what they regard as matter and as
unconscious is m reality but a mode of the universal consciousness, even as they
themselves are modes of that consciousness. In this view, so far from there
being no spirit, all is spirit; and what is meant by matter is simply a mode of
spirit so much more dense than spirit in its normal state, as to require for us
some name other than spirit to distinguish it, thus, even while vaunting itself
atheist and denying spirit, is science at once Spiritualist, Polytheist,
Christian, and Pantheist, and ministering with all its might to the cultivation
of the Spirit. And so “He maketh the wrath of man to praise Him.”
(p. 341)
To those who have thoroughly
grasped the conception of existence as a thing alive and sympathetic throughout,
the doctrine will be far from fantastic that sets forth the reality of a soul of
nations as well as of individuals, – a living, sentient, energising entity,
having spiritual affinities with other national souls, and leagued with the
spirits of the elements for reward or chastisement on its incarnate children,
while the various Modes of the Supreme Himself are, as Divine Persons, ever at
hand to render aid, England being as she is, what more likely than that this
present plague of waters should be a visitation having the double end of forcing
us to repentance and laughing Science to scorn? What more likely than that in
the floods by which ever since her great trouble France has annually been
devastated, the dual soul of the nation – spirit at once of Paris and Helen,
united but not yet truly wedded – is weeping itself away in the endeavour to win
for itself and its children, by means of” “Water and the Spirit,” the repentance
and regeneration which not all the blood and fires of Paris and of Troy together
have yet effected; – nor can effect so long as between France and her salvation
stands the cruel, sensual devil of Gallican orthodoxy, which, while pretending
to
(p. 342)
exalt the woman, thrusts her and her sweet
true influences into the nethermost hell, and so exemplifies the treason of
If then it be the fact, that man
is the battle-field of the great conflict of the opposites which constitute all
derived existence, and that existence is alive and sympathetic through-out,
there must be a sympathy between the elements and man’s own spiritual condition,
and as he is, so will they, more or less, also be. And if, as also seems to be
necessarily true, man’s woes come of the lack of the due union and accord in him
between the elements which constitute the duality inherent in all existence; if
soul and body, spirit and sense,
(p. 343)
perception and reflection, reason and
imagination, m ale and female, – if, in a word, God and Nature, instead of an
harmonious marriage, are estranged and divorced through man’s own act, then must
it follow either that all those elements which, by virtue of their faithfulness
to the intuitions of their own consciousness, remain faithful to the Supreme as
to their true self, will for man be in disastrous discord, and will hold
themselves at the bidding of those national souls which seek in vain to win
their people to their own salvation; or that the elements will themselves
partake of man’s defect of harmony, and thereby be equally indifferent to his
well-being. That the Israelites adopted the former hypothesis is evident from
the whole tenor of the Bible. Hence, if they were right, we may expect to see
Should, then, this doctrine be a
truth, not now,
(p. 344)
as in the memorable day of
The evil the infliction of which
is contemplated by
(p. 345)
whatsoever, involves the negation at once of
the Unity, Duality, Trinity, and Plurality of all existence whatsoever, and
hence the negation of existence itself; that is, of the world, of man, and of
God. In seeking to reconcile and combine in one its two great constituent
elements, the
(p. 346)
dark races by the light, either as a whole or
in parts. For the light and dark races of the earth are, in respect of their
moral, intellectual, and spiritual characteristics, to each other as male and
female, pole and equator, light and heat, head and heart, reason and intuition,
priest and prophet. In the persons of their chief representatives, they have
always exercised towards each other relations equivalent to those of man and
wife.
From the earliest known times they
were to each other as sons of God and daughters of men; and the earliest Hindoo
and Hebrew legends concur in representing the white race as descending from the
Hindoo Koosh, or
(p. 347)
to the male and female in the case of
individuals; and that in fact, both as unit and as aggregate, individually and
collectively, man is “made i n the image of God, male and female.”
