THE “NEW GOSPEL OF INTERPRETATION”

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VII.

The Bible Charges Ecclesiasticism with

Having Resource to Sorcery

It is upon Ecclesiasticism, obtaining its hold over man through the corruption of the “woman,” intuition, and acting as agent for the occult powers of evil, that the Bible, as now interpreted, lays the responsibility for that sacrificial system which, exalting a demon to the place of God, has made the earth a scene of slaughter and torture, and human history a continuous record of agony, despair, and madness, in avowed propitiation of a blood-loving deity. And it is Ecclesiasticism itself, with the social systems engendered of and controlled by it, that is really implied by the terms Baal, Molech, Sodom and Gomorrah, Egypt, Assyria, Tyre, Nineveh, and Babylon, the “kings” of these places being the ruling element in man’s system when, become wholly materialistic and in bondage to the sense-nature, and utterly selfish, he renounces principles in favour of self-interest, and knows no right but that of the strongest.

This element is the intellect. In the Church’s un-fallen state, when linked with a pure intuition, the intellect is the heir of all things, lifting man from the dust of the ground to the throne of the Most High. Thus does it fulfil its proper function and vindicate its proper name, Lucifer, the Light-bearer; the bright and

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morning star, herald and bringer-in of the perfect day of the Lord God.

But in the Church’s fallen state, with the Spirit renounced and the intuition corrupted, he becomes “prince of devils” in man, the maker of the earth into a hell; and his deposition from the heaven of his power on the advent of the whole Humanity, has ever by seers and prophets been hailed with joyful anticipation, while they loaded him with bitterest execration for the misery he has wrought on earth alike to man and to man’s rudimentary brethren, the animals, charging him with supplementing the physical forces and his disposal with others obtained by means of sorcery.

The Bible is emphatic in its assertion of sorcery as the stronghold of Ecclesiasticism. Only in our day has it been made possible both to verify the accusation and to divulge its significance. The explanation is in this wise. Hell and devils are realities but the world has mistaken their origin and nature. They are not God-made, but man-made. Man subsists under two modes, incarnate and discarnate, and the extreme antithetical conditions of the latter are those which are denoted by the terms “celestial” and” infernal.” Man incarnate is accessible to both, and according to the tendencies he voluntarily encourages, comes under the influence of either. The former ever seeks to raise him spiritually to its sphere; the latter ever seeks to drag him down spiritually to its sphere. Sorcery represents the systematic cultivation of relations with the latter. Cut off by their own inveterate wickedness from the celestial and the divine life, and knowing themselves doomed to extinction, the lost souls but strong wills of the infernal seek to sustain themselves by the fumes or “spirits” of blood freshly shed. It is their favourite, because their most highly vitalising pabulum on which they can the longest postpone the extinction sooner or later inevitable. Hence their endeavour to promote on earth

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the state of things most conducive to bloodshed. And, knowing that as is man’s conception of God, so is his conception of himself and his conduct of life, their most potent device consists in impressing him with the belief in a deity who is force only and will, and by no means substance and love; like themselves a lover of blood, and to be propitiated by bloody sacrifices, the real object of which is their own sustentation. Such are the genesis and motive of that most potent of all infernal devices for depraving man’s conception of God, the doctrine of salvation by substitutory sacrifice, theologically called “vicarious atonement.” A perversion, as is every error, of a truth in itself inexpugnable, it is the root of that sacrificial system which, having religion for its main trunk, extends its branches into every domain of human activity, everywhere exacting the sacrifice of individuals and of principles to tradition and convention, and nowhere recognising truth and right.