This holds good when the
distinction is other than that of sex or colour, and is restricted to mental
qualities. The late conflict between the Northern and Southern States of America
is the most tremendous illustration on record of this doctrine. In that case the
National Soul had a double difficulty to contend against in reconciling the
unity and the duality of its people. For not only was the masculine North
striving for the mastery with the feminine South, but the Aryan white race was
striving to retain its connexion with the African dark race. The contest was
essentially a spiritual one. It was a contest, on the plane of humanity, between
the assertion and negation of God. The determination which enabled the upholders
of the national unity to achieve their object was a testimony to the essentially
Pantheistic, and therefore Christian, character of the religious consciousness
of
(p. 348)
progress to the stage in which the duality
will develop into the Trinity indispensable for its full manifestation. It is in
the character of the work it will accomplish in the world, that the third
person, or Spirit, of the American Union, having its procession primarily from
the unity, and secondarily from the duality, will manifest the true nature of
the national substance.
The rivalry between the
“Democrats” and “Republicans,” which has at length reached its crisis, is, like
that between our Liberals and Conservatives, a war of the sexes in the sphere of
politics. The sympathy accorded by our orthodoxies to the Confederation of the
South in the civil war, was but a proof of the allegation respecting the
essentially atheistic character of orthodoxy. Finding the doctrine of the unity
of existence impregnable, directly it makes its attack through the duality.
All other nations, as Great
Britain, France, Germany, Italy, manifest the like distinction and relation
between their northern and southern divisions; the former always correspond to
the male or light, the latter to the female or dark race. The configuration of
the various continents ministers to such a classification, most countries having
their greatest length from north
(p. 349)
to south. But no people seem able to maintain
themselves as a nation which do not consist of sections capable of being thus
referred to the two sexes respectively. They must differentiate, if only into
Liberal and Conservative, at their best, parties of progress and parties of
order. And so necessary is such a differentiation to every abstract that is to
subsist in the concrete, that bodies which to the minutest inspection appear to
be homogeneous, invariably on manifesting themselves in operation, assume in
regard to each other male and female functions. Professor Tyndall has told us
that the smallest atom of matter contains a positive and a negative pole.
Biology informs us that the smallest protoplastic monad, which propagates itself
by fission, is inherently dual. We see in human life that no two members of a
family, even though of the same sex, can dwell together without becoming one as
the man and the other as the woman in their general relation towards each other.
Turning to
(p. 350)
antagonism between
(p. 351)
Existence, are preparing for our posterity. For this is the
Catholic Faith, which except, every one do keep whole and undefiled: without
doubt he shall perish everlastingly.
And thus it appears that the
Churches which once had the key of knowledge have taken it away, and not only
have not entered in themselves, but have hindered those who would enter in; and,
persisting in their refusal of admittance to any, have at length lost the key, and now have to receive back at
the hands of a Free-thinker the true interpretation of their own symbols.
Thus also does the legend of
(p. 352)
as some of the early Gnostics rightly
maintained, it was not the enemy, but the friend, of man; not the Devil, but the
Saviour; even the Soul incarnated in humanity, the Christ that was before
Abraham, that was in the beginning with God and that was God; even the Lamb
slain by Sacerdotal Orthodoxy from the foundation of the world, and whom it is
once again urging England to crucify afresh by tearing in pieces the
marriage-lines of her contract with the Moslem; – he it was who, as the
beneficent Serpent of eternal generation, prompted man to adhere to the pure
diet suited to his frugivorous structure, in order that thus he might maintain
soul and body alike in their proper NATURAL perfection; and so by virtue of his
perfect intuition hold direct communion with the universal Soul of all things,
and, instead of groping his way as in the dark by Reason, might walk boldly as
in the day by sight.
Let us return to our immediate
subject.
(p. 353)
Slav population of the southern half of
The case between the two divisions
of the Russian people is thus precisely that which makes it the most friendly
act on the part of a neighbour to close his doors against the wife, in order to
stimulate her return to her duty, and protect his own family from a demoralising
association. This is the only course that any
(p. 354)
one having the slightest respect for the
sanctity of the marriage-tie would for a moment contemplate; especially any one
professing a religion which recognises marriage as the sacrament of human
correspondence to the Divine unity and duality, and adultery and divorce as
deadly sins. Yet the whole endeavour of our sacerdotalists is to promote in the
case of
Even this, however, does not
constitute their greatest offence against the fundamental doctrines of the
religion they profess. For the union which has always subsisted between the dark
and light races – who in this case are represented not merely by the Turk and
the Ishmaelite, but, on a far vaster scale, by Christian and Moslem, England and
the East – is, to all intents and purposes, a true marriage, and one in which
the whole of the light and dark races of mankind are represented. For it is a
marriage contracted and consummated from the foundation of the world; and one,
more-over, wholly valid, suitable, and necessary in respect of affinity, of
opposites, and of interests. Enough has been said to make evident the
consequences of
(p. 355)
a separation between the two halves of
humanity, as represented by
While it is an interesting problem
to ponder how far it may be in the possibilities of the future that the
descendants of Ishmael may, as the elder offspring of the hardy stock of
Abraham, come into the full enjoyment of the spiritual perfection which thus far
Israel has tasted only to reject, it is manifest from the largest inductions of
history, that the duty and
(p. 356)
interest of man consist in the culture of his
soul. The same truth holds good for races and. for individuals. The maintenance
of the vitality of the spiritual essence within us, is the one condition of
health, wealth, and happiness. For that is not health, not wealth, not
happiness, which has its orbit round a centre which is not the true, central,
and permanent self of each, in that it is not the universal self and centre of
all existence. It has been her neglect of this fact, and her exclusive devotion
to the mere outward and lower self, that has plunged
One thing is absolutely certain –
namely, that while the whole of
(p. 357)
brought her to this pass, and flinging to the
winds her pride and incredulity, and the orthodoxies spawned of Satan, to listen
once more to her long-suffering National Soul as it cries to her as to one sunk
in a deep slumber, and who must by all means be awakened, “Arise! shine! for thy
light is come!” “Awake! arise! or be forever fallen!”
*
*
*
*
*
But the soul of
(p. 358)
smothered, and his own ear dulled, by the
unvitalised rubbish with which he has crowded his sanctuary. But though the
sound of England’s knocking at the door of him who is destined to be the Paul of her coming regeneration, has
failed to reach the ear for which it is specially intended, it has not been
unheard elsewhere. Few indeed have caught it, or its significance. And to these,
for the most part, it has seemed that it thundered, or that an angel was
speaking in an unknown tongue. Nevertheless, it has been seen that his hour,
which was not yet come, would soon come, and that when it should come, then
would the Divine voice penetrate the whole of his dense and outer self, and that
in the access of his sudden illumination, he would be as it were struck to the
ground, and cry at once, in agony and in joy, “Who art thou, Lord? What wilt
thou have me to do?” and that then, perchance, he would, even as his great
prototype, arise and go into the city, where it should be told him what the work
is that the Soul of England has for him to do.
Let me be forgiven if I seem to
attach too much importance to coincidences of time. It is a recent thing with me
to attach any importance to them at all. And it is due solely to the
accumulation
(p. 359)
upon me in the course of my special studies,
of instances impossible to be ignored, that I have come to do so. Here is my
reason for attaching importance to the date at which I am now writing. It is
exactly one year ago to the minute since, after a long course of wanderings
through every kind of speculation and hypothesis, I reached the central fact of
which I had been in search. It came to me on the morning of the 3rd of January
last, at twenty minutes past eleven; and in my delight at having at last solved
the greatest of all historical problems, and fearing to be anticipated in its
promulgation – for now that I had found it, it seemed so clear that I fancied
everybody else must be finding it also – I despatched a hasty line to two or
three trusty friends who knew something of the work on which I was engaged,
telling them that I had “found Jesus,” not in the Moody and Sankey sense, but as
a real historical fact. Of that find, after a whole year o f intense study and
numerous vicissitudes of view, this book is an outcome; and it is at the exact
anniversary of my discovery of Christ that I have discovered Paul, and the
correspondence between the part played by him in the establishment, and the part
apparently to be played by Mr. Gladstone in the completion and
(p. 360)
regeneration of Christianity. It is at the
same instant, also, that I have discerned the modus of the famous conversion, and
become vividly impressed by the idea that Mr. Gladstone is at this moment
undergoing a crisis in his spiritual development precisely similar to that of
Paul.
The Christ of every people is the
man in whom the national soul of that people finds its full expression. The
reason why the character, or at least an approach to it, is so rare is that so
few individuals follow a mode of life which admits of their whole organism
becoming thoroughly vitalised by the national soul which they share in common
with their fellow-countrymen. It is too much the custom to burden the outer and
false self of the body and its mental apparatus with substances of which the
consciousness is too low to be capable of being worked up by the system to the
highest degree of vitalisation of which the individual is capable. It is through
the voluntary choking of our inner and true flame, the soul, that we render
ourselves so dense and dark. The Christ of a people is simply one through whom
the spirit of that people is recognised as shining unobstructed by a particle of
substance that is incapable of being suffused and permeated wholly
(p. 361)
by the Divine light of the soul. Every
individual man is an epitome and repetition in small of the universe of God and
Nature; and what we call evil is nothing but the result of the interception of
the light and heat of the one through the denseness of the envelope that
constitutes the other. Nature itself is to God as a body, formed by himself, at
his own will. It is not God, but God’s; precisely as our bodies are not us, but
ours. The substance of this body of God is that of the thought of the Divine
mind. It is an idea, which, while real for the world that
consists of it, is for God and Mind but a thought, capable of increase,
diminution, modification, or cessation at the Divine will.
While it is necessary for us to
conceive of the Divine Mind as absolutely eternal, it is necessary for us to
conceive of the Divine body, or Nature, as eternal only in so far as we are able
to conceive of the Divine Mind as capable of subsisting without manifestation in
thought. The substance of the physical and phenomenal universe, then, is a
secretion, as it were, of thought in the Divine Mind; and the spiritual universe
of souls consists of a spiritual progeny generated from the Divine Mind itself.
To this last, as Moses perceived, the term substance cannot be applied without
(p. 362)
in the first place producing a misconception
in ourselves; and, in the second place, depriving the phenomenal world of the
only term by which we can designate that of which it consists. The term
substance can be no more applied to God than to our own minds; and if the
materialist physiologist cavils at the notion of the material world consisting
of consciousness or ideas secreted through the mutual interaction of
the functions into which, on translating itself into action, the Divine Mind
differentiates; if he still insists on seeing in matter a substance inherently
unconscious, I refer him to the demonstration he has himself given me – simply
by means of a legitimate anatomy of the dead subject – of the sexual character
of the microcosm of the Macrocosm, the brain of man himself. If in presence of
that stupendous miracle, whereby the Divine Power and the Divine Soul have
stamped themselves in effigy, for the redemption of the world by the translation
into humanity of the Divine Thought and the Divine Feeling, – if, I say, in the
presence of that miracle – instead of seeking by self-purification and
sanctification to fit himself for the due comprehension of the mystery that lies
open before him, he can crack his brutal jokes, and exercise his ingenuity only
in devising new and
(p. 363)
more excruciating torments wherewith to seek
to wring the divine secret of Life from the writhing frames of fellow-creatures
equally sensitive with himself, and differing from him solely by reason of their
being but a step or two lower on the ladder of physical existence than himself –
yet perchance how much higher morally! – then is he one who, by virtue of his
own absolute defect in respect of the dualism essential to the constitution of
the whole and sound man, – by his defect in respect of that feminine and
sympathetic half, whereby throughout the whole Divine Existence the masculine
and intellectual half is supplemented and complemented, – is wholly unfit to be
entrusted in any manner or degree whatever with the vocation which he has taken
upon himself. He is one to be ejected with scorn and contumely from the divine
ministry of the
Let us look a little more closely
into the Divine method in existence. It belongs to our subject, inasmuch as it
is through the failure of the Church and the world alike to comprehend the
doctrine of the Divine Dualism, that they have come to their present desperate
pass. And if any one be still disposed to press for authority
(p. 364)
and proof of the truth of what I am
advancing, and to ask how such things are known, I must in reply ask
him how he knows that space is infinite, that time is eternal, that mind, that
existence, that God, is One? Of course, if he maintain that to his own
consciousness no truth whatever is self-evident; I have nought to say to him. I
could not win his assent to the first axiom of geometry. To the allegation that
the
whole is greater than the part, he would reply, – “How do you know it is? I
do not see it.” To those who, while less dense in that they have a perception of
some self-evident truths, are nevertheless incredulous of the existence of the
power to see as self-evident truths which are somewhat more remote, – who, while
seeing for instance that 7 x 7 = 49 cannot see with equal certainty that 49 x 7
= 343, but think that this must be a matter of “opinion” to be decided by a
majority of voices, as “the good of the community” may require; – to these I say
that once granted the existence of a consciousness capable of discerning a
truth, it becomes only a matter of the development of the capacity of that
consciousness how remote and stupendous the truth it is able to discern. My view
of Church dogma, for instance, is that all true dogmas are the result of the
perception
(p. 365)
of them as self-evident and necessary truths.
To me, at least, so far as that little “bone,” the Athanasian Creed, is
concerned, every proposition is it seems to be self-evident and necessarily
true, at once of the human and of the divine existence. And I can confidently
say the same of every proposition advanced dogmatically in this book – the
appeal in demonstration of which is to the consciousness of those who, in
developing their allotment of that divine gift, have by their scrupulous care in
developing both sides of it alike at once confessed their belief that God made
man “in his own image, male and female;” who have declined to ally themselves
with “the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit” to war against and
slay the “two witnesses” of God who have now been prophesying “a thousand two
hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth;” and who have not in any
department whatever of their activity, by ministering to the divorce of
knowledge and sympathy, ministered to the exaltation of that “old serpent, the
dragon” of sense and selfish-ness.
Creation is conceivable of only as
consisting, first, in the propagation of innumerable spiritual force-centres
through the spontaneous fission (for
(p. 366)
its own satisfaction) of the infinite
dualistic monad, termed by us the Divine Mind, each such centre constituting a
soul, or individual spirit endowed with all the characteristics of its Divine
Parent, save only his-and-her infinity. And, secondly, it consists of a
“material” world of which, while the original substance is no other than the
thought of the Divine Mind, its nature
being the dictate of the Divine Will, the fashioning or “redemption” is
committed to the individualised spiritual force-centres called souls. And so
plastic, by reason of its being a mode of the Divine Consciousness, is the
substance of the phenomenal world, that it becomes for each individual unit into
which the Divine Mind has differentiated itself, precisely what that unit
chooses to make it. Essentially one, those units vary in the degree of their
power to infuse themselves into, and vitalise with the higher life of the
spirit, the phenomenal world around them, according to the stage o f their
development from their original inception as mere spiritual force-points. The
great obstacle to the perfect fashioning or “redemption” of this planet of ours,
hitherto, is, as I have endeavoured to show, the failure of the souls which, for
its sake and their own, have been charged with the task, to accord
(p. 367)
due recognition to the two halves of the
dualism inherited by them in virtue of their divine ancestry. It is by virtue of
the dualism of the primary, underived, supreme Existence itself, that the like
dualism pervades every plane and sphere of the secondary, derived, subordinate
existence we call Nature. Through all conceivable existence run parallel to each
other, in some one or other mode, the two sides of the Ladder of Existence, –
Thought and Feeling. And precisely as on seeking to pass beyond the lower plane
or outer sphere of existence, we find that the negation of thought and feeling
is the negation of existence itself, – is, as it were, the outer void beyond the
solar system, where, through the absence of sun and satellite, God does not
manifest himself in creation; so, on seeking upwards or inwards to the highest
plane or most central sphere of existence, we find, instead of the negation, the
absolute identification of thought and feeling, energy and love, male and
female, in the Divine Mind.
Creation, then, consists in the
Divine Mind having, for its own satisfaction, projected itself in the form of
innumerable spiritual force-centres, identical in substance and kind, but
varying in mode and degree, and constituting
(p. 368)
individualised units of consciousness, whose
unalterable and unquenchable nature it is to seek to return from the distances
to which they have been projected, to their original habitat in the Divine Mind.
And the purpose for which they have been put forth is, that after wanderings
proportioned to the obtuseness and insensibility of their perceptions, they may
return to the Divine home whence they have so long ago been despatched, with
their power to appreciate the perfections of that home indefinitely enhanced by
the experiences undergone on the journey of individual existence. The parable of the Prodigal Son is thus the epic at once of the individual
and of the universal world on each of the planes of existence. It is ethereal,
it is material, it is animal, it is human, it is solar, it is Divine. Only they
who have quitted the Divine home, and gone forth into the world of existence,
and by means of the things done, and suffered, and felt, and learnt therein, can
rightly appreciate that home, and the love that reigns there. The religious
consciousness of man is no other than the universal home-sickness of the human
soul when sufficiently vitalised to be incapable of deriving satisfaction from
the things of sense; and this is the meaning of the saying, a saying so old
(p. 369)
und so wise as to be fairly entitled to be
regarded as one of those words which have survived from the wreck of worlds long
submerged under the deluges of time, and to which Aristotle referred as an
Archaios logos,
the saying, namely “the greater the sinner, the greater the saint.” It was by a
true instinct that our American brethren renounced the principle of
primogeniture. They wanted no “elder brothers” to be lapped all their lives in
the luxuries of the paternal home, and reared in the notion that they are
perfect because, having everything they want, they have no inducement to go
wrong. In this the Americans have shown that they in a measure comprehend aright
the fundamental principle of Existence. For they perceive that it is necessary
for the full development of the capacity of every individual whatever, that,
like the younger brother, he goes out into the world and gets his own education
and his own experience, and makes his own living for himself. Thus only will lie
become a real man, knowing what is in man, with the truth also that only thereby
can man attain that perfection of humanity which is also the perfection of
Deity. Those only, moreover, who make trial of God’s goodness by going astray,
can know the full extent of that goodness,
(p. 370)
It is quite possible in refraining from sin
to commit a sin greater than that which is refrained from; for it may be through
lack of faith in the Divine affection that we fear to put it to the test. The
Bible is not backward in showing that God can love a hearty sinner as well as a
cheerful giver. It is thus that we learn to recognise the full significance of
the oracular injunction to the seeker for wisdom, Know thyself; and of the sciolism of that poet
without insight who proposed as an amendment, “Ignore thyself, and learn to know
thy God.” For the latter showed only that he had not made the very foundation
discovery of all knowledge, – the discovery that God is the true self of every
individual unit of consciousness in the universe, so that a man cannot know
himself without knowing God. I do not know whether the experiences of others
correspond with mine in the matter, but although I have heard and read many
discourses on the parable of the Prodigal Son, I have not found in any of them
the smallest recognition of the significance of the phrase,
“And when he carne to himself.” The only explanation I can offer of the
omission is that, inasmuch as the words imply the identity of the true self of
the individual with the Divine source of all things, it constitutes on the part
of
(p. 371)
Christ a confession of Pantheism, and hence
is fatal to the favourite orthodox doctrine of the total depravity of man; as is
the whole scope of the parable to that of vicarious atonement.
Herein lies the peculiar
adaptation of Mr. Gladstone for the part indicated. As the special defect of the
vanishing dispensation has consisted in its contravention of the doctrine of the
Divine dualism, so the special object of the coming regeneration is the
rehabilitation and exaltation of that doctrine. Man has to accord as a whole
practical recognition to the lesson taught alike in Paradise and in
(p. 372)
of the regeneration will be the religion of a
whole humanity. It was through Paul’s inability, by reason of his own
constitutional’ defect, to represent a whole humanity to the world, that the
religion of Christendom has hitherto been restricted to the male element only.
Paul’s inability to appreciate the feminine side of the soul of Christ, while it
led him to exalt the masculine, led him also to depreciate woman and her
influence to a subordinate position in the economy of Christendom. It is true
that the Gospel of Paul, like that of Christ, was based upon the intuitions, and
recognised the emotions. But while that of Christ, in virtue of the completeness
of his humanity, exalted “Water and the Life” as the means of salvation, that of
Paul, owing to his incompleteness, exalted Blood and a Death. In a religion of
this kind, woman could have no part. Hence the necessity and special
significance of the crisis at which we have arrived. As a “man-child,”
Christianity has “ruled all nations with a rod of iron,” while the woman has
been hiding in the wilderness of the cloister, ecclesiastical or social. But her
“thousand two hundred and threescore days” are drawing to their end, and once
more there is “war in heaven.” The dragon of orthodoxy and
(p. 373)
his angels will fight against the woman that
she be not restored to her place in the Divine dualism; and Michael and his
angels will fight against the dragon in the woman’s cause, and the cause of the
true unity.
Such being the nature of the
coming struggle – a struggle which, like all the great contests of humanity,
consists in the translation into fact on the plane of sense of an antagonism
subsisting on the plane of spirit – it becomes an absolute necessity that no
pains be spared to assure ourselves respecting the qualifications of the one man
indicated by circumstance as him through whom the soul of England contemplates
revealing itself in action.
Some of my readers may be
interested in learning that it was not until long after I had discovered that
Christ represented the full expression of the national soul of Israel, and that
the Jews were, to use a modern term, Animists, or soul worshippers, that I
attained any sure conviction, either that the national soul, or indeed any other
soul, was an actual entity, or that Christ and Paul bad been actual living
persons. I had by dint of pure reason reconstructed the whole system of
religious thought, Jewish and Gentile, which led up to the conception of
“Christ” and
(p. 374)
had found that such a character and history
were as absolutely necessary to the full completion of that system as are the
flower and fruit to the completion and perfection of the tree. But I had no idea
that the fruit and flower were other than manufactured in order to make it
appear that the tree was complete. I think it well to make this statement in
order that it may be seen that so far from this book being written to uphold any
foregone conclusion, it represents only conclusions which have been forced upon
me in spite of the strongest prepossessions the other way.
It was from the scientific
standpoint that I began my search for the origin of the idea of Christ. Theology
failing me, I had fancied that Science was the only alternative. It was not
until I had written half a volume under this conception, that I found not only
that what is called Science would at best not carry more than a fraction of the
facts, but that Science was itself but a mode of the very principle I had
repudiated as fatal to truth in theology. For I found that so far from their
being really opposites to each other, they were opposed only as the two
divisions of an army are opposed which are besieging one and the same city from
opposite sides at once. Pursuing the inquiry on this track, I was not long
(p. 375)
in discovering, what had previously been
wholly unsuspected by me, that both orthodox religion and orthodox science are
the chief Instruments whereby, through the exaltation of sense, man’s lower
nature is ever fighting against his higher, his body against his soul.
Such success as I have had in
discerning the true solutions of the various problems I had proposed to myself
is, so far as I can judge, due entirely to the faithfulness with which, while
giving full heed to my reason, I have remained true to my intuitions. Those
intuitions had in my youth forced me to repudiate as a blasphemy against every
principle of the soul’s health, the orthodox doctrine of atonement by the blood
of another. It was only many years afterwards – scarcely three years ago – that
the instinct which had ever led me to revolt against the orthodox doctrine of
salvation for the body by the blood of others, found confirmation and full
recognition from me. My instinct on the matter then received full justification
from a careful study which I made of the physiology of the question. It was what
I discovered in the course of this study respecting modern medical orthodoxy
that disclosed to me the nature and identity of all orthodoxies whatever, and
showed me that the doctrine of salvation
(p. 376)
for one’s health by means of the torture of
animals, is every whit as great a blasphemy against every sound principle of
existence as any of the other articles in the orthodox creed of blood.
The special vitalisation of which
I have recently become conscious, is distinctly traceable to the indignation
excited in me by the atrocious barbarities of modern physiological practice,
especially in regard to animals. It was the appeal of these poor helpless
fellow-citizens that led to the full revelation to me of a doctrine I had
undesignedly made the basis of the tales I have from time to time written. For
although the volumes in question were illustrated by monograms expressly
designed to symbolise the doctrine of the duality of existence, it is only as I
have proceeded with this book that I have discerned the full value of that
doctrine, and recognised the consistency with which I had previously advanced
it. As it is to my practical recognition of that doctrine that I owe the
development of every faculty the exercise of which constitutes a true culture of
existence, I think it but right thus to indicate to others so valuable an aid to
the proper development of the consciousness. Once purified by means of its full
adoption in practice, and with body and soul alike set free from the
(p. 377)
stain of blood, there was nought to stand
between me and the full vision o f the ideal which had all my life been
revealing itself to me, as it were, in tiny patches of blue through the
occasional openings in the thick clouds of sense. And at length my faith and
patience were rewarded by seeing the clouds clear away entirely, and the whole
fair face of the heavens of existence disclosed to me in a beauty and glory
surpassing aught that I had ever before imagined, enabling me to recognise as in
no degree exaggerated the rapturous utterances in which Paul – the man whom I
had lately suspected of having never existed, but thought the name that of a
school of Jewish writers – has described his insight into the true nature of the
existence discernible as the sole reality by those who are vitalised in both the
spiritual and physical region of the in consciousness.
We have now reached the point at
which we can discern the causes of the failure of Paul and of Moses to render an
account of a perfect work, and of those also which stand between Mr. Gladstone
and
(p. 378)
those of
Nevertheless, it seems to me
manifest that
(p. 379)
but by her faith. She alone of all the peoples has
been true to her intuition; she alone of the nations has not forgotten her first
love. The people of whom but yesterday it might have been predicated, – “Lo,
here! or Io, there!” among them shall Christ be born, – has forfeited its claims
to the distinction, though not wholly by its own fault. Under more favourable
conditions
(p. 380)
one who, to supreme reason, added a pure
intuition, one who, discerning the moral impossibility of the truth of the
received orthodoxies, set himself to demonstrate the absolute untruthfulness of
the popular theologies in regard to the history of Christ. Thus far Dr. Strauss
followed a true insight. But his time of trial carne, and when weighed in the
balance he was found wanting. In all that he was and did he was a true
representative of the degree in which the national soul had succeeded in
expressing itself in its people. His failure was due to. their failure. And he
fell away even as they had fallen away from the pure ideal of the Divine
perfection of existence; fell away from the ideal of a Deity and humanity in
which the spiritual and moral perfection s of both sexes should be perfectly and
harmoniously combined, to the worship of a male presentation only in their
present god of blood and iron. True, as I have said, the fault was not that of
(p. 381)
promptings of her animal nature, and by
yielding became a sharer in her sin. The intuitions, the soul, and God
renounced; the sun and its system, and all vitalising influences whatever
abandoned, nought remained but to enter the region of negation, atheism, and
pessimism, there to wait until a new cycle in the development of man’s spiritual
consciousness should come round, and Germany should at length “stretch out her
hands unto” a God that was something more than an iron will.
It seems to me that even now is
the time at hand for such an issue as this for
(p. 382)
of the spirit, and converting the ashes of
her Reformation into the phoenix of her Regeneration.
And
They hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through
so those who have been partners in the
transgression shall, when the Satan of the orthodoxies who tempted them shall
like lightning have fallen from heaven, together
On their glorious work,
Now enter; and begin to eave mankind.
For just as Germany and England are the male
and female representatives of the Teuton division of that “strong son of God” –
the white and Aryan half of humanity – of which it is necessary that England
should enact the mother’s part; so are Teuton and Celt, as represented by
Germany and France, the male and female divisions of the Aryan race whose
mission in the future, as in the past, is to redeem the dark” daughters of men”
by the presentation of a perfect humanity. But the humanity of the future will
be more perfect than that of the past, inasmuch as by recognising the equality
of the sexes, it will constitute a
(p. 383)
practical recognition of the essential
duality of all existence.
Thus it appears that the object is
fixed, the nation chosen, and the time at hand; and that it remains only to find
the man through whom the soul of
And as is ever the case with the
typical man of a people, he in whom she shall accomplish her destiny will be one
who has been a prodigal like herself, – one who has accompanied her in her
wanderings, and has shared in her repentance. Even he it is who shall guide her
home; and
(p. 384)
shall do so by virtue of that same
faithfulness to the intuitions which has constituted the bond between them, as
well in their outgoing as in their incoming. Not the least strange part of the
matter is that in the new rendering of the parable, the characters of prodigal
and of elder brother will be played by the same actor. For while Mr. Gladstone’s
false self has remained at home with the chief priests and Pharisees of
sacerdotalism, his true, though unenlightened, self has gone astray, and wasted
his country’s substance in riotous living with the wantons of Liberalism. Said I
not rightly that h e was not yet all of a piece? that he had not yet completed
his system of thought? that his mind is a vast nebula, comprising suns and
planets, and all the wherewithal to constitute a magnificent and harmonious
system, whenever he should have finally determined around which of the many
centres he was essaying in turn he should ultimately revolve? Well, this is the
point in his development which, as I judge him, he is now fast approaching. The
fiat, “Let there be light!” has been spoken. The nebulous haze is already
rolling away. The true sun is fast manifesting itself. The old is fast passing
away. All things are being made new. Chaos
(p. 385)
is becoming kosmos. What else is it that
prompts his refusal to go on flogging the dead horse of Liberalism, but his
instinctive perception of this truth? Mr. Gladstone cannot be judged aright save
by those who, recognising in him a true son of man, know that his every word and
deed are the product of a growth, and not of a manufacture. No political
tradesman, but true artist is
Do we want a sign? Let us revert
from the Apocalypse to the Genesis, from the consummation
(p. 386)
to the initiation. We have referred to Enoch.
Enoch was the son of the prophet Cain, who, for being a renouncer of blood, and
a follower of the intuitions, was falsely represented by sacerdotalists as
having murdered his brother. Enoch – the son of a murderer! – begat the
longest-lived of the sons of men; and after walking with God “was not, for God
took him;” that is, he did not die, but was “translated” at the end of 365
years.
One calling on me fears that my
work on this book has been too much for me. For I tell him that there is going
to be a demand for Bibles such as never was known, and that he may do a good
(p. 387)
stroke of business by buying up the whole stock in trade. He thinks the Bible is utterly dead. A few curious persons may buy copies of the new translation!